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Transfiguration: a Narrative Analysis of Male-To-Female

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Transfiguration: a Narrative Analysis of Male-To-Female TRANSFIGURATION: A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF MALE-TO-FEMALE TRANSSEXUAL IN GEORGIA by JODI KAUFMANN (Under the Direction of Kathleen de Marrais) ABSTRACT The position of transsexual in the West has been constituted in narrative as a specific body and subject position. To be a transsexual is to narrate oneself as a transsexual (Prosser, 1998). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how narrative re/produces a transsexual body and subject. Specifically, I examined the structure of transsexual narratives and the body and subject represented in these narratives. This study was a narrative analysis (Bal, 1999). The participants for this study were two male-to-female transsexuals living in Georgia. The data consisted of two biographical interviews, two photo elicitations, and one Yahoo profile. The interview data collected were condensed using Bal’s (1999) concept of an event and Moustakas’s (1994) concept of data reduction. These narratives were then analyzed for their alignment to Roof’s (1996) heteronarrative structure – an introduction that commences in the heteronormative and foreshadows the struggles to come, a conclusion that ends in the heteronormative, and a middle which allows homology, or the logic of the perverse. The constituents of the body and subject – essential, inscribed (Foucault, 1980, 1984, 1990), discursive (Butler, 1993, 1997, 1999) and/or becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) of the protagonist in each narrative was also analyzed. It was found that the position of transsexual was contained within the heteronormative through the structure of narrative. Each narrative erased the homologic possibility of transsexual through concluding in the heterologic, the logic of productivity, capitalism, and the modern alignment of sex/gender/sexual orientation. Additionally, the homology of the middle was an illusion as each instance of ambiguity was quickly pulled back into the heteronormative. It was also found that the presentation of the body and subject followed a heteronarrative structure. Almost exclusively, each narrative began and concluded with an essential self and presented, albeit briefly, an ambiguous body and subject in the middle. Each homologic body and subject was thwarted, however, as it was quickly sutured to the heteronormative. INDEX WORDS: Transsexual, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Identity, Narrative TRANSFIGURATION: A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF MALE-TO-FEMALE TRANSSEXUAL IN GEORGIA by JODI KAUFMANN B.A., The University of Washington, 1983 M.A., Antioch University Seattle, 1996 A Dissertation Submitted to the graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2004 © 2004 JODI KAUFMANN All rights reserved TRANSFIGURATION: A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF MALE-TO-FEMALE TRANSSEXUAL IN GEORGIA by JODI KAUFMANN Major Professor: Kathleen de Marrais Committee: Robert Hill Sujata Iyengar Kathy Roulston Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 Purpose of the Study..................................................................................................4 Definitions.................................................................................................................6 2 TRANSSEXUALITY: A NARRATIVE POSITION....................................................9 The Emergence of the Sign Transsexual.................................................................10 Transsexuality and the Body and Subject ...............................................................28 Conclusion...............................................................................................................47 3 METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................48 4 MICHELLE’S NARRATIVES...................................................................................61 The Structure of Michelle’s Narratives ...................................................................61 The Body and Subject in Michelle’s Narratives ...................................................114 Conclusion.............................................................................................................137 5 JESSIE’S NARRATIVES.........................................................................................141 The Structure of Jessie’s Narratives......................................................................141 The Body and Subject in Jessie’s Narratives ........................................................183 Conclusion.............................................................................................................203 6 DISRUPTING THE HETERONARRATIVE STRUCTURE...................................206 Transsexual: A Rhizonarrative..............................................................................207 iv 7 CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................222 The Re/production of a Transsexual Body and Subject ........................................224 Significance and Implications ...............................................................................229 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................233 v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Living in the excesses of the heterosexual matrix, the interconnecting discourses that constitute heterosexuality as the normative, is not a new mode of existence. Variations of transgendered bodies and subjects permeate cultures and histories (Feinberg, 1996; Green, 1998; Prosser, 1998). The Roman Goddess Venus listened with compassion to the desires of feminine souls residing in male bodies; prior to becoming the emperor of Rome, Heliogabalus was delighted to be called wife and Queen in his former marriage; Abbe de Choisy, Ambassador of Louis XIV, knew herself as a woman and dressed in female attire as she passed in and out of Russia on trips of espionage (Green, 1998). In 1922, Earl Lind was castrated because she wanted to rid her body of its maleness (Meyerowitz, 2002). In 2004, Deirdre McCloskey, a post-operative male-to-female transsexual, is the Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Precious Armani, a pre- operative male-to-female transsexual, was shot in the head in front of her apartment in Buckhead, Georgia. In the West the position of male-to-female transsexual has been constituted in narrative as a specific body and subject position. Although the position of female-to-male transsexual intersects with this position, it is an alternate experience and signification – the meaning which is linked to a signifier, a word -- and beyond the scope of this study. In the following I discuss the emergence of the male-to-female transsexual position, its changing signification, and its 1 dependence on the body and subject positions available. This is followed by the purpose statement and research questions of this study. In the West, the first sex reassignment surgery was recorded in 1922 when Lili Elbe, born Earl Lind, was castrated in Berlin at the Hirschfeld Institute (Meyerowitz, 2002). Elbe died nine years later of heart failure after surgery to construct a vagina. With the help of her doctor’s pen, her autobiography was published in the United States in 1932. The fabula--"a series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by actors" (Bal, 1999, p. 5)--of her story was that she was a female “personality” born into an intersexed body. Reaching a fairly wide circulation in the States, Elbe’s autobiography spread this specific hermaphroditic fabula, which may still be heard in transsexual autobiographies to date. The hermaphroditic fabula began to shift in 1949 when Dr. David Cauldwell, a psychiatrist, named “trans-sexual” those individuals who narrated themselves as being the opposite gender from their biological sex (Meyerowitz, 2002). In this naming, Cauldwell not only shifted the transsexual fabula from one of being a female personality in an intersexed body to one of being a woman born into the wrong body, he constituted transsexuality as an autobiographical act, one was a transsexual because one named herself as such (Prosser, 1998). A contemporary of Cauldwell’s and the first advocate for medical intervention rather than psychoanalysis in the treatment of transsexuals (Fausto-Sterling, 2000), Harry Benjamin, an endocrinologist, interviewed hundreds of patients, diagnosing over a hundred of them as transsexual (Califia, 1997). His diagnoses were based on the sex/gender misalignment fabula set forth by Cauldwell accompanied by a theme of extreme psychological distress as a result of gender dysphoria (Prosser, 1998). But, working in the strict heterosexual social climate of post World War II, Benjamin and his associates only supported those candidates who would align 2 within the heterosexual matrix after transition (Meyerowitz, 2002). Thus, to be diagnosed as transsexual and be in the position to receive help from the medical community in transitioning, a patient had to narrate physically – possess a body that would pass after transition -- and textually – structure her narrative within the misalignment fabula – a specific heterosexual
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