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PERSONAL, POLITICAL, and PSYCHOLOGICAL NARRATIVES of TRANS REPUDIATION, TRAUMA, and HEALING

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PERSONAL, POLITICAL, and PSYCHOLOGICAL NARRATIVES of TRANS REPUDIATION, TRAUMA, and HEALING THE GENDERED and TRANS/GENDERED SELF: PERSONAL, POLITICAL, and PSYCHOLOGICAL NARRATIVES of TRANS REPUDIATION, TRAUMA, and HEALING By CHRISTOPHER ACTON SHELLEY B.A. (hons.), York University, 1992 M.A., Adler School of Professional Psychology, 1995 M.Phil., King's College, London University, 2004 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Women's Studies and Gender Relations) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 2006 © Christopher Acton Shelley, 2006 11 Abstract The Gendered and Trans/gendered Self: Personal, Political, and Psychological Narratives of Trans Repudiation, Trauma, and Healing Transpeople are among the most marginalised and subjugated of social groups. Any attempt to improve this situation demands understanding (a hermeneutic task) and concrete change (which activism can incite). This study turns to feminist theory and psychoanalysis/depth psychology, in an attempt to understand the everyday/night repudiations that transpeople experience. Examples of such experiences are taken from twenty in-depth interviews conducted in BC, and considered in relation to existing comprehensions of gender (injustice. Trans repudiation is perpetrated from across the political spectrum (from the right, centre, and left) and paradoxically configures transpeople simultaneously as exotic Others (a seductive spectacle), and dangerous transgressors (stirring fear/enmity). Transpeople present a challenge to both modernist and postmodern theories of sex/gender in relation to subjectivity and the body. In particular, they epitomise problems in longstanding debates around the integrity of the "self" and the divided status of the "subject". Transsexuals illustrate the difficulties of changing sex in order to become "whole", while the trans-gendered experience obstacles to their desire to remain both (m/f) or in-between (/). All those interviewed have experienced an array of prejudiced reactions based on their status as 'trans'. Repudiation occurs at the intersections of interiority and exteriority: exteriority in the form of barriers encountered in the social world, and interiority as demonstrated in interpersonal dynamics that engage the perpetrators' unconscious motivations (repression/projection/abjection) and transpeople's internalised (emotional/mental) conflicts. The interviews allow identification of institutional sites where trans repudiation is most "problematic, while the theoretical framework points to the deeper changes that need to occur in people's consciousness in order to eliminate this repudiation. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iii List of Tables vi Abbreviations vii Acknowledgements viii Dedication ix Part I: FOREGROUNDING HORIZONS: NARRATIVE RESEARCH WITH TRANSPEOPLE Chapter 1 Introduction: Ethical and Field Issues in the Study of Transpeople's Narratives 2 Ethical Issues in Research on 'Trans' Subjects 2 Subjugation and 'Cure ': Transpeople as "Phobogenic Objects" 2 The Importance of Ethical Agency 7 Researching Trans Repudiation: Narrative 'Method' and Study Participants 9 The Research Project 12 Issues in the Field of Trans(Gender/Sexual)Studies 18 Queer Theory 19 Two-Spirit People 24 Interiority and Exteriority ...27 Trans-scribing Theory and Interviews: The Structure of the Dissertation 31 Chapter 2 The Interviews 33 1. Health Care. 34 2. Lavatories / Change Rooms 42 3. Intimate Others 47 4. Public Institutions: Employment, Education, and Other Public Services 52 Employment 52 Education 56 5. Types of Repudiation 60 Threat / Intimidation 60 Physical Assault 64 Law Enforcement 65 Relations with (Other) Lesbians and Gays 66 Reactions from Radical Cultural Feminists 71 IV Chapter 3 Fusing Horizons: Situating Theoretical Assumptions 74 Hermeneutics 74 Foregrounding Horizons 78 Situating the Research 83 Critical Psychology and Depth Psychology. 87 Part II 'TRANS/PHOBIA' AND THE POLITICS OF REPUDIATION Chapter 4 Repudiation and Transphobia: Concepts, Theory, and Experience 98 Repudiation 98 Problematising trans/phobia 101 Narratives of Trans Repudiation and Transphobia 107 Trans Repudiation and Intersectionality 116 The Problem of Trauma 118 Chapter 5 The Political Repudiations of Trans Subjectivity 121 The Conservative Repudiation 121 The Ambivalent/Contradictory Politics of Liberalism 126 Liberal Feminisms and the Gender Binary 128 The Radical Cultural Feminist Repudiation of Trans and Queer 132 Re-asserting the Power of the Binary 136 Chapter 6 Talking Back: Historicizing the Repudiation of Transsexualism 144 Talking Back to Liberalism and Conservatism 144 Film, Television, and the Internet: The Contradictory Influences of Media 148 Talking Back to Radical Cultural Feminism 154 Case Vignette: Kimberly Nixon and Vancouver Rape Relief. 158 The Double-Edged Scalpel: Psychiatric and Psychoanalytic Repudiations 164 Diagnostic Repudiations in DSM-IV-Tr 166 Conservative Psychoanalysis 169 i Part III PSYCHOLOGICAL REPUDIATION: RETURNING THE GAZE OF DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY Chapter 7 Psychoanalytic Theory and Depth Psychology 178 Feminism, Depth Psychology, and Gender: The Forces of Irrationality and the Unknown .179 The Relevance of Psychoanalytic Concepts to the Repudiation of Transpeople 182 Anna Freud and Melanie Klein 189 Object Relations 192 Trans Women and Mothering 194 Jacques Lacan and French Psychoanalysis 199 Beyond Lacan: Feminist Re-Readings 203 The Felt Body: Beyond Language and Sight 205 Jungian and Post-Jungian Psychology 206 Chapter 8 Adlerian Theory 213 Adler's Break with Psychoanalysis 214 Adler and the Guiding Fiction: Consciousness as a Mise-en-abime 218 Adler and the Contested Realm of the Ego 222 Masculine Protest 224 Community Feeling: The Problem of Be/longing 234 A Repudiating Gaze: Homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorders 230 Adler and Poststructuralism: Disputations of the Self and the Ego 233 Chapter 9 Conclusion: The Gendered and Trans/gendered Self 237 The Gendered Subject 237 The Gendered Self. 241 Trans Integrity / Trans Selfhood 246 The Holistic Self: Problems in Holism 247 Internalising the Gaze of Repudiation: 'Self-Oppression' 252 Conclusion: The Enigma of Self-Estrangement 257 References 261 Appendix A: Consent Form 281 Appendix B: Interview Questions 282 vi List of Tables Table 1. List of Participants 15 Table 2. Interiority / Exteriority 28 Table 3. Various Lavatory Symbols 202 Abbreviations APA American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision (American Psychiatric Association) GID Gender Identity Disorder (DSM-IV-TR Category #576) IS Intersex FtM Female-to-Male LGBTTQI Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Trans-Two Spirit-Queer-Intersex MtF Male-to-Female SRS Sexual Reassignment Surgery1 TG Transgendered Trans Used tentatively in this study as an umbrella term to denote Transsexual or Transgendered. TS Transsexual ' (I) MtF: vaginoplasty with or without labiaplasty and with or without orchiectomy [with orchiectomy: (I) removal of testes; (2) without orchiectomy: relocation of testes up and into the abdominal wall]; Optional: breast implants, facial reconstruction (FFS), voice box surgery, Adam's apple reduction/shave, hair transplant. (2) FtM: usually any one, or combination of, hysterectomy; oopherectomy [removal of ovaries], mastectomy, metoidioplasty [release of the suspensory ligament of the clitoris so that it resembles, according to Lawrence (2000) "a micro penis"]; vaginectomy [removal of the vagina]; scrotoplasty [creation of prosthetic testicles]; phalloplasty [abdominal flap, radical forearm flap, or fibular flap]. Acknowledgements Numerous individuals, some in small ways - others in greater ways than they may know - were crucial to the construction of this study. I wish to offer deep thanks and appreciation to all of the following: my supervisors, Prof. Valerie Raoul (French/Women's Studies), Dr. Becki Ross (Women's Studies/Sociology), and Prof. Dawn Currie (Sociology), whose guidance as feminist scholars and shared belief in the principles and praxis of solidarity, have aided me enormously in producing this work; Tina Arsenault and Caroline Magnier of Nelson, BC, who provided valuable assistance with the interview transcripts and related equipment; my colleagues at the Centre for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relations (UBC) who have provided me, a male-bodied person, a welcoming environment and an uncommon opportunity to contribute to feminist research (with special thanks to Prof. Sneja Gunew, Dr. Dorothy Seaton, Dr. Tineke Ffellwig, Dr. Wendy Frisby, and fellow Ph.D. candidates Bianca Rus and Kim Snowden); Caroline White of the department of Women's Studies at Langara College, Vancouver, for her scholarship, trans allied activism, and assistance with critical feedback on earlier drafts of this study; Dr. Rachael St. Claire, of Boulder, Colorado, USA, for permission to cite from her sagacious, unpublished paper on Jungian psychology and transpeople; Dr. Derek Hook of the department of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London, England, for permission to cite from his unpublished manuscript on postcolonial psychoanalysis; Prof. Irmingard Staeuble of the department of Psychology at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, for permission to cite from her unpublished manuscript on psychology and colonisation; Susan Cosco of Toronto for her tremendous personal support; the key informants who participated in this study, for their enormous help in aiding me to
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