THE MATTER OF SEX AND GENDER: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TRANS BODIES

AND FEMINIST THEORY

A THESIS

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE

TEXAS WOMAN'S UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

BY

J.A. STEIN, B.S.

DENTON, TEXAS

AUGUST2009 TEXAS WOMAN'S UNIVERSITY DENTON, TEXAS

May 19, 2009

To the Dean of the Graduate School:

I am submitting herewith a thesis written by J.A. Stein entitled "The Matter of Sex and Gender: A Dialogue Between Trans Bodies and Feminist Theories." I have examined this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements forthe degree of Master of Arts with a m J 'kWomen's Studies."

We have read this t

Accepted:

�� Dean of the Graduate School ABSTRACT

J.A. STEIN

THE MATTER OF SEX AND GENDER: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TRANS BODIES AND FEMINIST THEORIES

AUGUST2009

Despite significantsocial and political gains derived from gender theory, feminist scholars, progressive thinkers, and those in the transgender community do not critically examine the pre-supposed meanings of sex in gender theory. Instead, they simply assume its significance,th4s erasing its complexity and inadvertently reproducing its binary status. In this paper, I use close analysis of theoretical texts to expose the foundational assumptions prevalent in prominent gender theorists who sometimes fallinto the trap of pre-supposed sex signifiers. I explain why this tendency erases the terminology's complexity and inadvertently silences diverse trans identities. Arguing that these unexamined/unintentional dualistic perceptions of sex reproduce existing binaries, I demonstrate how and why such a dualism harms trans-people and produces disjunction between our lived realities and academic theory. I conclude by presenting new and alternative ways or perceiving systems of sex that are fluidlyinclusive of broader identity categories.

111 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT ...... iii

Chapter

I. ORIGINS AND IDEOLOGIES: TRENDS IN FEMINIST DISCOURSE ...... 1

II. BODY LANGUAGE: THE BORDERS, BARRIERS, AND BINARIES OF MARGINALIZED SEX ...... 20

III. THE ISLAND OF THE WORLD: VISIONS FOR (RE)THINKING SEX ...... 37

IV. WORKS CITED ...... 52

IV CHAPTER 1

Origins and Ideologies: Trends in Feminist Discourses

I have always had trouble recogni zing myself in the features of the intellectual (philosopher, writer, professor) playing his [sic] political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned. ---Jacques Derrida

Just as the social forms of labor demand certain kinds of personality, the social forms of sex and gender demand ce1iain kinds of people. ---Gayle Rubin

In feminist circles, theory constrained within binaries is often considered

inadequate, ineffective, and incomplete, and yet, feminist scholars, progressive thinkers,

and those in the transgender community have stopped short of critically examining the

pre-supposed meanings of sex which, ironically, are located within an accepted (though

often unacknowledged) dichotomy. In such instances, fragmented critical interrogation of

both sex and gender inevitably eclipses the liberating component of contemporary sex­

gender theorizing. Consequently, this distinction has yet to fully benefit the lives of those

who transgress normative identity boundaries, specifically those within the transexual 1

and transgender communities. In this thesis, I argue that by assuming a natural, dialogic,

and dualistic relationship2 between sex and gender, theorists who pre-suppose untroubled

1 The spelling of transexual with one 's' reflects a conscious political move to displace the term from its medical origins. Therefore, I prefer to spell transexual with one "s. " When citing the work of others, I will follow the author's spelling preference.

2 The dichotomy between sex and gender is a unique and paradoxical one. The critique here will be on the tendency to associate sex with biology and gender with sociological apparatuses. In other words, there are more complex dualisms that exi t within the sex-gender paradigm. meanings silence "alternative" trans identities such as queer, intersex, no-hos (no-

hormones transexuals), andros (androgynous gender), and genderqueer. The tendency to

assume the significance of sex erases the term's complexity and inadvertently reproduces

it as part of a binary. Without agitating the very significance of sex, transgressive theory

theory inadvertently excludes "non-normative" identity experiences by (re )producing the

problematic orders of sex vs. gender, sex-biological, and gender-social.

The genesis of more inclusive feminist dialogues requires archaeology,

examination, and new methodologies to replace failing discourses. In this chapter, I

examine prominent gender theorists who sometimes fall into the trap of pre-supposed sex

signifiers. I then explain, in chapter two, why this tendency erases the terminology' s

complexity and inadvertently silences diverse trans identities. Chapter two problematizes

the prevailing discourse on sex and gender as an accepted dichotomy with presupposed

meanings for the term "sex." I demonstrate how and why such a dualism harms trans

people and excludes identities that fall outside conventional notions of transgender. 3 In

addition, unexamined/unintentional dualistic thought erases the complexity of these

categories and inadvertently reproduces division. In the final chapter, I present alternative

ways of perceiving systems of sex that are fluidly inclusive of broader identity categories.

3 "Conventional notions" of transgender/transexual people include re-codifying sex transitions from one oppositional "side" to the other, for example, male-to-female (MTF) or female-to-male (FTM). The traditional definition of sexual difference (as polarized binary opposites) sometimes permeates even the most liberal of ideologies addressing transgressive identification. This "either/or" thinking erases the complexity behind sexual transitioning and ignores trans people who may identify in-between or outside of the sexual binary. Thus, conventional examples of trans people (crossing from one side to the other) actually reinforces/reproduces gender binarism. I will speak more on this point in chapter two.

2 The need to present new understandings of sex is paramount for transexual activists and theorists. Despite the sex-gender dyad's potential benefits, theorists' unexamined acceptance of this dichotomy4 has had negative effects on trans people who identify beyond categories of "man" and "woman." Especially significant is the medicalization of trans people as "dysmorphic" and psychologically impaired. Since the

1960s, with the inception of the te1m "gender" in sociological and psychological circles, the transgender community has largely relied on medical apparatuses to rectify the incongruency between our "sex" and our "gender." One does not match the other. Kate

Bornstein speaks to this point via her personal accounting of therapy: "transsexuality is the only condition for which the therapy is to lie .... Here I was, taking a giant step toward personal integrity by entering therapy with the truth and self-acknowledgement that I was a transsexual, and I was told, 'Don't tell anyone you' re a transsexual'" (Gender

Outlaw 62). Bomstein's account echoes my own experiences in therapy. I had known from the very beginning that I did not identify completely as a male or as a female but found myself embellishing my attachment to the male gender for fear of not receiving the coveted "surgery letter," since the therapeutic purpose was to diagnose dysmorphia.

Understanding medicalization as a tool for social control is foremost in examination of how and why the treatment of sexual ambiguity is firmly rooted in binary classification.

Consequently, there is little room for the medical/psychological community to accept identity categories that fall outside established sexual domains.

4 I explore this un examined acceptance later in th is chapter. 3 The sex-gender distinction may provide a neat little package for feminists to use

as they problematize connections among power, language, and gender while applauding

identity transgressions as socially progressive. However, for trnnsgender theorists and

members, this little package can be a tight box of static imperatives. The sex-gender

distinction is an inclusive and free domain for trans people only if all spaces of identity

are recognized, especially those existing outside the sexual binary. If the distinction

between sex and gender exists, then it is critical that both sides be examined equa1ly and

without ignorance of one for knowledge of the other. The gender component of the sex­

gender dyad has often been positioned by feminist thinkers as a "socially constructed"

dividend of power, institutions, and difference. 5 Additionally, some feminists have

examined queer theory's defining lack of attention to other intersections that may interact

with and alter perceptions and definitions of gender. 6 As a result, perceptions of gender

have become more fluid, nuanced, and critically re-defined and examined as an

oppressive social construct while perceptions of sex have not developed in similar

fashion.

Humans have a unique ability to question their own existence. What is the self?

Who are we? What is our purpose? How do we think? Questions of selfhood seem to

arise from a personal interest in eliciting answers from the unknown. The explanations of

self (as unifying principle, as soul as ego, as consciousness as spirit, as being) collide

with fear of the universe's unknowable secrets. Who are we? What are we? In past

5 See, for example, Fausto-Sterling, Lorber, Connell, and Butler.

6 See, for example, Larde, Anzaldua, Collins, and hooks.

4 centuries, human understanding of the world, our societies, and ourselves, has partially

been derived from socially legitimated knowledge production, generated predominantly

by white, upper-class men. In response, feminists and other critical epistemologists are

engaged in generating and legitimating knowledge frameworks contextualized within a

myriad of marginalized identities. Feminism recognizes that one's experiential context

decisively impacts how one constructs reality and, therefore, consistently challenges

conventional ideas of self by acknowledging dynamic, diverse, intersecting identities.

Upsetting legitimated knowledge, however, requires a unique responsibility to new

knowledge production. Empathetic, inclusive, and diverse knowledge production

demands a critical interrogation of all components.

Some components of our social locations (in this case sex) escape serious

exploration because they are so familiar, so ingrained that we do not even find a need to

question them. However, if new knowledges concerned with social location 7 as

references to intersecting realities are to flourish, then social location can be understood

as a means of accounting for the diversities of experience within a g1ven category. For

example, social locations can account for diversities within categories as long as those

diversities are acknowledged. Both sex and gender are pivotal theoretical tools by which

to understand relational selves and impact feminist rhetoric, but cannot actualize as such uritil removed from the trap of pre-suppo ed meanings.

7 In the context of this discussion, "social location' refers to identity categories shaped by social and cultural ideologies--for example, an individual s race, class sexuality gender, ability, religion, or other social experience which, in tum, is decisive of how that individual constructs reality, interprets knowledge or perceives the world. 5 A brief archaeology of feminist history concerning sex and gender provides a

helpful starting point for comprehending how and why sex has assumed meanings and

unexamined parameters. One of the primary issues inhibiting diverse perceptions of sex

is that the terms "sex" and "gender" hold different meanings for different feminist

theorists and neither term has an essential definition. In the late nineteenth century, for

example, it was widely believed that behavioral traits associated with "women" and

"men" were caused by biological differences in anatomy or chromosomes. Two

prominent sociologists of the time, Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thompson, conducted a

study in 1889 that catapulted biological determinism8 to new heights. In regards to

women's place in politics and public life, the two are famous for having written: "what

was decided among prehistoric protozoa cannot be annulled by acts of parliament" (267).

In other words, separate spheres for the sexes must be maintained as both have natural,

biological characteristics suited to their place.

Sex, for the biological determinist, is always a result of anatomies, metabolisms, hormones, and physical characteristics. Behavioral traits, therefore, arise from physiological states. As Geddes and Thompson conclude, "males are stronger, handsomer, or more emotional simply because they are males, i.e., of more active physiological habit than their mates" (26, my italics). Obviously this sort of determinism is not only heterocentric, androcentric, and sexist, but it also allows for the social justification of female subordination to men. In order to counter these "natural" claims, feminist theorists questioned the classification of oman as "Other.' Simone de Beauvoir

8 In essence, the iew that biology is one s pre-ordained destiny.

6 first published her text, The Second Sex, in 1949 in order to address this treatment of

women as "second" and problematizes males as the positive norm. In her classic work, de

Beauvoir asks the same question I will be returning to later in this discussion; that is,

what is a woman:

I reject also any comparative system that assumes the existence of

a natural hierarchy or scale of values-for example, an evolutionary

hierarchy. It is vain to ask if the female body is or is not more

infantile than that of the male, if it is more or less similar to the apes, and

so on .... It is only in a human perspective that we can

compare the female and the male of the human species. But man is defined

as a being who is not fixed, who makes himself what he is .... As

Merleau-Ponty very justly puts it, man is not a natural species: he is a

historical idea. Woman is not a completed reality, but rather a becoming,

and it is in her becoming that she should be compared with man; that is to

say, her possibilities should be defined. (66)

De Beauvoir arrives at her famous conclusion that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" (301) through a unique insight that one's destiny is not rooted in biology but is, instead, culturally acquired. From this point onward, it became common for scholars to distinguish biological sex differences from socially contrived ones. Understanding sexual difference as not biologically fixed directly contributes to liberating women forced into static gender roles resulting from the oppressive dictates of male and female behavior.

7 Feminists began to find it useful to separate the social and biological realms in

order to counter biologically deterministic viewpoints. If differences between men and

women are socially rather than biologically produced, their gender roles, therefore, are

questionable as an ideological social product. Arguably, one of the most commonly cited

of these scholars is Gayle Rubin. Her work appears in Toward an Anthropology of

Women, compiled in 1975. Rubin's role in establishing what would become the

mainstream feminist view of sex and gender is paramount. Rubin has been cited by such

contemporary gender scholars as Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, Suzanne Kessler, and

Wendy McKenna among many others. It is precisely in Rubin's work that we can find the fore-grounding of dualistic sex-gender theory. In her revolutionary essay, "The Traffic in

Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex," Rubin coins the term "sex/gender system" while remarking on Claude Levi Strauss' s paradigm of kinship systems within the patriarchal order: "I call that part of social life the ' sex/ gender system' for the lack of a more elegant term. As a preliminary definition, a 'sex/gender system' is the set of arrangements by which a society transfers biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied' (534). In other words,

Rubin argues that a sy tern is in place that perpetuates the distinction between biological sex and gender whiie naturalizing the conversion of sex into gender through various societal mechanisms ·that produce norms. Rubin s sex/gender system ·provided an appreciable basis for feminist theory's counter-claims again.st biological determinism by exposing the systemic character of sex and gender.

8 In a robust critique of patriarchal power's heterosexist machinations, Rubin

points to what she perceives as the primary division "of the sexes." She writes: "it is this

taboo [who can have sex with who] which divides the sexes into two mutually exclusive

categories, a taboo which exacerbates the biological differences between the sexes and

thereby creates gender ... thereby enjoining heterosexual marriage" (178). So, tor

Rubin, sexuality certainly has a part in determining differences between sexes. Since gender is a product of the primacy of sex, it is logical that gender should be created through some expressions of sexuality and taboos placed upon sexualities. It is important to note Rubin's articulation of the sex-gender system as a system by which certain elements of patriarchal societies are internalized and repeated by individuals to form distinctive male and female identities. In other words, a system is in place, a specific mechanism that converts sex to gender. However, I often wonder if the works of de

Beauvoir, Rubin, and other such theorists are trapped within their own ideologies. If the distinction between sex and gender was constitutional to addressing the problems of biological determinism, some sort of materiality of the body must also be addressed.

Countless theorists have engaged gender theory but the most prominent and notable are in unique positions to contribute to larger, general feminist discourses, thereby greatly impacting current rhetorical trends.

From de Beauvoir to Rubin, a seamless transition from sex into gender via specific social apparatuses highlights one of the foundational concepts of mainstream feminist theory. Sex can now be perceived as a biological given, easily discernible (in most cases) and gender is something done as a result of sex. Although this assertion 9 provides feminism with an avenue through which to nullify oppressive notions of

biological determinism, one is still left wondering where sex has gone once this gender

assignment has occurred. If sex is converted to gender, sex must no longer exist in any

materiality apart from the consistent repetitions of gender roles and norms. Perhaps

Rubin's contribution to gender discourse has mined the passageway to social constructions of gender and toward the theoretical primacy of gender as construction.

Although gender theory countered biologically deterministic viewpoints and liberated women from statically defined gender roles, gender's dynamic nature also demanded a theoretical primacy over sex. The "social construction" of gender held sway.

For example, in a widely-anthologized article, "The Social Construction of Gender,"

Judith Lorber writes: "For the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth ... : [A] sex category becomes a gender status through naming, dress, and the use of other gender markers"

(14). Throughout her essay, Lorber argues that gender is entirely a product of socialization and subject to interpretation, perception, and experience. For example,

Lorber allows experiential context some theoretical space: "women with children who have neither the resources of a man~s economic support nor a secure position of their own in the workplace are unlikely to protest the system as a system. But they, above all women, experience its oppression firsthand" (291). Lorber's work epitomizes contemporary gender rhetoric, echoing the social construction of gender as the ery ballast of oppression unearthed by Rubin and her contemporaries. By reducing gender to a social construction (and nothing more), sex is then implied as biological differences: 10 chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs. Sex becomes a

primary marker through which to assign the secondary component of gender. Lorber's

emphasis on gender as dynamic ( changeable though gender markers) re-emphasizes the

theoretical primacy of gender over sex. In other words, sex, for Lorber (just as for Rubin)

actually becomes a gender status and, therefore, corresponding social roles based upon

that gender. Lorber writes: "in our society, in addition to man and woman, the [gender]

status can be transvestite (a person who dresses in opposite-gender clothes) and

transsexual (a person who has had sex-change surgery). Transvestites and transsexuals carefully construct their gender status by dressing, speaking, walking, gesturing in the ways prescribed for women or men whichever they want to be taken for--and so does any

'normal' person (14, my emphasis). Again, Lorber continues to re-produce the categories of sex and gender as relational but necessarily separate entities. In addition, she implies that sex is already always present from the beginning.

Lorber must pinpoint the presence of sex in order to establish gender as a social construction. Femininity, as a repetition or sign of the female sex, is acted upon by social institutions differently than masculinity. She states that: "[i]ndi iduals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine" (22). Lorber's assertion directly illustrates the feminist understanding of gender as a learned component of socialization. She continues with another foundational position, situating the female gender as always visible as deviation and situates the creation of the Other: "The dominant categories are the hegemonic ideals, taken so for granted as the way things should be that white is not ordinarily thought of as a race, middle class as a class, or men 11 as a gender .... [T]hese categories define the Other as that which lacks the valuable

qualities the dominants exhibit" (33). So, sexual difference for women is always already

present. Perceiving gender as a socially contrived element has precipitated the ·

understanding of gender as interwoven within larger matrices of power. However,

because of Lorber's inability to seriously examine sex as a theoretical principle, the

actual meaning of sex is still not evident. As in Rubin's work, sex disappears in her

construction of gender simply because sex becomes gender. One of the dominant

categories that need so desperately to be questioned is that of non-trans gender ( cisgender)

people. People who rarely heed sex as a category that requires theory are often those

whose own sex is so familiar, so close that it is not even seen or questioned. Lorber' s

reduction of trans gender identities aside, we might ask: what of the body beyond mere repetition of gender roles and norms? Who is it that decides what actions constitute a person's sex based upon certain gendered performances? It is sex that not only remains invisible, but is not credited with an explanation or definition. Upon reading Lorber, the question of what sex actually is remains unanswered.

To be sure, some prominent feminist scholars have critiqued the dualistic quality of sex and gender in meaningful ways that move beyond merely noting gender's constructed nature; however, these works still fail to adequately describe the qualities of sex as a viable theoretical component. For example, in Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, and Corporeality, Moira Gatens claims that the sex/gender distinction is similar to the separation often made between body and consciousness. If the sex/gender distinction is seen as a dichotomy, it can correspond to essentialist and constructioni t theories as well 12 as uphold Cartesian frameworks of duality. When Gatens finally speaks about bodies, she makes clear that there is no neutrality among them. In other words, she challenges the tendency for those constructions labeled as "social phenomena" (gender) to codify the body as passive. She points out that our conception of sex is based on a lived biology which is constituted of our historical and cultural ideas. So sex, too, is a dynamic phenomenon. However, even with her theories of "sexed bodies, '~imaginariesn and

'"corporealities," Gatens does not critically analyze what sex means. These assertions seem in conflict with an earlier theorist, Anne Fausto-Sterling9 and her infamous professions concerning the possibilities of many (biological) sexes. Sterling also asserts that sex and gender may have biological, scientific, and socially constructed natures

(Sexing the Body 25). Although Fausto-Sterling comes closer to naming the essence of sex than others, we are still left with questions: What is a sexed body? What is the significance of sex within which she grounds much of her theory? This assumption of the connotations, limitations, and implications of sex leads us back again to the idea of sex as natural, leaving the materiality of the body absent and unverified.

Another well-known feminist text, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion ofIdentity , largely problematizes gender in relation to sex but fails to examine closely the issue of sex in and of itself. One of the pioneers of queer theory,

Butler10 has obviously made possible the transition from natural to political via the

9 Fausto-Sterling easily aligns with other such gender theori ts on thi s issue such as Eli zabeth Grosz and Alfred Kinsey.

10 Although queer theory has certainly been "done' before Butler, she is often .heralded as one of the first and so warrants discussion here. It is not pos ible to trace the origins of queer theory without doing 13 distinction of sex and gender. As I suggested earlier in this chapter, to feminists, to gender theorists, to those constrained by the norms of gender, the assignment of sex as natural is liberating precisely because gender enters the realm of culture and politics. By moving gender into these realms, many feminists believe they can produce social change and, indeed, they have produced social change by challenging oppressive and essential gender identities. Throughout her work, Butler argues that gender is something we become, although to become our gender is not simply to choose it. Gender is bridled by social apparatuses, political processes, and institutions of privilege and inequality all the while revolving around that fetal utterance of personhood-sex. For example, when summarizing the work of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Butler naturalizes sex:

"one is perhaps born a given sex with a biological facticity, but ... one becomes one's gender; that is, one acquires a given set of cultural and historical significations, and so comes to embody an historical idea called 'woman. ' Thus, it is one thing to be born female, but quite another to undergo proper acculturation as a woman; the first is, it seems, a natural fact, but the second is the embodiment of an historical idea ("Gendering the Body" 254). If gender is socially causal then it can be changed. There are similar questions to consider in Butler's work, much like those already discussed. For example, if gender is chosen via systemic mechanisms and constrained by sex, is the process of becoming our gender pre-determined? Will sex always govern gender? And as Butler's famous claim at the start of Gender Trouble suggests ' perhaps this construct called 'sex'

violence to its multiple influences. For prior queer theori ts, see Gloria Anzaldua, Teresa de Lauretis, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Michel Foucault. 14 · is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all" (7, my emphasis). Even if the system is reversible and gender becomes causal for sex, what, then, is the purpose of sex? Where is the body? Additionally, if sex is inevitably enveloped by the "natural" realm and social mechanisms govern the construction of one's gender based upon one's sex, how is it that some sexed individuals secede from their socially constructed categories? In other words, based upon previous feminist gender models, how does one account for the diversity within sex-gender social systems such as gender queers, transexuals, transgender, and intersex individuals; individuals that have constructed identities based upon personal journeys of resistance to social constructions? Although Butler has been considered au courant in theorizing, her work in Gender Trouble still beckons a discussion on the meaning of sex itself in order to recognize the potential fluidity and meaning of sex as well as gender.

In a later book, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits ofSex , Butler attempts to address criticisms that her gender theories dismiss, ignore, and trivialize the materiality of the body itself. This work is her closest attempt at examining what sex actually constitutes. An examination of sex is exactly what I am hoping more feminists do in the future. However, Butler's work on the matter is primarily focused on the discursive apparatuses working intimately on the body rather than a discussion concerning real bodily materiality itself She eventually hints at the conclusion that, whatever sex may be, it cannot exist outside the realm of history, society, and culture.

Power delimits sex from the start. Butler examines the body as a sexed site, offering a 15 partial solution to the very problem of this discussion. However, she continues to seek

causal, linguistic, and dialogic_intersections concerning sex without ever truly unpacking

the meaning ofsex in the first place. Sex, for Butler remains "an ideal construct which is

forcibly materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but

a process whereby regulatory norms materialize 'sex' and achieve this materialization

through a forcible reiteration of those norms" (2). Her statements imply a reversal of

"gender from sex" into "sex from gender." We have previously been accessing gender from its foundation (sex). With Bodies that Matter, however, rather than taking sex as the primary factor causing some gender assignment, Butler seems to posit instead that we can only understand sex through gender. This epiphenomena} quality of sex~ however, does little to reconcile the missing meaning of sex. Of course, Butler understands that definitions are not deliverable in absolute terms because that delivery will al ways fail.

When dealing with the materiality of the body, Butler attempts to position the body as something that cannot exist prior to socialization, prior to discourse about sex itself because "we discover that matter is fully sedimented with discourses on sex and sexuality that prefigure and constrain the uses to which that term can be put" (Bodies that

J\Jatter x). She acknowledges problems with the sex/gender distinction by noting that "if gender is the social construction of sex~and if there is no access to this sex except by means of construction, then it appears that not only is sex absorbed by gender but that sex becomes something like a fiction, perhaps a fantasy, retroactively in talled at a pre­ linguistic site to which there is no direct access" (5). Ob iously, the dissolution of sex is as problematic as ignoring it altogether. Since even matter itself is saturated with 16 historical and linguistic gendered normativities, sex cannot exist prior to ·socialization.

Therefore, both perceptions of sex are based upon fallacy. Instead, Butler comes to the

conclusion that "subjected to gender, but subjectivated by gender, the 'I' neither precedes

nor follows the process of this gendering, but emerges only within and as the matrix of

gender relations themselves" (7). Sex, therefore, is both produced and de-stabilized

simultaneously. This de-stabilization is close to determining some sort of theory

concerning sex's qualities, but simply critiquing sex as not natural while positioning sex

as potentially socially contrived still leads us back to the same problem. Sex as natural

and sex as social mechanism are both positions that still rely on an assumption of what

sex actually is.

Whatever sex may or may not be, we have arrived at the conclusion that sex is

both produced and de-stabilized by the re-iteration of norms, and Butler's critics have

also been de-stabilized in Bodies. However, the substance of sex is never fully explored.

Butler consistently argues along the·Derridean line of deconstruction--that is, the argument that language has gaps and fissures, for language can never fully capture the essence of something. 11 A boy's body will always be much more than the labels delimited by his sex and re-produced by masculinizing postures, clothes, ocial roles, or words. The essence of "boy" or "girl' can never be fully captured by any sort of

11 Obviously, Derridean deconstruction is much more complex than this simple e planation. Derrida believed that the term deconstruction is necessaril y complicated and difficult to xplain si nce it active! criticizes the very lan guage needed to explain it. So for my purposes here and in order to pre ent the lin k with Butler, this short clarification must suffice. For more on Derrida and deconstruction, see his Of Grammatology.

17 socialization or construction. I will utilize the same line of argument to indicate that the

essence of sex as a theoretical term can never be fully captured. Sex will always be much

more than "an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time" as Butler

states, and it will never fully materialize. Obviously, since we are now seeing sex as a

process, a construct, a product of re-production and de-stabilization, sex is outside the

realm of definition. This quality of sex is acceptable Gust as it is with gender) because the

question of meaning does not have to fully materialize as long as any theory concerning social mechanisms is also concerned with actions. Butler argues about constructivist vs. essentialist notions of sex. The focal point of the entire work can be said to center on debates between biological sex vs. social cultural gender. Furthermore, if sex varies over time, then we cannot ever know what sex really means.

Despite her acknowledgement of the unknowable quality of sex, I find in Butler's work an ironic disassociation of sex and body. At one point, Butler acknowledges that

"the name fails to sustain the identity of the body within the terms of cultural intelligibility; body parts disengage from any common center, pull away from each other, lead separate lives, become sites of phantasmic investments that refuse to reduce to singular sexualities" (Bodies that Matter 140). If Butler is able to destabilize sex (and therefore sexual difference), then what remains is a question of meaning. What, then, is sex? What is sexual difference? Her theories are almost always and foremost epistemic ones, arguments that establish knowledge debates at the core. Butler's methodology is· perfectly acceptable if the dialogue were to remain within questions of truth. However theory lacking material viability freezes praxis. Additionall ', what does this di scourse 18 mean? Are there biological differences between the sexes or not? Found within her

diffuse rhetoric, there is no denial of some biological difference. However, Butler seems

unsure whether anatomical apparatuses should be the primary determinant of these

differences. Again, if a foundational imperative was to override biological determinism

as a viable ideology, then what understandings of sex and sexual difference can we derive

from the rote denial of biological facticity--a denial that cycles back to itself with no real

statement of meaning? Perhaps we cannot distinguish sexual difference or know the

essence of sex precisely because elements change over time. However, theoretical models

based upon sex must be extricated from the abyss of pre-supposed significance.

Although Butler has nearly examined sex in a real and material manner, the last

step has yet to be taken. There needs to be a call towards new ways of perceiving,

defining, and understanding the material which has been destabilized. Once any

apparatus has been destabilized, what is left in its place? If body parts do "refuse to become sites of singular sexualities," then what new transient sites are formed? Feminist theory regarding the issue of sex has yet to source methods of understanding new sex, characters, anatomies, and configurations. Gender theory must call upon third fourth, fifth, spaces of knowledge production in order to account for the rainbow of di versity waiting in the fissures of the text.

19 CHAPTER2

Body Language: The Borders, Barriers, and Binaries of Marginalized Sex

There is something compelling about being both male and female, about having entry into both worlds. Contrary to some psychiatric tenets, half and halfs are not suffering from a confusion of sexual identity, or even from a confusion of gender. What we are suffering from is an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other. It claims that human nature is limited and cannot evolve into something better. ---Gloria Anzaldua

I wish to demonstrate how and why the marginalization of sex within the sex­

gender system harms trans people and excludes identities that fall outside conventional notions of transgender. What is the purpose of turning to the construction of sex if gender theories already encompass the ability to account for a wide array of diversity? To these questions and others, I will say that my intention here is to not marginalize sex as a construct of power. Of course, the legitimate critical inquiry may remain: if gender is an extension of biological sex, what is the difference between the problem of gender and that of sex? After all, Judith Butler has stated quite adequately that gender is a performance ... something we do and, in fact, that "no correlation can be drawn between drag and transgender and sexual practice, and the distribution of hetero, bi-, and homo­ inclinations cannot be predictably mapped onto the travels of gender-bending or changing" (Gender Trouble xiv). It is possible for gender to exhibit ambiguity without disrupting the norms of sexuality, and performativity cannot always act as an indicator of sex, sexuality~ or sexual practices. 20 These gender concepts do not necessarily (in and of themselves) erase the

complexity of trans identities if gender can be the locus of transformation and if, as

Butler states, there is no direct correlation between sex, performativity, and sexual

practice. As evidenced in previous feminist theory, gender, because it is such a variable

element, carries with it the ability to account for diversity. Sex, as a concept that has gone

largely unrecognized, ignored, or assumed, may have just as much progressive potential

as gender. The assumed meanings of sex in gender theory have marginalized the term,

reducing it to a vehicle for gender. However, anatomical differences may be just as malleable and transient as gender differences.

Sex embodiment, the visible fleshiness of sex, can be a personal choice that can change over the course of social centuries, decades, years, and even days. In other words, the living, moving fleshy bodies change dramatically at the individual experiential level when representing sex as well as gender performativities. Where one construct ends and the other begins has not yet been fully resolved. How, if at all, does sex contribute to gender performativity? How, if at all, does gender performativity contribute to sex? What is sex? Often the answers to these questions are transitory due to personal experience and individual embodiment re-enforced by individual perception, leading to conclusions based on how those perceptions are interpreted. We can no longer ignore the dimensions of psychic subjectivity in relation to the body. As trans people more often enter the stage of gender theories, the constituent element of sex demands consideration. For if there are no neutral bodies, as Moira Gatens and Gayle Rubin posit, then the struggle to have trans identities validated ( or locating the language to define ourse l~ es and our experiences) 21 becomes work. Rather than allowing this important discussion concerning sex to sink into

assumed meaning ( an assumption that so much gender theory is based upon), sex as a

signifier of being requires more thought.

Fleshy, material sexes require of gender theory recognition, naming, and

acknowledgment. I often feel the presence of trans people at the edges and margins of

feminist theory. When I read, I hear their whispers within the gaps and fissures of the

text. Gloria Anzaldua recognizes this absence as an "absolute despot duality that says we

are able to be only one or the other," either male or female (Borderlands 141 ). My sense

is that gender transgressions are becoming more widely acknowledged within progressive

circles, but these identities are also tightly restricted into the pre-ordained categories of

man and woman, which erase the rich complexity behind them. Here, the binary rhetoric ·

of "wrong body" fits tightly, inviting a trans discourse that inevitably extrapolates the

biological variations of one group of people on to all forms of gender transgressive

behavior. Sex, if perceived as merely "man" and "woman," re-produces sexual difference

even if those boundaries are transgressed through gender. Even the diverse potential of

gender cannot actualize if these gender variations always inevitably point back to a

sexual binary. The rich diversity among trans people needs recognition if feminist theory

is to endure as a rich, inclusive ideology. Human nature does not have to remain

biologically limited or fixed. Perhaps there is a need to talk about bodies body parts, and

body pieces in a very direct, articulate, and precise manner--not as fixed bodily apparatuses but as transient processes of life.

22 Perceptions of sex do not exist in a theoretical vacuum. Each semester, for

example, I ask the students in a women's studies course that I teach two seemingly

common-sense questions: "What is a man?" and "What is a woman?" Immediately, they

give answers that seem very much in sync with greater societal perceptions of the

meaning of sex. With giggles and snickers, students tell me that women have vaginas,

wombs, breasts, soft skin, and estrogen. Men have penises, facial hair~and are unable to

physically birth babies. Some students will even attach social attributes such as violence,

strength, and aggression to "males," perhaps confusing masculinity or gender norms with

sex. However, when countered with nuanced individual experience, the question of what

a "man" or a "woman" actually is becomes much harder to answer. For instance, a woman who has had a double mastectomy because of breast cancer is still a woman, albeit one without breasts. Eunuch monks are still men, although they have no penises.

Post--menopausal women who have had hysterectomies are still women; men produce estrogen; women produce testosterone; and Thomas Beatie, the now-famous transexual man, will soon give birth to his second child. Stumped by these and other experience­ based exceptions, students who were previously so certain of their understandings of

''male" and "female" begin to see sex as that which is largely unknowable across indiv1duation. It is imperative that the language of the body be re-articulated in order to escape the trap of assumed significance. These "common-sense ' meanings of man and woman unknowingly silence "alternative" trans identities such as queer, intersex, no-hos

(no-hormones transexuals), andros (androgynous gender), and genderqueer. Without

23 agitating the very significance of sex, some theory may inadvertently exclude "non­

normative" identity experiences from its pages.

Rhetoric that ignores trans people's lives also ignores trans people's bodily

experiences, inadvertently rendering the body unknowable across individuation. We

might ask: how is it then, that a body comes to be marked by the category of sex? Jay

Prosser attempts to identify this problem in Second Skins: The Body Narratives of

Transsexuality. He writes, "relating how first the body comes to be marked wrongly, then

how it comes to be marked correctly, transsexual narratives take up post structuralism's

untellable story .... narratives that immerse us in the in the bodily matter of sexual

difference, transsexual autobiographies challenge theory's cynicism over identity' s

embodiment" (67). In other words, some lived realities of individual sex embodiment

(marking the body via sex) are greatly influenced, reproduced, and enforced not by behavior but by the body. Some theorists may overlook the point that, for trans people who physically alter bodies, it is not necessarily gender that is changed via a sex change.

It is hard to say that only gender is accounted for when hormone therapy is begun or the surgical knife alters bodily contours, (re )shapes anatomies, or reconfigures, replaces, or removes pieces of body matter. Hormones change the body. Surgeries change the body.

Sex is changed, manipulated, malleable, and transitory. The continual privileging of gender examination over sex often renders ·the body itself unkno able. If sex disappears as it so often does in current gender theory, how is it that one can concei e of transexual at all? What real material is left for transexuals to transgress? E en the biological deterministic irreducibility of sex is farcical since wholes of bodies can have multi pl 24 parts and wholes of parts can have even smaller pieces. Biology is not as irreducible as

once thought. 12 Perhaps this lack of materiality is one of the reasons for the rise of the

term transgender.

Even the potentially liberating terminology of transgender can actually erase

diverse identities because it fails to acknowledge sex, potentially producing a disjoint

between trans people's personal identities and theoretical sex/gender institutions. David

Valentine's Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of Category is one of the few scholarly works available that supports the assertion that untroubled, assumed meanings of sex and gender dismiss and ignore the diversity of transgressive gender identities.

Valentine examines the category "transgender" as a social identity, a newly institutionalized term that may or may not correspond with the personal meanings of transgender for those who actually hold that identity. He writes:

The meanings attached to the category transgender ... reproduce a set of

hierarchical relationships along the lines of embodiment, race, cla~s, and

age .... But words, language, and categories do more than describe the

world--they create it too. While every word we speak is a category, some

come to have more power to explain who we are, ... [C]rucially the limits

of "trans gender" are not simply the failure of categories to account for a

complex world. Rather, the re-iteration of these categories in a wide range

12 For more on the dangers of bracketing or negating materiality and biolog_ical bodies see the introduction to Material Feminisms by Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman . 25 of day-to-day and institutionai contexts is productive of that failure. (233 ,

his italics)

Even though the term transgender has fit successfully into a paradigm in which gender

and sex are distinct, meanings attached to the category transgender are far more complex than this paradigm often allows. Valentine writes:

I also use other terms, at times, to avoid using "transgender," such as

"gender variance" or "crossgender," or to account for subjectivities that do

not easily fit into the homosexual/transgender distinction such as

gender/sexual variance. However, these constructions do not solve the

problem of naming, nor are they any more devoid of historical and cultural

meanings than "trans gender." ... The assertion of the sexed body at the

heart of such formations, and the implication of a definite movement

across a stable gender/sex border, erases the specificity of certain

identities and the complexity of such transitions. (27)

In other words, attentiveness to language is necessary in order to bridge the gap between theoretical models of transgender and trans gender identities themselves. Theoretical models can only take us so far. This separation of terminology describing trans people and the lived realities of trans people is extremely harmful. Ignoring transitional complexity assumes that sex changes or gender movements are simply a brief 'jump" from one side of a binary to the other and further denies the existence of in-between states.

26 Valentine's research, although centered primarily on distinctions and definitions

of trans gender and sexuality, points to a similar re-codification of sexual binaries via an

omission of more complex sex spaces than "man" and "woman." A significant obstacle

for re-thinking sex is the fact that sex may mean different things to different people.

Furthermore, the category of sex, while perceived differently by individuals, can also

change meaning when intersected with varying social locations such as ability, race, and

class as Valentine suggests (233). It is impossible to account for the complex nature of

experience and the ways that identities may intersect and influence one another. This

failure may seem paradoxical considering that any gender variance could potentially fall under the transgender umbrella. It is beneficial to keep in mind, however, that including so many variant identities under one single "umbrella" may have its consequences.

Riki Wilchins addresses these difficulties in Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender: "a trans gender rights movement, unable to interrogate the fact of its own existence will merely end up cementing the idea of a binary sex which I am presumed to somehow transgress or merely traverse" (67). As long as sex continues to exist within a social paradigm only permitting it two spaces, gender ariances will inevitably reflect these binary spaces, especially when gender is considered an extension of sex. Wilchins' warning cycles back to the argument that, ithout new theoretical, linguistic, and material spaces within sex as well as within gender any gender transgression ultimately reproduces a sexual binary. The binary of man ' and " oman" is, therefore reflected within the potential di ersity of transgender. The compleJ ity of identity involved within tran gender is so vast that we must ask hat complexities are 27 glossed over or ignored altogether. Is there an equal tendency to homogenize identities

under this umbrella? Although transgender serves as an all-inclusive go-to for any gender

variance, grouping MTFs (male-to-female transexuals) with heterosexual transvestites,

drag queens, genderqueers, intersexes, and bois may inadvertently privilege some issues

over others.

It's important to examine the manner in which transgender has become a term of choice over transexual and both the consequences and benefits of this transition.

Transgender is certainly a beneficial, inclusive, and progressive term. It resists the tendency to medicalize and politicize trans people via societal surveillance mechanisms.

The fact that so many diverse identities can come together underneath one label is nothing short of fascinating. I do not want to ignore the progression and freedom this term has allowed; however, even though the term transgender has entered the lexicon, it has not yet been able to fully encompass broader nuances of gender variance. The obvious difference between the two terms is the substitution of "sex" for "gender": transexual has become transgender. 13 This transition falls neatly in line with the trends in feminist thought, substituting, replacing or explaining sex for gender. Because gender has been thoroughly examined, ·the nuances available within the term allow transgender to have such a diverse umbrella. I would argue that the terms gender and transgender are not inherently problematic. Rather, over-privileging gender theorizing while as urning

(but not exploring) the significance of sex brings these problems. As long as ex remains

13 For a complete history on transexuality, see Joanne Meyorwitz s How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.

28 in that unknowing, unacknowledged, and under-represented void of knowledge, the

sexual binary will always be reproduced unless there are as many new ways of theorizing

sex as there are gender.

Very real consequences on trans existences occur when sex is not fully actualized within theory. For trans people, legal, medical, psychological and social sanctions still exist in our societal institutions based on an outdated and traditional notion of sex. For example, the legal scholar, Paisley Currah, writes of the medical, legal, and psychological transparency and surveillance trans people still face, highlighting the myriad of mechanisms that police trans bodies:

State projects of sex categorization ... continue to operate in the register

of geography. Those petitioning to change sex classifications on state­

issued identity documents must submit detailed descriptions of the lay of

their body's land. That evidence includes descriptions of the pre ence or

absence of penises, vaginas, as well breasts and other secondary sex

characteristics - hair, musculature patterns, fat distribution. These maps

take the form of surgical records affidavits from ph sicians describing

treatment, reports of physical examinations. B itself, a petitioner's

narrative of gender transition is not sufficient- it is the particularities of the

body's physical structures and landscapes that matter. (2)

Currah's points exemplify the state's control and operation on tran bodies in what

Michel Foucault calls "bio-politics" ( "The Birth of Biopolitics" 73). Thi state

29 supervision of the body operates as a series of regulatory and disciplining controls,

creating a medical and legal transparency of trans bodies. This surveillance and control is

not exercised on those who wish to surgically alter their bodies within societal norms-­

such as breast augmentations (for non-trans women), face-lifts, gynecomastia treatment

(for non-trans men), and rhinoplasty. Significantly, a cisgender (non-trans) woman can

decide to have a breast augmentation and do so whenever she chooses but a trans woman

must have years of psychotherapy to "ensure" the very same decision. This surveillance

stems from a fear of the unknown, reproducing norms and deviations that distinguish individuals inadequate for state goals. 14

It is easy to theorize about the unacknowledged domain of sex while remaining unaware of the societal structures affecting trans lives. These effects are especially evident within the systems of privilege and inequality that weave our social institutions.

We still exist in an environment that largely defines people by their sex, and this · environment is extremely hostile to trans people. There are countless ways that the social body still polices trans people based on a binary sex perception. Like the students in my class, many of our social institutions continue to envelop the 'either/or' thinking of patriarchal ideology and, therefore, reinforce traditional binary perceptions of what sex means. Ideas about gender have trickled out of academia and helped to transform the landscape of gender. New ideas about sex must do the same thing. Our social order continues to require that each of us possess a single sex, exemplified in our daily

14 See Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish: Th e Birth of the Prison and Madne sand Ctvilizatwn: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. 30 activities such as checking one of two boxes: "male" or "female." The words "male,"

"female" and "sex" in everyday understanding do not incorporate transexuals. Nowhere is this requirement more evident than in three seemingly umelated arenas: the law, medicine, and public restrooms.

Despite feminist theory's radical paradigmatic shifts in gender knowledge, legal perceptions of sex still rest on outdated notions of biological determinism. These perceptions create a stifling limitation of personal, subjective identity's actualization in legal matters. For example, courts are called upon to determine which physical and social differences between the sexes matter legally. As legal scholar Nancy Levitt explains,

"Laws and legal decisions send symbolic messages about what it means to be male and female, and those messages play a central part in shaping gender. ... [E]mbedded in the courts' [constitutional] decisions are the notions that biological differences between the

[two] sexes exist and that they matter" (64). In After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex and

Gender, Georgia Warnke notes that identities are subjective, personal, and interpretive.

She cites well-known legal proceedings that have determined sex based on traditional notions of biology despite advances in gender theory:

[T]he Texas Supreme Court ruled that Christie Littleton was not really a

woman and the Kansas Supreme Court had the same iew about J' oel

Ball. The International Olympic Committee Decided Maria Patino was a

man while the United States Tennis Association Decided that Renee

Richards was a woman. What are these decisions? How do we determine

whether we or others are or are not reall men and women? ( 1) 31 These legal cases poignantly illustrate the general disjunction between fleshed

experiences of trans realities and societal institutions, public perceptions, and general

meanings of sex.

The Christie Littleton case is especially cogent. Littleton v Prange was a court case setting the legal precedent for determining one's sex based on genetics, shifting sex from the visible domain of anatomy to the microscopic, scientific survey. Littleton was a trans woman who enacted a wrongful death suit against her deceased husband's physician in Texas. The defense argued that the marriage between Littleton and her late husband was invalid because Littleton was a transexual woman: because she was genetic.ally male, and as such could not legally marry another male, Littleton did not have a legal standing to sue as a widow in the first place. The Court agreed, ruling Littleton's seven-year marriage invalid (Burda 162). Justice Karen Angelini, one of the concurring opinions in the case, admitted:

Because we lack statutory guidance at this time, we must instead be

· guided by biological factors such as chromosomes, gonads, and genitalia

at birth .... I note, however, that real difficulties will occur if these three

criteria [ chromosomal, gonadal and genital tests] are not congruent. We

·must recognize the fact that, even when biological factors are considered,

there are those individuals whose sex may be ambiguous. ( Concurring

Opinion," par. 2)

Even though Justice Karen Angelini concurred with the major legal opinion of the court that statutory guidelines for sex do not exist, she.and her colleagues refused to accept 32 Littleton as a psychological and physical woman because her chromosomes do not

scientifically coincide with woman. Psychology, surgery, medical diagnoses and lived

experience could not change sex. From this point onward, the U.S. courts have continued

to construct a genetic understanding of sex that perpetuates legal violence and hostility

toward trans people. It is precisely in the legal domain that trans identities can be personally actualized through gender marker changes, name changes, and marriage recognition. Additionally, because of the prevailing social perceptions of binary and biological sex, the law for the most part ignores intersex, genderqueer, and bi-gender people.

The medical institution, which closely reflects the legal institution, is another space in which institutional regulation and surveillance of trans people is a constant point of frustration. Discussions concerning medical intervention in trans lives are tricky and some both/and thinking is required here. The medical community both serves as a method of self-actualization, bodily transformation, and gender confirmation and as a dangerous apparatus for trans surveillance and transparency. Transexuality is still vjewed as a psychological disorder and is subject to scientific constraints. In Sex Change :

Transgender Politics, Patrick Califia outlines this medical trans paradox : 'Because so many of us require medicai assistance to transition, and because even those of us who do not wish to change our bodies still need respectful, professional treatment from healthcare p~ofessionals and those in the mental health field, a plethora of issues remain to be addressed on those fronts" (xxi).

33 This "gender dysmorphja," a medical diagnosis, still rests on the dominant

ideology that there are only two sexes. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical

Manual ofMental Disorders ih Edition clearly states that four "symptoms" must be met

in order to "qualify" for this medical diagnosis in children:

[The individual must exhibit] a repeatedly stated desire to be, or insistence

that he or she is, the opposite sex, [exhibit] a preference for cross-dressing,

a strong and lasting preference to play make-believe and role-playing

games as a member of the opposite sex or persistent fantasies that he or

she is the opposite sex, a strong desire to participate in the stereotypical

games of the opposite sex, and a strong preference for friends and

playmates of the opposite sex. (581 , my· italics)

When describing sex, the term opposite occurs in every "symptom' of gender identity

disorder, further instituting transexuality as a binary transgression. Furthermore, the

association of "stereotypical" game-playing and friends of the "opposite" sex as criteria

for diagnosis is especially troubling. A non-binary self-selected identity is clearly

impossible under circumstances that require binary identification with one sex or the

other as well as stereotypical, hegemonic assumptions about femininity and masculinity.

A medically (dis)ordered classification is required before obtaining any surgery,

hormones, legal name changes, or other transitional needs. This medical policing of trans

bodies under stereotypical and traditional notions of man' and ' oman' alanningly erases and marginalizes trans identities that exist outside of the accept d exual binary.

34 In a seemingly unrelated arena to the legal and medical domains, the public restroom is a site where trans people have been harassed, fired, or attacked due to common fears of societal transgression in such a rigid, policed, and surveyed binary domain. Indeed, nowhere in our public space is the binary nature of sex more prevalent than on the doors of public toilets in the U.S. Judith Halberstam takes note of the pervasiveness of the sexual binary and its relation to public restrooms in Female

Masculinity. Using Lacan's notion of "urinary segregation," Halberstam writes: "the system of urinary segregation creates the very functionality of the categories of 'man' and ' woman' (25). These social binaries still exist because sex has yet to be re-thought in the same manner as gender. There may be the possibility of many genders as a result of feminist theorizing on the subject, but because sex has not been assigned a significant meaning ( or because sex still means so many different things to different people), our social and cultural public settings still contain the sex binary of "man" and "woman."

Every time we use a public restroom, we reproduce the very real expectations of actual, material difference between men and women. In other words, we inadvertently create a situation where gender is, literally, embodied in only two possible ways. o matter the myriad of theory regarding gender as diverse, fluid, d namic and socially contrived, public restrooms (because they are a product of a sex binary and culture that still relies on this binary) force us again and again to dichotomize our bodies. Ho we know, understand, and think with our body is split e ery time an person tran or not, walks into a public restroom. Again, even though the nature of gend r as a social phenomenon has been created and used for progress the tendenc to regard sex a al ays 35 biological re-produces the binary of s_ex simply because our current social system still

heavily relies on traditional notions of sex. This tendency is partiall_y caused by a serious

lack in critically analyzing the construct of sex in and of itself.

Legal, medical, and public spaces represent societal institutions that rigidly define

sex in a manner that is not always consistent with actual trans lives. Theory about gender

as an extension of sex has created challenges to hegemonic ideals about men and women.

However, when theories unwittingly use sex as a foundation for gender, sex must take on some form of meaning. Otherwise, the disjointed nature of the physical reality and embodiment of trans people will continue in a tangential manner to these theoretical models. The view seems to prevail in the feminist community that sex is a marginal subject. The works of Gatens, Rubin, Lorber, and Butler all attest to the tendency to marginalize sex in favor of gender. Even in Bodies That Matter, when Butler attempts to materialize the body, she only does so in terms of discursive practices concerning the body, leaving sex in that void of the unknowable. This trend reproduces the binary nature of sex. It is a critical time to re-visit the concept of sexed bodies in ne and meaningful ways that account for the diversity and experience of sexual spaces existing outside of hegemonic binary identification. In the words of Gayle Rubin near! three decades ago :

"The time has come to think about sex" ( Thinking Sex 1). Ob iousl that time ha come agam.

36 CHAPTER3

The Island of the World: Visions for (Re)thinking Sex

If [the fundamental arrangements of knowledge] were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility--without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises--were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man [sic] would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea. ---Michel Foucault

Over a century ago, Charles Darwin maintained that survival depends on sexual

variability and that diversity is essential to the island of the world (69, 379). Darwin's assertions are even more poignant today than in the nineteenth century because the divisions between nature, culture, language, and bodies still exist in some spheres. I want specifically to unpack the disjuncture between general, societal perceptions of sex and feminist theory regarding sex. Examining sex as a significant element of both culture and biology can help bridge the theoretical divide between body and language. As I have emphasized throughout this discussion, sex must be re-visited as a viable and deserving node of analysis. Ignoring the significance of sex produces bodies that need to be overcome, transcended, and controlled. We critically need diverse, robu t identities outside of the sex binary of "man ' and woman.' As I explained in the pre ious chapter, the societal, medical, legal, and psychological tendencies to assume that trans people must fit into male or female creates condition that ha e r al effect for gender- ariant people of all sorts. In this chapter, I wish to forge methodolog that allo s a (re)thinking 37 of sex that recognizes identity categories outside male/female dichotomies. Additionally,

this chapter will focus on subversive perceptions of sex that resist the reproduction of

limiting binaries.

Sex has not been previously credited with much theoretical versatility, but

paradigmatic knowledge shifts relating to the body tell another story. It is critical that we

archeologize sex in various histories as it progresses through the political and social

contexts allowing its very existence. If our current conception of sex is historical and

situated within a specific paradigm, then it easily follows that sex is not static. For

example, Thomas Laqueur examines sex in much the same way as Judith Butler famously troubled gender. In Making Sex: Bodies and Gender/ram the Greeks to Freud, Laqueur conducts an archaeology of sex as a social conception and possible construction. He demonstrates how, prior to the mid-eighteenth century, Western men and women in were simple v;rsions of a single sex. Such a one-sex model meant that the differences between men and women were neither clear nor important in early medical texts. Consequently, the social body perceived both men and women as parts (if unequal parts) of a larger order. Given such a historical record, Laqueur rightly concludes that sex itself (rather than only gender) is socially determin d, describing the one-sex paradigm as a product of historical perception:

In pre-enlightenment texts, sex and the bod must be understood as the

epiphenomenon, while gender, hich we ould take to be a cultural

category, was primary or "real .. .. At the er., least hat e call sex

and gender were in the "one- ex mod l " explicit} bound up in a ci rcle of 38 meanings from which escape to a supposed biological substrate ... was

impossible. In the world of one .. sex, it was precisely when talk seemed to

be most directly about biology of two sexes that it was most embedded in

the politics of gender, of culture .... Sex before the seventeenth century,

in other words, was still a sociological and not an ontologicaJ categoty. (8)

As Laqueur makes clear, definitions of sex can be historically and socially

determined. It is possible, therefore, to adopt a "both/and" perspective and view sex as a

social construction as well as a biological fact, which gives credence to its dynamic nature. If sex has been determined differently within various historical paradigms and situations, then it is possible that sex is as dynamic as gender. Sex does not have to be perceived as difference. Rather, new spaces must be explored that conceive of sex apart from the post-structuralist ideology that divides nature and culture, body and language.

Laqueur' s archeology renders that forgotten historical moment when males and females were not seen as different in kind visible once again. Since that great paradigm shift of sexual difference,· the biological, natural, opposition of "man" and "woman~ ha helped foster the social and political consequences that followed. Why the exed body should have become fixed in an eighteenth-century paradigm while the gendered self progressed along with history and culture into a rich, dynamic nuanced, manifestation is a myster

It is entirely understandable why femini t theorists would move avi ay from the natural and biological under the consideration that, omen and men were oppositional from the eighteenth century onward. Ho e er I b lie e that feminist theory is taking a turn

39 toward the material once again in order to account for the void left by the marginalization

of the body.

It is worth noting that a return to the subject of material sex does not necessarily

indicate a dismissal of language and discourse. It is entirely possible to acknowledge

material constructs along with language in order to produce a new methodology for

theorizing sex. 15 For example, Michel Foucault's philosophical models provide a

methodology with which to perceive sex as both construct and material. He cautions

theorists who try to situate sex exclusively as construction: "the notion of ' sex' made it

possible to group together, in an artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological

functions, conducts, sensations, and pleasures, and enabled one to make use of this

fictitious unity as a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning, a secret to be discovered

everywhere: sex was thus able to function as a unique signifier and as a univer al

signified" (History ofSexuality 154). Echoing Laqueur's archaeology, Foucault cautions

against merely constructing sex as an illusion. Rather than viewing sex as primary

material upon which discourse acts, it ·can function as a "unified effect of a certain

grouping of features" which influences, produces and fosters new discourses itself. Via

this avenue of approach, if sex is just as constructed as gender, this construction does not

make sex less real or less about the body. In other words we don t just ' ha e' bodies.

Our bodies (or our perceptions of our bodies) are shaped by a ailable kno ledge but this

15 Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman empha ize this point in their introduction to Material Femini m : " post-moderns have turned to the discursive pole a thee elusive ource of the constitution of nature, society, and reality. Far from deconstructing the dichotomies of language/reality or culture/nature the · have rejected one side and embraced the other' (2-3). 40 knowledge is also influenced by bodies. If new, transgressive, and resistant anatomies

become visible, then those bodies may have an effect on shaping new discourses about

them.

A re:..thinking of sex requires a both/and approach to new methodology.

Intersecting seemingly variant components such as nature, spirit, performativity,

language, and the material can yield a richer, more diverse context for sex conceptions. In

"Post-Humanist Performativity," Karen Barad notes a unique blend of performativity,

discursivity, and material ideologies: "Discursive practices and material phenomena do not stand in a relationship of extemality to one another; rather, the material and the discursive are mutually implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity. But neither are they reducible to one another. The relationship between the discursive and the material is one of mutual entailment" (140). Barad coined the term, intra-activity, in order to offer a

(re )conception of interaction. Unlike some forms of interaction, intra-action does not imply a privileging of any one element over another. Additionally, intra-action counters the claim that there are several discrete actions among entities as well as a prior existence of any one element. As she explains, "It is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the 'components' of phenomena become determinant and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful" (133). Building on Barad s theory, I want to suggest that sex, as an embodied component ' of the sex/gender, body/language dyad, can be perceived as an intra-action between nature and culture. Sex can be both a natural fact and a performance. A both/and ideolog indicating nature and nurture, culture and biology mind and body can blend into ne wa., s of understanding 41 the fluid dimensions of sex as well as gender. The body, as a material category, is as

transitory and changing at the same time its biological nature is acknowledged if intra­

active, both/and methodology is applied.

Applied to the body itself, Barad's theory of intra-action grants the ability to

identify the body as a continuously dynamic entity. Our physical, human bodies have the

ability to change, morph, and adapt to environmental and psychological stimuli. For trans

people, this assertion is important because our physical bodies change when we

transition. Our sex changes when we transition. Hormones alter the physical body.

Surgeries alter the physical body. These bodies are both a part of the material world and

interact ( or intra-act) with the physical world by influencing, manipulating, and

participating in it. Sociologist Myra J. Hird notes the biological variations of sex found

in nature: "the vast majority of cells in the human body are intersex; most of the organisms in four out of the five kingdoms do not require sex for reproduction, and, marvelously, the schizophyllum has more than 28,000 sexes" ( qtd. in Alaimo 241 ).

Gender alone cannot account for the changing of sexed bodies for trans people.

The material, fleshy transformation is not always necessarily obtainable through mere gender transgressions. This notion is especially e ident when we consider that ome individuals such as bois, butches, kings/queens and intersex are sometimes considered transgender without having undergone any bodil transformation at all. Sex is the "stuff of matter." Re-thinking and re-imagining the images of sex within a notion of intra­ activity can allow for acknowledgements of arious identitie that are not entrenched within an essential 'man/woman" binar . Perhap it is pre isel ithin the ph sical bod , 42 the material body, in sex that new spaces can be accessed in much the same manner as

gender theory has allowed. We can push the category of sex beyond the body and into

intersecting.realms of culture, history, nature, and spirit.

These new ways of perceiving the body may provide additional ways to speak

about the body and sex without robotically always and necessarily severing the -ties

between nature and culture, human and non-human, material and discursive. Even if

discourse is "not what is said [but] it is that which constrains and enables what can be

said" ( 13 7) as Barad would posit, then body discourse can still have limitations when

refusing to intra-act with its subject. In the introduction to Second Skins, for example, Jay

Prosser writes of the need for fleshy body language for trans people:

The importance of making transitions in our conceptual paradigms for

thinking bodies becomes particularly clear when we examine how

transsexuals have been represented in cultural theory thus far. Since the

body is perceived as a discursive effect ... the transsexual is read as either

a Iiteralization of discourse--in paiiicular the discourNe of gender and

sexuality--or its deliteralization. (14)

Indeed, what makes it possible to name shifting bodily· contours as new flesh is the

human sense of the body as not necessarily "natural" but born out of a complex set of

relations, comparisons, re-alignments divisions, experiences, and interactions specific to

each individual. My point here is not that the body has been entirel ignored by theorists like Foucault, Butler, and others; howe er, I believe that the di cussion on the bod does ignore material flesh, parts, pieces, arid anatomies. As stated before surgeries change 43 body contours. Hormones change the body. Decolonizing trans bodies from the medical

stranglehold requires questioning and examining sex from material, bodily perspectives.

Prosser again re-visits the embodiment of flesh-body for trans people when he writes:

"What makes it possible for a female-to-male transsexual to name the somatic material

(skin, tissue, and nerves) that were transplanted from his forearm or abdomen to his groin

'my penis' or for a male to female transsexual to name the inverted remains of her penis

'my vagina' is a re-figuring of the sexed body that takes place along corporeal, psychic,

and symbolic axes" (67). In order for new language about the sexed body to materialize,

"body language" must occur along many axes simultaneously, thus accounting for the

various mechanisms through which the sexed body itself materializes. These new

methods of speaking will inevitably intra-act with culture and nature, human and non­

human, psychological and symbolic because these intersections are the very manner in

which our sexed bodies come into being.

Because definitions have an intrinsic power as limiting agents, it is neither

beneficial nor radical to attempt to create a definition for sex. However, understanding

sex as having both natural and cultural qualities can contribute to a broader, more

inclusive acknowledgement of it. Turning to nature for richer considerations of sex may have major benefits. For example, Joan Roughgarden examines the intersection between biology and culture in Evolution 's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in ature and People. Roughgarden points to the limitless intersex accounts found in nature, positioning intersexuality as more common and complex than mere separate sexes in separate bodies. Furthermore, she suggests that the ability for many organisms ( especially 44 fish) to change sex is not as bizarre a phenomenon as once thought. She writes: "Aspects

of this system appear again and again among vertebrates, especially the themes of male

control of females and their eggs, multiple male genders, hostility among some of the

male genders, flexible sexual identity, and social organization that changes with

ecological context. ... We're only just realizing the concepts of gender and sexuality we

grew up with are seriously flawed (32). Blending the natural realms with the social

produces new questions reflecting the connection between social ideologies and biology.

Could a fish that changes sex help inform us about our concepts of "man" and "woman?"

Perhaps it is time that we begin to marvel not over the fact that so many instances of transexuality exist in nature, but rather why transexuality is still perceived as a disorder in the human realm.

It is not necessarily a new definition of sex that is warranted, but rather c:1.n expansion of the theoretical borders of sex. We might ask: what is the real, material nature behind the diversity found within sex and gender? Does diversity within the realm of sex require special treatment? How can we explode traditional notions of sex in order to include a wide array of identity expressions within it? Discursive-only focuses and trends concerning performativities have left mainstream discussions about sex (and especially transexuals) deeply entrenched with concerns of passing and authenticity. For example, a mainstream dictionary entry explaining transexuality reads as follows:

The male-to-female operation is more common because the genital

reconstruction is more satisfactory. The male tran sexual's penis and testes

are removed and an artificial agina created· breasb are created ith 45 implants or female sex hormones. Female transsexuals may undergo

mastectomy and hormone treatments to produce male secondary sexual

characteristics, but attempts to create an artificial penis have not been

satisfactory.

Note the terminology of "artificial" when referring to transex surgeries. The

"satisfactory" nature of genital reconstruction is obviously deeply concerned \Vith

medico-scientific ideas of authenticity, completely disregarding the individual and

cultural aspects of sex transitions. An expansion of the theoretical borders concerning sex

would have this encyclopedic entry written very differently. Blending (in an intra-active

manner) the scientific, biological, and social realms can work toward the de-colonization of trans bodies from narrow and limiting borders.

Culturally-grounded approaches are necessary for the self-identification and diversity within the trans community as well as for building new methodologies concerning sex as a signifier of being. Western epistemological frameworks have long set a historical invisibility for spaces beyond the male/female dichotomy. Third Sex, Third

Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History contains a collection of essays that trace cultural variations in perceptions of sex offering ways to think beyond this dichotomy. ative American Berdache the Indian Hijras caste hermaphrodites in

Melanesia, third genders in Indonesia and the Balkans and transexuals in the United

States are all comparatively analyzed as conceptual exemplars of third, fourth and even

46 fifth spaces of sexual embodiments. 16 The editor, Gilbert Herdt, provides a model: "first,

scholars must seek to understand the historical and cultural context in which 'third'

categories exist; second, rather than focusing solely on labor divisions and ceremonial

and kinship institutions, the erotic experiences of the subjects must be recognized; third,

scholars must consider the relationship of cultural process and the historical continuance

of third sex and gender categories" (18). Medical and psychological models that dismiss

additional spaces because of their reliance on dominant Western conceptions of sex will

continue to perceive any element residing outside a hegemonic sex/gender system as

dysmorphic and disordered.

New models of sex that resist binary reproduction must also break out of

dominant, hegemonic perceptions of the body relying on epistemologies of whiteness. 17

If sex is understood as biological and cultural, then it is beneficial to consider how white

epistemological frameworks have contributed to our biological and cultural approaches to

sex. As more trans identities become recognized and enter the social stage there is a

critical necessity to de-colonize trans identities from dominant, Western spaces. The

vocabulary available in the psychological community is deeply based upon white

16 There has been much research on sex spaces beyond the Western sex binary. It is important to employ caution when culturally specific examples are used to note points about Western se gender systems. "Leaming" from "other" cultures raises concerns about ot-hering and appropriation. Additionally, the anthropological evidence gathered about these cultures is often, itself, a product of Western epistemological appropriation. It is not my intention here to reduce any culture's ideologies to a battering ram for sex theorizing. Rather, I only wish to point out variations in se conceptions beyond the limiting scope of Western thought with respect and reverence.

17 Epistemologies of whiteness can be characterized as fragmented and fragmenting. White epi temologies produce knowledge that sees the world as divided, non-relational, dualistic and partitioned. The e methods create and construct the "Other" as abstract exotic and dangerou . It's important to note that these epistemologies can be enacted by anyone. For more on white epistemologies see "White Socio- patial Epistemology," by Dwyer and Jones. 47 epistemologies and, therefore, must resist white epistemological frameworks in order to expand, transform, and envelope the diverse identities of trans people. Additionally, the sciences have long been criticized for enveloping a dominant and hegemonic view of nature as well as culture. Charles W. Mills writes about this paradigm·of white, . hegemonic epistemologies in "White Ignorance":

Classically individualist, indeed sometimes-self-paradoxically-to the verge

of solipsism, blithely indifferent to the possible cognitive consequences of

class, racial, or gender situatedness ( or, perhaps more accurately, taking a

white, propertied male standpoint as a given), modern mainstream Anglo­

American epistemology was, for hundreds of years, from its Cartesian

origins, profoundly inimical terrain for the development of any concept of

structural, group based, miscognition. (13)

Indeed, pre~isely because the medical and psychological fields have been so dominated by epistemologies that negate relationality, interconnectedness, and mind-body connections, the perceptions of sex from these fields will inevitably echo these epistemologies: Even though the trans community has been developing new terminology to describe the variance and diversity within our identities, traditional Western ideologies stilI dominate the medical and psychological literature intended to pro ide our care. The implementation of medical treatment for trans people and the issue of G ID are perhaps the most salient political issues for trans people today. These issues determine both how trans people define themselves and how the~ are defined by others in society. The inclusion of culture, ethnicity, race, and multicultural epistemologies is needed to mo e 48 the understanding sex and gender beyond the fictions created by Western narratives of the medical body.

Rather that continuing to re-produce and re-affirm dominant models of knowledge and disorders, new perceptions of sex as a category must resist these models by self­ determining the very nature of sex. Any examination of sex must take into account the diverse nature of the experiential context as well as a multicultural perspective that is aware of race, class, and sexuality. New attentions to sex must move beyond dominant or hegemonic ideology in order to move beyond trans "fictions" and exclusive identity boundaries. I believe that people who transgress societal norms understand the contradictions in multiply-located identities and are aware of the linguistic trappings of difference, which influence meanings and subjectivities. Sex can mean different things to different people simply because individual knowledge differs based on experiential contexts.

Turning to the work of writers and activists who insist on cultivating multiple selves can help to build a methodology for (re )thinking sex on the self-determined and individual level. Audre Lorde, for example, continuously demands the recognition of contradictory and shifting identities in much of her work. She is e pecially poignant in

"School Note" when she writes: "for the embattled/there is no place/that cannot be/home/nor is" (217). Kate Bornstein, a trans activist and feminist also demands the right to self-identify in Gender Outlaw: On 1en, Women, and the Re t of Us : ·"I keep trying to integrate my life. I keep trying to make all the pieces into one piece. As a result my identity becomes my body hich becomes m fashion which become m writing 49 style. Then I perform what I've written in order to integrate my life, and that becomes my

identity after a fashion" (1 ). The poet/activist Minnie Bruce Pratt explores the

inconsistencies of sex in S/he: "When you live between opposites, you cannot escape the

s/he who will follow you, who must either be wrestled with or embraced" (13). Listening

to the voices of those who unapologetically demand the acknowledgement of "in­

betweeness" and multi-spaces can expose the inconsistencies, fluidity, and self­

determining nature of sex as well as contribute to re-discovering the diverse identities

that exist outside the sexual binary. Multi-vocal and multi-situated selves are a critical

component of understanding sex beyond the categories of "man" and "woman." It is not

doctors, lawyers, judges, psychologists, or institutions who should retain the power to

determine the meanings and machinations of individually-sexed bodies. Rather, re­

workings of sex meanings can empower the individual to self-determine sex and the

embodiment of that sex in all forms and formulations.

New methods of theorizing sex and the body are a principle concern in forging

alliances and recognizing those trans identities that exist outside the exual binary. The

inclusivity of all trans identities is paramount for any feminist accounting of sex and gender. Blending multi-disciplinary and multicultural epistemologie such as poetry, writing; art, nature, spirit performativity, and science in inter(intra1action can de ign deeper, inclusive, permeable, and fluid definitions of sex. Sex, as signifier, must mo e closer to the forefront of contemp rar feminist theorizing just as iL gender counterpart has done in the past. I have faith in feminist cholars to return to the material and natural in conjunction ith the discursi e to produce robu t, clear understandings of identit" . 50 From the medicalization and colonization of trans people to legal, psychological, and personal experiences of trans people, there is a real call for gender theory to produce new knowledges concerning the meaning and significance of sex. Patrick Califia concludes Sex Changes with these words: "If you could change your sex as effortlessly in reality as you can in virtual reality, wouldn't you like to try it at least once? Who would you become" (277)? To this work of mine, I will conclude in much the same fashion as

Califia. What would it be like to live in a world where no one is considered abnormal or disordered? What would our bodies look like and who would we be if the concepts of sex where expanded to include so many different biological as well as cultural and personal interconnections? Let's expand the meanings and significance of the sex category so that it is applicable to every trans identity. In fact, let's expand the very idea of identity so that the mechanisms imprisoning sex crumble like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.

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