Alvina Chamberland Takes a Scalpel to Straight Men’s Secret Attraction to Trans Women

Alvina Chamberland’s debut novel, Love the World or Get Killed Trying, is an explosive work of autofiction that combines playful and poetic prose, zingy social commentary, and razor-sharp gallows humor. The novel is structured as a stream-of-consciousness travelogue where we journey around Europe with the novel’s protagonist, an opinionated trans woman coming up to her thirtieth birthday. In the wilderness of Iceland and along the busy boulevards of Paris, we witness our protagonist probing questions of philosophy, society, sexuality, and love—while also dealing with the dangerous blend of discrimination and desire that informs straight men’s treatment of trans women.

Love the World or Get Killed Trying is a glorious, soul-shaking, vibrant manifesto of a novel. As its title suggests, it is a voice-driven testimony about how hard it can be to remain soft, while living in a world where trans people’s rights and autonomy are increasingly under political threat. 

Over a combination of email and Google Docs, Chamberland and I spoke about a range of topics including: the importance of breaking rules and bending genres, transmisogyny as a heightened version of misogyny against cis women, the uses of humor as a tool of survival and transcendence, and the manifold problems that result when straight men are unable to fully face, name and own their desires for trans women.

Shze-Hui Tjoa: What made you start writing this novel? 

Alvina Chamberland: I started mainly for two reasons. First: to survive. Ever since I was 19 and first fell madly in love, I’ve needed writing to not be driven out of my mind, and to try to make myself and my experiences of the world understood. It’s an escape route from death-spiraling anxiety, through giving the darkness form I create a moment where it can’t take over my life. 

Second: because I haven’t read many other books like this, and I need it to be out there in the world, a novel written by a trans woman that dares to be literary and poetic and abstract and realist and non-linear and dreamy. A novel which politically confronts straight men’s behavior towards us and demands change, and personally exposes both the universal and specific experiences that have shaped my life—my hope is that this vulnerability can connect and build bridges between people with very different structural positions.

ST: There’s so much humor in Love the World or Get Killed Trying! I especially love your protagonist’s quips about place as she travels – I laughed out loud to read her description of Iceland’s “Scandinavian Design temples dedicated to the fear of inflicting stains and the feeling of being dead inside.” What roles do humor and observation play in your writing?

AC: Oh my god, so many! First of all, trans girls need a wicked sense of humor in order to survive all the extremes and hypocrisies this world throws at us. In turn all these experiences make us so clever, sharp and witty in our observations. I can break down and build up social structures with my trans woman friends in ways I can’t with anyone else. This of course translates into how I write—or all the dark experiences portrayed in this novel, the humor goes even darker. 

One of my favorite terms in the world is “gallows humor,” but in order to inhabit that term, one must spend a lot of time in the gallows. I think I can say I have, and although I am dead serious and want to make a reader cry a hundred times, I also want to make her laugh nearly as much. It’s through this combination one can transcend the role of a one-sided victim without foregoing honesty, or denying the pain and tragedy and injustice of far too many things in our world.

ST: One of Love the World’s big themes is around “spotlighting straight men’s frequent and secret attraction to trans women.” And of course, the opening epigraph cites several statistics about the commercial popularity of transgender porn, explaining how “Transgender porn has presumably become the largest, most popular genre of porn among heterosexual men.” 

Could you say more about why you chose to write a book that spotlights this subject? I’m also curious about the differences between being desired and fetishized, which is one of the related themes your novel touches upon.

AC: I suppose the simplest way to describe the difference between being desired and fetishized would be: is a guy interested in me predominantly because I’m a trans woman or predominantly because I’m Alvina? The latter brings us closer to desire, as it allows me to be an individual. Of course, other factors also play in, like if the guy is keeping me secret, if he sees me as viable for a long-term relationship or just a fling/one time thing, if the desire’s solely sexual, about my body, or if it’s also about my personality etc. Unfortunately, not more than 1-2% of the rows of straight men who want to have sex with me live up to all these criteria, and straight men really have to start grappling with their hypocrisy, objectification and cognitive dissonance towards trans women. One rarely sees “feminist men’s groups” addressing these topics, rather they can often be the most silent and intimidated by trans women of all straight men —too busy pretending to “tolerate” us to ever date us. Like, my experience is that white middle class liberal northern European men may be the most transphobic in the world. 

The whole issue of straight men’s desire is of course extremely relevant to me as it encircles my, and most straight trans girls’, lives. I mean the reason trans women, especially trans women of color, are the group within the LGBTQI+ umbrella facing the most murders and extreme violence, isn’t that straight men harbor more hatred towards us, but rather that they harbor hatred towards themselves for desiring us. And yet, any and every trans girl knows just how common and normcore this desire actually is. In our current society it wouldn’t be safe for many of us to do so, but if trans women one day collectively decided to out every man who seeks us out, a full-blown revolution would ensue by nightfall. There’s just so many of them and they’re almost completely invisible.

ST: I love that phrase—“a revolution by nightfall.” What kind of revolution are you thinking of, what do you hope it will dismantle or change?

AC: Allow me to get a bit abstract here as I’m talking about something that goes beyond our imaginations of liberation for minorities/subgroups. It’s about straight men finally being placed in a position of vulnerability, outside of their comfort zone, getting into contact with our very queer life experiences and thus not staying in the heteronormative echo chamber most of them have lived their entire lives within. This carries with it so much potential for collective freedom and liberation and a radical shift of fragile masculinity, thus far built on hiding, shame, and obsession with other men’s approval. 

What may not be as revolutionary—but would cause an important shift in many trans women’s lives—is creating an understanding of what transitioning really means in a physical sense, beyond identity. Of course if someone looks like society’s definition of a man, yet identifies as a woman, most straight men won’t find her attractive. But if a woman lives up to the beauty standards for women, she’ll be desired by most straight men, whether or not she is trans. For us to be held to the same beauty standards as all women isn’t revolutionary, but it’ll at least mean we won’t have to look perfect in order for a guy to even consider a date with us in daylight. The goal however is to eradicate these cisnormative patriarchal beauty standards altogether…

ST: Your novel is so incisive about how transmisogyny is a heightened version of regular misogyny. And as a fellow writer, I’m curious how (or if) you think this dynamic plays out in the careers and public reception of trans writers.

AC:  To begin with, most well-known trans women authors and intellectuals are lesbians. That has a lot to do with the messy extra trauma and hyperfemininity straight trans girls often endure and express, which has us deemed less competent. For similar reasons trans men may be deemed even more competent than lesbian trans women by institutional powers. Us straight trans women are generally granted visibility as models, actresses, or sex workers—the desire for us is hidden like gay desire was in the 1950s, and we are largely limited to a few select occupations like cis women were in the 50s. And if we’re very beautiful, we get reduced to that beauty and accused of “pandering to the male gaze.” At the same time cisnormative society defines a successful and respectable transition as one which leads to beauty and passing. It’s a double bind, damned if you, damned if you don’t.

I notice that this doesn’t happen to normatively attractive trans men, who reap rewards in a more linear fashion. The more I’ve started passing, the more I’ve noticed that queers and feminists expect me to be a bit stupid and conservative, until I prove them otherwise. Meanwhile, straight men are now the ones who seem the most eager to give me compliments for both my beauty and my intellect. Yet, before I became beautiful in a cis passing way, they completely ignored me and my work. So, I guess beauty is the prerequisite for them to pay me any attention at all, and I still deem it unlikely that they’ll be lining up to buy my book…

ST: There are many fantasies of romance woven through Love the World. The protagonist develops all these imaginary relationships in her head—with Cristiano Ronaldo, or the ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. But also, she’s in a kind of imaginary relationship with us—her readers—as she’s always breaking the fourth wall to talk to us directly. Was writing this book about finding connections, for you? 

AC: Since writing is such a solitary process, I think the real answer would be that the deepest connection I am seeking is one with myself. My hope is, however, that all this intense digging—all this openness and vulnerability and honesty—will make others feel connected to me as well. But that’s up to them to decide. I have no control over where the text goes, though I wish I could put it in the hands of more straight men, who perhaps are the ones who need to read it the most.

Most of all though, I don’t really have a target audience. I hope what I’ve written is heartbreakingly human enough and good enough as literature to traverse beyond static identity borders. And not because I’ve compromised and watered down my reality to make it more palatable—quite the contrary, real bridges are built through being adamantly real, getting humanized by showing just how human you are. 

I don’t want cis people to read this and be like “I’m a good ally, I read a novel by a trans woman, and it has nothing to do with me.” And neither do I want trans women to read and only feel empowered (although perhaps that too), but rather seen and understood in all the complexities we’re forced to live through. Or not—because in the end this is a novel, and I can only represent my own voice in it, and that voice may resonate with some and not with others. Its resonance may indeed occur in the most unexpected directions, which is the beauty of it.

ST: I keep coming back to this line near the end of the novel, which has stayed with me over all the months since I first read it: “Cool, composed, self-assured, professional—all characteristics we try to attain in order to better become machines. I don’t possess these qualities, and I have quit trying.” 

Love the World makes such intentional room for “too muchness”, instead of eliding it like other novels do. I’m curious what you feel it brings to the reading experience—or to the reader—when a writer doesn’t shy away from showing the contradictions, messiness, or complexities of their “behind the scenes” world…  because I feel like Love the World does this with such style and flair, and in a one-of-a-kind way compared to other books I’ve read. 

AC: I feel literature can capture the complexity, battles, and contradictions going on in our inner monologues to a deeper extent than more visually focused art forms. It’s difficult to make a film that only showcases what is going on inside a person, but it’s much easier to write a book based on that foundation. I find this especially important in today’s social media world where Twitter allows 240 characters, Insta-success comes from establishing a simple and consistent brand, and activists are seen as the most radical and worthy of visibility if they present themselves as 100 percent certain. The thing is though, most of us are neither simple nor consistent nor completely sure, which doesn’t mean we are total messes who can’t articulate any opinions… But honesty lies somewhere in-between and in this novel I’ve tried to enter various questions with that broad embrace. Indeed, I guess you could say I approach politics more as questions than answers…