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Unqueering Transgender? a Queer Geography of Transnormativity in Two Online Communities

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UNQUEERING TRANSGENDER? A QUEER GEOGRAPHY OF TRANSNORMATIVITY IN TWO ONLINE COMMUNITIES by Fred Joseph LeBlanc A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Gender & Women’s Studies Victoria University of Wellington 2010 ABSTRACT This research implicates gender in the study of sexuality and suggests a genealogy of transgender that consists of both the medicalisation of transsexuality and the articulation of gender performances in gay liberation’s politics of difference. While the transgender subject is often idealised in queer discourses, this research positions the transsexual (one articulation of transgender) as normative: conservative gender politics, the ontological separation of gender and sexuality that echoes assimilationist gay and lesbian politics, an identity based on essentialist biology and psychiatric “wrong body” discourses, and the privileging of passing technologies such as hormone replacement therapies and sex reassignment surgery (themselves justified though the elaboration of wrong body discourses). Further to this, the public rendering of some transgender bodies as nonconformist results in violence and the need to explore alternate spaces of being, namely the internet which has the potential to build community, raise consciousness of gender and transgender oppression, but can also be used to legitimate transnormative (re)productions of the self. The analysis of two online communities of transgender individuals shows the most frequent users tended to be transsexual and privileging conservative gender politics and an essentialist medical etiology of transsexuality. Users were i also typically more knowledgeable in passing biotechnologies than some medical professionals. In one community that are tailored to transgender individuals, subjects felt at ease to discuss a variety of topics and explore the complications of transgender. In the second community, tailored towards feminists in general, transgender issues were addressed in a more confrontational manner, often exposing the transphobic nature of some feminisms. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I wish to thank Nathan and my New Zealand family, as well as my parents and sisters, for experiencing my own narrative along with me (for better or worse). Thank you all for putting up with the opinions. Appreciation always goes to Amanda, Stefanie, Sunday, and Jasmine, who I look forward to seeing and philosophising with when I visit the United States. Much appreciation also goes to the nonhuman children, Otis and Totoro. Thanks to my advisor, Dr Alison Laurie, for the amazing insight, guidance, and fleshing out this project, and to Dr Michelle Lunn for early discussions on what this project might have been. Great appreciation to undergraduate and postgraduate instructors, including Drs Elizabeth Grosz and Louisa Schein. And, of course, thanks to all queer people who make the world interesting. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...………………………………………………….…………...….……i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………...……..……………….……..…..…..iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .…….……………..………………...…………...…...…iv LIST OF IMAGES ……...………………………………………………………….v CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION …………………….……..…….……01 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS .………………………...………………..…………03 GENDER NONCONFORMITY AND THE CULTURAL MAINSTREAM ….…...….…….06 THE DEATH (AND REINCARNATION) OF QUEER? .................................................11 CHAPTER TWO: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ………………..……14 BECOMING TRANSGENDER ….……..…………………….………………...……19 BEING TRANSGENDER ….…………..…………………….……………..………29 FROM PUBLIC TO VIRTUAL SPACE …...……………………..………..………….34 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY ……………….……….……...………39 INTERTEXT: THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN GAY ……….…..…………..……….…44 IN/OUTSIDER AND FOR WHOM THE RESEARCH IS DESIGNED …………….……..49 ORAL HISTORY …..…..……...…………………………..….………..………….51 RESEARCH RESOURCES ...………………………………..……………..……….54 CHAPTER FOUR: MAKING A SPACE ON THE TRANSWEB …....….……56 “WE CAN ALWAYS USE MORE TRANNIES!” …………….……….…..…...…….58 A SPACE FOR CRITICAL QUEER ONTOLOGY? DISCOURSE AS VIOLENCE …......…66 THE TRANSSEXUAL PATIENT ………………………………...…..…..………….73 DON’T BE A HOT MESS ………………………………...…….……..…..……….79 VIOLENCE AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING……………………………...…………83 THINKING TRANSNORMATIVITY ………….….……………………….…………88 CHAPTER FIVE: BORROWED SPACE & TRANSPHOBIC FEMINISM ON FEMINISTING.COM ….............................................................….……92 TRANSPHOBIA AND FEMINISM …………………..……….……….…..…...…….95 TRANSFEMINISM ………………………………………………………….......…98 ENGAGE AND ENRAGE ………..……...………………………...…..…...……100 EDUCATING FEMINISTS? ……………………………...…….……..…..……….106 THE OTHER’S OTHER? ……………….……………………………...…………109 (RE)THINKING TRANSNORMATIVITY ………….……………………….………115 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION ………....…………..…………...……...……122 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………..…………...……………………….….…..……127 iv LIST OF IMAGES IMAGE 1: INTERIOR OF CUBA’S PRESIDIO MODELO PRISON ……………………..27 IMAGE 2: FEMINISTING.COM’S MUDFLAP GIRL LOGO ……………………………96 v 1 AN INTRODUCTION For heterosexuals allowed homosexuals enormous social leeway for their excesses, so long as they agreed not to disturb the general peace of society at large. -Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality (1995) This thesis is a visible, psychical, and academic sign of my own sexuality and degrees of gender play. Not only have I had to come to terms with my sexuality for my own sense of self, I have also had to come to terms with how my masculinity is perceived because of it as well as having my sexuality presumed by my gender performance(s). Queer politics have provided me with an insistence that I can (re)invent my sexuality and gender on my terms. I include gender within my ontology of sexuality because gender nonconformity is often inferred as homosexuality and sexuality variances can have quite colourful and playful performances of gender without typically being termed “transgender,” complicating the very notion of transgender and its relation to the gay and lesbian communities. Transgender is an umbrella term to describe a variety of gender subversions, including, but not limited to, transvestism, transsexuality, drag, androgyny, and even intersexuality. Types of transgender subjectivities and performances are often delineated by their nature: transvestism is typically associated with fetishism, drag with the playful exaggeration of gender roles, and transsexuality with being “in the wrong body” and a desire to live long term as the gender that is not congruent to their sexed body. To complicate matters even more, 1 for example, most transsexuals may choose genital reassignment surgery, whilst others may prefer to keep the genitals with which they were born. I use transgender in its broadest form, to incorporate any form(s) of gender subversion, as I believe the word’s socio-political potential is to act to delimit any categorisation. An online transgender community may help to frame debates and discourses to help challenge cultural assumptions about gender and gender variance, especially as they relate to and intersect with sexualities. As a means of promoting a dialogue with the public, the internet is one of the cheapest and far-reaching ways ideas can reach the public (Grauerholz and Baker-Sperry, 2007). Since there are virtually no controls over what can be published on the internet, it can be a place where marginalised voices and personal narratives can be heard. Once online and available globally, websites in the public domain have the potential to engage or enrage the public. And if feminist and queer projects are intertwined with a sense of social movement activity, they are already public. Transwebs, what I term websites designed by and targeted to transgender people, including informational resources, message boards, social interactions, etc, can be an effective medium to challenge cultural (mis)conceptions about gender, by providing critical and ontological alternatives to gender. Employing poststructuralist perspectives, and in particular the analytical instruments of social constructionism, this research seeks to explore the following questions: 1. How did the category transgender come into meaning and how does it act to name and (re)produce its own subjects? 2 2. Are certain transgender subjectivities and ontologies privileged and does that produce a sort of transnormativity? 3. How might an online resource be constituted by and constitutive of that which is transgender? Further to this, this project will 1. document recurring themes in the communities and analyse the constructive discourses of community members and their dissemination of advice, information, and self-exploration/subjectivity formation; 2. explore the problematics in the diversity of the umbrella term “transgender”; 3. assess the theoretical “queerness” of transgender subjects varying from more normative (and unqueer?) transsexual subjectivities that are arguably framed by medical and “wrong body” discourses, and; 4. assess the ways in which the use of virtual space can have real effects in material space through consciousness-raising and cyberactivism. Structure of the Thesis The remainder of Chapter One will discuss introduce main themes upon which this thesis is based, including gender transgression in the cultural mainstream, from television to the internet, noting the public discomfort caused by gender variance. It also positions gender as both implicated in the genealogy of contemporary homosexuality and rights claims and within the proliferation
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