Recent transgender theory

Feminist Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 465-490

  Hausman, Bernice L ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0040440287     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3178770     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Bernice L. Hausman, Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). In the book, I argued that previous treatments of transsexualism understood it as a symptom of culture but did not adequately assess how the emergence of transsexualism helped to produce current conceptualizations of gender, which feminists now use to understand it. Thus I traced the emergence of transsexualism in the twentieth century to the development of specific medical technologies and treatment protocols for which gender as a concept was mobilized and elaborated.
2. For example, see Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, "Double Fault: Renée Richards and the Construction and Naturalization of Difference," Sociology of Sport Journal 7 (March 1990): 1-21; and Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1991). There are many other examples; see Hausman for a discussion of the distinctions between a cultural feminist view of transsexualism and a cultural studies feminist view.
3. For example, see Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, "Double Fault: Renée Richards and the Construction and Naturalization of Difference," Sociology of Sport Journal 7 (March 1990): 1-21; and Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1991). There are many other examples; see Hausman for a discussion of the distinctions between a cultural feminist view of transsexualism and a cultural studies feminist view.
4. Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon, 1979; rpt., New York: Teachers College Press, Athene Series, 1994).
5. Annemarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1996), defines "queer" in the following way (p. 3): Broadly speaking, queer describes those gestures or analytical models which dramatise incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between chromosomal sex, gender, and sexual desire. . . . Institutionally, queer has been associated most prominently with lesbian and gay subjects, but its analytic framework also includes such topics as cross-dressing, hermaphroditism, gender ambiguity and gender-corrective surgery. Whether as transvestite performance or academic deconstruction, queer locates and exploits the incoherencies in those three terms which stabilise heterosexuality. Demonstrating the impossibility of any "natural" sexuality, it calls into question even such apparently unproblematic terms as "man" and "woman." For a contestatory approach to queer theory, see Susan Danuta Walters, "From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Fag)," Signs 21 (summer 1996): 830-69.
6. Annemarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1996), defines "queer" in the following way (p. 3): Broadly speaking, queer describes those gestures or analytical models which dramatise incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between chromosomal sex, gender, and sexual desire. . . . Institutionally, queer has been associated most prominently with lesbian and gay subjects, but its analytic framework also includes such topics as cross-dressing, hermaphroditism, gender ambiguity and gender-corrective surgery. Whether as transvestite performance or academic deconstruction, queer locates and exploits the incoherencies in those three terms which stabilise heterosexuality. Demonstrating the impossibility of any "natural" sexuality, it calls into question even such apparently unproblematic terms as "man" and "woman." For a contestatory approach to queer theory, see Susan Danuta Walters, "From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Fag)," Signs 21 (summer 1996): 830-69.
7. Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (New York: Routledge, 1994).
8. In this essay, the terms "transsexual" and "transsexualism" refer to the people who seek to change their sex hormonally and surgically and the phenomenon of sex change generally. "Transgenderism" and "transgenderists" are terms that refer to the larger social phenomenon of people who live as a sex different from that to which they were assigned at birth and may or may not have surgical or hormonal sex change to facilitate their lives as the "other sex." Transgenderists may also simply confuse sexual signifiers in their daily presentation of self, living out a sort of purposeful chaos in what is supposed to be an orderly aspect of self and society. Thus, the category of transgender includes that of transsexual and transsexualism. This is the common understanding of these terms, although many of the authors discussed in this article have more idiosyncratic ways of glossing them. "Recent transgender theory" thus includes theoretical speculation and commentary on transsexualism and transgenderism, mostly by transsexual people and transgenderists themselves, but also by others interested in trans individuals and the social movements they have created. The term "trans" is often used inclusively, to designate all persons who cross some sort of sex or gender category, and I use it occasionally here. TS/TG refers to the whole gamut of transsexual and transgender theory, and FTM refers to female-to-male transsexuals.
9. Of course, theorists of gender from the 1970s sometimes used transsexual subjects as examples for theory. See Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach (New York: John Wiley, 1978; rpt., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); and Candace West and Don Zimmerman, "Doing Gender," Gender and Society 1 (June 1987): 125-51.
10. Of course, theorists of gender from the 1970s sometimes used transsexual subjects as examples for theory. See Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach (New York: John Wiley, 1978; rpt., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); and Candace West and Don Zimmerman, "Doing Gender," Gender and Society 1 (June 1987): 125-51.
11. In addition, as the reader will become aware, I argue in favor of a specific kind of feminist inquiry, one that emerges from a constructivist and radically skeptical approach to identity and the concept of gender. This view is not, of course, taken up by all feminist scholars, many of whom have elaborated the ontological view of gender that I critique here.
12. See, for example, Anne Bolin, In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1988); and Deborah Feinbloom, Transvestites and Transsexuals: Mixed Views (New York: Delacorte Press, 1986).
13. See, for example, Anne Bolin, In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1988); and Deborah Feinbloom, Transvestites and Transsexuals: Mixed Views (New York: Delacorte Press, 1986).
14. Current examples of transgender scholarship offer far more attention to female-to-male transsexualism than did previous considerations of transsexualism, which largely considered the experiences of male-to-female transsexuals.
15. Sander Gilman, Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul: Race and Psychology in the Shaping of Aesthetic Surgery (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
16. I explored these issues in Changing Sex. At the time, I argued that transsexual people sought inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) series so as to secure a diagnosis that would authorize medical treatment (surgery and hormones). I have since revised my views somewhat. Transsexual people, it seems to me, have argued for an ambiguous relation to medicine-seeking treatment while fighting the stigma of mental illness that the treatment's diagnosis implies (or socially produces). So although the diagnostic definitions in the DSM are strategically necessary for many transsexual people to obtain medical services, transsexual people have argued politically that they are not ill and that medical supervision of their experience (physicians' and gender clinics' role in gatekeeping, for example) mimics medicine's historical regulation of and attempts to eradicate homosexuality. I question whether this similarity logically holds.
17. And, tellingly, Raymond comes to stand for all feminist approaches to transsexualism, and all other feminists who critique the practices or theories of transsexualism are linked to her, regardless of any theoretical differences that might exist among them.
18. See Biddy Martin, "Sexualities without Genders and Other Queer Utopias," Diacritics, Special Issue on Critical Crossings, 24 (summer-fall 1994): 104-21.
19. Charles Shepherdson, "The Role of Gender and the Imperative of Sex," in Supposing the Subject, ed. Joan Copjec (London: Verso, 1994), 158-84.
20. Shepherdson points out, in agreement with Catherine Millot in Horsexe, trans. Kenneth Hylton (New York: Autonomedia, 1990), that many transsexual people develop an identification with a fantasy of the "other sex" in which that sex is not lacking (in a Lacanian sense; cited in Elliot and Roen, 246).
21. Shepherdson points out, in agreement with Catherine Millot in Horsexe, trans. Kenneth Hylton (New York: Autonomedia, 1990), that many transsexual people develop an identification with a fantasy of the "other sex" in which that sex is not lacking (in a Lacanian sense; cited in Elliot and Roen, 246).
22. For discussions about the technical problems with sex-change surgeries, see Cheryl Chase, "Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism," GLQ 4 (1998): 189-212; and Suzanne Kessler, Learning from the Intersexed (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
23. For discussions about the technical problems with sex-change surgeries, see Cheryl Chase, "Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism," GLQ 4 (1998): 189-212; and Suzanne Kessler, Learning from the Intersexed (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
24. Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, Corporeality (London: Routledge, 1994). Indeed, to further this argument, one problem with vaginas (perceived from a dominant, masculinist viewpoint) is that they tend to stretch (especially after childbirth), while the primary medical risk with neovaginas is that they tend to collapse and shrink. Routine dilation of a neovagina is a necessary postsurgical practice, one that continues indefinitely for many transsexual women and intersexed subjects assigned to the female sex (Kessler). This distinction suggests that the two vaginal forms involve very different experiences of sexed embodiment. I'm not trying to argue that one is more authentic than the other; rather, I'm suggesting that to say that one gains the embodiment of the "other sex" through SRS is a problematic claim.
25. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
26. See also Kessler and McKenna; West and Zimmerman. In a critique published in 1984, Gayle Rubin argued that gender is the province of feminism, while sexuality cannot be adequately treated by feminist theory-thus a new methodology had to be fashioned to accurately treat sexuality. Eve Sedgwick espouses a similar view. See Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole Vance (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 267-319; and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
27. See also Kessler and McKenna; West and Zimmerman. In a critique published in 1984, Gayle Rubin argued that gender is the province of feminism, while sexuality cannot be adequately treated by feminist theory-thus a new methodology had to be fashioned to accurately treat sexuality. Eve Sedgwick espouses a similar view. See Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole Vance (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 267-319; and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
28. Sedgwick.
29. See Martin; Eliot and Roen for an extended discussion of this point.
30. Judith Halberstam, "F2M: The Making of Female Masculinity," in The Lesbian Post-modern, ed. Laura Doan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 210-28.
31. See Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000), for some extended discussions pertinent to these questions.
32. Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," in Blood, Bread, and Poetry (New York: Norton, 1986), 23-75.
33. I don't mean to discount the significance of bleaching creams or hair relaxers, but it seems evident that no significant movement of transracialism exists to parallel that of transgenderism. The insistent demand of political antiracism is to end social discrimination based on race and not to transform racial embodiedness.
34. Kessler, 132.