Kaufman in the Age of YouTube: the Questionable Performance Art of Trisha Paytas

Jonathan Smith
Nov 3 · 11 min read
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool

R.E.M., “Man On The Moon”

In 1984, an entertainer and self-described “song and dance man” Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer at the unholy age of thirty-five. Directly following this event — well, in March of 2015 — The New Yorker ran a piece entitled, “Is Andy Kaufman Still Alive?” Like Elvis, a man Kaufman liked to impersonate onstage, Kaufman lives on in a liminal state of mostly-joking trutherdom. Given Kaufman’s penchant for pranks, the notion that he faked his own death and has been hiding out ever since seems almost plausible. In describing Kaufman’s practice, Avi Steinberg for The New Yorker writes,

For Kaufman, the key was always to inhabit a character all the way — whether or not cameras were rolling — and to operate under the principle that passionate, persistent fictions are indistinguishable from fact.

In this light, “prank” might be too small a word to capture the comic work of Andy Kaufman. Many have suggested he would be better described as a performance artist rather than a simple comédien. It takes profound dedication to comedy to sustain a joke outside the frame. Whatever your opinion on Kaufman, he managed to make everyone who saw him a participant in his jokes: if you didn’t get it, then you took him at face value (the worst crime) or had too little patience for the absurd; if you found him funny for any reason — be that a single performance or the lengths he went to — that only meant you were a willing participant. To know Andy Kaufman was to react to him, whether you wanted to or not.

Kaufman got into hot water for his “career” as a World Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion. Viewers were outraged at his physical domination of women onstage, and Kaufman was believed to be a loud-mouthed, misogynistic chauvinist. The stunt seemed to be a way to put all these new-fangled feminist women back in their place, yet the absurdity of it calls to mind a very different tactic. In his wrestling matches, Kaufman lampoons a type of weak, insecure man who is so threatened by independent women that he seeks to dominate them — in other words, he skewers the very sort of man many believed him to be. Those who got offended were made into targets by their own inability to get the joke; those who questioned whether it was a stunt were similarly made into buffoons. The fact of the matter was that Kaufman’s act was so surreal it couldn’t possibly be real; yet it was just real enough — Kaufman sounded enough like a real misogynist — to make it a masterful troll.

More recently, a Kaufmanesque bomb shook the online transgender community. By “Kaufmanesque,” I mean that to learn of this spectacle was to react to it — even I, at first, fell prey to the whirring tunnel of questions that engulfs the trans mind upon encountering such seeming insanity. Trisha Paytas, a particularly buxom YouTube personality, has come out as a transgender man.

Trisha Paytas’ video titled “I AM TRANSGENDER (FEMALE TO MALE),” and the two follow-up videos, are tearful, meandering rambles about various qualities that make her think she’s trans. These include preferring to be friends with guys and disliking how others treat her dismissively for being female— but buried in these commonplace experiences are feelings that many trans men can intimately recognize; these are feelings that hearken to gender dysphoria, which according to the would-be trans intelligentsia, is the defining characteristic of transness. A woman can wish she were born a man for any number of reasons, but unless she experiences gender dysphoria, she’s just your average cis.

“You need dysphoria to be trans.”

There’s a common refrain that leads to much gnashing of teeth in trans online circles: you need dysphoria to be trans. This assertion became popular within the last decade, after the term “gender dysphoria” first appeared in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), published in 2013. In two previous editions, gender identity disorder was the preferred term to describe transness, but the new term avoids the stigma implied by the word “disorder.” To receive a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, an adult must have experienced two of the following for six consecutive months:

• A strong desire to be of a gender other than one’s assigned gender
• A strong desire to be treated as a gender other than one’s assigned gender
• A significant incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s sexual characteristics
• A strong desire for the sexual characteristics of a gender other than one’s assigned gender
• A strong desire to be rid of one’s sexual characteristics due to incongruence with one’s experienced or expressed gender
• A strong conviction that one has the typical reactions and feelings of a gender other than one’s assigned gender
• In addition, the condition must be associated with clinically significant distress or impairment.

Paytas certainly describes “a strong desire to be treated” as a different gender; she also insists she has “a strong conviction that [she] has the typical reactions and feelings” of men, and she tells us that she has had these since childhood. She claims distress over these feelings, and in her coming out videos, speaks of talking about this issue in therapy. If one needs gender dysphoria to be trans, then according to the American Psychological Association (APA), it is not wholly clear that Trisha Paytas isn’t trans.

However, like many words, a popular connotation exists that run roughshod over its technical definition. According to the way a number of trans people use it, gender dysphoria is a persistent, overwhelming desire to change one’s physical body to better match that of the opposite sex. By this definition, Paytas is almost certainly not trans — she stated she does not wish to change her physical body anytime soon, although she did like the way she looked and felt while dressing in drag for a video. She “felt like a thick man,” as she put it, and that summoned up feelings of apparent dysphoria she has felt off-and-on since childhood. Paytas tells us she used to feel uncomfortable in girls’ restrooms, dislikes having a vagina, and is uncomfortable being perceived as female. She considers her hyper-feminine appearance a tool for making a living — sex sells, apparently — yet also expresses an appreciation for the feminine aesthetic in general. Dysphoria hardliners may still doubt her dysphoria is genuine — If she truly hated being seen as female, wouldn’t she just transition already? Why would she accentuate the features of her biological sex? — but Paytas’ description of what in some ways is hardline-dysphoria serves to undermine those who’d immediately dismiss her.

However, when asked point-blank what made someone male, Paytas responded it was a person’s “energy” and “the way you feel inside.” This line of thinking is embraced by other corners of the trans community, those who find themselves at odds with the hardliners. People can have all sorts of reasons for not transitioning, so presenting in a way typical of one’s biological sex group, even if no medical interventions are sought, is no reason to deny someone’s transness. Some people may be too poor to afford transition; some may not feel “safe” enough, a nebulous term that nevertheless conjures up scenes of abandonment, eviction, loss of employment, and physical assault. However, this reasoning has been pushed to include an extreme (and some will say contradictory) declaration: a person can be trans even if they don’t want to transition.

The Ultimate Troll?

In an aforereferenced interview for H3 podcast, Paytas describes the encounter that made her decide to come out. She met a person who called herself a trans woman, yet who looked to Paytas like your average guy. According to the story, this trans woman was even too poor to afford “wearing a denim skirt;” however, no matter how she looked, she definitely considered herself a woman. This resonated with Paytas, she who resembles a caricature of a blonde bimbo yet feels utterly male inside. Though it stretches the imagination that the trans woman in Paytas’ story could not locate any articles of women’s clothing by way of donation, the softliners would insist this doesn’t matter — plain and simple, a person is trans if they say they are.

Here, allow me a moment of pure speculation: if Paytas had indeed encountered such a trans person, she might have found the scene rather ridiculous. This would have been an uncharitable reaction, given that all trans people were pre-transition at some point; and perhaps this trans woman, if she exists, indeed lacks the requisite network to obtain the clothing she wants. However, there’s a difference between being pre-transition and probably-never-transition. If a hyper-femininely sexualized troll like Paytas were to glean this distinction, she might — just might — decide to troll us all within an inch of our sanity.

The claim that even the desire to transition — traditionally speaking, to live as and look like a member of the opposite sex — is not crucial to transness might seem incomprehensible. And yet, it is diagnostically possible to be trans without a desire to change one’s sex characteristics whatsoever, as the APA’s guidelines show. Feeling like a different gender and wanting to be treated as such is enough.

Some will contend this Paytas-trans debacle is the logical conclusion of the softliners’ argument. The thought that Paytas — big-haired, made-up, surgically enhanced boobs and porn star Trisha Paytas — could conceivably think of herself as trans is intuitively ridiculous. Several trans YouTube commentators have spent time earnestly explaining why Paytas can’t possibly be trans, though the fact that this must be explained seems absurd in itself.

If someone were to satirically expose the absurdity in current trans discourse — all this hemming and hawing about who’s really trans — there would be no better candidate than Paytas. In addition to her hyper-feminine physicality and clothing choices, Paytas is assumed by many to be an overly emotional idiot — or if not an idiot, then mentally disturbed, and if not mentally disturbed then definitely on drugs. She also has a history of trolling, as evidenced by her at one time claiming to be black. As a YouTube character, Paytas is not one who is regularly taken seriously; pulling a trans stunt was guaranteed to touch a nerve and get people talking.

Ethan Klein, co-host of H3 podcast, brought up not only Paytas’ trolling past but also her avowed appreciation for Andy Kaufman. Yes, that Andy Kaufman — the man who trolled the world so hard that even his death was thought a hoax. This nugget of gold, sitting right there in her Wikipedia page, was somehow missed by all of the prominent trans YouTubers who reacted to Paytas’ coming out. All raised the specter of her troll career, but none fully understood the depth and import that a trolling like this could have.

“Maybe it’s all a joke” is much too shallow a take for something as potentially Kaufmanesque as Paytas coming out as trans. Her rhetoric, though clumsy at times, strongly recalls the softliners’ ardent assertion that what makes a person trans is the person believing it so; so believable is Paytas’ reasoning that when paired with her dramatic fool persona, it becomes possible to believe that she may actually believe she’s trans. And that, my friends, is an excellent troll.

Accusations of Bad Taste

Trolling only works if others have earnest reactions to it. There’s a reason Ricky Gervais identifying as a penguin isn’t funny — it’s a shallow, obviously silly joke. It doesn’t take brains to compare transgender to saying you’re something you obviously aren’t; it does, however, take a deep and nuanced understanding of the thing one’s making fun of, as well as the self-awareness to know one can pull it off, to create and sustain a trolling like Paytas may be.

The question reigns, however, as to whether Paytas’ trans trolling is in good taste. Isn’t she making a mockery of the trans community by claiming to be trans if she isn’t? Trans people suffer psychological, social, and sometimes physical distress by coming out and attempting to live a life that feels more authentic; Paytas, in contrast, can continue on her merry, cleavage-y way. But what of those who sincerely come out as trans yet do not wish to transition? Aren’t they, in some way, carrying on in a manner intolerable to those who wish to transition? Wouldn’t it be easier to feel confident in one’s transness yet not feel the urgent desire to change one’s body, or even to buy a new wardrobe?

Trans people who do not transition, however, report great psychological and social distress; very few people take their transness seriously, yet the disgust and outrage felt toward trans people as a whole nevertheless includes them. Doubt and outrage directed at those who don’t transition come from other trans people, too, be it from insecurity or just plain competing definitions. It can be difficult to comprehend a trans person who does not transition if one’s definition includes trans-ition in the trans-sexual sense.

But if trans does not involve transition, then what does it tangibly mean? Is it possible to determine who’s mistaken, who’s trolling, and who’s sincere? It becomes difficult to draw a line without becoming a hardliner, but trans without boundaries can require exhausting mental gymnastics. Being a hardliner — insisting this is the definition and only this — inevitably excludes people who are, in truth, trans in a way; but expanding a word like trans to encompass all who’d potentially claim it can make the word seem meaningless.

Does anyone have the right to be an arbiter of trans? This is precisely the nerve that Paytas has exposed. If this truly is one grand ruse, however, then it all seems rather cruel. She might be poking fun at people who are trans but haven’t transitioned, or she could be taking a wider view, illustrating how all transness is illogical, a humorous contradiction. Nevertheless, the conflict Paytas has tapped into is a very real one: if one of the biggest battles trans people have to face is deciding who gets to be trans, that is absurdity at its finest.

But It’s Better If You Do

Some very intelligent individuals still believe Kaufman’s misogynist act was just too good to be pure ruse; his death was a bit more certain, and some still doubt even that, though the intelligence of those people can be reasonably doubted. Perhaps Kaufman was a woman-hater at heart, and perhaps Paytas genuinely feels she is trans. A grounded, rational case can be made for both.

However, I’d argue another Kaufman truther theory can be instructive on how we should think of the Paytas trans debacle. There exist people who believe — or, who believed as of 2016 — Donald Trump is Kaufman in disguise. The similarities between Trump and Kaufman’s Vegas lounge character Tony Clifton are too many to be coincidence; we’ve seen Kaufman pull off a Trump character, and Trump’s presidency is just too absurd not to be one grand trolling. More salient, the Trump presidency is too awful for some to accept, and thus they take comfort in the theory that Trump will one day pull off his mask and reveal himself to be Andy Kaufman.

In a way, it also feels better to believe Paytas is trolling. The trans community is in a crisis of meaning, troll or no troll, but there’s something more sinister, more psychologically disturbing, in believing Paytas is sincere. Making a mockery out of trans people is infuriating, and if that’s what Paytas intended to do, people aren’t wrong in getting angry; but let us not get so angry that we lose sight of what is being exposed. Perhaps the trans community and its allies do need to take a step back and view this intra-community conflict as, objectively, quite absurd; since our quagmire appears to have no good solution, the healthiest way to deal with it may be laughter — but first we have to get the joke.

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