Trans on Telly: Popular Documentary and the Production of Transgender Knowledge Jay Stewart Goldsmiths College, University of London PhD I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own and where the contributions of others are included they are clearly acknowledged Signed: 2 Abstract This thesis considers TV documentaries that feature transgender subjects and which have been broadcast in the UK between 1979 and 2010. Despite the growing popularity of such documentaries, very little critical attention has been given to them. This thesis offers an original investigation of these mainstream cultural items within the multi- and inter-disciplinarity of Transgender Studies. The thesis also contributes to other disciplines, particularly Popular Culture, Visual Culture and TV Studies. My thesis investigates specifically how the visual narratives and the knowledge produced by them contribute to the ways in which trans subjects form themselves between knowledge products. Such TV documentaries form a notably ‘popular’ route to obtaining trans knowledge – what it means to be trans or what trans is. I also consider how they utilise the visual as part of their performance as well as foreground the productivity or achievement of such knowledge and make explicit its ‘uses’. In this thesis I ask: What happens when we see trans? What trans do we see? And what does seeing trans do? I consider the relationship between ‘serious’, scientific documentary making and notions of respectability, legitimacy and normativity. I show how such a relationship has been compromised through the emergence of the infotainment documentary. I frame my thinking autoethnographically in order to gauge the receivership of trans knowledge by trans viewers. I offer my own textual and historical analysis of the knowledge products and have also carried out TV screenings of the documentaries, in order to draw on recorded discussions with small groups of trans viewers for my research. I consider how popular documentaries that feature trans subjects play their part in producing a trans public that circulates discourse, forms sociability and effects change and pursues productive exchanges out of, from and through trans knowledge. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Gavin Butt for supporting me through supervision of my thesis. I would like to thank all of the people who attended my TV screenings and for their contributions through discussion. I would also like to thank other people from across various community events and projects, including the young people at Gendered Intelligence, from whose contributions I also drew for the purposes of carrying out this thesis. 4 Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 List of Figures 8 1 Introduction - Visualising Trans Knowledge 9 1.1 Oh No! I’ve Only Just Realised I’ve Gone and Got the ‘Wrong Body’ 9 1.2 Queer Alternatives 15 1.3 A Trans Epistemology 17 1.4 Sexology 19 1.5 DSM and Standards of Care 24 1.6 Sex/Gender as Performative 28 1.7 Autobiographies 33 1.8 Transgender Studies 36 1.9 Contribution to Knowledge 40 1.10 The Performativity of Knowledge 46 1.11 Popular Knowledge 48 1.12 The Productive Potential of Trans Knowledge 51 1.13 The Popular and Determined Transsexual 53 1.14 Gendered Intelligence 57 1.14 Trans in Visual Culture 58 Notes 63 2 Methodology 68 2.1 The ‘Auto’ Motive: Queer Methodologies and Autoethnographic Practice 68 2.2 Locating Ethnography after the Postcolonial Turn 72 2.3 Experimental and Auto Ethnography 77 2.4 Drawing on Other Autoethnographies 80 2.5 Modes of Visual Analysis: Gaze upon Gaze upon Gaze 83 2.6 The Transgender Gaze 89 2.7 Queer TV and Modes of Reception 91 2.8 Trans as Category 94 2.9 On Being Trans 95 2.10 Publics vs Private 98 2.11 Trans Publics and Trans Viewers 100 2.12 In the Trans Public Eye 102 2.13 Conclusion 104 Notes 106 3 Historicising UK TV Documentaries that Feature Trans Subjects 109 3.1 Introduction 109 3.2 The Emergence of Trans Activism 110 3.3 History of Broadcasting 118 5 3.4 Deregulation and Convergence: The New Millennium 123 3.5 Charting the ‘Popular’ in the Documentary Genre 127 3.6 The Fight to be Male 130 3.7 ‘Dumbing Down’ 133 3.8 Narrative Structures in Documentaries 134 3.9 The First Trans Narrative on Television in the UK: A Change of Sex 136 3.10 The Emergence of Infotainment Documentaries 142 3.11 Becoming TV Fodder 144 3.12 Knowing and Not Knowing 148 3.13 Conclusion 150 Notes 151 4 On the (Un)bearable Lightness of Being Trans 155 4.1 Grave Indeed: Death, Pain and Loneliness 155 4.2 The Seriousness of Surgery 166 4.3 The Freak Show, Gender Queer and Ideas of Regret 171 4.4 Emotions on Display: Lucy: Teen Transsexual 176 4.5 Serious Failings 181 4.6 Concluding an (Un)bearable Lightness of Being 183 Notes 186 5 So Why Would You Do It? Explanations of Being Trans in Popular Documentaries 188 5.1 The Performativity and Productivity of Causation 188 5.2 Causality in ‘Popular’ Television Documentaries 190 5.3 Transsexual versus Transvestite 194 5.4 Simple versus Complex Knowledge Products 196 5.5 Mind versus Brain: Causality and Treatment in the Psychiatric Encounter 199 5.6 ‘Careful Selection’: The Authentic ‘Real’ Transsexual 201 5.7 Active Consumer versus Passive Patient 204 5.8 On Responsibility 206 5.9 Navigating Multiple Causes 210 5.10 Conclusion 213 Notes 215 6 There’s No Such Thing as ‘Bad’ Publicity: Taste Cultures and Value in Popular Documentaries that Feature Trans People 216 6.1 Introducing the ‘Bad’ Knowledge Product 216 6.2 That’s Entertainment!: Introducing Taste Cultures 219 6.3 A Class Distinct Viewing 223 6.4 Stop Taking the Piss: Moral Performances across ‘Trans Publics’ 225 6.5 The Benefits of Disgust 228 6.6 ‘I’m Worried I Might Start Laughing’ 229 6.7 Productivity in Trans Knowledge 231 6.8 Queer Subversions 233 6.9 Conclusion 235 6 Notes 238 7 Conclusion: Trans Knowledge in ‘Popular’ Television Documentaries 240 7.1 My Transsexual Endgame 240 7.2 ‘Are We There Yet?’ 249 7.3 The Revolution is Being Televised! 250 7.4 Gendered Intelligence 253 7.5 The Privilege of Unintelligence 256 7.6 Taking Ourselves Seriously 258 7.7 My Knowledge Project 260 Notes 264 Bibliography 266 Publications 266 Websites 298 Newspaper/magazine reviews and articles 299 Blogs 300 Films and Documentaries 300 Reality TV and Other Contemporary Fact-Making Programmes 301 Conference Papers 301 Appendices 302 1 Filmography 302 2 TV Screenings 311 3 Transcripts of Group Discussion 314 7 List of Figures Fig. 1.1 Fred and his sister in The Wrong Body (Oliver Morse, UK, 1996, Channel 4). 9 Fig. 3.1 Depicting an egg about to be fertilised in The Fight to be Male (Edward Goldwyn, UK, 1979, BBC). 131 Fig. 3.2 Julia Grant in A Change of Sex (David Pearson, UK, 1979, BBC 2). 138 Fig. 4.1 Middlesex (Anthony Thomas, UK, 2005, Channel 4). 161 Fig. 4.2 Peter Sterling, photograph of David Chickadel, People Weekly 28:5, 73 (3 August 1987). from Jan Zita Grover ‘Visible Lesions: Images of the PWA in America’ (in Miller 1992). 165 Figs 4.3 and 4.4 Safe to Learn: embedding anti-bullying work in schools by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) 2007. 165 Fig. 4.5 Cindi Harrington’s post-Gender Reassignment Surgery results in Return to Gender (Julie-Pia Aberdein, UK, 2005, Channel 5) 171 8 1 Introduction – Visualising Trans Knowledge 1.1 Oh No! I’ve Only Just Realised I’ve Gone and Got the ‘Wrong Body’ The Decision was a series of documentaries featuring various themes around medical and ethical dilemmas. Televised in 1996 for Channel 4, one of the programmes featured was The Wrong Body (Oliver Morse, UK, 1996, Channel 4). The film follows a group of female to male (FTM) transsexuals living in England and undergoing or investigating gender reassignment. I, like many people across the nation, sat down to watch.1 I did this without any forethought or planning; it just happened to be on.2 It was the first documentary featuring trans men (as opposed to trans women or gender queer people) to be broadcast on terrestrial television.3 At this point in my life – I was 21 years old – I had no idea that I was (or would become) FTM myself. I found the documentary compelling as the idea of female-bodied people undergoing gender reassignment and living as men was new to me. In particular it was the story and personality of 13-year-old Fred, who featured in The Wrong Body, that impressed me and resonated with me most. Although I had been mostly boyish growing up, I did not have the kind of conviction of being a boy that Fred seemed to display in this documentary. He presented as strong-minded and extremely certain of his gender – perhaps this was necessary in order to convince his family and doctors. Figure 1.1 Fred and his sister in The Wrong Body (Oliver Morse, UK, 1996, Channel 4) 9 Just moments into the documentary we see Fred’s sister giving him a haircut using barber clippers (see Figure 1.1). The sister shrieks with excitement, seemingly because the haircut is so short (and therefore extremely boyish). She calls him ‘a nutter’ and the voiceover begins: Many children have temporary fantasies about belonging to the opposite sex but one in 17,000 from first consciousness are certain that nature has played a cruel trick.