Critiquing the Critics
Sexologists have greatly shaped the way the public at large views transsexuals (as well as the way many transsexuals come to view themselves), but they are not the only group to position themselves as “authorities” on transsexuality. Over the years, many academics in the social sciences and in gender studies have also written extensively on the subject. Unlike the gatekeepers, who have often expressed consternation and condemnation for those transsexuals who fail to live up to society’s traditional and oppositional sexist expectations regarding gender, many academics have had the reciprocal concern—namely, that transsexuals work too hard to achieve gender normalcy. This concern typically arises from the assumption (embraced by many in the humanities) that transsexuality is a modern construction, something that would not exist if it were not for medical technology, psychological pathology, patriarchy, heterosexism, capitalism, and/or our culture’s rigid binary gender norms. Because academics in the fields of sociology and gender studies have been disposed toward seeking out the societal causes of transsexuality, they have tended to overlook or dismiss the possibility that intrinsic inclinations (i.e., subconscious sex) drive trans people toward transitioning. Framing the issue this way has ensured that transsexuality can only be understood as a form of “false consciousness” and that transsexuals themselves can only be conceptualized in one of two ways: as “dupes” (who are misled into transitioning by gatekeepers) or as “fakes” (who are so distressed by their own exceptional gender expressions and/or sexual orientations that they are willing to go to the extreme lengths of surgically altering their bodies and unquestioningly embracing sexist ideals in order to fit into straight mainstream society).
While sociological models of transsexuality and transgenderism have not had as direct an impact on the lives of trans people as sexological models have, both models foster the false impression that cissexual “experts” (whether academic or clinical) are capable of understanding transsexuality better than transsexuals themselves—an idea that is as problematic as suggesting that male “experts” can understand womanhood better than women, or that heterosexual “experts” can understand homosexuality better than gays and lesbians. Further, while sociological and gender studies accounts of transsexuality have not garnered the public attention that their sexological counterparts have, they have profoundly shaped the manner in which trans people are discussed and considered in academia and in feminism. In this section, I will debunk many of the most common academic misconceptions regarding transsexuality. While some of the arguments I critique may seem unfamiliar, even esoteric, to readers outside the fields of sociology and gender studies, it is vital to address these points here, as they are encountered repeatedly in queer and feminist politics.
One of the most prevalent academic misconceptions regarding transsexuality is that the gatekeepers actively promote the use of sex reassignment and prey on gender-variant people, enticing them with the promise of assimilating them into “normal” women and men. One of the more influential research articles espousing this view was written by sociologists Dwight B. Billings and Thomas Urban in 1982, in which they claimed that “transsexualism is a socially constructed reality which only exists in and through medical practice.” (Emphasis theirs.)50 In Billings’s and Urban’s eyes, “transsexual therapy ... pushes patients toward an alluring world of artificial vaginas and penises rather than toward self-understanding and sexual politics.”51 Janice G. Raymond has a similar view. In her 1979 book The Transsexual Empire (discussed previously in chapter 2), she described sex reassignment as a “male interventionist technology” in which “[t]ranssexuals surrender themselves to ... therapists and technicians.”52 She goes on to suggest that trans people would be better off if they were counseled using the same “consciousness-raising” methods that she experienced in the feminist movement.53 So, in other words, both sets of authors believe that transsexuality would not exist if trans people simply became more educated and involved in feminism and sexual politics.
So how do Raymond, Billings, and Urban explain why trans people are so easily “duped” into transitioning when transsexuality itself is considered taboo by society at large? Their rationale is that transsexuality has become socially acceptable, a rather outrageous claim considering they were writing during the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively.54 Of course, the idea that transsexuals are highly susceptible to suggestion and easily yield to medical authority would surely come as a surprise to many gatekeepers, who regularly complained about how transsexuals were “stubborn,” highly resistant to psychotherapy, and usually came to appointments having already made up their minds.55
Another major flaw with these theses is that they rest on the assumption that people identifying and living as members of the sex other than the one they were assigned at birth was a novel phenomenon, one that did not exist prior to the invention of sex reassignment procedures. However, numerous historians and anthropologists have described the existence of trans people in other eras and cultures.56 In fact, many of the original gatekeepers, including Harry Benjamin, only “discovered” the existence of transsexuality after trans people approached them about the possibilities of physically transitioning, and many of the earliest transsexuals, such as Christine Jorgensen (the first transsexual to gain mainstream attention) and “Agnes” (who is discussed in more detail in chapter 9), self-administered hormones prior to consulting with doctors about their desire to physically transition.57 Indeed, the gatekeepers didn’t “invent” sex reassignment, but were dragged into it kicking and screaming. And the fact that the gatekeepers almost universally favored strict restrictions that greatly reduced the number of people undergoing sex reassignment clearly indicates that they were, at best, reluctant advocates.
A similar attempt to remove transsexuals from any historical or cross-cultural context can be found in Bernice L. Hausman’s 1995 book Changing Sex. Despite the fact that Hausman is aware of people throughout history who have lived as members of the other sex, or who do so today without using hormones or surgery, she nevertheless chooses to narrowly define transsexuality as the act of changing one’s sex via physically transitioning.58 This allows her to put forward the thesis that “developments in medical technology and practice were central to the establishment of the necessary conditions for the emergence of the demand for sex change.”59 The amateurish nature of this argument is astounding; it’s akin to discounting the existence of all nonmotorized vehicles (bicycles, sailboats, horse-drawn carriages, etc.) to make the claim that transportation is a modern construction dependent on the discovery of fossil fuel and combustion engines.
Of course, there is an obvious reason why Hausman chose to define transsexuality so narrowly: To do otherwise would subvert her entire thesis. After all, if she were to acknowledge that trans people have existed in varied cultures and throughout history, her readers might view transsexuality as part of a natural rather than culturespecific phenomenon and thus understand trans people’s desire to live in their identified sex as being primarily driven by their own intrinsic inclinations rather than by social forces. From such a perspective, one would be inclined to see sex reassignment as a modern option for trans people, similar to how recent advances in medicine now enable cissexual women and men to undergo similar procedures, such as hormone replacement therapy, breast or penis enhancement or reconstruction, and infertility treatments. Instead, by removing transsexuality from this trans-historical and cross-cultural context, Hausman misleads her readers into believing that trans people suddenly appeared out of nowhere, almost overnight—a fabrication that practically strong-arms her readership into seeing transsexuality as a culturally specific and socially derived phenomenon.
The intellectual inconsistencies in Hausman’s thesis become even more blatant when she makes it clear that she accepts that same-sex desire has always existed (and therefore precedes social construction). This allows her to claim that transsexuality is not analogous to homosexuality because of its “special conceptual and material relation to medical discourse and practice.” (Emphasis hers.)60 This is a rather convenient argument for Hausman to make considering that she has already dismissed the existence of those transsexuals who do not physically transition. Indeed, Hausman seems oblivious to the fact that, were she able to wave away the existence of same-sex attraction throughout history (as she does with transsexuality), she could easily make the analogous claim that homosexuality is just as much a product of modern medicine as transsexuality. After all, both words, “homosexuality” and “transsexuality,” were coined within the last 150 years, gained prominence as concepts with the rise of sexology in the twentieth century, and emerged as identities and political movements both because of and in response to their psychological pathologization. And if one were hell-bent on portraying homosexuality as entirely constructed, one could easily reach the same shortsighted conclusion that Hausman has reached. The argument would go: The rise in the number of people openly calling themselves homosexuals over the past half century is not due to political and cultural changes that have allowed them to finally “come out of the closet,” but rather that the medical invention of homosexuality itself generated a “demand” for people to become homosexual.
Hausman’s book demonstrates the misinformation academics can generate when they narrowly define transsexuality based on psychiatric or medical parameters, or attempt to isolate transsexuals who do physically transition from the broader population of trans people who identify and live as members of the other sex without medical intervention. These very same mistakes are regularly made by anthropologists who focus on what are sometimes called “third,” “multiple,” or “alternate” genders—categories designed to describe people who are viewed by their cultures as being not quite male and not quite female. Because these groups appear to exist outside the gender binary, and blur distinctions between what Westerners would call transsexuality, homosexuality, and transgenderism, they are subjects of interest among academics who believe that gender is primarily socially constructed.
One such anthropologist is Serena Nanda, who has studied Indian hijras and authored several books, including Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations. This 2000 book is an overview of gender variation across the world, and highlights examples of social categories and gender roles that challenge our Western tendency to define gender exclusively based on one’s physical sex. For the most part, Nanda remains respectful and refrains from placing value judgments on the cultures and gender-variant people she describes—that is, until she gets to the chapter titled “Transsexualism.” Here, she seems to go into diatribe mode, describing transsexuals as a medical “invention” who are shaped by Western doctors’ and psychologists’ stereotyped view of gender.61
Nanda goes on to make the broader point that transsexuals, “far from being an example of gender diversity, both reflected and reinforced the dominant Euro-American sex/gender ideology in which one had to choose to be either a man or a (stereotypical) woman.”62 For Nanda to make this sort of blanket generalization when there are countless examples of transsexuals who were involved in the early days of the gay rights and the lesbian-feminist movements, or who are at the forefront of today’s transgender and genderqueer movements, suggests that either she is completely ignorant of the existence of any transsexuals who do not fit her stereotype, or she purposefully ignores or discounts them in order to create the false impression that all transsexuals are stamped from the same medical establishment cookie cutter.
Nanda’s motives for painting such a rigid and distorted picture of transsexuals becomes obvious in the following chapter, “Transgenderism.” Despite the fact that virtually all organizations and communities that call themselves “transgender” generally include transsexuals, Nanda has somehow taken it upon herself to redefine “transgender” in opposition to “transsexual.” She describes transgenderism as being based on the principle of androgyny, explaining that (unlike transsexuals) transgender people do not limit themselves to a single gender.63 It seems rather obvious why she is so determined to deny the overlap between these two groups. A running theme throughout the book is that transgender people who are defined as being separate from female and male necessarily challenge our Western assumptions that the male/female binary gender system is “natural.” Transsexuals complicate this issue by virtue of the fact that we are gender-variant yet typically identify within the binary. By dismissing us as a medical invention that “upholds the status quo of the binary sex/gender system,” Nanda seems to be establishing a gender binary of her own, one in which “third gender,” androgynous, and visibly queer people who blur distinctions between female and male are considered radical and natural, while those who identify as or appear to be clearly female or male are considered conservative and contrived.64
This radical/conservative gender binary is also forwarded by Will Roscoe, an anthropologist who has focused much of his research on reconstructing the lives of what he refers to as “berdaches” (a Western umbrella term for Native American gender-variant people) from the historical record. As a strict social constructionist, Roscoe refuses to believe that berdache status is merely “a compromise between nature and culture or a niche to accommodate ‘natural’ variation.”65 He also denounces the view held by many anthropologists that some berdaches “crossed” genders (from male to female or female to male) because they could then be “interpreted as upholding a heterosexist gender system.”66
Because Roscoe is determined to demonstrate that Native American berdaches represent “third genders,” he plays up the ways in which these groups showed signs of being separate from and/or a mix of female and male, while playing down evidence that some berdaches may have actually seen themselves as, or wanted to be, the other gender. While this is not difficult to do for certain berdaches (as these roles varied significantly between Native American nations), Roscoe sticks to his “third gender” hypothesis even when analyzing the historical record of the Mohave alyha (MTF spectrum) and hwame (FTM spectrum) berdaches (reviewed in his 1994 essay “How to Become a Berdache”). Despite the fact that the alyha “insisted on being referred to by female names and with female gender references,” used “the Mohave word for clitoris to refer to their penises,” received female facial tattoos, and took part in rituals where they simulated pregnancy, Roscoe still argues that they should be considered “third gender” because they were given a unique name (i.e., alyha) to distinguish them from other women.67 Other evidence that Roscoe uses to undermine the Mohave berdaches’ self-identified gender is that they were not always fully accepted in that gender by other Mohaves: He references accounts of individual Mohaves commenting that alyha were less womanly than other women and cites rare occasions when some Mohaves used pronouns that referenced the berdaches’ birth (rather than identified) sex.68 Thus, to make his point that Mohave berdaches represent “third genders,” Roscoe resorts to giving more credence to the judgments of non-gender-variant Mohave than to the way the alyha and hwame saw themselves. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, as Roscoe himself purposely uses inappropriate pronouns and favors birth sex over identified sex when writing about berdaches.
The dichotomy that Nanda and Roscoe attempt to make between “third genders” and trans people who “cross” from one gender to the other seems rather dubious. After all, some people who are members of non-Western “third gender” traditions do identify fully as the other sex and/or choose to physically transition when given the opportunity.69 Furthermore, as a Western transsexual, I may identify squarely within the male/female gender binary if I want to, but once other people discover my transsexual status, they usually start slipping up on pronouns and referring to me as a MTF, boy-girl, s/he, she-he, or a she-male. In other words, people try to third-gender me. Both Roscoe and Nanda seem to have so much invested in promoting the theoretical significance of “third genders” that they’re oblivious to the ways in which these categories—rather than shattering the gender binary—may actually contribute to its stabilization by marking and segregating those people who have exceptional gender inclinations from gender-normative women and men. If you want to convince me that a culture truly has multiple genders that are dissociated from binary sex, show me one where male- and female-bodied people are both included in every gender category. So long as “third genders” are composed only of male-bodied people with feminine qualities and female-bodied people with masculine qualities, it is hard for me to see such designations as anything other than oppositional sexist attempts by society to marginalize gender-variant people.
Unfortunately, the mistaken notion that some genders are inherently more “radical” or “subversive” than others, which is seen throughout much of the anthropological literature on “third genders,” has also flourished throughout the social sciences, in women’s and gender studies departments, and the humanities in general. And in the social constructionists’ radical/conservative gender binary, no group is more regularly discredited and maligned than transsexuals—we are often portrayed as gender sellouts, and our attempts to live as and/or physically transition to our identified sex are often misread as being driven not by our own intrinsic inclinations, but by a desire to “fit in” or assimilate into gender normalcy. Such misconceptions are evident in the following series of quotes:
Transsexualism is a response to the rigid, socially prescribed gender dichotomy of heterosexual men and women.
The idea is that societal pressure ... leads the transsexual to surmount the problem by changing the body to fit the norm of dichotomous gender.
Transsexual patients have an excessively narrow image of what constitutes “sex-appropriate” behaviour.... Were the notions of masculinity and femininity less rigid, sex change operations should be unnecessary.
—Margrit Eichler (1980)72
Sex-change surgery is pro foundly conservative in that it reinforces sharply contrasting gender roles by shaping individuals to fit them.
While transsexuals may be deviants in terms of cultural norms about how one arrives at being a man or a woman, they are, for the most part, highly conformist about what to do once you get there.
Ironically, transsexuals wish to be women but end up approximating men’s sexual conservatism ... most can still be typified as the Uncle Toms of the sexual liberation movement, in sharp contrast with other sexual minorities.
The implication that transsexuals transition in order to hide their exceptional gender expression and/or sexual orientation is only made possible by the social constructionist practice of dumbing down gender to exclude subconscious sex. This exclusion is notable, since virtually all transsexuals describe experiencing a profound, inexplicable, intrinsic self-knowing regarding their own gender. Because such accounts of transsexual subconscious sex/gender identity are nearly ubiquitous, one can only conclude that either the above critics have made their conclusions without bothering to read or listen to what transsexuals have said about their own lives and experiences, or they have chosen to ignore or discount such accounts, presumably out of an unwillingness to consider the possibility that trans people have an understanding about gender that cissexual academics do not. Not only do these “transsexual-as-assimilationist” accusations blatantly dismiss transsexual perspectives, but they are also unabashedly cissexist in other ways. They erase the existence of the many transsexuals who are unrelenting feminists and queer activists, and hold those transsexuals who do identify as heterosexual feminine women and masculine men more accountable for gender-based oppression than the overwhelming majority of cissexual people who identify the same way.
Another dehumanizing tactic used by these academic critics is the assumption that they are capable of fully understanding and speaking authoritatively about transsexuality despite the fact that they are not transsexual themselves; in fact, rarely do they get to know any transsexuals personally. When Shapiro, Nanda, Grimm, and Eichler speak disparagingly about transsexuals, their arguments rely almost entirely on other people’s research. Hausman boasts about attending one transgender conference, then liberally (and extensively) quotes from transsexual autobiographies without any consideration given to the role that non-trans book publishers and audiences play in deciding which transsexual stories get told and which do not.
Those sociologists who do base their critiques on interviews with transsexuals seem to have no qualms about drawing firm conclusions despite the many caveats inherent in their research: They generally rely on pathetically small sample sizes from the same geographic location, and their sample populations consist of trans people from similar (middle-class) economic dispositions who are all in the earliest stages of transition. This latter point is particularly salient, as the perspectives of transsexuals who are in the process of actively managing their physical transitions (and other people’s reactions to those changes) tend to differ greatly from those who have already been living in their identified sex for a number of years. Further, many sociologists make the common mistake of deriving their sample population from patients at gender identity clinics (GICs). While such clinics may seem a boon for sociologists—as they provide a rare place where one can find a relatively large number of transsexuals—they are also likely to provide the most biased research population.76 GICs are notorious for enforcing particularly strict oppositional and traditional sexist norms for their trans patients. Thus, research populations derived entirely from GICs have already been selected for those transsexuals who are most able or willing to conform to cissexual expectations regarding gender. Further, because GICs regularly carry out research on transsexuals, sociologists who conduct interviews in association with GICs are likely to be viewed by the transsexual as part of the gatekeeper establishment. As a result, the sociologists will likely receive pat and predictable answers to their interview questions.
Because transsexuals often have to submit themselves to the rigorous interrogation of gatekeepers, and constantly have to explain and justify their existence to a reluctant cissexual public, many are weary and suspicious of any cissexual—whether gatekeeper or academic—who wishes to turn trans people into research subjects. This reluctance is evident in the vast difference between the conclusions of superficial sociological interviews and those where the interviewers worked to gain the transsexual’s trust, such as in the work of Anne Bolin and Viviane K. Namaste.
Bolin’s study is particularly telling because she starts out with a small and biased sample population similar to that which many sociologists rely on: The bulk of her data came from twelve members of the same transgender support group, all of whom were in the early stages of transitioning.77 However, because she got to know these trans women over several years and eventually gained their trust, she got to see a very different perspective of the trans female experience: “Contrary to the stereotype of transsexuals as hyperfeminine, reveling in traditional notions of womanhood to a greater extent than genetic women, the transsexuals in this population were not admirers of stereotypical womanhood. They were keenly aware of the feminist movement, wanted careers as well as someone to share their lives with, and represented styles of dressing as diverse as the female population emulated.”78
If more academics would actually get to know transsexuals as people (rather than as mere research subjects), they would find that the assumption that we transition in order to “fit in” to the gender binary has virtually no relevance in most transsexuals’ lives. For many of us, the decision to transition comes after years of successfully “passing” as “normal” members of our assigned sex—for us, transitioning entails the complete antithesis of trying to fit in. Those of us who are attracted to members of our identified sex transition despite the fact that we will no longer be considered heterosexual. The variation in our gender expression ensures that some of us will be considered somewhat masculine women or feminine men after our transitions. And all transsexuals run the risk of being unable to physically “pass” (in the short term or the long term) in our identified sex upon transitioning.
Perhaps the most condescending aspect of the “transsexual-as-assimilationist” argument is that it presumes that transsexuals are accepted by society more than cissexuals who are queer in other ways (i.e., because of their gender expression or sexual orientation). This is most certainly not the case.79 As someone who has spent a chunk of her life as a relatively “out” male crossdresser, and later as an androgynous bigendered boy, I have found that people, on average, were extraordinarily more tolerant of—and comfortable with—my gender status back then than they are now when I tell them I’m a transsexual. And if you ask other transsexuals—even those who were out and proud queers prior to transition—why they didn’t choose to transition earlier in their lives, most will tell you that they feared the social ramifications that come with transitioning: being disowned by family and community, losing a job, being considered undesirable in the eyes of others, having one’s identified gender constantly questioned by others. Not only is sex reassignment just about the most stigmatized medical procedure that exists in our society, but transsexuals themselves are rarely accepted culturally and legally as legitimate men or women. It is safe to say that lesbians and gay men are far more accepted and respected by the straight mainstream than transsexuals are. Thus, the idea that a trans person would transition in order to “conform to heterosexist gender norms” is nothing more than an illogical and disrespectful farce.
It seems to me that the entire debate in academia over whether transsexuals are radical or conservative with regards to gender is founded on cissexual privilege. Because these scholars have not had to live with the reality of gender dissonance, they are afforded the luxury of intellectualizing away subconscious sex, thus allowing them to project their own interests or biases onto trans people. Not surprisingly, the researchers’ academic backgrounds seem to be the primary determinant as to what explanations for transsexuality they will posit. Being that Harry Benjamin (who was trained as an endocrinologist) believed that transsexuality was caused by fetal hormone levels, and Richard Green, Robert Stoller, and John Money (all trained in psychology) looked to relationships with parents and/or events that occurred during one’s formative years as its primary cause, it is not surprising that social scientists generally argue that transsexuality is the result of societal gender norms, lesbian and gay scholars claim it is the result of heterosexism, feminists blame it on patriarchy, and poststructuralists simply deconstruct it into nonexistence.