The Equality Act 2010 and Empty Diversity: Neoliberal Legislation and Inequality in the Lives of Trans* and Sexgender Nonconforming People
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The Equality Act 2010 and Empty Diversity: neoliberal legislation and inequality in the lives of trans* and sexgender nonconforming people. C Hunter Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD London Metropolitan University May 2018 Abstract This thesis explores how effectively equality and diversity legislation in the UK offers recognition and protection to trans* and sexgender nonconforming people by engaging with their contemporary experiences. In order to explore these dynamics I give a genealogical and multidisciplinary context to my work. More specifically, I trace the ways in which the development of trans* and sexgender nonconforming discourses impacts on the evolving self-understanding of my research subjects. Finally, I also analyse the implications of my findings for particular forms of legally focused activism. The thesis makes a critical examination of the much commented-on increase in trans* and sexgender nonconforming people’s visibility and social inclusion in the 21st century. In order to undertake such critique I theorize the impact of structural socioeconomic and cultural changes that have taken place in the context of neoliberal governmentality, including the developments in information technologies. I focus on important issues of materiality and political economy to analyse how the neoliberal logic of inclusion of previously discriminated against populations according to their socio-economic fungibility – i.e. their ability to participate in the market – necessarily creates new forms of exclusion and marginalization. This thesis produced a critical examination of the nature of diversity itself in a neoliberal age, focusing in particular on how the valorization of a particular form of empty diversity – i.e. a depoliticized, instrumental and commodified recognition of difference - is emblematic of the delimitations of the effects of the neoliberal project. I contend that the forms of protection grounded in neoliberal understandings of ‘equality’ work to mask the structurally unequal and iniquitous effects of legislation, even if they represent an improvement in relation to the previous lack of recognition. In particular the Equality Act 2010 can be seen as entrenching inequality and discrimination, rather than promoting genuine social and economic equality, by only protecting more ‘legible’, ‘fungible’ and normative experiences of trans* expression. Acknowledgements I have reached the end of a transformational six years researching and writing this thesis. This is a six year period that I wouldn’t have survived academically or emotionally without a great deal of support. I would like to give heartfelt thanks for all the support I have received. Firstly I would never have got through this without the amazing support of my Director of Studies Irene Gedalof. Thank you so much for everything! Also for the significant contribution of Nick Mai and earlier in the whole process Fiona Colgan, my other supervisors, thank you. Also in particular, and in no particular order I would like to thank Jennifer Fraser, Sam Lamble, Calo Giametta, Vick Virtue, Mijke Van Der Drift, and Nat Raha who have all been inspirational and supportive academically. I would also like to thank Mijke and Nat for all our radical transfeminist engagement and work together which has changed the shape of this thesis. Thank you too to all my fellow PhD students at London Met, all of whom completed before me, but who were so important in helping find an academic voice. And many thanks to other academic friends who read and commented on my work, made such helpful suggestions and encouraged me. I would like to thank all the respondents whose contributions have changed my work and changed how I see the world. This work would have been very different without your contributions! I would like to say thank you the many people I have encountered and friends I have made and worked with in activist circles who have also variously affected my thinking. To Roberta Francis who has been so supportive in so many ways, every step of the way, with whom I set up TAGS. And to all the other people in TAGS, in particular Megan Faulkner. To people who I met through the Bent Bars Project, whose friendships have been so important to me during this time, especially Aislin Baker, Wayne Burnette and Nadia Dorr. You have buoyed my spirits through some very difficult times (even if you didn’t always realise!) and given me faith in the spirit of solidarity and much more. I would also like to thank people I have worked with in Gendered Intelligence, in particular Sasha Padziarei for their friendship, and Jay Stewart and Catherine McNamara for inviting me in. To my colleagues and friends at Opening Doors London, in particular Kate Hancock and Paul Webley. And finally to my flatmate Amy Kingsmill and happiness and security at home which have been so important. And my family, my father Ian Hunter, my stepmother Jean Lightfoot, my children Tye, Rosie and Kane Hunter, and their partners Tash and Jane, my sister Lynne Harrison and brother-in-law Mike Harrison and my nieces Natalia and Elysse. To my chosen sister Claire Dixon Miller, and nibling SJ. And to one more nameless friend as well whose love and support kept me going at a very dark time. You all mean the world to me. Much love and solidarity and huge thanks to you all. I dedicate this thesis to all of you. Contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1 The research focus 1 1.2 The structure of the thesis – an overview 3 1.3 The breaking down of borderlines 6 1.4 The terms of the discussion 7 1.5 The development of the project 8 1.6 Original contribution to knowledge 9 2. Chapter 1: Literature Review 11 2.1 Themes 14 2.2 Discourse and the delimitations of knowledge and self-knowledge 16 2.3 A genealogy of sexology: the invert to the transsexual to transgender 17 2.4 Essentialist feminist resistance to trans* authenticity and the reverse discourse 19 2.5 Delimitations of trans* scholarship and environment 20 2.6 Transgender studies 22 2.7 Addressing oppression and misrecognition 28 2.8 Recent achievements for some trans* and sexgender nonconforming people 29 2.9 Cultural change and the legal landscape 31 2.10 Conclusion 33 3. Chapter 2: Methodology 36 3.1 The emplacement of the researcher 37 3.2 A queer methodology 42 3.3 A critique of grounded theory 44 3.4 Choices of subject areas and texts 46 3.5 Participants 48 3.6 Problems associated with the recruitment of participants 50 3.7 Semi-structured interviews 55 3.8 Participant/researcher positioning and interactions 56 3.9 Notes of data analysis of respondents’ interviews 60 3.10 Ethical notes on naming and data protection 62 3.11 Conclusion 63 4. Chapter 3 Discourses of the Self 65 4.1 My ‘journey’ 66 4.2 The subject and inscription of subjectivity 70 4.3 Narratives – debates in trans* scholarship 74 4.4 Contextualising the focus on diversity in the transgender studies canon 78 4.5 Contemporary trans* and sexgender non-conforming narratives 81 4.6 Valorising diversity 89 4.7 Conclusion 93 5. Chapter 4: Social Relations – Transing in the Twilight 95 5.1 Sex and gender, sex/gender, sexgender 96 5.2 Questioning ‘identity’ 98 5.3 Heteronormativity and LGBT recognition 100 5.4 Homo- to transnormativity 101 5.5 The limits of transgender/trans* as queer 103 5.6 Reconfigurations of trans* positionalities 105 5.7 Normativities in neoliberal context 107 5.8 Atomisation – macro-, meso-, and micro socio-political Identifications 110 5.9 Neoliberal diversities and queer 111 5.10 Fungibility and the implications for sexgender 114 5.11 Institutionalising and internalising anti-discrimination culture 125 5.12 Conclusion 126 6. Chapter 5: Embodiment, Expression and Environment 129 6.1 Hybridity and Power 130 6.2 Cultural binarism, anti-trans* discourse and non-normative Sexgender erasure: biology is not destiny 132 6.3 Genealogy of binaries in science 135 6.4 A polymorphic analysis 136 6.5 Brains, hormones and plasticities 138 6.6 The (psycho)medical model 141 6.7 The turn from authenticity – how the medical model and conformity slipped through the grasp of the gatekeepers 144 6.8 Normative or not: slipping beyond the binary 147 6.9 Authenticity and the impossibility of the natural body 153 6.10 The molecular individual 156 6.11 Conclusion 159 7. Chapter 6: Heterotopic Environments and Markets- a Politics of the Internet, Social Networking and the Media 161 7.1 Internet emerges 163 7.2 From ‘streets to screens’, to screens to streets’ 164 7.3 New media, old discourses 167 7.4 Web 2 and media reporting of trans* and sexgender nonconforming issues 170 7.5 A new standard 176 7.6 A reflection on celebrity transition 178 7.7 Mainstream media and trans*-positive role models 180 7.8 Old media/new media interactions 184 7.9 The continuing failure to adequately report complexity 186 7.10 Conclusion 188 8. Chapter 7: The Effectivity and Affectivity of Gender Reassignment as a Protected Characteristic in the Equality Act 2010: How the Law Protects, Reinforces, Erases and Obfuscates 192 8.1 Genealogy of laws protecting trans* people in the UK 193 8.2 The Equality Act 2010 196 8.3 Protected characteristics 196 8.4 Delimitations of protections under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment 199 8.5 Lack of cases 200 8.6 ‘I fall under a protected characteristic but I’m not being protected 204 8.7 The Precariat and disenfranchisement 208 8.8 The most marginalised 211 8.9 Other cases of limited recognition or misrecognition in the criminal justice system 216 8.10 New regulations 217 8.11 Cultural gaps 218 8.12 Contextualising these bleak outcomes – the precariat and prison deaths 220 8.13 The derogation of law in a state of change 221 8.14 The Equality Act 2010, inequality and narrow recognition 224 8.15 Conclusion 224 9.