Situating "fluidity (trans) gender identification and the regulation of gender diversity

GLQ

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 97-130

  Davis, Erin Calhoun ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67549086462     PISSN: 10642684     EISSN: 15279375     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10642684-2008-020     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 308.
2. Much debate surrounds the terms transsexual and transgender. See Riki Anne Wilchins, Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1997); and Jason Cromwell, Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). I use the terms trans, transsexed, transgender, transsexual, and transman or transwoman to refer to individuals whose primary social gender identification does not correspond with their neonatal sex assignment. Use of these terms reflects neither a particular hormonal or surgical status nor a particular political sensibility. Despite this simplification, I recognize that the trans community is diverse, that there is variance in usage and disagreement over the appropriate usages of these terms, and that individuals often use transgender terminology strategically and to convey particular meanings in particular contexts. The complexities of trans language are discussed further later in this article.
3. Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination"; Joshua Gamson, "Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma," in Queer Theory/Sociology, ed. Steven Seidman (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 178 - 99; Jeffery Weeks, "History, Desires, and Identities," in Conceiving Sexuality: Approaches to Sex Research in a Postmodern World, ed. Richard G. Parker and John H. Gagnon (New York: Routledge, 1995), 33 - 50.
4. Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (New York: Routledge, 1994); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993); Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998); Sandy Stone, "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto," in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991), 280 - 304; Wilchins, Read My Lips.
5. Viviane K. Namaste, Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
6. Anne Bolin, In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1988); Patricia Gagne, Richard Tewkbury, and Deanna McGaughey, "Coming Out and Crossing Over: Identity Formation and Proclamation in a Transgender Community," Gender and Society 11 (1997): 478 - 508; Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968); Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
7. The use of the term concealment is not intended to situate trans people as fraudulent pretenders. All individuals, not simply transgendered individuals, engage in impression management (see Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [New York: Anchor, 1959]). Management, including concealment, of potentially discreditable information is part of this process. Given mainstream assumptions of sex/gender congruence, transgendered individuals' gender claims are particularly precarious and subject to public dispute. Further, language such as "hiding" or "concealing" may reinforce the assumption that trans individuals' gender displays are illegitimate. My own use of the language of concealment is not intended to reinforce this problematic assumption but to reflect respondents' use of this language in describing their own identity management. Further, I also use the term closeting to subtly reference power dynamics that structure presentations of self.
8. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York: Pantheon, 1967).
9. C. Jacob Hale, "Leatherdyke Boys and Their Daddies: How to Have Sex without Women or Men," Social Text, nos. 52 - 53 (1997): 233 - 34.
10. Steven Schacht, "The Multiple Genders of the Court: Issues of Identity and Perfor mance in a Drag Setting," in Feminism and Men: Reconstructing Gender Relations, ed. Steven P. Schacht and Doris W. Ewing (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 202 - 24.
11. Schacht, "Multiple Genders of the Court," 210.
12. Turnabout is an example of this within the drag context, when according to Schacht, "members of the court are expected to appear as their gendered opposite" ("Multiple Genders of the Court," 223). This is a special event that allows individuals to "cross" gender boundaries for the evening.
13. Carla R. Golden, "Still Seeing Differently, After All These Years," Feminism and Psychology 10, no. 1 (2000): 30 - 35; Katrina Roen, " 'Either/Or' and 'Both/Neither': Discursive Tensions in Transgender Politics," Signs 27, no. 2 (2002): 501 - 22; Schacht, "Multiple Genders of the Court"; Eviatar Zerubavel, The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life (New York: Free Press, 1991).
14. Golden, "Still Seeing Differently"; Judith Lorber, "Using Gender to Undo Gender: A Feminist Degendering Movement," Feminist Theory 1, no. 1 (2000): 79 - 95; Schacht, "Multiple Genders of the Court."
15. Butler, Bodies That Matter, 15.
16. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw; Pat Califia, Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism (San Francisco: Cleis, 1997); Wilchins, Read My Lips.
17. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 52.
18. Gamson, "Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct?" 404, 415.
19. Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 19.
20. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 294.
21. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 119.
22. Sara Salih, ed., with Judith Butler, The Judith Butler Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 344.
23. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this framing.
24. Robin May Schott, "Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction, and the History of Philosophy," Hypatia 14, no. 3 (1999): 157.
25. See Bornstein, Gender Outlaw.
26. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), 17.
27. Ki Namaste, " 'Tragic Misreadings': Queer Theory's Erasure of Transgender Subjectivity," in Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology, ed. Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 193.
28. Paula C. Rust, "Sexual Identities and Bisexual Identities: The Struggle for Self- Description in a Changing Sexual Landscape," in Beemyn and Eliason, Queer Studies, 66.
29. Butler, Bodies That Matter, 187.
30. Butler, Bodies That Matter, 10.
31. There is one exception. Rhonda, who self-published a book on her experience, asked that her real name be used.
32. In addition to presentation changes, transitioning can include hormones, genital reconstruction, and a host of other possible surgical or medical techniques. Because the availability and effectiveness of techniques differ for transwomen and transmen and because individuals select which procedures are meaningful for them, the categories of post-op and pre-op are not always a useful schema for categorizing location in the transitioning process or for subcategorizing trans status. The self-defined time since transition provides a more accurate reflection of those who are consciously and actively dealing with "transitioning." Time since transition for 30 percent of the respondents was one year or less.
33. While the differences are slight, individuals who had been in transition for a year or less were more likely to identify themselves in transsexual or transgendered terms than those whose time since transition was one year or more.
34. Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," 309.
35. James Green, "Look! No, Don't! The Visibility Dilemma for Transsexual Men," in Reclaiming Gender, ed. Kate More and Stephen Whittle (London: Cassell, 1999), 123.
36. See also Roen, " 'Either/Or' and 'Both/Neither,' " 515.
37. See Candice West and Don Zimmerman, "Doing Gender," Gender and Society 1 (1987): 125 - 51.
38. While in academic writing "passing" often refers to the successful management of information that could potentially disrupt or discredit one's self-presentation (see Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, or Barbara Ponse, "Secrecy in the Lesbian World," Urban Life 5, no. 3 [1976]: 313 - 38), this term more generally implies not simply the conscious management of an individual's self-presentation but more significantly a falsely displayed identity.
39. To be socially accepted as authentic men and women, transsexual individuals may, at least under some circumstances, engage in a number of image management strategies. Common techniques for avoiding gender disruption include closeting one's transsexed status, revising one's past history, managing incongruent bodies, and presenting oneself according to traditionally masculine or feminine standards of appearance and behavior. See Erin Calhoun Davis, "Overcoming Gender? Transsexualism and the Gender Paradigm" (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2002).
40. Kristin Esterberg, " 'A Certain Swagger When I Walk': Performing Lesbian Identity," in Queer Theory/Sociology, ed. Steven Siedman (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 261.
41. Rhonda Hoyman, Rhonda: The Woman in Me (Timonium, MD: Pearce, 1999), 236.
42. Green, "Look! No, Don't!" 123.
43. Schacht, "Multiple Genders of the Court," 210-11.
44. Douglas Mason-Schrock, "Transsexuals' Narrative Construction of the 'True Self,' " Social Psychology Quarterly 59 (1996): 176 - 92.
45. Some individuals, typically because of either their physical appearance or their mannerisms, are visibly transgendered. For these individuals, managing the effects of social stigma is often a more relevant concern than trans self-expression.
46. Craig Calhoun, "Social Theory and the Politics of Identity," in Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, ed. Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994), 20 - 21.
47. See ACLU, "ACLU of Hawai'i Represents Transsexual Canoeist in Fight over Gender," September 13, 2000, www.aclu.org/news/NewsPrint.cfm?ID= 8114&c=105; Gay .comUK, "Transsexual Athletes May Be Allowed to Compete under Their Acquired Gender," February 10, 2003, uk.gay.com/headlines/ 3707; National Center for Lesbian Rights, "Transsexual Prisoners," www.transgenderlaw.org/resources/prisoners .htm; Terri Theodore, "Transsexual Woman Doesn't Have Experience to Be Rape Councillor," Vancouver Sun, December 13, 2000; Margaret Wente, "Who Gets to Be a Woman?" Globe and Mail, December 14, 2000. While the criteria of inclusion in athletics, prisons, and other gender-segregated activities and events may also affect transmen, the question of "who counts" tends to focus on transwomen.
48. Emi Koyama, "A Handbook on Discussing the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival for Trans Activists and Allies," www.confluere.com/store/pdf-zn/ mich-handbook.pdf.
49. Unisex facilities that do exist are typically single occupancy. It is extremely rare for men and women to share public facilities at the same time. In fact, even singleoccupancy toilets are often assigned to either men or women.
50. Cromwell, Transmen and FTMs, 102.
51. This is not to say that transsexual individuals do not experience harassment at work, simply that there are more mechanisms for redress, although in many cases weak, in the workplace than elsewhere. For a nuanced discussion of economic discrimination and violence directed at transgendered individuals, see Emilia Lombardi, Riki Anne Wilchins, and Dana Priesting, "Gender Violence: Transgender Experiences with Violence and Discrimination," Journal of Homosexuality 42 (2001): 89 - 101.
52. Cromwell, Transmen and FTMs, 128.
53. Gwendolyn Ann Smith, Remembering Our Dead, gender.org/remember/ about/core .html.
54. Patricia Elliot and Katrina Roen, "Transgenderism and the Question of Embodiment: Promising Queer Politics?" GLQ 4 (1998): 231 - 61; Golden, Still Seeing Differently; Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna, "Who Put the Trans in Transgender? Gender Theory and Everyday Life," International Journal of Transgenderism 4, no. 3 (2000), www.symposion.com/ijt/gilbert/kessler.htm; Namaste, Invisible Lives; Jay Prosser, Second Skins: The Body Narrative of Transsexuality (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Henry Rubin, "Phenomenology as Method in Trans Studies," GLQ 4 (1998): 263 - 81.
55. Butler, Gender Trouble.
56. As noted earlier, in any study of self-identified trans people, individuals who transition and then "go stealth" are likely to be underrepresented.
57. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this framing.
58. Joane Nagel, "Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture," in New Tribalism, ed. Michael Hughey (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 240.
59. Nagel, "Constructing Ethnicity," 241.
60. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 52.
61. Of course, while opening the boundaries to include normative-appearing individuals continues to disadvantage those who do not or cannot conform to traditional standards of behavior and appearance, visible nonconformity remains marginalized.
62. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Queer Performativity: Henry James's The Art of the Novel," GLQ 1 (1993): 15.
63. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this emphasis.