Representi}{G Trans Sexualities
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Kristina Gupø and Kaii June Cuankowski Gupta, K. {2012) 'Illn* and deception? Asexuality on House, MD'. Kinsey Confidential Bþ. Available at http://linseyconfidential.org/illness-deception-æexuality.house-md/ (accessed ? August 2015). Gupta, K. (2015) 'Compulsory sexualiry: evaluating an emerging concept'. Sigro : Jomulof Wmenìn 3 Culwe md Society. Volume 41 (1 ): 13 1-154. Gupta, K. and cacchioni, T. (2013) 'sexual improvement as ifyour health depends on itr an analysis of @ntemporary sex mmuals'. F¿njnrm ¿nd Psycftology. Volume 23 (4): 44245g, REPRESENTI}{G TRANS Hinderliter, A. (2009) 'Methodological isues for studying asexuality'. Archives of senø1 Behaviø. Volume 38 (5)¡ 619-621. Hulme, K. (L98q 'fhe Bme Peoplz: A Nov¿l. New Yo¡k: Penguin Books. SEXUALITIES Kahan, B. (2013) Ce\bæies: AreíunModemisnmdswlLile. Durham: Duke Univereity press. (2010) Kim, E. "'A mm, with the same feelings,,: disability, hummity, md heterosexual apparatus inBreaking theVøvæ, Bm m theFowtî of luþ, Breothingksffi, md Ocù,. In S. Chive¡s md Eliza Steinbock N. Ma¡kotié (eås) The ProblcmBo$: Prcjecting DisabíJitJ ín Fílm. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Pøybylo, E. and Cooper, D. (?014)'Asexual ¡esonances: rËcing a queerly aæxual æchive,. GLer The lomal of Gay anÀI¿sbim SatÅies. Volume 20 (3):29?-3f8. (198?) Ruso, V. Thc CelLulaìdCloset: Hwsenølity in theMovis. Rvd edn. New yo¡k: Harper and Row, This chapter disentangles the web of tems that knots together the medical naming of Sedgwick, E.K. (1997) Novel Gafing: Qreu Reddings in Fic¿rbn. Duham¡ Duke University præs. üanssexualism, the mediatised practices of tnns sex ând what might today be recognised as the muitiplicities of trans sexualities. Carla A. Pfeffer has named trms sexualities 'a lacuna' Media in theorisations of sexuality and desire (20L4: 598). For a growing number of (trans) sex and mediatised representations are vital academic Bm ø the Fowth of lub 0989t Directed by O. Stone [Filn]. USA: Xtian. scholan, trans sexualities, their the myriad ways in which gender Brul,ing tJle Vlaves (1996) Directed by L. von Trier [Film]. Denmarkr Argw Film produktie. and political concems. Trans sex and sexuality teveals mutually constitutive, moving foruard studies of Bruthing Itssorc: The Liþ and Vork of Møk O,Brim (1996) Directed by J. yu Bilml. USA: and sexuality are interdependent and Irocruable Films. gender md sexuality in practice, in policy and even philosophically. Close analysis oferotic (2QL2)'Bette¡ Hwe Half. Season 8, episode 9, Fox Television, 23 Januaty. (se1f-)representations brings to light the posibility of experiencing both sexual fluidity and (2002) 06ú Directed by C. Lee [Filml. South Korea: Dream Venture Capital. stability, resolving a long-standing impasse in feminist and queer approaches to sexuality Såørår (2006) Directed by J. Cameron Mitchell [Film]. USA: THINKFiIn. (Steinbock, 201 1). In this chapter i will focus on two domains that provide insight into the cultural shifts around how trans sexualities are mediatised: transfeminine activism in queer pomography and, by way of conclusion, some notes on news coverage of how to talk about ftans sex. Framing trans representation politics In this chapter I undentand tepresentâtion as including re-presenting the self through language and bodily expression, as well as through media technologies such as film, tele- v¡io" á"d digital forums, in genres ranging from news reporting to pomography' In each case, the representation of trans sexualities involves the double projection of a singular subject and collective subjectivities. lssues such as making available new collective vocabularies for self.definition - such as the much-publicised addition of gender qualifiers on Facebook and dating site OkCupid (North, 2014; Weber, 2014) - have a real impact on trms lives. Wh"..r, us"r, p..viomly had to identifi their gender as male or female md their orientation as stnight, gay or bisexual, Facebook now has 5o'plus different gender options (for US users), such as tnns man, trans woman' cis/cisgender, bigender, genderfluid, gender nonconfoming, intersex, agender, androgynous and two spirit' Genealogies oftram identities have sparked heated debates about how to understand the of gender and sexual Jiversity (Reid'Smith, 2013).1 The early medical "rt-gl.*åt, .o-.Ll"tur. of t o rexøl stresses how sexology imagined the deviant 'crossing' of a sexual 26 27 Elin steinbock RePr es ffi ting trans s walitie s questioning gender bo¡der. The diagnostic category of Gender ldentity Disorder (GID) in the American masculine-feminine gender binary, so LGB shares with T a politics of absence renders sexuality largely inco- Psychiatric Association's Diøgno stic atÅ. Søtistiml MmwL of MenøL Disordqs , Fifth Edition norfnativity. As Susan Stryker explaim,'[g]ender's of sexuality can be (DSM-5) (2013) allows for convoluted and contested terms, such as'autogynephilia', that herent, yet gender refuses to be the stable fomdation on which a system reduce gender identity to attnction, a paraphilia for becoming se:ually aroused by ima- theorized' (2004: 212). gâther one aggregate all for' gining or having a normative female body (Blanchard, 1989).2 The cunent clinical The umbrella identity term 'transgender' purports to into sheltering them nomenclatures ofGID and gender dysphoria classify trans as a condition that is universal mations of sex/ua1 and gender.nonconforming identities and expression, popular uptake of tramgender in political across cultures and experienced by a minute proportion of the population, identifiable ftom discrimination (Singer, 2014: 259). Yet the manifestatiom of gender according to a set of symptoms such as disgust at their own genitalia. The distress, social and educational arenas since the i990s continues to erase local isolation and depressíon that many self-identified trans people report are attributed by variance, and to subsume important cultural md racial differences in the understanding (Davidson, David Valentine's 2007 study of psycho-sexual literature such as the DSM-5 to a response to genital incongruence. However, of gender and sexmlity concepts 2007). the category üâns actívists md scholars argue that this resu16 from a society that expects one to New York City's gender-variant subcultures intenogates the ways in which versions of gender, eliding hold a gender identity that conforms to one's assigned sex at birth (cf. Nadal, Skolnik md tmnsgender emerçs from within \Uhite middle- and upper-class stud (African Wong,2012). interlinkages with racialised sexual subcultures. Two key sites of study are (South queer male' In cultures that organise gender and sexual norms in ways that afford bodily trans- American queer female-bodied masculinity) nð nmesti American elimination formation, value a multiplicity of gender expressions and honour legal rights to self- bodied femininity) identity cultures (cf. Lewis, 2013; Kupet eta1.,2014).'lhe of p.articularly found in determination, reported suess and suicide rates decrease dramatically (cf. Cabral and local erotic knowledge can also occur through colonialising impuises, Viturro, 200ó; Spade, 2011). Trans activism of the past decade has called for the anthropological reseãrch on hr¡ia and wariø Southeast Asian identities.4 Nominations such de-pathologisation, de-criminalisation and legal recognition ol trans identity/experience as third sex or third gender collapse cross-cultural figures into the same sort of transgender (cf. Balzer md Hutta, 2012). Integral to this is making accessible a range ofpractices for experience, overþing Western sex/gender systems while simultaneously 'rommcing the transfoming one's gendered embodiment, from name change to hormone replacement transgender native' (Towle and Morgæ, 2006)' The TSQ: Trmgenler SwÀ'ies Quø¡tsly therapy to surgeries and clothing choices. Regrettably, mmy popular representations of special issue on 'Decolonizing the transgender imaginary' challenges 'transgender studies trans sexualities continue to hark back to the ways in which psychomedical approaches both to look closely at its geography and historical location as the product of a largely North hypersexualise and de-eroticise trms individuals (Davy and Steinbock, 2012). A recent American settler culture' (2014: 308). example is the film ThB Donish Girl (2015, dir: Tom Hooper), based on an historical novel The domination of North American conceptualisations is repeated in cultural rep- about Lili Elbe, one ofthe first people to physically transition from male to female (in the resentations, which more often than not present trans people as sexual freaks with 1930s), with the support ofher wife. The film, however, presents trans womanhood as a improbable anatomy, e.g. pregnant men and she males. In a recent zine, trans woman Mi¡a forced feminisation fantasy, Iike those prevalent in pomography, in which a domínant Bellwether states (2013): woman dresses a submissive male who gains sexual enjoyment from his feminised status. In most media we're either cast as sexual predators who prey on unsuspecting men (hence 'trap', the clisgusting slur that's given to those of us who mostly pass as On (not) fitting in: LGB+T cis women o¡ are taken to be cis women), or we're looked down upon as objects A cent¡al quesdon raised by the genealogies of trans -sexual, -gender and GID is how in of pity who do not and could not pass as women at all, who couldn't conceivably fact t¡ans relates to being a sexuality. The term 'trans sexualities' seems to presuppose a set even HAVE a sex life. of