TRANSmitting Masculinity: FTM Performance and (In)Visibility in a Gender-Polarized Culture
by Nicole M. Di Fabio
B.A. in Anthropology and Women’s Studies, May 2006 University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
A Thesis submitted to
The Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
August 31, 2012
Thesis directed by
Barbara D. Miller Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs
Codirected by
Kathleen M. Torrens Associate Professor of Communication Studies The University of Rhode Island
© Copyright 2012 by Nicole M. Di Fabio All rights reserved
ii Acknowledgements
Special thanks to:
Dr. Barbara Miller, for encouraging me to pursue my anthropological interests, taking on this project, and seeing it through to the very end.
Dr. Kathleen Torrens, for always offering guidance when I need it, continuing to contribute to my growth as a student and human being, and steering me towards success.
Dr. Jen Riley, for starting me on my academic journey, introducing me to critical thinking, and for being a mentor and a friend.
All of the interview participants who made this project possible.
My work family, for being flexible and creating a professional environment that fosters and values my ambition.
My Dad and Mom, for always supporting me and my endeavors.
My partner, Megan, for being by my side through it all.
iii Abstract of Thesis
TRANSmitting Masculinity: FTM Performance and (In)Visibility in a Gender-Polarized Culture
The goal of this research is to further examine transgender identified persons who have taken steps to either socially or physically transition from female-to-male and the space that they occupy within Western culture. This project is designed to focus on the FTM experience due to their current lack of visibility in both academic research and scholarship, as well as in the social world, particularly within the United States. Gender performance, community, and
(in)visibility among FTM transgender identities and the public/private spaces that they accommodate is explored through interviews that have been conducted with five self-identified trans men.
iv Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ...... iii
Abstract of Thesis ...... iv
List of Figures ...... vi
Glossary of Terms ...... vii
Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1
Chapter 2: Literature and Theory: Discovering Gender Variance and the Trans Man ...... 6
Chapter 3: (In)Visibility of the Trans Man in Western Culture ...... 21
Chapter 4: Talking with Trans Men: Interviews and Observations ...... 25
Chapter 5: Trans Men and Forward Thinking ...... 44
References Cited ...... 56
v List of Figures
Figure 1 ...... 16
Figure 2 ...... 23
vi Glossary of Terms
Cisgender: “A word used to describe individuals whose gender identity matches the expected
norms for their sex (for example, a masculine gender identity and male sex). The prefix 'cis'
means aligned with or on the same side of. Cisgender, then, means a gender identity aligned
with one's ascribed sex (i.e. non-transgender individuals).” [Shapiro 2010:58]
Drag King/Queen: “A performance artist who uses gender as a medium for the purposes of art,
entertainment, and sometimes education.” [Bostian, Hill, et al. 2011]
Embodiment: “The lived body. A state of being in which the body is the site of meaning,
experience, and expression of individuals in the world.” [Shapiro 2010:3]
FTM: Female-to-male transgender or transsexual person (used interchangeably with “trans
man” for this project).
Gender: “A social status and personal identity, defined in the United States as a woman or
man. As a social status gender is a set of values, beliefs, and norms (rules for behavior) that
are created and enforced by society and assigned to individuals on the basis of birth sex. As a
personal identity gender refers to an individual’s sense of self as a man, woman, or
alternative gender.” [Shapiro 2010:8]
Heteronormativity: “Hierarchical system of sexual value” in which “marital, reproductive
heterosexuals are alone at the top” of the sexual pyramid. [G. Rubin 1992[1984]:279]
MTF: Male-to-female transgender or transsexual person (used interchangeably with “trans
woman” for this project).
Patriarchy: “A set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which,
though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that
enable them to dominate women.” [Hartmann 2005[1981]:358]
vii Performance: “All the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to
influence in any way any of the other participants.” [Goffman 1959:15]
Queer: “Umbrella identity term encompassing lesbian, questioning people, gay men, bisexuals,
non-labeling people, transgender folks, and anyone else who does not strictly identify as
heterosexual.” [LGBT at the University of Michigan, accessed July 28, 2012]
Sex: “Socially interpreted meanings of chromosomes, genitalia, and secondary sex
characteristics. In the contemporary United States sex takes the form of male, female, and
intersex.” [Shapiro 2010:8]
Trans man: An individual who was born as a biological female but “changes their sex or gender
after birth through social or medical means.” [Shapiro 2010:19]
Trans woman: An individual who was born as a biological male but “changes their sex or gender
after birth through social or medical means.” [Shapiro 2010:19]
Transgender (abbr. “trans”): “Used as an umbrella term that refers to individuals who change
their sex or gender after birth through social or medical means. It can also be used to refer
more specifically to individuals whose gender differs from their birth sex but who do not take
medical steps to alter their body accordingly.” [Shapiro 2010:19]
Transsexual: “A term that refers to individuals who take medical steps (e.g. hormones and
surgery) to bring their body into alignment with their gender. Transsexualism is currently
pathologized through the physical diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder.” [Shapiro 2010:19]
viii Chapter 1: Introduction
Since the 1950s, the discipline of anthropology has expanded to discuss concepts of gender and sexuality that had not been well developed in earlier theoretical discussions within the field. Western feminist theory, gay and lesbian theory, and queer theory have slowly emerged in the discipline to introduce how sex, gender, and sexuality have an impact on hierarchy, status, and position in culture and society. The ability to discuss transgender identities is something that has unfolded as a result of feminist, gay/lesbian, and queer theories working in tandem. Anthropologists have incorporated these theoretical approaches into the discipline in order to understand and explain transgender identities, particularly among male-to-female (MTF or trans woman) identified people cross-culturally. Still, female- to-male (FTM or trans man) identified people are somewhat less visible in anthropological studies of sex and gender, although, each of these theories has the ability to contribute to understanding why the FTM experience has been muted.
Before the second wave of Western feminism in the mid-20th century, society accepted
“experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers” (Friedan
2005[1963]:198), so women were in an explicitly inferior position to men and seemingly invisible in society. Feminist theory helped to create a voice for women in Western cultures by elevating the status of women and attempting to extinguish the belief that “woman has always been man’s dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality.
And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change”
(de Beauvoir 2005[1949]:179). Feminism and the Women’s Movement have situated women in a slightly higher position in American culture by placing women’s issues at the forefront of politics and media so the public could no longer turn their backs on women’s concerns.
Unfortunately though, marginalization and subordination are still at work because “patriarchy is not simply hierarchal organization, but hierarchy in which particular people fill particular places” (Hartmann 2005[1981]:359-360). Patriarchy is a complex system of structure and
1 dominance that impacts the position of certain groups over others; so, even as females have seen some relief in their oppression, patriarchy has continued to have an effect on hierarchical organization beyond the man/woman dichotomy.
Gay and lesbian issues and theories emerged in similar ways, with lesbians speaking out and branching off from the larger Women’s Movement to form a group of women focused on lesbian theories and politics. Charlotte Bunch was one of the many women who mobilized to exemplify the intricate needs of lesbian women. She brought attention to the fact that the social reinforcement of “heterosexuality as an institution and ideology is a cornerstone of male supremacy” (Bunch 2005[1975]:253) in Western cultures. In this era, something other than normative heterosexual behavior was finally acknowledged, and homosexuality was given a face, a voice, and even a new place in academic scholarship.
Queer theory is somewhat of an extension of gay and lesbian theory in that its topics include discovering sexual and gender identities that move beyond the historically structured binary gender system of man/woman and heterosexual/homosexual. The term transgender is defined by Leslie Feinberg as “an umbrella to include everyone who challenges the boundaries of sex and gender” (Feinberg 1996:ix). So, while the concept of gender variance is dated, transgender is somewhat of a newer term:
A quick Lexis-Nexis newspaper search pulls up more than 1,400 U.S. newspaper articles in the last year on transgender individuals, rights, and communities. We can compare this to only 1,000 articles between March 2002 and March 2003, and only 320 ten years ago. [Shapiro 2010:19]
Because “Western culture is deeply committed to the idea that there are only two sexes”
(Fausto-Sterling 2003[1993]:166), queer theory has become pivotal in deconstructing the social manifestations of sex, sexuality, and gender.
The goal of this research is to further understand transgender identified persons who have taken steps to either socially or physically transition from female-to-male and the space that they occupy in the United States. This project is designed to focus on the FTM experience due to their current lack of visibility in both academic research and scholarship, as well as in
2 the social world. David Valentine’s ethnography (2007) about the category of transgender is told through the experiences of male-bodied people who dress as women or who have taken steps to physically transition from male-to-female, and Valentine openly admits that there is an “absence of female-born people in the literature about gender-variant and transgender- identified people, with the result that claims about transgender experience are usually, and implicitly, made from the perspective of MTF people” (Valentine 2007:24).
FTMs are rarely the focus of transgender research, and they are also often marginalized by many radical Western feminists and lesbians who fault FTMs for being “transsexual males as lesbians who lack access to a liberating lesbian discourse” (Halberstam 1998:293).
Consequently, trans men are accused of betraying the lesbian community to live as the oppressor and enemy. The denial and ignorance of FTM identities by hetero- and gender- normative groups, and by feminists and lesbians, situates trans men in a position of isolation and inferiority because they are refused membership to these communities.
In order to study the multiplicity of the FTM identity, I conducted interviews with five trans men (three from the Washington, DC metropolitan area, one from the New York tri-state area, and one from the Seattle metropolitan area) to better understand the space they occupy in dominant spheres of society and culture, academic scholarship, and in the queer community.
This project explores gender performance, community, and (in)visibility among FTM identities and the public/private spaces that they accommodate. In turn, these FTM narratives will help to create an “awareness and acceptance of alternatives” (Kessler and McKenna
2003[2000]:225) within Western culture and scholarship.
The interviews conducted for this project help to answer questions such as: Who occupies space in the trans community? Why is the FTM practically unexplored in academia?
What type of performance is expected of FTMs, both within the queer community and within more broad social and cultural contexts in the United States? Is there a thriving FTM community, and if so, who is a part of it? If trans men do not comprise a large part of the queer community, to which communities do they belong? Interviews with trans men will provide
3 insight into how female-bodied masculine individuals perform gender, move through the social world after transitioning, and access community and visibility as a queer person.
It is important to note that the research, interviews, and methods used for this thesis project have been approved by The George Washington University’s Institutional Review Board
(IRB) prior to beginning the interview process. IRB approval was imperative for this project to ensure that the anonymity of the participants was not compromised due to the sensitive nature of our discussions and their trans identities. For this reason, no identifiers have been used, and the names of all participants have been changed to maintain anonymity and to protect their right to confidentiality.
It is true, to some extent, that “with Internet use, for example…we have seen the rise and solidification of gay FTM communities, genderqueer groups, and other marginalized transgender groups” (Shapiro 2010:112), but it does not suggest that a rise in the visibility of trans men on the internet has led to a significant increase in cultural acceptance among either gender normative or LGB (lesbian/gay/bisexual) individuals. The internet has in fact “mattered in dramatic ways to transgender individuals” (Shapiro 2010:107) by giving trans persons, particularly FTMs, access to a variety of resources that were non-existent or nearly impossible to find prior to the surge in usage of the World Wide Web. The internet has made information about hormones, surgeries, and transitioning stories and pictures much more accessible and abundant for both FTMs and MTFs.
The increase in internet visibility does not inevitably mean that FTMs have become more visible to those outside of the queer community or that FTMs have created a stronger alliance than has been previously recognized. Surfacing as a marginalized and stigmatized group is a contentious move because “being in public is a privilege that requires filtering or repressing something that is seen as private…[such as]…a violation of deep instincts about sex and gender” (Warner 2010[2002]:23). Unfortunately, though, transgender individuals do not experience “privilege” at the same rate as individuals who fit within the “two-party sexual system” (Fausto-Sterling 2003[1993]:167). Rather, FTM visibility remains limited and is
4 overpowered by the idealized historical establishment of gender hierarchy that perpetuates gender polarization in Western culture.
Understanding and researching trans identities is necessary for cultural and political progress, but the task is not simple. Trans spaces are minimal, as are the individuals who are willing to outwardly define themselves as transgender. In large U.S. cities there are typically numerous bars, clubs, health clinics, recreational sports teams, and other social groups that openly welcome gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals; however, there do not appear to be venues or groups that explicitly welcome transgender individuals, although the LGBTQ label (T and Q represent “trans” and “queer/questioning,” respectively) implies that that there is an inclusiveness of all queer and trans identities. For example, a Google search for “DC trans bars” yielded 33,700,000 results, but not a single result within the first three pages was an exclusive (nor even a notoriously inclusive) transgender social establishment. Instead, Google generated listings for other “gay cities,” the “best place to meet guys,” and “DC’s gay pride”
(Google search, June 13, 2012). There has not been a clearly defined space for trans people to retreat in Washington, DC or in other major cities throughout the United States.
In order to understand why FTM identified persons are so often marginalized, the fundamental components of Western feminist, gay/lesbian, and queer theories must first be outlined so they can be used to determine how invisibility becomes a result of transitioning from female-to-male. More importantly, understanding and accepting FTM identities and cultures go beyond theoretical components and rely heavily on what is conveyed through the
FTM perspective. By conducting interviews with five trans men, I will uncover potential reasons for how and why trans men have become so invisible by providing first-hand accounts of the
FTM experience.
5 Chapter 2: Literature and Theory: Discovering Gender Variance and the Trans Man
Western feminist theory, gay/lesbian/bisexual theory, and queer theory have all contributed to transgender scholarship. There have been many articles and books pertaining to trans women, such as Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross Dress (1910), by Magnus
Hirschfeld; Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts (1994), by Roger
Baker; and The Man Who Would be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism
(2003), by Michael J. Bailey, to name a few, but there are far fewer that focus on the trans man. The trans woman has also been portrayed in abundance in queer culture (i.e. drag queen performances in film, on TV, and on a stage), but trans men continue to be under-studied and under-represented. As a result of under-representation, the FTM identity may appear to lack importance, or may even suggest that female-to-male transitions are too rare of an occurrence to be significant. Although the FTM experience has lacked the same academic weight as the
MTF, there is still scholarship that has described the lived experiences of FTMs, and there is also a foundation of feminist, gay/lesbian/bisexual, and queer theory that aids in deconstructing the reasons behind why transgender identities (particularly the trans man) have remained seemingly obscure.
Feminist Theory, Shaping Anthropology
Feminist theory has contributed to the growth of anthropology since the 1950s by developing discourse pertaining to the ways in which women’s social circumstances have been shaped by dominant modes of cultural practice in Western societies. Anthropology, once a discipline in which research was entirely conducted by male scholars observing male subjects, transformed into a field of study that began to recognize the absence of the female voice.
During this time, it was (and often still is) assumed that males and females were biologically distinct and that “nature equips women with the empathizing, nurturing, and caretaking
6 aptitudes” (Seidman 2003:xii), while on the contrary, “military leaders, corporate executives, and political rulers are men because nature has furnished men with ‘leadership’ traits such as aggressiveness and decisiveness” (Seidman 2003:xii).
Before the merger of anthropology and Western feminist theory, Margaret Mead asserted that “girls can be trained exactly as boys are trained, taught the same code, the same forms of expression, the same occupations” (Mead 2005[1935]:159). She insisted that although sex roles have historically been perceived to be natural, they are instead socially constructed and then reinforced. Mead’s work helped to establish that expectations based on sex are
“created social fictions for which we have no longer any use” (Mead 2005[1935]:159). This was one of the first steps in dismantling the belief that gender roles and expectations are innate and universally accepted in an anthropological text.
Simone de Beauvoir has also had an influence on the direction of feminist thought. de
Beauvoir contributed pivotal theories that have helped to sever the tie between what was considered biologically inherited and socially taught (de Beauvoir 2005[1949]) in Western culture. Although Mead helped to uncover that sex roles and behaviors are learned and culturally dependent, de Beauvoir made the distinction that “every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity” (de Beauvoir 2005[1949]:176). de Beauvoir argued that females have been in constant opposition to males, marking them as other, because they are denied autonomy and subordinately positioned in the social hierarchy. de Beauvoir’s theories aim to assert that the “differences [between men and women] are superficial, [and] perhaps they are destined to disappear” (de Beauvoir 2005[1949]:177).
Following the lead of de Beauvoir, American feminist and cultural anthropologist Gayle
Rubin differentiates between biology (sex) and socially constructed (gender). G. Rubin applies a name to the “set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (G.
Rubin 1975:159), and she calls it a sex/gender system (G. Rubin 1975:159). Because biological
7 sex and socially constructed gender were considered to be inseparable, gender roles became essentialized and stabilized through the social reproduction of male hierarchy. The separation of sex and gender enabled theorists to criticize the widely believed notion that females should maintain femininity and “focus on reproduction” (Etienne and Leacock 1980:3) as their primary role in society. G. Rubin deconstructs the male/female binary and argues that:
Gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes. It is a product of the social relations of sexuality. Kinship systems rest upon marriage. They therefore transform males and females into “men” and “women,” each an incomplete half which can only find wholeness when united with the other. [G. Rubin 1975:179]
Society dictates that females and males maintain their “appropriate” social roles, which have been culturally contrived to dictate that women are responsible for marrying and giving birth, while men are the head of a family unit. G. Rubin’s sex/gender system shows how the “division of labor by sex” (G. Rubin 1975:178) has been culturally established and socially reproduced to preserve male superiority.
Western feminist theorists, in the 1960s and 1970s, were accurate in assessing that gender roles have been socially constructed and enforced, enabling men to ritually “attempt to create and maintain a particular culture, a particular set of assumptions by which experience is controlled” (Douglas 2003[1966]:534-535), and a culture in which women have been labeled inferior. Etienne and Leacock hypothesize that women’s roles became privatized due to a
“clash between...egalitarian principle and the hierarchical organization that European colonization brought about in many parts of the world” (Etienne and Leacock 1980:10), and in turn, women were positioned as universally “passive participants in a social and cultural universe structured by men” (Etienne and Leacock 1980:3). While feminist theorists were attempting to scrutinize and defeat sexism, feminist anthropologists also began to question the theories and practices of cultural anthropology. Early ethnographies, such as The Nuer by E.E.
Evans-Pritchard (1969[1940]), almost entirely dismissed women and their social and cultural contributions. Evans-Prichard’s ethnography details Nuer life and the immense cultural value of cattle, but coincidently enough, women were described to have minimal contact with the
8 cattle, which were a significant symbol of status. In fact, the cattle, for men, impacted all areas of their lives, including food, wealth, lineage, manhood, social bonds, and family name
(Evans-Pritchard 1969[1940]:16-19). The lens through which the Nuer culture was observed was male, therefore, female accounts were left practically unobserved and unrecorded because women were excluded from the facets of Nuer society that were being studied in Evans-
Prichard’s research.
Overall, anthropological theory and ethnography were predominantly written by male anthropologists, and early cultural descriptions were distorted because the female perspective was non-existent. Therefore, as anthropologists:
We need to be aware of the potential for a double male bias in anthropological accounts of other cultures: the bias we bring with us to our research, and the bias we receive if the society we study expresses male dominance. [Reiter 1975:13]
The examination of the male bias in anthropology was prefaced by an era of inflexible structural anthropological theory. While brilliant theorists contributed to the era of structural thought, their goal was to make anthropology more formulaic and systematic to prove that
“social behavior is susceptible of scientific study…with the establishment of certain abstract and measureable relationships, which constitute the basic nature of the phenomena under study” (Lévi-Strauss 1963[1958]:59). The structural model was based upon positivism, or the
“assumption that reality, including society, operates according to discoverable laws” (Perry
2003:206), and universality. The components of structural anthropological theory could only function if comparing entire societies without taking into account how individuals operated within specific cultural landscapes.
Even with its many flaws, Western feminist theorists applied the structural model to feminist anthropologies, and Michelle Rosaldo made the claim that there is a “universal asymmetry in cultural evaluations of the sexes” (Rosaldo 1974:17), and “in every human culture, women are in some way subordinate to men” (Rosaldo 1974:17). The proposed remedy for the universal subordination of women in ethnography was to introduce “new studies that
9 will focus on women” (Reiter 1975:16), but removing the male perspective from ethnography was problematic because “binary opposition hides the multiple play of differences and maintains [women’s] irrelevance and invisibility” (Scott 2005[1988]:453). The point, here, is that female inferiority would not exist if male superiority had not been exerted. In order to deconstruct hierarchy, the male/female dynamic and the “condition of individual and collective identities [and] differences” (Scott 2005[1988]:453) must be examined in totality.
New directions of Western feminist theory revealed that “feminist anthropology and gender scholarship are closely related to the core domains of anthropology” (Mukhopadhyay and Higgins 1988:486). When beginning to apply feminist ethics to anthropological research, feminist scholars hoped to improve field methods by attempting to eliminate exploitative and hierarchical modes of observation (Stacey 1988). Feminist anthropologists had hoped to establish a “postmodern ethnography” by removing the hierarchy between the researcher and participant and replacing it with “empathy,” “mutuality”, and “authenticity” (Stacey 1988:23).
Previously, ethnographic research often left distance between the researcher and the participant, which further reinforced the authority of the anthropologist. However, the practice of feminist anthropological methods introduced new methodological obstacles, such as compromising objectivity as a researcher and revealing complex conflicts of interest that were not present before (Stacey 1988). Stacey argues that “the greater the intimacy, the apparent mutuality of the researcher/researched relationship, the greater is the danger” (Stacey
1988:23) in conducting fieldwork to produce a “postmodern ethnography”.
The full integration of Western feminist methods into anthropology seemed ideal in theory but unstable in practice; Stacey’s proposed direction of feminist ethnography was realized to be impractical:
Fieldwork represents an intrusion and intervention into a system of relationships, a system of relationships that the researcher is far freer than the researched to leave. The inequality and potential treacherousness of this relationship seems inescapable. [Stacey 1988:24]
10 Still, merging these theoretical approaches and methods has been beneficial to the direction of both feminism and anthropology because, “while there cannot be a fully feminist ethnography, there can be (indeed there are) ethnographies that are partially feminist accounts of culture enhanced by the application of feminist perspectives” (Stacey 1988:26). Through the evolution of anthropology and the application of Western feminist theories, “the concept of the homogenous ‘woman’ must give way to the diversity of women” (Mukhopadhyay and Higgins
1988:486) and to a new way of conceptualizing sex, sexuality, and the performance of gender roles.
The Emergence of the Homosexual
Feminist theory deconstructed and disproved the assumption that gender roles had been inherently connected to biology in Western cultures. Until the concept of prescribed gender had been disputed to offer an alternative perspective, the oppositional and hierarchical model of MAN/woman was widely accepted as a “social fact”. “Social fact is to be recognized by the power of external coercion which it exercises or is capable of exercising over individuals” (Durkheim 1972:64). In Durkheim’s definition, he relinquishes the individual’s autonomy because he believes that humans have no way of obtaining social knowledge prior to their exposure to the social world; therefore, the social being accepts preexisting values and expectations because they appear to be historically rooted, immovable, and undisputable.
These social facts drive “ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that present the remarkable property of existing outside the individual consciousness” (Durkheim 1972:64). By contesting social facts, anthropologists and Western feminist theorists have determined that “we are born female and male, biological sexes, but we are created woman and man, socially recognized genders” (Hartmann 2005[1981]:358). The separation of biological sex from gender led anthropologists to then explore how Western society has been “perceiving, categorizing, and imagining the social relations of the sexes” (Katz 1995[1990]:7).
11 The study of sexuality has been historically discouraged in the field of anthropology because sex research has been viewed as illegitimate, while motives of sex researchers have been considered suspicious (Vance 1991:875). Social attitudes towards sexuality and the act of sex were primarily perceived as having “one best way to do it, and everyone should do it that way” (G. Rubin 1992[1984]:283), and the “best way” became known to be heterosexuality.
Sexuality has operated within the biologically-based binary sex/gender model, in which “the human body was thought of as a means towards procreation and production” (Katz
1995[1990]:10). Since procreation requires both male and female biology, only sex and romantic partnerships between men and women were recognized as legitimate (Katz
1995[1990]:12-13). Because reproduction had been so highly valued in Western societies, radical feminists have redefined “sexuality [to be] a tool used by men to dominate and oppress women” (Blackwood 2002:71); it is something that “has had to be imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by force” (Rich 1994:50). The social constructs of sexuality have imposed and upheld a double standard that suggests a “woman’s sexuality is assumed to be more spiritual than sexual, and considerably less central to their lives than is sexuality to men’s” (Echols 1983:449). Perceptions of sexuality and behavior are instilled at an early age and have been manifested by the “constraints set by [children’s] subordinate location in relation to adults” (Scott, Jackson, et al. 1998:692). Expectations of gender are formed when young children are socialized to repress expressions of sexuality, and these expectations are maintained into adulthood as a way to conform to the binary model.
The necessity of reproduction and ideals of sexual rigidity shifted in the 20th century when:
The transformation of the family from producer to consumer unit resulted in a change in family members’ relation to their own bodies; from being an instrument primarily of work, the human body was integrated into a new economy, and began more commonly to be perceived as a means of consumption and pleasure. [Katz 1995(1990):13]
12 Once the body could be recognized as an object of pleasure rather than as a means to reproduce children, sexual desire among both heterosexual and homosexual sexualities could be further explored. However, early misconceptions of homosexuality included the belief that the desire to engage in same-sex sex was deviant and abnormal (Katz 1995[1990]:14). Katz argues, though, that the heterosexual identity was invented as a way to oppose the homosexual, thereby creating another hierarchical dichotomy (Katz 1995[1990]:8-9). Just as male and female have been understood as oppositional identities situated within a hierarchical system of sex and gender, the categories of heterosexual and homosexual follow the same model. The heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy is supported by the fact that “feminist thought about sex is profoundly polarized” (G. Rubin 1992[1984]:303).
The polarization of sexuality creates a “hierarchical system of sexual value” (G. Rubin
1992[1984]:279), resulting in the possibility for “homosexual desire to coalesce into a personal identity—an identity based on the ability to remain outside the heterosexual family” (D’Emilio
1983:104). The concept of the homosexual identity did not exist in the Victorian era, but instead, same-sex behaviors were similar to “perversion like sodomy or adultery” (Seidman
2003:46). Seidman explains:
Normal sex was defined as heterosexual erotic attraction; abnormal sex was homosexual erotic attraction. In other words, the concept of “heterosexual” took shape and meaning in relation to the concept of homosexual. Both terms indicated a sexual desire unrelated to reproduction that was the basis of personal identity. [Seidman 2003:47]
While we still continue to use heterosexual and homosexual as a way to categorize sexual identities in contemporary Western society, same-sex sexual interaction in other cultural contexts is not stigmatized in the same way because “not all societies interpret this behavior as self-defining. In some societies, sex is simply a behavior” (Seidman 2003:43).
Feminist theories have, in many cases, perpetuated Western ideologies of male/female and heterosexual/homosexual dichotomies, but anthropological theories have helped to remove the stigma from same-sex sexual behaviors (and identities) by discussing the cultural relativity of same-sex acts. For example, Western theoretical interpretations of lesbianism
13 were assumed to be “acts of resistance against patriarchal domination” (Blackwood 2002:75), while it has been the “tendency of male gay activists to equate gay liberation with sexual freedom [and] has simply confirmed [the cultural feminist’s] grim view of male sexuality”
(Echols 1983:451). If we remove ourselves from Western perceptions and practices, we can find instances in other cultures where those who “engaged in same-sex practices did not experience their relations as breaking taboos or going beyond the bounds of acceptable sexual behavior”
(Blackwood 2002:75). Anthropologist Kath Weston describes a Kimam ritual that involves adult men “rubbing sperm on young male bodies for its growth-inducing properties” (Weston
1993:347). Because the act is a component of a ritualistic behavior, the Kimam people do not define the participants involved to be homosexual because the ritual is reduced to a series of behaviors that have no meaning outside of the ritual context. From a Western perspective, the
Kimam ritual would be interpreted as blatant displays homosexuality, but the concept of homosexuality is incomprehensible in many cultures, just as it has once been in the United
States. The inability to define homosexuality due to a lack of cross-cultural continuity would suggest that a “rubric of homosexuality” cannot exist (Weston 1993:342).
The majority of social scientists have long argued that gender and sexuality are a result of social constructivism, in other words, “specific cultural contexts shaped the forms, interpretations, and occasions of homosexual behavior” (Weston 1993:341), rather than gender and sexuality being a result of essentialism, or innate, pre-determined “individual orientation”
(Weston 1993:343). But, in order to make progress within gay and lesbian theory, the two biggest obstacles that are hardly addressed in these theories are, first, the theoretical dependency on a binary sex/gender/sexuality model, even within the category of the homosexual identity (i.e. gay vs. lesbian), and second, the notion that studying a “model of sexuality in which men’s sexuality was the norm, these scholars assumed that models based on male homosexuality would be generalizable to (or inclusive of) female homosexuality”
(Blackwood 2002:79). Both approaches to understanding gender and sexuality are ineffective if the goal is to parse out the complexities in the variations of identities pertaining to gender and
14 sexuality. Although Western feminist and anthropological theories have made substantial advances in pushing the limits of gender and sexual expectations, the social constraints that have kept ideologies of sex, gender, and sexuality intact have proven to be much stronger.
Breaking the boundaries of the binary requires a more dynamic theoretical model for continuously evolving gender frameworks.
Queer Theory and Performance – Androgyny is Out There
Queer theory, which is somewhat of an expansion of Western feminist and gay/lesbian theories, was introduced to the social sciences and gender studies in the early 1990s (Valentine
2007:131). Before the concept of “queer” surfaced, the theoretical approaches used to analyze sex, gender, and sexuality were incredibly limited due to the attempts to define gender categories within dichotomous or oppositional relationships. Using the term “queer” has become a way to describe:
Non-normative sexuality that transcends the binary distinction homosexual/heterosexual to include all who feel disenfranchised by dominant sexual norms—lesbians and gay men, as well as bisexuals and transsexuals. [Stein 1997:388]
Queerness, though, is not only inclusive of a range of sexualities; but it also captures a variety of gender expressions or gender performances. Unfortunately though, those who display more ambiguous gender identities are subject to stigmatization and social subordination, just as homosexuality was (and still can be) seen as too much of a departure from heteronormativity and cultural manifestations of gender roles.
The foundation of queer theory relies on understanding of the “formation of identities” (Valocchi 2005:751) through expressions of gender. Identity is used as a way to
“make sense of who we are (and should be) through our interpretation of our interactions with other people” (Shapiro 2010:11). Identity impacts individual thought, perceptions of ourselves and others, and how we use language to convey our embodied identity to others as “we come into the world as individuals, achieve character, and become persons” (Goffman 1959:20). The
15 various modes of identity expression are what Erving Goffman would call a performance.
Individual performances are not original, but are instead “‘socialized,’ molded, and modified to fit into the understanding and expectations of the society in which it is presented” (Goffman
1959:35). Gender identity is socially embedded and conveyed through performance, and Judith
Butler refers to gendered performances as “doing one’s gender” (Butler 1988:525). The slow emergence of queer and transgender identities has exemplified the significant expansion of the spectrum of gender identity and performance.
The use of the word “transgender” became more recognizable in the 1990s, around the same time that queer theory was emerging, and also like the term “queer”, “transgender” “has a range of different meanings and can also be understood as a collective” (Valentine 2007:24).
As illustrated in Figure 1, “transgender” is used as an umbrella term under which any gender- variant person can be categorized.
16 Eve Shapiro (2010) defines transgender as:
Individuals who change their sex or gender after birth through social or medical means. It can also be used to refer more specifically to individuals whose gender differs from their birth sex but who do not take medical steps to alter their body accordingly. [Shapiro 2010:19]
Because “transgender” encompasses gender identities that fall between the man/woman binary, “transsexual” has become less common, and often queer theorists who prefer the term
“transgender” “reject ‘transsexual’ as too restrictive and too diagnostic” (Kessler and McKenna
2003[2000]:226). Transsexuality is believed to reinforce gender dichotomies because transsexuals “do not conceive of their life projects as gender fucking…they tend to essentialize their identities [and] essentialist narratives are assumed to recapitulate gender normativity”
(H. Rubin 1998:276). In addition to using “transgender” as a catch-all for identities such as transsexuals, cross-dressers, drag kings and queens, FTMs, MTFs, and genderqueer persons
(along with many others), Valentine explains that “the emergence of transgender is central to the ongoing working-out of what ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ can mean in contemporary U.S.
American activism and social theory” (Valentine 2007:15). By claiming that Westerners are still
“working-out” gender identity and sexuality, he removes stigma from transgender categories while also removing heteronormative privilege from those who maintain rigid gender roles.
Butler’s theories align with Valentine’s claim because she believes that “gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed”
(Butler 1988:527).
From childhood, Western society conditions individuals to behave either as masculine or as feminine in order to appropriate gender to match biological sex and move seamlessly into the social world. According to a study done by Karin A. Martin (1998), “the hidden school curriculum of disciplining the body is gendered and contributes to the embodiment of gender in childhood, making gendered bodies appear and feel natural” (Martin 1998:495). Because gender performances are made to feel natural from an early age through tactics such as discipline, the constraints of masculine and feminine behavior are hardly questioned.
17 Embodiment and individual expression are much more restricted for “women” than for “men” because “women’s bodies are often sources of anxiety and tentativeness” (Martin 1998:495), but men are conditioned “to move confidently in space, to take up space, to use one’s body to its fullest extent” (Martin 1998:495). Social expectations are consistently reinforced and
“further gendering of the body occurs throughout the life course (Martin 1998:495) to ensure that males and females adhere to their socially prescribed gender roles.
Expression through the body is an opportunity to experience the social world “from the perspective of the I” (H. Rubin 1998:267). If transgender embodiment and gender fluidity are the presentation of self in its most genuine form, then perspective of “I” would be a reality.
Conversely though, the body is a “body-for-others...the I is coerced into taking the viewpoint of the Other” (H. Rubin 1998:269) because social expectations are strengthened by hierarchy and repetition, and “there is no way to secure ‘gender agency’ without radically altering the social world in which our choices are inevitably made” (Elliot 2009:14).
It is true that in the United States, within the spectrum of gender variance and trans/queer theory, dichotomous relationships are still thriving. Even in the queer community, hierarchies are still upheld because “gender continues to be real and dichotomous, even if an ambiguous presentation is tolerated” (Kessler and McKenna 2003[2000]:225). Although
Westernized societies have come to acknowledge the existence of gender variance, the binary system is still dominant and supports “relations of interdependence which link to other products” (Bourdieu 1993[1983]:32-33) because often, understanding self-identity means distinguishing it from another, seemingly oppositional, identity. Therefore, queer culture has instituted a hierarchy within its category, where conflict arises between oppositional identities such as transgender/transsexual, FTM/ MTF, butch/femme, drag king/drag queen, top/bottom, among many more.
The term “transgender” holds the power to “incorporate many different kinds of gendered expression and desire under its umbrella” (Valentine 2007:131) which means there are expressions of gender and identity that are potentially being dismissed because they are
18 hidden behind the façade of the all-encompassing category. There are more gender classifications than we can we can possibly imagine, although Deborah Rudacille (2006:172-173) references a survey that lists 84 identities (plus an “other” category) to attempt show the scale of gender variety. The FTM transgender identity is quite common; however, it is one that lies in the shadows of queer research. Trans men are invisible in queer theory, isolated from the lesbian community, and are perceived to be “freaks” (Smith 2010:28). Within theory, gender variance has been studied excessively among individuals whose anatomy at birth was male, and there has been no shortage of ethnographies that examine biological males with female identities, including the “hijras” of India (Nanda 1999), the “jotas” of Mexico City (Prieur
1998), the Brazilian “travestis” (Kulick 1999), and the Native American “Two-Spirit” (Feinberg
1996:21).
The FTM is also isolated from larger queer communities, as they do not have the rich history that drag queens have built through their participation in ball culture in the mid-1980’s
(Dir. Livingston 1991). Trans men have largely been “silenced by the structure of dominance, and if they wish to express themselves they are forced to do so through the dominant modes of expression, the dominant ideologies” (Moore 1988:3) of queer culture, but the umbrella does not necessarily depict the intricacies of the FTM experience. Furthermore, “many FTMs today have spent years and even decades in the lesbian community before transitioning” (Rudacille
2006:165), but Western lesbian and radical feminist populations have chosen to deny the existence of the FTM, further stigmatizing and marginalizing the identity of the trans man.
The consolidation of “queer” and “transgender” has not been completely successful in introducing expressions of gender variance because:
No categorical system fully explains the ways in which those lived experiences we name through “gender” and “sexuality” are lived on a day-to-day basis by particular social actors in particular social contexts. [Valentine 2007:61]
And, just as feminist anthropologists could not accept ethnography being written from the male perspective and focused only on the male subject, there is an “implicit absence of
19 FTMs/female-bodied masculine people” (Valentine 2007:39) in the understanding of what it means to be a queer or trans person. The gaps in queer studies can be filled by searching for
FTM accounts of embodiment, community, and visibility.
20 Chapter 3: (In)Visibility of the Trans Man in Western Culture
Pursuing this project stemmed from the notable absence of conversation circulating about the trans man experience in both academic scholarship and Western culture. As mentioned earlier, there have been quite a few ethnographies written about the experiences of male-bodied people who dress, perform, and/or live as women (i.e. hijras, travestis, jotas, etc.). The research conducted on male-bodied femininity has had a significant impact the development of gender ideologies within queer and anthropological theory, but the direction of these theories has hardly been influenced by the experience of gender-variant female-bodied individuals. The umbrella term “transgender” suggests moving “through gender, beyond gender” (Kessler and McKenna 2003[2000]:224), and the acts of gender movement have been gathered and placed in this common category.
The transgender category simplifies its underlying meaning because it is conceptualized
“not in terms of shared identity but in terms of shared practices” (Valentine 2007:104). Trans narratives and experiences are assumed to be shared, although they most frequently reference the trans woman’s transition. Therefore, the experience of the trans man fades into the background of transgender theory, while the experiences of the trans woman are generalized and presumed to accurately reflect the transitions from female-to-male as well.
A transgender man can be anyone who breaks boundaries of gender, whether they are dressing in drag, injecting testosterone, choosing to receive sex reassignment surgery (SRS), or even someone who just prefers to be referred to by a male name or male pronouns. Essentially, any exertion of “masculinity” would allow a female-bodied person to fit into a queer and/or transgender category. Western society often rejects the gray areas of gender and sexuality because they cause “confusion, concern, and disputes” (Valentine 2007:80). The identities that are situated between the polarized categories of the binary are in a liminal space, and Victor
Turner would define liminality as “ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural
21 space. Liminal entities are neither here nor there…” (Turner 1969:95). Transgender serves as a term that regroups and reclassifies gender identities and performances that have been considered too ambiguous to be easily recognizable as purely masculine or purely feminine.
Feminist anthropologists pinpointed the need for the female voice to be recognized within the social sciences, and the FTM voice has the same need as it has yet to surface in queer theory or
Western culture.
In 2012, the voice of communities who embody liminality has become slightly more recognizable as a result of increased internet use within the United States. Due to the rise in internet usage over the past decade, a vast “collection of ‘virtual communities’ where individuals interact in collective publics” (Shapiro 2010:95) has become more accessible, at least to those who are using the internet as a means to read about or connect with isolated trans cultures. Because “some social theorists argue that technology will supplement the limitations of nature, and expand possibilities for humanity” (Shapiro 2010:2), I conducted a simple Google search using American-English transgender-related terms to see if the frequency and relevance of information found on the internet pertaining to FTMs “supplemented” the lack of information that has been available in academic scholarship and other Western cultural contexts.
Based on the data shown in Figure 2, the graph illustrates that in 2012 the term
“transgender” received 158 million Google search results compared to 3,300 results in 2000
(Kessler and McKenna 2003[2000]:225), showing that there has been an exponential increase in content and searches for trans-related categories on the internet. Next, Figure 2 shows two groupings of terms for comparison; the first grouping refers to three female-bodied terms, while the other grouping refers to three male-bodied terms. “FTM” and “MTF” both yielded low search results in comparison to the other terms listed; however, “MTF” still yielded three times more results than “FTM”. I, then, compared “female masculinity” with “transvestite”. I chose to search “female masculinity” as a comparison for the term “transvestite” since no customary parallel exists for either of these terms, but both are used to describe gender-variant behaviors
22 among females and males, respectively. Here, the graph shows that “transvestite” yielded 21 million search results, more than three times the number of results for “female masculinity”.
Following the same trend, search results for “drag queen” (n=32,100,000) substantially outnumber the results for “drag king” (n=6,920,000) and even surpassed the sum of all the female-bodied terms in Figure 2 put together. The results of these Google searches are further evidence that gender variance among male-bodied individuals is much more visible, and within the context of queer culture (and even heteronormative culture) male-bodied performances of femininity may sometimes be more socially acceptable. For example, in an article detailing the accounts of drag queen performances, the drag queen is described as “often quite positive, powerful, and normal” (Hopkins 2004:137), while FTM individuals are “still working about the status of masculinity in female-bodied people in the context of much broader gendered inequalities” (Valentine 2007:171).
Gender attribution, as defined by Kessler and McKenna, is the “decision that one makes in every concrete case that someone is either a female or a male. Virtually all of the
23 time, gender attribution is made with no direct knowledge of the genitals or any other biological ‘sex marker’” (Kessler and McKenna 2003[2000]:224). The assumption that an outward gender performance will always match an individual’s biological parts could very well contribute to the desire to transform anatomy so that it more acceptably aligns with society’s expectation for gender and sex to match. Some transgender individuals are “intent on becoming wholly female or wholly male” (Allen 2010:103) and pursue sex reassignment surgery
(SRS) in order to feel more complete, while others are content with “remaining non-operative”
(Allen 2010:105). Physical transitions and the movement between the manifestations gender identities are the elements of the transgender category that support the inaccurate generalization that the MTF and FTM experience are one in the same.
The concept of switching sexes and/or genders is highly stigmatized in many Western cultures, especially where biological sex and corresponding gender performances are so strictly defined. As a result, transgender individuals are commonly perceived as “social banishments
[or] rejected persons” (Gichova and Maina 2010:255). Rather than following a trend and continuing to concentrate on the purely physical changes that FTMs and other trans individuals may experience, I intend to bring attention to the ways in which trans men perform gender and struggle to navigate community and visibility once they begin moving towards a trans identity.
24 Chapter 4: Talking with Trans Men: Interviews and Observations
In order for anthropological, queer, and transgender theories to better reflect the spectrum of identities that are categorized under the umbrella of transgender, ethnographic writing needs to widen its scope to include more in depth conversations with a larger variety of gender identities. Because transgender most commonly references the experience of the trans woman in queer culture and theory, I have chosen to expand upon the conversations involving trans men. By conducting interviews with five FTM individuals, whom I identified and contacted through mutual friends and social media networks, I introduce the underlying issues that prevent trans men from becoming a familiar face in both the queer community and in Western representations of gender variance.
Finding and approaching individuals who represent a nearly invisible portion of queer culture can be difficult, particularly if those individuals are often stigmatized and marginalized by more dominant cultures and subcultures. Michael Warner discusses how his theories of publics and counterpublics pertain to queer culture:
To address a public or to think of oneself as belonging to a public is to be a certain kind of person, to inhabit a certain kind of social world, to have at one’s disposal certain media and genres, to be motivated by a certain normative horizon, and to speak within a certain language ideology. [Warner 2010(2002):10]
Trans men represent a counterpublic because the FTM identity “maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. The cultural horizon against which it marks itself off is not just a general or wider public but a dominant one” (Warner
2010[2002]:119). In the 1950s Christine Jorgensen became a public figure when she caused both confusion and intrigue after undergoing sex reassignment surgery. While there had been sexual reassignment surgeries performed prior to the heightened public attention that
Jorgensen captured, she dominated the image of the transsexual, which “helped mark transsexuality as a male-to-female phenomenon” (Meyerowitz 1998:176). Unfortunately, in popular culture, “even today, there is no one FTM figure with the same name recognition of a
25 Christine Jorgensen…” (Rudacille 2006:164) and trans men remain unnoticed because
“attention is the principal sorting category by which members and nonmembers [of publics] are discriminated” (Warner 2010[2002]:87). The five trans men that will be discussed here serve as a way to begin a conversation about the various transgender identities that are embodied by those who were born female-bodied but do not identify as female or feminine.
Enzo and Jaidon
Enzo and Jaidon were the first two trans men to participate in an interview for this project. I contacted Enzo through a Facebook message, and although I had never met him or talked to him, I had known of him through a number of mutual friends. I had also known that he was a trans man. Since I had not been aware of any local trans communities or meeting places, I contacted Enzo as a way to initiate interviews for this project, as well as to get an introduction to local trans culture.
Enzo agreed to participate in an interview and we planned to meet at a neighborhood restaurant/pub in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Since I approached Enzo on Facebook to ask for an interview, I recognized him when he walked through the door of the pub, but I was surprised to see Enzo walk in with another person. Enzo had decided to have his friend,
Jaidon, come along with him to our interview. When I noticed both Enzo and Jaidon walking towards the table to sit down, I was immediately afraid that Enzo might censor his responses to my questions since this was no longer a one-on-one, confidential interview experience. After we shook hands and formally introduced ourselves, we sat down and Enzo explained that
Jaidon, too, was a trans man. Fortunately for me, during my first interview for this project I had the opportunity to create an open conversation and engage two trans men in a discussion about how they each fit into the local queer community.
First, Enzo and Jaidon each gave me a brief background: Jaidon described himself as a
32-year-old, black male, and he explained that he started his transition from female-to-male
26 when he began taking hormones in 2008, and he continued his transition in 2010 when he received chest surgery. Enzo answered next, and he described himself to be 30-years-old, recently married, white, Italian-Catholic, from the South, with a Master’s degree. He added that he also began transitioning in 2008, first by undergoing chest surgery, and then by taking hormones. Jaidon explained that he and Enzo met just as they were going through the process of changing names.
Before beginning to ask about the larger queer and FTM community as a whole, I wanted to understand how they choose to identify and their opinions of the term
“transgender”. Enzo succinctly stated:
I classify myself as a man, but I still do use trans with people in the queer community, and part of that is the fact that I went from being a lesbian female to a white guy. And being in the South, white men were the bane of my existence, I couldn’t stand them. [Enzo interview, February 4, 2012]
It is apparent by Enzo’s self-identification that choosing an identity is complex and confusing because he has chosen to accept certain gendered attributes of being a male, but has denied others. For Enzo, shaping his identity is a process that is continuously in flux, regardless of how well he “tend[s] to stay in character” (Goffman 1959:167) or performs the “gender-specific cultural practices of embodiment” (Johnson 2007:63) that are expected of males. However,
Enzo expressed his discomfort with appearing to be born as a biological male because men are given the right to take up space and embody a physical and psychological power that women are not afforded (Martin 1998:495). On the contrary, Enzo disassociated himself from a position of superiority due to interpreting his previous experiences with men to be “just annoying and
[men] felt like they were entitled to everything and I didn’t want to be classified as a straight, white male” (Enzo interview, February 4, 2012).
We moved on to speak about the communities or groups of people that Enzo and Jaidon identified with throughout different stages of their transitions. Enzo considered himself to be a part of the queer community, even if he is commonly perceived as a heterosexual male. Enzo stated that “we’re all a part of the queer community because we all get lumped into the
27 weirdo category” (Enzo interview, February 4, 1012), and Jaidon added, “people think trans means you’re some kind of Jerry Springer freak” (Jaidon interview, February 4, 1012). Just as we have seen through the evolution of Western feminist, queer, and trans theories, Jaidon made the statement that the “LGBT community doesn’t ever include trans people” (Jaidon interview, February 4, 2012), which is why they both found the respectful usage of the word
“queer” to be much more inclusive.
Both Enzo and Jaidon could confidently say that they belong to a general queer community, but they have both experienced being denied access to the lesbian community, a group to which they belonged for most of their lives. Enzo explained that he “got more flack from the lesbian community then I did from my Italian, Catholic family. The lesbian community was where I’d been, so to have this community make me feel so unwelcome, I felt so alone”
(Enzo interview, February 4, 2012). Jaidon echoed Enzo’s feelings and admitted that “I lost a ton of my lesbian friends” (Jaidon interview, February 4, 2012). Through a basic understanding of queer and trans theory we have seen how trans individuals easily become marginalized because they do not adhere to sex and gender binaries, but Enzo’s and Jaidon’s experiences have also demonstrated just how exclusive other factions of the queer community can be, even if they are all subsumed under the queer or trans umbrella.
Enzo described the irony of lesbians refusing to accept trans men but still enjoying drag king shows: “Drag is a costume, trans is for real. It’s a betrayal…it’s that strong women’s community and now you’ve just bailed and become a male” (Enzo interview, February 4,
2012). Enzo’s observations of trans men being driven out of the lesbian community align with the feminist and transgender theories that have articulated the “border wars…between FTMs and butches over the meanings of various masculine embodiments” (Halberstam 1998:288) and just how far the limits of masculinity can be pushed before the gendered performance becomes unacceptable.
Based on Enzo’s experiences, heteronormative culture is sometimes ignorant to the existence of transgender identities. Enzo mentioned that there have been times when he has
28 come out as trans to someone outside of the queer community and “it goes right over their head” (Enzo interview, February 4, 2012) because they had no concept of what it means to be transgender. Even among trans allies and other trans-identified individuals (who are most commonly MTF), Enzo has encountered confusion:
I’ve told some people I’m trans and they’re like “oh that’s really cool, wow that must be really hard,” and I’m like, ok, so they’re getting it, and then they go, “so when are you gonna have your surgery?” because they think I’m transitioning from male-to-female. ‘Cause to them, there are so many male-to-female cases out there and they never hear of FTM that they always assume if you say trans they assume trans women. And I hate to say this, but in the trans community at large that usually happens…when you get us all in the same room [for a conference] it’s usually more [trans] women than [trans] men. [Enzo interview, February 4, 2012]
The lack of FTM presence among the queer community has been very apparent to Enzo, as he has continued to notice the disproportionate amount of MTFs and FTMs that make up the queer and trans community.
One of the things that you will find in the trans male community is that guys, especially when it comes to like social and support groups, guys come when they need the help and they want to talk, and they want to talk about—What are hormones? What should I expect with surgery? Who should I go to? What kind of money am I going to need?…blah, blah, blah…What do I do about these papers? And then after a couple of years, you know two years or so of being on testosterone when they can completely slip into mainstream society and just pass stealth as cisgender, they kind of disappear off the face of the earth. Not always, but a lot of times they just slip into mainstream, they stop, I hate to use this word, they stop contributing to the community…they’re still contributing, but it’s like they stop being an out and vocal force. [Enzo interview, February 4, 2012]
Enzo happens to be an active part of the queer and trans community, but he has recognized that trans men appear to be the minority among other vocal queer identities. He explained,
“people put the burden of education on the discriminated” (Enzo interview, February 4, 2012), which contributes to FTMs being commonly confronted with confusion.
29 Jace
Because my interview with Enzo and Jaidon did not lead me to a larger FTM community, I sent an e-mail to friends who I knew to be active in the LGBTQ community and explained my project to them. In my e-mails I asked, if they were comfortable with doing so, to pass on my information to any FTM individuals (at any stage of transition) who might be interested in taking part in an interview. This method yielded one participant, who was Jace.
I was very surprised, but grateful, to have Jace initiate contact with me in order to participate in an interview. Since Jace lives in the Seattle metropolitan area, we conducted his interview over the phone. My concern regarding this interview was that it would be more impersonal than those that could be done face-to-face, but once we began our conversation
Jace became quite involved in the conversation.
First, Jace provided context for being so interested in participating in an interview with me, a complete stranger. He described himself as a 27-year-old trans man with a
Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in public health. During his studies in public health he produced a Master’s level literature review on sexual reassignment; because of his background, he wanted to contribute to the knowledge that was being compiled for my project on FTM identities. Because Jace had done extensive research on transgender identities and sexual reassignment, I asked him to convey any common trends he was able to identify as a result putting together a literature review. Although his primary focus was on sexual reassignment, he shared that he was disappointed to see how so few pieces of literature had been published on trans issues, other than those that pertain to the physical elements transition. He said that an overwhelming amount of scholarly writing that he found had been dedicated to discussions of surgery, and he felt that trans literature has been “too focused on that one area, especially because that’s not everyone’s path” (Jace interview, February 11,
2012).
Next, I asked Jace to describe the most difficult part of his transition. He outlined the steps he had taken to begin his transition, which included starting on hormones and changing
30 his name when he was 23-years-old, and then six months later he received chest surgery. Jace did not consider any of these physical processes or procedures to be the most difficult part of becoming a trans man, but instead he attributed his largest obstacle to having to tell others about his decision, and then to having to initiate the steps towards transition:
When I realized there’s such a thing as being trans and the option of transitioning, that was kind of a scary moment for me, because I realized, you know, it was easy before, in the way that there were no options so there was nothing I could do about it. So then when I found out about, um, you know the options and the community, then suddenly I had to make a decision, a conscious decision, and um, so that took me a long time…and that was really hard for me, I think that was the hardest part, really deciding I was going to do something. [Jace interview, February 11, 2012]
The description of the internal conflict that Jace experienced as he learned more about trans identities is not often a sentiment that is included in transgender narratives, and often transitioning is perceived to be something that is realized and then actualized within a short period of time. Neither Enzo nor Jaidon detailed this same hesitance when exploring a gender transition; however, Enzo may have been implicitly describing similar feelings through his conscious decision to perform masculinity differently than he had observed while growing up in the South.
After Jace made his statement about having to make the difficult choice of actually moving forward with his transition, he discussed his interpretation of masculine gender performances, similar to the ways Enzo had:
What I expected being a man was gonna be like is kind of not at all my experience. Part of that is because I kind of refuse parts of it. And part of it is I thought it was going to change a lot for me like in my life. And it didn’t change a lot for me. I still hang out with the same kinds of people in the sense that the people I hang out with are very queer. [Jace interview, February 11, 2012]
Here, Jace’s thoughts on masculinity mirrored Enzo’s in that they both “refused” to embody the aspects of gendered performance that have continued to support socially reinforced perceptions of masculinity and that have dominated the top tier of the gender hierarchy. Jace recognized that “general characteristics of performances can be seen as interaction constraints
31 which play upon the individual and transform his activities into performances” (Goffman
1959:65); therefore, he has denied socially structured “blueprints for behavior, belief, and identity” (Shapiro 2010:9), especially now that he has “experience[d] living as both genders”
(Jace interview, February 11, 2012).
Jace discussed how he dealt with performing gender throughout his transition, and he explained, “the more I transitioned and the more I got comfortable with myself, the less I wanted to identify as a typical man” (Jace interview, February 11, 2012). Jace began to tell me about a time when he had found his (heterosexual) brother hiding a Mariah Carey album, because owning and listening to an album by a diva singer, such as Mariah, could “compromise his masculinity” (Jace interview, February 11, 2012). Although this incident happened when
Jace and his brother were much younger, it has clearly had an impact on how Jace has shaped his performances of masculinity:
The more male I appear the less typical male things I feel like I have to fit in to. When I was identifying as a lesbian I was really butch, I was like overly masculine, more masculine than I truly am. But the more I’m seen as the gender I want to be seen, the more comfortable I feel really being myself, which is actually more, not feminine, just less masculine. [Jace interview, February 11, 2012]
Jace’s performances of masculinity are directly correlated to the communities towards which he has tended to gravitate. He also, like Enzo and Jaidon, had spent the majority of his life identifying and socializing with the lesbian community. Jace stated that he has managed to maintain many of the friends that he had before his transition, and he still feels most comfortable in lesbian spaces, but he described his encounters in lesbian bars to be very different than the encounters he had prior to transitioning. Jace has admittedly faced the dilemma of attempting to seek out a lesbian partner; however, women who identify as lesbian are most likely not looking for a trans man for a partner. But “even bi women, if they are in a lesbian space they’re probably looking for a woman because they’re at that particular club or bar” (Jace interview, February 11, 2012). As Jace has continued to take hormones and perform his variation of masculinity, he has noticed:
32 Sometimes when you wanna get read as trans for dating or whatever or just because you want to fit in the community, that could be hard because the more I look like a man the less and less I know how to fit into some of those spaces. [Lesbians] think I’m a straight guy, or sometimes a gay guy. [Jace interview, February 11, 2012]
Though Jace has rejected traditional forms of masculinity, as he has become more satisfied with his physical body, but his appearance has become a barrier between him and the lesbian community because he is no longer “legible” (Allred 2006) as either a woman or a lesbian, regardless of how ambiguous his performance of masculinity may be.
The discussion about Jace’s attempts to immerse himself into the lesbian community as a trans man led us directly to speaking about the visibility of trans men and how they are incorporated into the queer spectrum. Because he referred to lesbian spaces and lesbian friends throughout our conversation, I asked if he had established a group of FTM friends or if he has been involved in any trans communities. He immediately responded with “being trans isn’t as social as a thing as sexual orientation, so the community looks a lot smaller than it is”
(Jace interview, February 11, 2012). Next, he mentioned that there were online journals that many FTM individuals used to publically document stages of their transition, but these journals did not necessarily serve as a mechanism to generate a community. Overall, he explained that he has had “no connection [to the trans community] on the day-to-day…I’m not blogging about it, and I’m not part of a trans group anymore” (Jace interview, February 11, 2012).
Jace appeared to be considerably disconnected from any trans community, assuming from his previous statements that a trans community, in some capacity, does actually exist and has, in fact, been accessible to him. When I questioned his comment about his previous association with a trans community, he replied:
I joined a trans group and I was pretty apprehensive about it. It was for trans-masculine identified people; that’s how they branded it. I got into the group and pretty much my fears were realized. There was nobody in the group who had transitioned like me, who looked like me, basically, who like, had taken the path I had taken, was as far into the physical transition as I am. Which is fine, to each their own, that’s not my issue, it’s just that I wanted to connect with people who had the same experience as me. Whereas a lot of these people identified more as gender fluid, um genderqueer, and I was just like, this is not my
33 thing, this is not like what I was looking for, I wanted to talk to people about the fact that my identity is lost because I look so masculine, they’re not dealing with this issue. [Jace interview, February 11, 2012]
Ultimately, Jace felt that the support that he was looking for could not be found among a group of people who had not experienced the process of transitioning. He implied that the androgynous members of the group could not understand the complexity of the issues he faced as someone who has surgically altered his body and is now perceived as male, although he has felt detached from the new role he has been expected to perform as a trans man. Because trans support groups often do not represent a significant range of FTM transitional phases:
I had a hard time being in a group with people who were beginning their transition…some of that stuff was too stressful, it’s hard to be around. I’m past the point of documenting stages. People who are in the same space as me have moved on, so there’s a lack of community after a certain stage. [Jace interview, February 11, 2012]
Enzo articulated this same idea when he mentioned that in very early stages of transition
“every moment is thinking about being trans” (Enzo interview, February 4, 2012). Jace explained that being trans is “a huge part of who he is, but from day-to-day it’s not something
I think about” (Jace interview, February 11, 2012). Jace can pass as a male and he has reached a point where he has “lost a lot of queerness visibility-wise” (Jace interview, February 11,
2012) like many trans men late in their transition tend to do.
Wilson
Wilson is a 30-year-old, black, high school educated trans man who lives in the New
York tri-state area. Wilson and I met a few years before he considered transitioning, but we lost touch just before he began taking testosterone in 2003. I e-mailed Wilson to ask if he would be interested in participating in an interview for my thesis project, and he enthusiastically agreed.
Because Wilson and I used to see each other regularly, I was comfortable having a more casual conversation with him, but because we had not seen each other in over ten years, nor had we been in contact with each other, I was confident that I could still successfully carry out
34 an objective interview. I also considered my interview with Wilson to be an opportunity to find out if I had, so far, been asking the appropriate questions during my interviews with other trans men.
Before I began to ask questions Wilson offered some thoughts about being a trans man that he highlighted as important to explore throughout our interview. His very first statement was “transitioning is one of the most selfish acts that a person can commit. It just becomes this thing where you’re so self-involved, because you have to be” (Wilson interview, February 16,
2012). He described the physical, mental, and emotional elements of transitioning to be a lengthy process. Wilson explained, “it took me a long time. Where you’re at in your transition and who you are, and who the world allows you to be can dictate a lot and where you start to find your comfort” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012).
The continual search for comfort has been a reoccurring theme throughout the various interviews I have conducted. Enzo, Jaidon, and Jace all mentioned having similar issues, and
Enzo made the bold statement that “transitioning won’t make everything in your life ok” (Enzo interview, February 4, 2012). For this reason, Wilson has embraced the word “queer” as a way to define himself due to the fact that “being queer is convenient because it holds people to less expectations” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012). Since queer is a term that serves as a tool to categorize a vast array of gender performance, he does not necessarily feel he is confined by any particular gendered expectations.
Wilson’s queerness and position in the world has had an impact on how he is perceived by others, and the degree of visibility he has had as a trans man. He asserted that he
“consider[s] a transition as a necessity only for aesthetic reasons” (Wilson interview, February
16, 2012), and although he did not feel inclined to go through a surgical procedure to get a non-functioning penis, he “needed everyone to else to see on the exterior how I felt on the interior” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012). His physical appearance, which could be considered extremely masculine by Western cultural standards, is in part how he has found
35 comfort in going through something as life-changing as a gender transition. In fact, Wilson revealed:
I fit into normal society now, whereas at no other point in my life did I. I was either fat, or one of the only black people in the room, or I was a lesbian, or I was visibly queer at other parts of my life. I don’t have to think about, you know, the fact that I don’t have to put a binder on or do anything else different. There’s nothing that draws attention on a daily basis that I am a transsexual. People just believe I am a heterosexual male. [Wilson interview, February 16, 2012]
Again, as we have seen in the previous interviews, it has been common for FTM individuals to be “well integrated into their social fabrics as men” (Devor 1999[1997]:604).
The integration and comfort that Wilson has experienced led to a conversation about overall visibility of FTMs. Wilson began by saying:
There is little to no visibility [of trans men]. The majority of people I’ve dated have had no idea that trans people existed. My boyfriend now, he knows about drag queens, and he knows about queer or gay culture. He actually thought it was a test, he thought I was lying to him, especially because of my ability to move around the world as male. The guy I dated before him was like that, the girl I dated before him was like that. [Wilson interview, February 16, 2012].
As Wilson described, he has encountered invisibility on numerous occasions and he attributed the lack of FTM visibility to the same social impositions and inequalities that underscore the foundations of Western feminist theory:
What reduces the visibility of trans men is that they are conditioned to act as female. Women take up less space. Women are conditioned to be quieter, and polite. Polite people don’t get noticed. Polite people don’t pursue acceptance or even tolerance. It falls in line with why women get paid less. Even [trans] support groups are 90% trans women, most of have had all the surgery…they were successful as a male and are in a position to do that. Social conditioning, access, and privilege…those are the things that make the trans male community less visible. [Wilson interview, February 16, 2012]
Wilson, then, rhetorically asked, “why do we know more about trans women? Well, they used to be men and men know how to make noise. I had to learn how to have my voice heard”
(Wilson interview, February 16, 2012). Michel Foucault would classify the timid behavior of FTM individuals to be a product of “correct training” (Foucault 1995[1977]:170) and “artificial order” (Foucault 1995[1977]:179). Females have been expected to comply with socially
36 constructed performances of femininity, which has been limited to passivity, as not to disturb the hierarchical order of sex and gender. The sex and gender hierarchy has been reinforced through a “reality fabricated by this specific technology of power that I have called
‘discipline’” (Foucault 1995[1977]:194).
It is very possible that the selfishness Wilson mentioned at the start of our interview could be connected to the fact that Wilson was raised to perform femininity. Western feminist,
Germaine Greer explains that the only thing a woman is expected to “contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing” (Greer 2001[1970]:67). The expectation of passivity and domesticity may often mean forgoing autonomy, so for Wilson to refocus his attention on himself and his transition may have resembled self-indulgence, when he had been socialized, as a female, to be selfless. Parallel to his feelings of selfishness, Wilson used the word “guilt” twice to describe how he felt about becoming more invisible as a queer person and minimally contributing the representation of FTMs.
Sometimes I feel guilt about how uninvolved I am in the trans community. I sometimes do advocacy work, but the only time I’m really careful is at work. [Telling coworkers] won’t further anything for the community or myself. Sometimes I feel guilty about it, but no one really needs to know my business. [Wilson interview, February 16, 2012]
Wilson claimed to be somewhat transparent about his transition, but even his boyfriend’s close friends have assumed Wilson to be a biological, gay male. Wilson explained, “sometimes visibility is one of the scariest things. It’s safer to be in the background, or else people will notice all the things that don’t make you like other men” (Wilson interview, February 16,
2012).
Wilson experienced detachment from the FTM community for similar, if not the same, reasons that the three previous participants had specified:
I never felt like the trans man that I am was represented anywhere. When you see something about the trans community, male or female, you see one thing. It’s an extremely narrow representation, and I never felt like any of that was me. I personally had to step away some of the advocacy work I was doing because it was with younger trans people. I couldn’t handle the same story over and over…please come see me in
37 two years, I can’t handle you right now. You’re a young guy, you’re going through puberty again, you’re a mess. They want so badly to be male so some people grasp onto the few facial hairs they grow or start picking ridiculous names. I kind of went to all these extremes and I had to find my balance, and that’s where I am now. [Wilson interview, February 16, 2012]
Because Wilson has felt disconnected with the FTM community, I was curious to know if he still had any involvement with the lesbian community, as the other participants had attempted to maintain:
When I look back I was never actually a lesbian. I identified as lesbian because I was moving around the world as female. I’ve always been attracted to more than just women, but I was trying to identify what my masculinity meant. If I was a masculine lesbian I could have stayed in the community, but because [lesbians] now say I am a dude, for real, people don’t want to hear it. It feels like a betrayal to the community, but you don’t know where else to go. It was difficult, but that community was full of people who were still lesbians, and I wasn’t a lady anymore, and I didn’t want to take that away from their identity. [Wilson interview, February 16, 2012]
It would appear as though Wilson has been much more willing to be detached from the lesbian community in order more completely embody the trans man he has become. There could be a number of factors that have made it easier for Wilson disassociate himself from a lesbian identity and the lesbian community (i.e. self-awareness, physical and emotional gratification, etc.), but the recognition of his repressed sexuality may have made this social transition easier. Wilson stated, “queer binds you to something but opens you up a little more.
I didn’t have the language. I had this masculinity that was somehow displaced, so the only thing that felt right at the time was to only date women” (Wilson interview, February 16,
2012). Wilson’s gender and sexuality have both evolved to a point where he has been able to confidently affirm, “I am a boy, I don’t care about my attraction to anyone else, but I am a boy. I tell my boyfriend, I was born female, but I’m a guy kinda made up of my own means”
(Wilson interview, February 16, 2012).
Lastly, I wanted Wilson’s opinion of how, even with such a fractured sense of community, FTMs could become more visible. He restated that “being invisible is a safer space.
Again, being conditioned as female there is a lot of fear that goes into making yourself
38 vulnerable” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012). Wilson believed that the individuals who are defined by the queer label need to learn to be more vocal, and “as access to resources grows, as people feel powerful, [trans men] can be the people to make that noise” (Wilson interview,
February 16, 2012). He compared the trans community to the slow emergence of the gay community, holding trans individuals responsible for fighting to establish visibility and integration into society. Wilson concluded the interview by stating:
[In the queer community] we have the opportunity to think about how we want to express ourselves, once we come to terms with being honest with ourselves, we have the opportunity to take different chances and try out different things. I think that’s what helps make a lot of people in the queer community, trans community, the lesbian community, the gay community successful, because you have to think about it. Things can’t just happen to you. You have to put a concerted effort into bringing it about. [Wilson interview, February 16, 2012]
Essentially, Wilson has held the queer community accountable for increasing visibility. Fighting for visibility leads to increased acceptance, and Wilson firmly explained, “I don’t feel like I should be just tolerated by anyone” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012).
Alastair
My next interview was with Alastair, who I had initially met through a mutual friend while attending a lesbian event in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Alastair and I have repeatedly crossed paths at different queer events, so we have become familiar acquaintances over the past four years. I contacted Alastair to ask if he would be willing to participate in an interview, he agreed, and we met for a short discussion about trans identity and visibility.
Alastair is 26-years-old with a high school education. He identified as a trans man (he has been on hormones and received chest surgery), but he referred to his sexuality as queer.
Alastair is very different from the rest of the individuals who have participated in this project so far. First, he stood apart from the previous participants because he considered himself to have a very upfront approach when revealing his identity. He believed that it is “important to be out” (Alastair interview, March 10, 2012), and he has tried to casually reveal his identity
39 within the first few encounters he may have with someone. Alastair’s transparency of identity
“is a celebration of liminality, of the spaces between or outside structure” (Seidman
2004[1997]:133) as he has refused to be governed by gender ideals and restrictions.
The direct approach does not work for all trans men, which has been demonstrated by the fact that the other FTMs involved with this project have typically concealed their identity as trans. However, Alastair’s decision to transition was very rapid; it almost immediately followed his decision to come out as a lesbian. At the age of 18 Alastair dated his first woman, and she made it possible for him to be comfortable with expressing his gender identity for the first time. He began to better grasp his position in the gender spectrum when he started to request that his girlfriend refer to him using male pronouns during sex, which eventually led to his path of transition. The desire for Alastair to have his gender performance be read as masculine illustrated the “practices of self [that] can never be disengaged from the principles of physicality and embodied experience” (Johnson 2007:56). Because Alastair perceived his gender to be more masculine, the demand for his girlfriend to use male pronouns under very physical and intimate circumstances helped him to affirm how he experienced his body.
Alastair’s immersion into lesbian culture seems to have almost coincided with his introduction to the FTM community, which may be the reason that he has continued to be very invested in the lesbian community. Alastair came out as a lesbian and then a trans man in a considerably short period of time; he explained “I didn’t start hanging out at lesbian bars until after my transition. I went from dating men, to dating my first woman, and then I transitioned”
(Alastair interview, March 10, 2012). Alastair is in a unique position as a trans man who runs a business that targets a lesbian audience. He not only manages this business, but he is the public (trans) face that has represented its lesbian following. I asked his motivation for starting a business that caters to a lesbian audience, and he responded, “I hoped to combine the lesbian and trans communities. Trans people isolate themselves but also experience a sense of exclusion specifically from the lesbian community” (Alastair interview, March 10, 2012).
40 Understanding the tensions that have existed between lesbian and trans male identities, I asked Alastair if there were other communities to which he felt connected:
Really, the lesbian community is so open to me, I’ve never went elsewhere. I don’t have any trans guy friends…like for real…I mean I know a couple, but that’s it. And I don’t have male friends. We can’t be friends for some reason. It’s hard to make a male friend without them being like “hey dude, are you gay?” [Alastair interview, March 10, 2012]
Alastair has clearly maintained a very strong connection with the lesbian community, which has contrasted the experiences of the other participants who felt unwelcome and uncomfortable after they were far enough along in their transitions to begin passing as a male.
However, much like the other trans men, Alastair has also removed himself from engaging in an
FTM community:
Once I transitioned I didn’t go to therapy or groups or whatever. I was, bam, done. I get impatient with trans guys. One acquaintance was confused about whether or not he should take hormones. I basically told him if you want to do it, do it. If not, then don’t. [Alastair interview, March 10, 2012]
Alastair’s comment above also aligns with the attitudes of selfishness that the other trans men had described. He believed that “[transitioning] is something that people have to do on their own” (Alastair interview, March 10, 2012), placing the responsibility for developing emotional and mental stability on the individual rather than promoting community as a means to gain FTM visibility and solidarity.
Earlier in the interview, Alastair recounted how he came to understand his gender identity, and how he then began his quick transition from identifying as a heterosexual woman, to a butch lesbian, and then a trans man. Although he knew that transitioning was the best choice for him, Alastair’s appearance is more androgynous than the other participants, and his transition has taken a different path:
I stopped taking testosterone consistently three to four years ago. I get confused with being a female more than ever before. I used to hate being seen as female but now I don’t bother to correct strangers. [Alastair interview, March 10, 2012]
41 Alastair appears to be the only participant of this project that would feel comfortable with inconsistently taking testosterone and embodying a more androgynous gender identity, as the others rely heavily on their masculine appearances and performances to move through the social world. Alastair acknowledged that “people using female pronouns fucks with you”
(Alastair interview, March 10, 2012), but perhaps maintaining some sense of androgyny has been the reason for his continued acceptance into lesbian social circles. On the contrary, the other participants have been pushed out of their lesbian communities and “have had to search and then I found a community who really wasn’t open to me. I really wasn’t a very masculine guy, and that wasn’t acceptable to them” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012). Therefore, unlike Alastair, Wilson has “marked his body to the extent that it is unlikely that he will ever be read as anything but male” (Johnson 2007:56), just as Enzo, Jace, and Jaidon have also felt the need to do.
Alastair’s trans identity is no secret to his friends and acquaintances due to his ability to be vocal. He stated that “passing enables invisibility, and because trans guys were female they’re not that cut throat or aggressive. MTFs are more flamboyant and have a larger presence” (Alastair interview, March 10, 2012). Alastair’s comments continued to accentuate the role Western feminist theories have played in overall FTM visibility, but because he has had a secure community in a lesbian space, which has been uncommon for the other trans males involved in this project, I wanted to explore how an FTM role model could generate visibility, even in the absence of a clearly defined FTM community:
A lot of designers are using trans models, male-to-female models, and you’re like woah, is that a male? Or like androgyny is kind of coming in, it’s not mainstream yet but it’s definitely visible. And then you see like RuPaul is campy, she’s a total drag queen, and then you see some like trans women, like reporters in Asia, and you see trans women in the media. Then you know who we have as our trans guy, we have Thomas Beatie pregnant twice, and it’s like, way to introduce a trans guy to the world. I mean do your thing, but that’s going to be our number one, and then we have Chaz fucking Bono, I mean come on. [Alastair interview, March 10, 2012]
42 With FTM identities still being pushed into the margins, Alastair implied that the two trans men that have surfaced into the public eye “give us a bad name” (Alastair interview,
March 10, 2012). In order to prevent trans men from being stigmatized, FTMs are expected to first fit into mainstream culture. The two trans men that Alastair mentioned, specifically
Thomas Beatie, are unrelatable to those that perform more socially normative gender roles, and subsequently, trans men become further marginalized due to the ways in which they are seen to embody gender. However, “we cannot separate culture from the communicative interactions because we capture ‘the voice’ of a certain social group who perhaps shares parts of their identities in one aspect of their lives” (Friedman and Jones 2011:83). In turn, the unrelatable trans men who become visible only because of their extreme performances of gender now represent the entire FTM population, reaffirming the perceived stigma of the trans
“freak”, and causing visibility to be less desirable by trans men. Alastair claimed, “you need someone who owns themselves” (Alastair interview, March 10, 2012) and who can portray a positive and relatable image before trans men can be visible and accepted in Western society.
After speaking with these FTM individuals it became apparent that the invisibility and lack of community among trans men is not only a problem that impacts the growth of queer and trans scholarship and popular culture, but it is also something that impacts real individuals who could benefit from visibility, acceptance, and community during a time of increased vulnerability and anxiety. Each of the individuals here share an identity in the sense that they all have chosen to be classified as a trans man, but how and when they each choose to perform their masculinity varies based on their experience in the social world. What also remains the same, regardless of the degree of masculinity they each perform, or what type of community they choose to represent, is that each of these trans men have come in contact with complications and disappointment due to being exiled from a community, being denied membership to another, and having to navigate trans culture without knowing what a trans man might look like because they have not been “visible in the world” (Wilson interview,
February 16, 2012).
43 Chapter 5: Trans Men and Forward Thinking
Gender identity is one of the primary tools used to socially situate the self within
Western cultures. Sex and gender are two attributes (among many others) that are used in the social world to define, classify, and restrict identity. We expect biological males to perform masculinity, while biological females are expected to perform femininity, because adhering to gender scripts is crucial in order to “construct socially legible lives” (Shapiro 2010:9) and be accepted in mainstream society. Additionally, in order to avoid stigma, gendered individuals are expected to maintain “consistency between appearance and manner” (Goffman 1959:24).
Queerness, then, becomes the largest threat to the social scripts that govern the binary sex and gender system in Western society. Polarization perpetuates the sex and gender hierarchy that “grants virtue to the dominant groups, and relegates vice to the underprivileged” (G.
Rubin 1992[1984]:283), and polarization does not allow queer and trans individuals access to the same privileges that are embedded in conforming to the binary gender system.
Trans men are transgressing the socially determined and dichotomous categories of gender performance, and by doing so they are continuously scrutinized for deviating from what
Western culture believes to be gender normative. At the same time, trans men appear to lack the visibility and community that could be beneficial in achieving a mentally and emotionally successful transition. My interviews with trans men have attempted to address the complications of being FTM and reintegrating into society, finding community, and managing the performance of gender variance within a binary gender system. This thesis project has served as a way to reach out to the FTM community, engage in conversation, and reveal some of the feelings and opinions of the queer constituency that has often remained invisible.
The theories of performance that Goffman contributed in the 1950s, together, with the theories that Butler contributed in the 1980s and 1990s, argue that the repeated and ritualized performances of gender lead Western society to be “convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality” (Goffman 1959:17). The insertion of “transgender” into the
44 gender spectrum “constitutes a fluidity of identities that suggests an openness to resignification and recontextualization” (Butler 2005[1990]:501), but before feminist theorists deconstructed the hierarchy of sex and gender performance, Western cultures operated within the “ideology or cognitive system that presents gender categories as unalterable” (Vance
1983[1980]:372). Challenging the sex and gender system resulted in pushing the boundaries of sex, sexuality, and gender performance, slowly enabling females to be empowered, LGB voices to emerge, and queer representations of gender to be visible in mainstream Western culture.
With the development of queer theory, the term “queer” has been used “as a collective category of difference” (Valentine 2007:24) that serves to capture any identity that is non-normative; however, the concept of queer conflicts with Western ideologies of gender because “agency, including subjective performances of gender, is disallowed” (Brickell
2005:39). Queer identities and communities have not been characterized as normative because the individuals who are associated with this category:
Are socially marked by their participation in this kind of discourse; ordinary people are presumed not to want to be mistaken for the kind of person who would participate in this kind of talk or be present in this kind of scene. [Warner 2010[2002]:120]
Generally speaking, those who are classified as heteronormative are removed (based on behavior and identity) from queer culture and meaning; therefore, as members of a gendered community that is perceived to be socially superior, heteronormative ideologies dictate
“whether or not the performer is authorized to give the performance in question” (Goffman
1959:59). Meanwhile, polarized gender categories function as a way to “organize the world around you and act within it” (Agar 2002[1994]:134). Because queer exists beyond the boundaries of acceptable gender performance, it carries a stigma and is constantly under scrutiny by those who perpetuate the binary.
As Wilson had mentioned in his interview, the category of queer has allowed for there to be a multiplicity of ways to perform gender without having to adhere to any concrete expectations. “Transgender” can be interpreted as a term that is synonymous with the term
45 “queer” because it implies movement through the gender spectrum. Those who are comfortable identifying as queer or trans can sometimes find empowerment in these “liberal enclaves” (Whitley 2010:33), but queer and trans classifications are also a “way for external agents to try and sort out what appears to be a confusing conflation of gendered and sexual identities…” (Valentine 2007:81). The issue for those who associate with the queer community is not the lack of acknowledgement of overall queer existence, but instead a larger issue has been introduced by using a collective category (queer/trans), which “unintentionally reproduces some of the very inequalities it aims to overturn” (Valentine 2007:141). Just as ethnography was historically written only from the male perspective (observing only male subjects) (Reiter 1975), and as gay and lesbian theory was derived from “masculinist studies of homosexuality” (Blackwood 2002:83), the word “transgender” has continued to unjustifiably
“paint a picture of trans women” (Enzo interview, February 4, 2012).
It became evident through reading and speaking with trans men that the “female- bodied masculine person, that is, someone born female who takes on masculinized behaviors and/or identities” (Valentine 2007:80) is commonly invisible in portrayals of the transgender community. In theoretical texts, trans men are often not discussed, except to say that they are absent in the “institutionalized form of transgender-as-collectivity” (Valentine 2007:74), or that “FTMs viewed their participation in the [trans] community as temporary” (Factor and
Rothblum 2008:251), but that it is still “important for further studies to distinguish FTM and
MTF experiences” (Factor and Rothblum 2008:252).
There are, of course, accounts of female-bodied masculine people that exist in trans discourse, but the focus of these texts are now dated. For example, Holly Devor (1999[1997]) contributed a 695-page book dedicated entirely to the discussion on FTM transsexuals. This book is the most detailed account of trans men I have encountered, and it includes everything from trans history to trans theory, as well as narratives from trans men who have experienced a gender transition. However, the narratives in the book are limited to recounting each participant’s story of childhood, puberty, adolescence, relationships between the trans man
46 and their parents, surgery, and the attempts to fully reintegrate into the gender binary as a
“man”. Devor’s book places an emphasis on childhood psychology and physical metamorphosis, but it barely touches upon life, community, and visibility as a trans man post-transition.
Furthermore, the post-transition complexities that are described in Devor’s book are based solely upon the success of “their lives as unremarkable men whose transsexuality remained invisible except to specifically chosen other people” (Devor 1999[1997]:604), but conversation needs to be continued and expanded to include the varieties of contemporary trans men, such as those whose ultimate goal might not include integrating and fading into preexisting manifestations of gender.
Jacob Hale and Judith Halberstam are two more theorists that have concentrated on female-bodied masculinity among trans men and butch lesbians. In particular, Hale has contributed “Suggested Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about Transsexuals, Transsexuality,
Transsexualism, or Trans___” (Hale, accessed June 13, 2012) as a guide for non-trans individuals who choose to tackle trans research topics. Hale warns writers to be cautious of trying to explain trans identities without actually traveling into the trans world to fully understand queer subjectivities. He also urges writers to avoid representing “discourses as monolithic or univocal; look carefully at each use of ‘the’, and at plurals” (Hale, accessed June
13, 2012). Halberstam demonstrates the usage of Hale’s rules by appropriately distinguishing between the forms of female-bodied masculine performances and their communities. Both Hale and Halberstam convey the intricacies of the trans man experience and extract him from the larger queer community to examine why there has been “so little focus on FTMs” (Halberstam
1998:289). These theorists write to illustrate how “queers are not united by any unitary identity but only by their opposition to disciplining, normalizing social forces” (Seidman
2004[1997]:133) and to broaden the scope of how academia and popular and queer culture approach the topic of transgender identities. The writings of Hale and Halberstam have helped to represent the censored FTM voice, but these writings have only scratched the surface of the layered causes of their invisibility.
47 The Unwanted Body
After observing the exclusion of FTMs in academic writing and Western society, I conducted interviews to unveil some of the underlying reasons for invisibility among trans men in the larger queer community. In preparing for my interviews I wanted to ensure that my questions shifted the focus of trans conversation. Trans narratives have tended to place emphasis on internal gender conflicts from childhood through adulthood and the state of mind leading up to the decision to transition (as seen in Devor 1999[1997]). As a result, the physical transition (first testosterone injections, facial hair growth, muscle growth, chest surgery, and thoughts of bottom surgery) begins to define what it means to be a trans man. Accentuating the physical aspects of transition contributes to the invisibility and isolation of the trans man through objectification, but beginning to speak about how FTM individuals take up space in the social world can help trans men regain a voice.
First, not everyone who chooses the path of gender transition will opt for surgery, or even hormone treatments, but trans men often experience objectification (especially from those who are considered to be gender normative) due to misconceptions, such as, “if I wanted testosterone, I should be looking for a surgeon to cut on my genitals” (Hale 2002[1997]:250).
The trans men I interviewed have all taken testosterone and received chest surgery, but none have received bottom surgery, nor do they plan to. Wilson explained that he was “initially deterred by a changing body without surgery because who would want to be physical with someone like that?” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012). However, the only reason each of these trans men had chosen to forgo bottom surgery was because “it’s terribly unsafe and horrifying. I had a trans woman friend say to me, ‘I have the Ferrari of vaginas, you would never believe how great my surgery was,’ and I’m like, there’s no trans guy out there saying that” (Wilson interview, February 16, 2012). In a culture where “the idea of questioning one’s given gender is bizarre and absurd” (James 2002:128), trans men become further marginalized by mainstream culture since “there’s absolutely not one way” (Wilson interview, February 16,
2012) to transition or perform gender.
48 The emphasis on the physical not only makes trans men the “other” in mainstream culture (and in the queer community), but in many cases, it also strips from them their association with lesbian community, to which most trans men previously belonged. The
“butch/FTM border wars” (Halberstam 1998) demonstrate how:
Some FTMs see lesbian feminism as a discourse that has demonized them and their masculinity. Some butches consider FTMs to be butches who “believe in anatomy,” and some FTMs consider butches to be FTMs who are too afraid to transition. [Halberstam 1998:287]
With the exception of Alastair, every other interview participant involved with this project has reinforced how unwelcome they have been in the lesbian community. Femme and butch lesbians alike consider trans men to embody “new heteronormative forms” (Halberstam
1998:298), while the butch performances of lesbianism are still correlated to “femaleness”
(Halberstam 1998:295).
Non-Existent Communities, Disappearing Trans Men
If we remove the discussion of trans men away from the body and physical transition, there is room to explore why it is that trans men do not represent the queer community, and where they turn instead to find community. The issues of invisibility and community were far more important to me than determining which steps these participants had taken in order to transition. Establishing community also relates to establishing visibility (or invisibility) as trans men move through mainstream and queer culture. Since identity and community are continuously evolving for all social people, I wanted to understand why trans men appear to recede from visibility after taking their first shots of testosterone or committing to surgeries.
Valentine admits that when researching MTF communities, he found “no consistent social space or organized venue in which FTMs or female-bodied masculine people congregated as a group” (Valentine 2007:260). Similarly, there has been a “lack of lesbian drag culture”
(Halberstam 1997:115) because male impersonation is a “luxury the passing butch cannot afford” (Halberstam 1997:116). Conversely, men in drag and “feminine performativity within a
49 male supremacist society” (Halberstam 1997:116) are “deliberate acts to create a collective drag queen identity that establishes new and more fluid gender and sexual meanings” (Taylor and Rupp 2004:117).
The lack of organized space for female-bodied masculine individuals and the instability of the drag king culture illustrate, first, how being raised as a female has an impact on the ability to emerge as visible and vocal as a trans man, and second, who is allowed (or not allowed) access to performances of masculinity. Valentine explains that the absence of FTMs in the queer community “speak to broader social processes where transgender-identified women and male-bodied feminine people, who were socialized as male, are more able to claim public spaces, or have benefitted from male socialization prior to transition” (Valentine 2007:260).
This theory has been apparent to each of the interview participants through their experiences of transition.
Additionally, Matthew C. Guttman’s studies of masculinity provide evidence of how
“masculinities develop and transform and have little meaning except in relation to women and female identities and practices in all their similar diversity and complexity” (Guttman
1997:400). So, the oppositional relationship of man/woman helps males to develop their “own subjective understanding of what it means to be men” (Guttman 1997:386). As a result, female-bodied masculinity challenges dichotomous gender performances, and trans men become a threat to “a particular kind of masculinity that is, by nature, only available for men to achieve” (Guttman 1997:386). Because performances of masculinity have been restricted to and dominated by cisgender males, it is threatening and unthinkable for females to exert extreme performances of masculinity (i.e. injecting testosterone, using a male name, growing facial hair, passing in the world as male). For this reason, it could be that the more closely a trans man’s:
Performance approximates the real thing, the more intensely we may be threatened, for a competent performance by someone who proves to be an imposter may weaken in our minds the moral connection between legitimate authorization to play a part and the capacity to play it. [Goffman 1959:59]
50 In other words, female-bodied individuals who perform masculinity beyond a degree that is considered to be socially acceptable produce transparency in the social construction of gender; therefore, they are a threat to the gender binary and to those who have believed that masculinity and femininity are inherent characteristics of biological males and biological females, respectively.
Guilty and Selfish (In)Visibility
The components that have contributed to FTM invisibility so far described in this chapter have been previously mentioned in academic texts, but because most queer and trans discussions pertain to MTFs, drag queens, or other performances of male-bodied femininity, it is important to illustrate that the interview participants involved in this project acknowledged their absence, yet there has been little change in their representation within the queer community. Astonishingly, every trans man that participated in this project added another reason why they have been disconnected from the FTM community, and the reason they offered was something they all shared in common.
As mentioned throughout the interviews, these five individuals became frustrated with
FTM groups and the population of people who belonged to those groups. According to this small sample of trans men, the majority of the people who choose to be a part of FTM groups or communities are typically made up of:
Trans men who are early in their transition. Everything is all about being trans and announcing your identity…declaring identity when previously you hadn’t been able to, finally for the first time they understand their identity and their community. [Enzo interview, February 4, 2012]
These five men are at a stage in their lives where the progress of their transition is no longer based upon a timeline of transitional goals (i.e. beginning testosterone, changing to a male name, receiving surgery). Disassociating from the trans community has become a conscious choice for these trans men, not because they want to completely deny that they ever lived as female, but because the trans community no longer reflects the type of trans men they have
51 become. The small FTM community that does exist, then, is not really an FTM “community” at all. It only represents the trans man at a certain point in time, which is the point before he has to come to terms with being perceived as male, and before he begins to “maintain the line they are what they claim to be” (Goffman 1959:166) on a continual basis. Having been socialized as a female, reintegrating into the social world as male can be difficult, especially as the support for the FTM begins to disappear once they begin to pass and more closely resemble heteronormative representations of gender rather than queer, according to the interview materials gathered here.
The five participants did in fact convey a desire for a trans community that paralleled their identities, but because that community is not available to them, they have all begun to
“cross borders” (Halberstam 1998:304), pass, and fade into what is mistaken for gender normative. The appearance of heteronormativity is where the conflict arises between lesbians and FTMs, but passing becomes easier and less lonely than trying to blend into communities where trans men are often denied access and not represented (i.e. lesbian communities and early stage FTM communities), as long as their trans identity is not revealed. Jace admitted, “it sucks because I relied on someone who was at a much later stage [of transition] to support and guide me, but I’m not at the point where I can be that person” (Jace interview, February 11,
2012). These trans men did not necessarily prefer to become an invisible portion of the FTM community because they have all, in some way, disclosed that “there will never be a day that I don’t think about being trans, or being different” (Enzo interview, February 4, 2012), but the trans community has not offered the type of solidarity or representation that each of these trans men have needed. Instead, they have chosen to be minimally involved with other trans men and the FTM community so they can “take control of the setting” (Goffman 1959:93) and find a community where they feel they fit best.
Somewhat related to being dissatisfied with the lack of representation in the trans community was the feeling of “selfishness” or “guilt”. Only Wilson outwardly confronted these feelings during transition and in speaking with me, but there were implications of these
52 feelings with each of the five participants, although none could fully articulate why they felt guilt or selfishness. Wilson’s awareness of “selfishness” could be related to becoming so “self- involved” in order to commit to following through with each step of transition. Guilt was often experienced due to disappointing family and friends, and Enzo further described always
“having to worry about the effort his wife had to put forth to adhere to my changing identity”
(Enzo interview, February 4, 2012). Acts of selfishness and guilt could correlate to the divide among FTMs in different stages of transition because what Wilson considered to be selfish
(focusing on the intricacies of his own transition) coincides with the point in time when FTMs find comfort in a community of trans men in the early stages of transitioning, who seem to only take part in order to ask questions and to publically track the progress of their own transition.
Late in 2011, I began following FTM blogs to observe conversation between trans men so I could come to my interviews with an understanding of what types of trans communities exist and to prepare appropriate questions to ask participants. At the time, it had not occurred to me that the majority of blogs I encountered were posted primarily by trans men who were in the very early stages of their transition, accommodating trans men who had not yet started to take testosterone. I had only noticed, after conducting my interviews, that the FTMs in the blog community were only beginning explore living life as male, and the purpose of their blog posts was to connect with other trans men who were simultaneously going through a transition.
In order to protect the anonymity of the trans men who post, I will not identify the blog locations or names, but popular blog posts included: how to come out as trans; where to find a binder (a piece material that compresses breasts to give the appearance of a flat chest prior to receiving surgery); where to purchase a packer (silicone, flaccid penis to give the appearance of a bulge); and transition self-portraits (before, during, and after certain stages of physical transition to demonstrate changes in muscle growth, hair growth, chest surgery results, and even genital growth and surgeries).
The blog content that is populated by and for trans men deals with topics that would only be valuable to those who are just beginning their FTM journey. In addition, the fact that
53 the blog content contains self-portraits and questions that are posed in order for early-stage trans men to gain self-awareness and gratification supports the claims made by interview participants that the beginning of transition is a very selfish time, and it is also a deterrent for trans men later in their transition to become involved in the community. While most of the trans men who participated in this project described having to selfishly go through transition on their own, it could be the case, that as much attention as they each had to focus toward themselves, selfishness was only a feeling that surfaced due to having been socialized as female and conditioned “to hide the possession of masculinity” (Riviére 2005[1929]:147). In an unpublished quote by Audre Lorde, she states, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation,” and perhaps self-indulgence is a feeling that every trans man should have the opportunity to experience.
The Trans Man Does Exist
Throughout the course of this project, when family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances have asked what I had chosen for my thesis research topic, I would briefly explain, “the invisibility of female-to-male transgender individuals in Western society.” The most common response I have received has been, “well, that’s because there are fewer of them, right?” If nothing else, the assumption that the FTM hardly exists while there is a recognized culture surrounding MTF identities demonstrates just how severely the trans man has receded into the background of mainstream and queer culture. Additionally, queer theory and scholarship has only really examined a small portion of the complexities that appear to cause the invisibility of trans men.
My conversations with these five trans men have not uncovered all of the mysteries of the FTM identity, but the purpose of creating dialogue with trans men is to reopen a queer conversation, this time including a voice that is often not represented. Visibility is important because the absence of the image of the trans man could imply that he is insignificant, inferior, abnormal, uncommon, or even unreal. But the trans man is in fact real. Through these
54 five interviews we can conclude that there are reasons for the trans man to remain below the radar of cultural awareness, such as lingering stigmas, objectification, the influences of female conditioning on social development, and something that should now become part of the conversation regarding community, the intentional disengagement from newly transitioning trans men, which has caused a significantly fractured FTM community.
Queer is a term that is expected to be all-inclusive. However, the primary focus on male-bodied femininity throughout academia, the heightened awareness of drag queen culture and male-to-female cross-dressing in Western culture, and the detachment of the trans man from the queer community make the category of queer appear more exclusive than it actually is. The separation of trans men from the larger queer community, and specifically from FTMs who are in earlier stages of understanding their gender identity or transitioning, is one of the
“devices for determining the information the audience is able to acquire” (Goffman 1959:93), allowing MTFs to represent the public face of queer while trans men continue to recede.
By passing in the social world as male and denying their connection to the queer or FTM community, trans men make the choice to evade stigmatization and leave behind the turmoil caused by transgressing gender and defying dichotomy. As a result, FTM solidarity is lost and visibility becomes harder to achieve because trans men seem to have become divided.
Although the term, “queer”, itself does not indicate exclusion, it does remove the visibility of trans men because the trans woman has become the identity that is immediately associated with the overall queer and trans community. Queer and trans should be “a position that celebrates what it takes to be the more transgressive effects of openly embracing gender variance” (Elliot 2009:13); therefore, the trans man needs to be reintegrated and equally represented in the queer and trans community so they too can be a part of the celebration.
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