Transgender Issues Are Invisible
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BOOK REVIEWS NEW MILLENNIUM TRANNIES: GENDER-BENDING, IDENTITIES, AND CULTURAL POLITICS by Joelle Ruby Ryan Charlotte Suthrell, UNZIPPING GENDER: SEX, CROSS-DRESSING AND CULTURE. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2004. 220p. $24.95, ISBN 1-85973-725-0. Helen Boyd, MY HUSBAND BETTY: LOVE, SEX, AND LIFE WITH A CROSS-DRESSER. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003. 285p. $16.95, ISBN 1-56025-515-3. Henry Rubin, SELF-MADE MEN: IDENTITY AND EMBODIMENT AMONG TRANSSEXUAL MEN. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003. 217p. $22.95, ISBN 0-8265-1435-9. J. Michael Bailey, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE QUEEN: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER-BENDING AND TRANSSEXUALISM. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2003. 233p. $24.95, ISBN 0-309-08418-0. It can no longer be said that riences and identity categories. These concert with feminism and queer theo- transgender issues are invisible. In fact, have included texts for both academic ry, transgender studies scholars have they seem to be everywhere. Flipping and general audiences, penned by both sought to destabilize hegemonic gender through television channels, one can trans-identified and non-trans authors. categories and call into question cul- see gender variance represented on Since the early 1990s, transgender tural assumptions regarding the pre- sensationalistic daytime talk fests like studies has begun to emerge in aca- sumed unity among biological sex, Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, on demia, although it has often been diffi- gender identity, and gender expression. pseudo-scientific programs like Chang- cult to place this burgeoning field of ing Sexes: Male to Female on the Dis- study within pre-existing academic dis- While as a community we have covery Channel, in poignant and pro- ciplines. Like women’s studies and gained increased visibility in many ar- vocative documentaries like Southern queer studies, transgender studies is an eas of society and culture, such as me- Comfort and Venus Boyz, and even in inter- and trans-disciplinary field that dia, academia, and publishing, we the realm of reality TV on shows like makes use of a variety of epistemologi- must continually ask, What kind of TBS’s He’s a Lady, where “macho” cal and methodological traditions to visibility? And at what cost? The polit- straight men dress and live as women further knowledge about the diversity ical stakes for texts that explicate the in order to vie for a cash prize. A of sex, gender, and sexuality in cultures realities and complexities of transgen- plethora of websites deal with gender all over the globe. One of the central der lives are enormous, particularly diversity, and a slew of popular concerns of transgender studies has during this conservative cultural ep- films—such as To Wong Foo, Different been to radically interrogate the binary och. Further, in order to facilitate anal- for Girls, Normal, Soldier’s Girl, and system of sex, gender, and sexual orien- yses that interrogate reigning systems the Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry, tation that so stubbornly persists in pa- of power, exploitation, and physical, about the real-life rape and murder of triarchal, androcentric societies. This economic, and psychical systems of transgendered Nebraskan Brandon work is perhaps best exemplified by violence, we must ask difficult ques- Teena—have emerged. In addition to Kate Bornstein’s brilliant Gender Out- tions about texts that explore transgen- these media texts, a number of books law, the first book of gender theory that have joined the gender debate written by a transperson. Working in have centered transpeople’s lived expe- Feminist Collections (v.26, no.1, Fall 2004) Page 1 Book Reviews der issues. Viviane Namaste, author of in both India and the U.K., consisting theoretical debates about gender and Invisible Lives, has provided an excel- mainly of extensive in-person and sexuality within material culture. lent critique of studies of transgender- phone interviews with individuals who ism in both the humanities and social identified as transvestites or hijras. Unzipping Gender is cogently sciences. She writes that “queer theory Central to Suthrell’s mission is an ex- written and enjoyable to read. Suthrell as it is currently practiced must be amination of clothing and its relation clearly lays out her methodology (in- challenged because it exhibits a re- to prevailing cultural categories, ideol- cluded are four appendices that reveal markable insensitivity to the substan- ogies, and contradictions. Suthrell sees some of her questions and her subjects’ tive issues of transgendered people’s clothes as a “tangible indicator of nor- responses) and includes detailed de- everyday lives” (p.23). Namaste and mative structures which are so taken- scriptions of some of the interviews she others seek to promote a mode of aca- for-granted, so obvious, they can re- conducted with both British transves- demic inquiry that is “theoretically so- main almost invisible if they stay with- tites and Indian hijras. One of her phisticated, politically engaged and in permitted, ‘common-sense’ bound- chief concerns is with the conflicting practically relevant” (p.1). Each of the aries” (p.3). Once these boundaries are ways in which transgenderism is con- texts reviewed below contributes ceived and treated in different to ongoing political and scholar- cultural and geographical con- ly debates about the nature of texts. Other researchers have sex, gender, and desire in the attempted cross-cultural and new millennium. Each achieves trans-historical projects in order a different level of success in to create historical continuity making a connection between and cultural parallels between theory and praxis. disparate “transgender” subjects. For instance, Leslie Feinberg The central objective of explores transgender identity Charlotte Suthrell’s Unzipping and resistance to oppression Gender is to examine the ways throughout history in Transgen- that culture shapes and con- der Warriors, while Serena Nan- structs notions of gender and da examines seven gender-vari- sexuality. In order to accomplish ant groups across the globe in this important goal, Suthrell Gender Diversity. One of the examines and compares the cul- fundamental credos guiding ture of British male-to-female such work is that gender-variant transvestites and that of the people have existed throughout hijras — also called eunuchs — time and in every society of contemporary India. While throughout the globe; it is nei- many in the U.S. have eschewed ther a “new” phenomenon nor the term “transvestite” for its one confined to Western, capi- clinical, fetishistic, and psychiat- talist culture. Although there is ric connotations, in the U.K. scholarly merit to such an en- the term has a different, more deavor, and often positive politi- positive valence. Through an cal intention, this approach is ethnography of these two also very problematic. Postmod- groups, Suthrell attempts to center violated through gender crossing, how- ernism has insisted on the importance their experiences in order to analyze ever, cultural ideology becomes readily of analyses that are localized and spe- larger cultural questions about the na- apparent, and clothing can serve as a cific and that avoid universalizing gen- ture of sex, gender, and sexuality. “material marker of ideas, notions and eralizations. Cross-cultural compari- Suthrell conducted extensive fieldwork theories” (p.3). Suthrell uses the dis- sons often center Western subjectivity cussion of clothing to ground complex and “other” Third World cultures and identity categories. Page 2 Feminist Collections (v.26, no.1, Fall 2004) Book Reviews While Suthrell’s attempt to ex- ments of the global gender-variant tion to the transgender community, amine the differential ways that gender community and asks pivotal questions but it never veers far from its true fo- variance is treated in two cultural tra- that are relevant to all scholars of gen- cus, which is to demystify the experi- ditions is important and ambitious, der studies and to textile and apparel ences of heterosexual cross-dressers and there is very little analysis devoted to studies in particular. their wives and family members. race and class, ethnocentrism, Boyd writes in her introduc- and the huge impact of imperi- tion, “I am writing this book alism and colonization on India. because many of the crossdress- Given Great Britain’s long impe- ers’ wives I’ve met are angry and rialist rule of India, Suthrell’s bitter… If and when they do text could have benefited from a come around to accepting their longer analysis of imperialism, husbands’ peculiarity, they only post-coloniality, and the way tolerate it, and rarely enjoy it” hegemonic Western culture has (p.13). Although the book fo- affected sexual and gender iden- cuses on a variety of important tity formation. Further, Suthrell topics, I find most compelling would do well to interrogate her its exploration of cross-dressing own privileged social location from the point of view of the vis-à-vis the hijra population girlfriend, fiancée, or wife. Why that she studies. Suthrell calls are so many female significant herself “handicapped” by her others “angry” and “bitter” “English-ness” and “white-ness” about their male partners’ cross- (p.76) and notes that she found dressing? Why do they not ac- most of the hijras she met “diffi- cept it? cult to talk to, uncivil in their The answer, as you might ex- manner and considerably more pect, is highly complex. In reali- interested in financial reward ty there is a complicated contin- than in any notion of hospitality uum of acceptance/non-accep- or friendship” (p.111). Here, she tance, and the reasons for this seems to have an attitude of en- vary tremendously. Boyd writes titlement that sadly reinstates that she wants her work to “be the colonizing impulse of the the kind of book a wife or a British over the Indians. As girlfriend can read with her Suthrell points out, attitudes toward cross-dressing husband or boyfriend the hijras have gone from general spiri- Like Suthrell, Helen Boyd invites that might lead to a new level of com- tual and cultural respect and acknowl- readers to enter an often secret world: munication between them” (p.18).