## 1. Terminology



*Transgender* is often used to refer to people who "do
not conform to prevailing expectations about gender" by
presenting and living genders that were not assigned to them at birth
or by presenting and living genders in ways that may not be readily
intelligible in terms of more traditional conceptions of gender. Used
as an umbrella term, it generally aims to group several different kinds
of people such as transsexuals, drag queens and kings, some butch
lesbians, and (heterosexual) male cross dressers. Earlier the term
*transgenderist* had been used by Virginia Prince, a pioneer in
the cross dresser movement in the US, to stand for a person who lives
in the gender "opposite" the one assigned to them at birth
but who is not a transsexual (Stryker 2008, 123). It seems that Leslie
Feinberg was one of the first to use this as a political, umbrella term
(ibid).




The term currently flags the political stance, especially
in the Anglo United States, of resisting medical pathologization of
trans people. This places it in prima facie opposition to the
older notion of *transsexual* (at least in the more traditional
sense of that word). The term *transgender* is also sometimes
used as an equivalent to *transgenderist,* to refer to folk who
live full-time in the role other than the one assigned to them at birth
but who do not see themselves as transsexual.



*Transsexual* is often used to refer to individuals who use
hormonal and/or surgical technologies to alter their bodies to conform
to their gendered sense of self in ways that may be construed as at
odds with the sex assigned at birth or in ways that may not be readily
intelligible in terms of traditional conceptions of sexed bodies. It
may also be used to indicate people who self-identify and live as the
sex "opposite" to the one assigned to them at birth. The
condition of being a transsexual has been captured by the terms
*transsexualism* and *transsexuality*, the latter of
which will be used in this entry.




Traditionally, the term *transsexual* has been connected to
psychiatric notions such as gender dysphoria and has also been associated
with the metaphor "trapped in the wrong body." The term was
first used in English by David Caldwell (spelled with one *s*). It was then
popularized by Harry Benjamin (spelled with two). *Transsexual*
has now also been redeployed in ways amenable to and possibly
subsumable under the more recent term *transgender* (depending,
in part, upon one's political stance). It may also be
used as a political term indicating a break from the term
*transgender* and as possibly contesting the underlying
political ideology of "the transgender movement."



*FTM* and *MTF* are abbreviations of
*female-to-male* and *male-to-female*. They were
originally connected to transsexual (medical) discourse indicating
individuals who transition to the "opposite" sex. They are
now used in ways that have broken from this medical discourse and may
be used more generally to indicate folk who move away from being
assigned male (or female) at birth to the "other"
direction. They may also be used as primitive (undefined) terms. This
means that they are not treated as abbreviations indicating transition
from one sex to another. Instead, they are used to simply categorize
individuals in a way analogous to the categories *man* and
*woman*.



*Queer* is a political and theoretical term and a reclamation
of the word used as an insult. Politically it was associated with
groups such as Queer Nation and is used as umbrella term to apply to
individuals often associated with the categories lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT). It generally indicates opposition to
identity-based categories and signals a strong antipathy for
"heteronormativity" (roughly: the taken-for-granted social
and sexual arrangements in a heterosexual-centered world-view).
*Queer Theory* roughly applies to theoretical work, typically
informed by Foucault and Derrida, that aims to study and
"deconstruct" heteronormative ideology. It emerged in the
1990s through thinkers such as Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick. The term *genderqueer* draws on the political force
of *queer*. It is used as a term of self-identification by
individuals who do not subscribe to the traditional binary division
between male/female, man/woman, and masculine/feminine. An individual
who self-identifies may claim both sexes or genders, neither, or a
complex blend of them.





Since around 2010, the term *trans\** has been used in place
of *transgender* and *trans* in order to provide for
more possibilities. One of the reasons for this is that many of the
people who self-identify as trans (or as transgender) identify as men
or women and therefore in one way place themselves within traditional
binary categories. As a consequence, those who do not place themselves
within the binary (e.g., genderqueer people) are effectively left out,
despite the original intention behind transgender as an inclusive
umbrella term. Since its introduction, unfortunately the term is also
now frequently used as a prefix that occurs before woman or man (as in
trans\* man and trans\* woman) in well-intentioned efforts at
inclusivity. A problem, however, is that such a use may replicate the
very problem that led to the introduction of trans\* in the first place
by generating the expectation that trans\* people are either trans\* men
or trans\* women and thereby eliding trans\* identities that resist
placement within a gender binary. Moreover, many trans people may not
self-identify as trans\* and so there is a problem of wrongfully
imputing identities (and political agendas) that run contrary to
self-identifications.




In this entry, *trans* will be used as a place-holder for the
possibly productive political tensions discussed above (transsexual
vs. transgender, trans\* vs. transgender). Since many forms of
transphobia involve categorizing individuals contrary to their own
sense of self, caution is required in applying terms to individuals
who may not self-identify with them. In light of this, the use
of *trans* should not be understood to impute an identity or a
shared political vision. Rather, it is a functional term restricted to
this entry alone, and is not intended to invoke a shared category
among diverse individuals The expressions *trans women*
and *trans men* will be used to refer to MTFs and FTMs who
self-identify as women and men respectively (where *trans*
functions as a context-restricted placeholder for the aforementioned
political tensions.


## 2. The Transsexual Phenomenon




Until 2013, Gender Identity Disorder had been a diagnostic
category in both the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV-TR
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and the World
Health Organization's ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases
and Related Health Problems). The newer DSM-V replaces the diagnostic
category Gender Identity Disorder with Gender Dysphoria in an effort
to lessen stigmatization. Nonetheless, trans experiences continue to
be captured by diagnostic categories in manuals which provide criteria
for mental disorders.




While homosexuality was removed from the DSM as a diagnostic
category in 1973, transsexuality was added in the 1980 DSM-III.
However, the view of transsexuality and other trans-related phenomena
as psychiatric and/or medical conditions has a much longer history. To
be sure, not all accounts of trans phenomena were pathologizing
(indeed, some aimed at political liberation). However, it is clear that
early scholarly discussion of trans phenomena unfolded within the field
of sexology--the "scientific" study of human
sexuality. Some of the most notable thinkers include Karl Heinrich
Ulrichs, Richard von Krafft-Ebing ([1886] 1965), Havelock Ellis ([1905]
1942), and Magnus Hirshfeld ([1910] 1991).




In the early first part of the twentieth century, European
scientists began to experiment with "sex-change"
(Meyerowitz 2002, 16-21). By 1953, media sensation Christine Jorgensen
had become the first "celebrity" MTF transsexual in the
United States and scientific controversy heated over whether
transsexuality was a psychological or physical condition (Meyerowitz
2002). While the former position (then dominant in the U.S.) held that
trans phenomena were purely psychological in nature and ought to be
treated psychotherapeutically to "cure the mental illness",
the latter (European model) held a "bisexuality theory"
which maintained that there was a physical blend of male and female in
all human beings and that special cases yielded a
"mixed-sex" condition which in some cases justified
surgical intervention (Meyerowitz 2002, 98-129)




Work by John Money, Joan Hampson, and John Hampson on intersexuality
(the state of having both female and male biological characteristics)
led to the introduction of the technical term *gender*
(1955)*.* They purported to evade the debate between psychology
and biology, arguing that while the capacity to learn a gender role
and orientation (like a language) was biologically grounded, the
specific native role and orientation learned (like language) was
contingent upon social environment which became "locked
down" at a very early age (1957). Subsequently, the expression
*gender identity* was coined by Robert Stoller and Ralph
Greenson in 1964, which helped terminologically separate the notion of
social role from psychological sense-of-self. It was ultimately taken
up by the likes of Money and Harry Benjamin (Meyerowitz 2002,
117-9), and while debate over etiology continued, views allowing
for both biology and social environment in determining gender identity
gained somewhat greater prominence (Meyerowitz 2002, 119). Notably, in
these views, gender identity is a biological demand to the extent that
the capacity for gender identity (as the capacity for language) is
viewed as innate. Such a view would seem to suggest that gender, like
language, is integral to the human self.




In 1966, Benjamin published the landmark *The Transsexual
Phenomenon* and that same year saw the opening of the Johns Hopkins
University program for sex-reassignment surgery, ushering in a period
of large university-based gender-identity clinics which lasted until
the end of the seventies. By the closing of Johns Hopkins in 1979, the
Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (since
renamed The World Health Professional Association for Transgender
Health or WPATH) had been formed and had approved standardized criteria
for the treatment of transsexuals. A year later,
*transsexualism* was added to the DSM.




Notably, until the early nineties, the vehicle by which transsexuals
wrote about their own experiences was largely autobiography. Some
examples of these include Canary Conn's *The Story of a
Transsexual* (1977), Mario Mario's *Emergence: A
Transsexual Autobiography* (1977), and Jan Morris'
*Conundrum: An Extraordinary Narrative of Transsexualism*
(1986)


## 3. The Transsexual Empire




Many of the earliest non-trans feminist perspectives on transsexuals
were marked by hostility. One of the first examples of non-trans
feminist reactions to trans women was the expulsion of Beth Elliott
from the Daughters of Bilitis and the subsequent controversy over her
participation in 1973 in the West Coast Lesbian Conference in Los
Angeles (Stryker 2008). At the conference, Robin Morgan charged
Elliot, "as an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a
destroyer--with the mentality of a rapist" (Morgan 1978,
181). This theme of "violation" can also be found in Mary
Daly's
*Gyn/Ecology* (1978, 71). It is more thoroughly elaborated in
Janice Raymond's *The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the
She-Male* (1979) where she writes :



> 
> 
> All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female
> form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves. However,
> the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist violates women's
> sexuality and spirit, as well. Rape, although it is usually done by
> force, can also be accomplished by deception. (104)




The thesis that MTF transsexuals are rapists because they
appropriate women's bodies to themselves or through deception is
difficult to assess since no arguments seem to have been given in its
defense. However it will be worth trying to push such extreme
representations to the side in order to isolate the core assumptions
which ground Raymond's position as well as to appreciate her
feminist critique of transsexuality as a medical phenomenon.



Raymond's position is underwritten by a substrate view about sex
according to which sex exists as a given prior to the machinations of
culture; social sex roles are then assigned on the basis of sex.
(Raymond does not usually use the term *gender*,
preferring, instead, the expression *sex role*). Membership
in the category *woman* is determined by chromosomes and the
individual's history of experience being assigned to a sex role
(1979, 4, 18, 114). In light of this, Raymond maintains that MTF
transsexuals are really men and FTM transsexuals are really women. The
last condition (history of experience) is important in noting that MTF
transsexuals have avoided the history of damage done to women who have
suffered a lifetime under sex-role oppression. It is worth
recognizing, however, that while MTFs may have avoided this oppression
before transitioning, many MTFs experience sexual harassment and
discrimination in the workplace, the threat of all variations of rape,
survival sex work, and domestic violence *after* transitioning.
Moreover, some MTFs live as women from a very young age.



A second underlying assumption of Raymond's position is that
oppression experienced by transsexuals (and trans people more
generally) is nothing but an aspect of the sexist oppression enforced
through sex role (1979, xviii, 16). In other words, MTFs are really men
who are victims of the violence done through the rigidly enforced
sex-role system and FTMs are really women who, as such, are the central
targets of this system. Gender dysphoria experienced by transsexuals,
in such a view, is to be understood as unhappiness with the existing
sex-role system. This means that Raymond does not recognize a distinct
modality of oppression that specifically targets trans people in a way
that is non-reducible to the sexist oppression inherent in sex roles.
Raymond poses the rhetorical question "Does a Black person who
wants to be white suffer from the 'disease' of being a
'transracial?'" and then observes that "there is no
demand for transracial medical intervention precisely because most
Blacks recognize that it is their society, not their skin, that needs
changing" [Raymond 1994, xvi]. What is lacking in such an account
is the possibility that transsexuals might be oppressed *as*
transsexuals.



On the basis of these two theses, Raymond is led to see the
medicalization of gender variance and the gender identity clinics as
nothing but vehicles to further secure sexist sex roles. Thus, for
her, a sexist society is "the first cause" of
transsexuality (1979, 16). The role of the medical treatment of
transsexuality is to turn men into "women" and women into
"men" when they cannot be normed into their natally
assigned sex roles. For Raymond, the phrase *transsexual
empire* applies to the patriarchal medical establishment which
perpetuates sex-role oppression through surgical intervention. (She
uses the word *empire* to refer to "a political unit having
a territory of great extent, or a number of territories under a single
sovereign authority" (xv). She sees the medical
"empire" as including numerous specialties such as
urology, gynecology, endocrinology, and so forth. She also sees the
collaboration of psychology and psychiatry in hiding what she calls
the sovereignty of the medical "empire" by making it
appear that there is some need for transsexual medical intervention,
as well as the involvement of lawyers and legislators. However, it is
the medical establishment, for Raymond, which possesses this
sovereignty. So it is the medical establishment which is the unifying
authority of the "transsexual empire" (ibid.)).




Now Raymond is right that the medicalization of transsexuality
involved the perpetuation of sexist (and heterosexist) norms. Yet the
actual struggle of some scientists and surgeons to make surgeries
available to transsexuals is ignored in Raymond's account (Riddell
2006). Such advocates for transsexual surgery were in the minority
(certainly in the U.S) and themselves experienced hostility and
marginalization. This means that what Raymond calls the transsexual
empire was not monolithic. And given the *marginalization* of
these advocates for transsexual surgery, it seems that the medical
establishment was not especially friendly to transsexuality (Riddell
2006). Generally transsexuality was and remains largely unaccepted in
society. Contrary to Raymond's view, it is largely *not*
endorsed by "the patriarchy."




Raymond's contrast between *integration* and
*integrity* brings out a core aspect of her picture of
liberation. *Integration*, for Raymond, involves putting
together parts to form a complex whole (1979, 163). She sees androgyny
as a kind of blend between masculine and feminine and she argues that
transsexual surgery also brings about such blends (constructing the
individual into a kind of hermaphroditic being) (1979, 165). By
contrast, *integrity* involves a prior wholeness from which no
part can be taken away (193). For Raymond, true liberation cannot be
secured by any mere blending of sex roles. Rather, it must be secured
through a *transcendence* of sex role altogether (164). This
suggests a notion of the self that is prior to sex role or at least a
notion of a self that can be freed from the cultural interpretations of
sex. Raymond's solution to "the problem" of
transsexuality which she sees as promoting the surgical violation of
bodily integrity, is to "morally mandate it out of
existence" (178) by working against sex role oppression through
education and consciousness raising (178-185).



Raymond's representation of transsexuals themselves warrants
particular comment. Beyond the two key assumptions mentioned above,
Raymond adopts a stance for which transsexual subjectivities are
erased. This means that she constructs monolithic, stereotypical
representations of trans individuals (based on her own ideology) in
ways that foreclose the possibility of registering the actual variable
experiences of trans people (on this point see Riddell 2006, 152-3,
Stone 1991, 298, Heyes 2003, 1095). She points to ways in which (some)
MTFs take up traditional sex roles (and are thereby complicit) on the
one hand (77-79), and yet goes on to criticize lesbian-separatist
identified MTFs who have eschewed such roles as oppressively masculine
(102-6). In this way, she traps MTF transsexuals with a double-bind:
Either MTFs take up traditional sex roles and are thereby sexist or
else they eschew these traditional sex roles and are thereby sexist
(See Califia 1997, 102, 104-5; Serano 2007, 49). Such a theory
isn't equipped to accommodate the actual variable experiences of
MTFs trying to negotiate gender in a sexist and transphobic world. In this way,
Raymond's theory erases the actual experiences of MTFs through
monolithic, ideologically-driven representations of them. Moreover
because Raymond sees transsexuality as essentially a male phenomenon,
her discussion of FTMs is minimal. She argues that FTMs are mere tokens
who are used to prop up claims that transsexuality is a universal
phenomenon and thereby hide its true patriarchal character. In this
way, FTM transsexuality is largely dropped out of the picture (xxiii,
27-28, 140; for further critique see Califia 1997, 100-1, Serano 2007,
48). This allows her to avoid discussing FTM transsexuals in any depth
at all. And this means that the complex, variable, everyday experiences
of FTMs do not get represented in the first place. Consider, for
example, Raymond's claim "All transsexuals rape
women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact,
appropriating this body for themselves." While the statement
purports to be universal, it is also a claim specifically about MTF
transsexuals. In Raymond's account, there is no room for FTMs.
They are erased.




While this tendency to forgo consideration of the real life
experiences of trans people in favor of monolithic, stereotypical
representations of them (or through outright erasure) seems to have
been common in academic writing at the time, it is also worth noting
the deep theoretical and political commitments at work. Raymond's
account is situated within a lesbian-separatist paradigm which sees
women's oppression as secured through compulsory heterosexual
relationships (Radicalesbians [1970] 1988). In this heterosexual
context, women are forced to adopt an identity that is male-dominant
(man-identified). Liberation from the colonization of identity can only
be obtained through lesbian relationships and a community of
women-identified women. Central to this paradigm of oppression/
liberation, then, is the view that a woman's identity can be
thoroughly colonized as well as the view that this can possibly be
eliminated through loving lesbian relationships (Frye 1983). It is one,
then, which does not see the self as inherently bound up with gender or
sex role.




Given this account, it is no surprise that Raymond criticizes
Money's view that gender identity, while determined by
environmental factors, is "locked down" at an early age
(1979, 62-8). And given the separation between sex and role, it becomes
apparent why transsexual claims about gender identity become hard to
fathom. On the one hand, identity might involve the internalization of
and identification with the sexist gender roles from which, according
to Raymond, we need to find transcendence. This would obviously cry out
for feminist intervention. On the other hand, since Raymond accepts a
view according to which sex is a given, biological substrate upon which
cultural role is assigned, identity may simply be taken to reflect
recognition of one's own invariant biological sex (male or
female). Such an identity would survive any transcendence from cultural
sex role. In this case, however, any purported misalignment between
body and identity would seem deeply misguided (since identity merely
reflects one's invariant biological sex).


## 4. The *Empire* Strikes Back




In 1977 a controversy erupted in lesbian-separatist circles over
Sandy Stone, an openly transsexual woman and an engineer who had been
working at Olivia Records (an all-woman recording company). Both she
and Olivia were explicitly targeted by Raymond in *The Transsexual
Empire.* After leaving Olivia, Stone earned her doctorate under
Donna Haraway at Santa Cruz, and in 1991 published a reply to Raymond
and what would become the founding essay in transgender
studies, "The *Empire* Strikes Back: A (post)transsexual
manifesto" (Stryker 2008, 105, 124-5).


### 4.1 The Manifesto



Stone takes up a third position in opposition to both the medicalized
view of transsexuality characterized by Benjamin's
*The Transsexual Phenomenon* and the feminist critique offered in
Raymond's *The Transsexual Empire*. The fundamental move of
the essay is to see transsexuals as a kind of "oppressed
minority." While Stone does not position transsexuals as a third
gender, she does propose that transsexuals "currently occupy a
position which is nowhere, which is outside the binary oppositions of
gendered discourse" (1991, 295). Because Stone wishes to avoid
appeal to a pre-existing class of individuals who are then oppressed,
she represents transsexuality as a *genre* of discourse. The
idea is that traditional medical discourse about transsexuality
constitutes a distinctive, regulated *way* of talking and
theorizing which Stone calls a *genre*. (Contrast, for example,
traditional medical discourse on transsexuality with Raymond's
feminist discourse on transsexuality). Stone is suspicious of appealing
to a group of individuals *prior* to the workings of a
particular discourse (that is, one which is conceived of as independent
of a particular discourse) since, goes the postmodern worry, such an
appeal to this group of individuals would nonetheless be at the same
time providing an account of them *within* a discourse--a
discourse which could be shaped by ideological commitments. Instead of
trying to make such a move, then, Stone identifies a group of
individuals as represented through traditional medical discourse about
transsexuality.




Drawing on the autobiographies of some transsexual women, Stone
finds herself in agreement with Raymond in worrying about what she sees
as the uptake of sexist stereotypes by (some) MTFs (1991, 289).
However, she *also* notes (some) MTF insistence upon a
male/female binary and the absence of any middle or more complex gender
ground (286). Beyond this, she criticizes the subjectivity-erasing,
blanket claims in Raymond's work (e.g., "All transsexuals
rape women's bodies") along with the implicit denial of
transsexual subjectivity discussed above (298).




What is lacking, according to Stone, is space for the discourse of
transsexuals *as* transsexuals. She points to ways in which the
medicalization of transsexuality has required both the uptake of sexist
behavior *as well as* the acquiescence to a strict gender
binary. In this way, she argues, transsexuals have been complicit in
telling a story within a genre that does not necessarily reflect their
own subjective experiences (1991, 295). At the same time, argues Stone,
transsexuals have also developed their own subcultures as well as
distinctive practices within those subcultures that entirely run
against the official account of transsexuality (such as helping each
other know what to say and how to act in order to get medically
designated as a transsexual) (291-2). The solution, Stone argues, is
for transsexuals to begin telling their own stories (295). This
requires minimally, that post-operative transsexuals come out as
transsexual and forego passing as (non-transsexual) men and women
(298-9). The traditional medical requirement that one construct a
plausible non-trans history to hide one's past, for Stone,
undermines the possibility of authentic relationships. Because the
injunction to forego passing as the (non-transsexual) sex one has
transitioned into runs entirely against the prevalent discourse of
transsexuality *as such*, Stone represents the political move as
*post*-transsexual (299). She sees that while many transsexuals
are complicit in this discourse, they nonetheless *go beyond* it
by attempting, for example, to assist each other in
"working" the medical regulations (as explained above).
Thus their experiences and actions *outstrip* the
"official" medical accounts of transsexuality. Yet this
"outstripping" is rendered invisible in any complicit
attempt to fit into a medical account which requires that one's
status as transsexual be ultimately denied in everyday life (through
this construction of a false history). For Stone, eschewing this
discourse is important because it hides the complex, variable
experiences of different trans people who are often positioned in
contestatory ways vis a vis this discourse. The move is not designed to
find some one authentic and uniform account of transsexuals beyond the
medical discourse. It is, rather, to clear the way for discourses from
which it is at least possible to speak and to speak politically
*as* a transsexual.


### 4.2 Cyborg and *Mestiza*




Stone's manifesto relies on an account of
oppression/resistance that breaks sharply from the utopian vision found
in Raymond's work. Instead, it draws largely on the ideas of
Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (1983, 1991) and
Gloria Anzaldua's theory of the mestiza (1987). It will be
worth discussing these views briefly to draw out the nature of
Stone's theoretical departure from Raymond.




Haraway's postmodern image of the cyborg (explained below) is
intended to raise worries, derived largely from writings of women of
color, about single, monolithic (identity-based) accounts of
oppression/liberation. Haraway worries about political accounts which
postulate an original state of innocence and subsequent fall from grace
and which then envision a utopian future which promises a return to
innocence.




According to Haraway, the difficulty with such theories is that they
are partial in their account of the world (while assuming universality)
and so end up ignoring (and even promoting) certain forms of oppression
(1991, 156). For example, a feminist vision which posits a shared
experience of oppression among women and recommends lesbian-separatism
as its solution, as formulated, leaves out the experience of racial
oppression among women of color (Combahee River Collective 1981). Why
should women of color be expected to forego solidarity with progressive
men of color?




The cyborg, then, is a collection of disparate, incongruent parts:
Each individual contains multiple elements of oppressor and oppressed.
As a metaphor, it is intended to refuse postulations of original
innocence and utopian future (1991, 151). Instead, resistance for
Haraway is possible due only to the possibility of the cyborg's
turning against the intentions of its maker in a dystopian environment
(151). This idea is notably taken up by Susan Stryker (1994), who uses
the metaphor of Frankenstein's monster, in her reply to Mary
Daly's (1978) representation of transsexuals as monstrous
boundary violators.




This notion of mixture is also central in the work of
Anzaldua, who speaks against an emphasis on purity and in favor
of the notion of mixed race (*una raza mestiza*) (1987, 99). She
recognizes herself as a border dweller, torn between the demands of
conflicting cultures (for example, anglo and Mexican) (1987, 100). The
experience of being caught in the confluence of multiple cultures leads
to a kind of multiplicity or fragmentation of self. For example, one
might be represented in a racist manner in dominant white forms of
feminism and in a sexist manner in dominant forms of racial resistance.
This tension between conflicting cultural perspectives yields the
possibility of "double" or "Mestiza"
consciousness which involves the capacity to see oneself in accordance
with the dominant ways in which one is oppressively represented and
constrained in different, and often conflicting ways (101-2).




It is precisely the capacity to be conscious of this plurality of
the self, in Anzaldua's view, that allows for resistance,
since there is an awareness which outstrips the multiple forms of
oppression by viewing them together, as well as in conflict (1987,
102). Such a consciousness also allows for the possibility of
"linguistic terrorism"--the creative blending of
disparate languages and cultures in ways that work against the
monolithic character of each (1987, 75-86). For example, Chicano Texas
Spanish and Tex-Mex involve such a linguistic blending.
Anzaldua writes, "Until I am free to write bilingually and
to switch codes without having always to translate ... my tongue
will be illegitimate" (81). And: "We are your linguistic
nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic
*mestizaje* ..." (80).




While neither Haraway nor Anzaldua explicitly discuss
Raymond, it is clear that the position articulated in the
*The Transsexual Empire* is vulnerable to their concerns.
Raymond's vision provides both an origin account as well as the
promise of salvation: The original imposition of sex roles and the
final achievement of *integrity* through freedom from them
(1979, 164). And Raymond's dismissal of *integration* (the
mish-mash of incongruent parts) is precisely celebrated by Haraway and
Anzaldua, who have no patience for the alleged
"innocence" and "purity" of *integrity*.
Significantly, Anzaldua identifies a state between man and woman
as a site for creative resistance:



> 
> 
> There is something compelling about being both male and female,
> about having an 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 (1987, 41).




Although Stone does not explicitly use the expression "double
consciousness", it is evidently at work in her suggestion that
transsexuals have learned to adopt the discourse of medicalization
while doing so within a subaltern transsexual culture which fails to
accurately correspond to the official account. Certainly her suggestion
that transsexuals speak beyond the gender binary is anticipated in
Anzaldua's work, as is her call to mix-and-match
genres.




The differences between a vision of the self as a site for potential
gender colonization /decolonization (as presupposed by Raymond) and a
vision which emphasizes "mestiza consciousness" are
significant. Maria Lugones (1990), for example, argues that the
former type of vision, as articulated by philosophers such as Frye
(1983), simply cannot succeed as a theory of resistance. The
difficulty, in part, is that the former seems to postulate a self
underlying the cultural work of oppression or at least the possibility
of a self that has been or could be freed entirely from culture (or at
least gender). Yet, if such a possibility is not realistic, as it seems
not to be, it is hard to see how any form of resistance to oppression
can get a foot-hold. How can the colonized mind be open to
transformation and resistance given that it is already colonized? It is
precisely this possibility of "double consciousness",
argues Lugones (1990), which makes resistance possible at all.


### 4.3 The Transgender Paradigm




Stone's article laid the foundations for the emergence of
transgender studies, which can be characterized as the
coming-to-academic-voice of (some) trans people against a history of
scholarly objectification. The early nineties also witnessed the
emergence of current transgender politics, articulated in the popular
works of Leslie Feinberg (1992, 1993, 1996, 1998) and Kate Bornstein
(1994). Three major features of what might be called the transgender
paradigm paralleled the ideas of Stone: 1) the recognition of
gender-based oppression, usually targeting trans people, as distinct
from and non-reducible to sexist oppression; 2) the positioning of
trans people as problematically situated with respect to the binary
categories *man* and *woman*; and 3) the endorsement
of a politics of visibility.




This is not to suggest that such politics are uniform. For example,
while Feinberg tends to emphasize the historical persistence of
transgender people as a kind of people or oppressed group, Bornstein
tends to emphasize the constructed (and oppressive) nature of gender
categories as a whole, the desirability of viewing gender as fashion,
and the importance of moving toward a more consensual gender system.
Notably, Bornstein draws on the ethnomethodological work of Garfinkel
(1967) and Kessler and McKenna (1977). The work of Kessler and McKenna
is especially remarkable for its early broad use of
'gender' to apply even to biological sex in order to
indicate the implication of sex within cultural interpretation and
practice. Ethnomethodology is a sociological analysis of how
individuals construct their common-sense knowledge of the world in
social contexts. Bornstein draws principally on Garfinkel's
notion of the *natural attitude about sex.* This attitude, for
Garfinkel, constitutes the everyday "common-sense" about
sex. It is held by those he dubbed "normals" for whom the
categories male and female are exclusive, exhaustive, invariant, and
applied on the basis of genitalia. Notably, part of the natural
attitude involves dismissing counter-examples (e.g., intersexual
individuals who show that the neat categorization of humans into two
discrete categories is bogus) as abnormal and aberrant. 




At any rate, these and other popular works characterized and perhaps
provided the foundation for the emerging Anglo-American transgender
politics of the 1990s which while insisting upon the distinction
between gender identity and presentation (on the one hand) and sexual
orientation (on the other) also fought for representation within LGB
politics. This led to the development of a somewhat more inclusive LGBT
politics, grounded in the idea that gender-variant individuals had
always, in the first place, been central to gay and lesbian liberation
and that gay and lesbian individuals themselves may be subject to
discrimination on the basis of gender presentation.




The emergence of transgender politics included the prolonged
conflict between trans activists and non trans feminists over the
exclusion of trans women from the Michigan Womyn's Music
Festival. In 1994, the trans activist group, Transexual Menace,
organized 'Camp Trans' directly opposite the festival. (The
term *transexual*, spelled with one *s*, was intended to
signal a break from the traditional medical conception of
transsexuality). The point was to challenge what was seen as the
festival organizers' transphobic attempt to exclude trans women
through its 'womyn-born womyn' policy. The political
conflict persists to this day.




In 1994, *The Transsexual Empire* was re-issued with a new
introduction by Raymond that explicitly takes up the new transgender
politics. Her critique largely involves the claim that any gender
transgression by transgender people still involves the uptake of sexist
gender roles and therefore fails at genuine gender transcendence (1994,
xxix). In Raymond's view, most self-identified transgender people
are predominantly men who are in some way performing a stereotypical
and sexist femininity (ibid.). However, she also discusses
Feinberg's *Stone Butch Blues*, a novel which played an
important, informative role in the emergence of transgender politics.
In this novel, we follow the lead protagonist, Jess, who moves from the
category of *butch* (in butch-femme lesbian subculture) to the
category *transsexual,* and who then recognizes that transition
from female to male is likewise unfulfilling. Jess ends up occupying a
middle ground, identifying simply as a 'he-she.'
Raymond's major concern with this trajectory is that,
Jess ultimately refuses self-identification as a *woman* (1994,
xxxii).




Raymond's theoretical framework regarding gender transcendence
and a strict biological binary prior to cultural imposition guides this
discussion. Given her distinction between integration and integrity,
any mixing and matching of gender would fail to achieve the goal of
complete gender transcendence, and therefore fail as a politics of
liberation. Moreover, given that she does not allow room for a third
space between man and woman, given that she does not recognize trans
oppression as somewhat independent of sexist oppression, and given that
women-identified-women are central to her views about resistance, it is
hardly surprising that she should be dismayed by Jess' decision.
Aside from problems mentioned with this theory earlier, it is worth
adding that, as Cressida Heyes notes, Raymond's theory, which
rejects transgender resistance a priori, seems to be unfalsifiable
(2003, 1108).


## 5. (Trans) Gender Trouble




 The impact of Judith Butler's *Gender
Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity* (1990) was
immediate and profound. Instead of being oppositional, the
ground-breaking work of Butler bears a much more complex relation to
transgender individuals and to trans studies.


### 5.1 Gender Trouble




Butler's work was partly motivated by the desire to answer
concerns that queer enactments of gender (as in a butch-femme
relationship or in gay male drag) merely replicate traditional
patriarchal norms. For Butler, such a view presupposes a heterosexual
bias obscuring the way in which gender is re-worked in queer contexts.
What she has in mind is that in queer subculture gender practices do
not always have the same meaning that they do in mainstream cultural
contexts. For example, feminine presentation in some queer contexts may
involve a degree of irony not found in mainstream instances of that
feminine presentation. To treat queer gender practices as simply
repeating or miming non-queer practices without any significant change
in meaning is to understand all gender practices in a way that assigns
dominant heterosexual meanings to it.




Queer gender performance, far from replicating patriarchal norms,
can subvert such norms by exposing their non-natural, imitative
character (1990, 174-80). Sometimes queer gender performance can
involve irony and/or parody through exaggeration. (Good examples of
this can be found in early films by John Waters, such as *Female
Trouble*). Queer gender can make fun of heterosexual gender
practices by exaggerating them and parodying them in such ways that
make them seem theatrical and contrived. And gay male drag, for Butler,
can show that feminine presentation is not the sole property of female
individuals. Once it is recognized that such behavior is only
contingently assigned to groups of individuals, the very idea that gay
drag merely involves imitation of heterosexual women as the original
assigns a priority to the latter over the former. This prioritization,
for Butler, reflects a heterosexual bias. And, so for Butler, feminist
identification of *all* gendered behavior as *inherently*
sexist (as, for example, found in Raymond's work) is nothing
short of a heterosexist tendency to attach a primacy to heterosexual
gender performance.




Butler's account of gender aims to call into question the
pre-existence of a group of individuals (i.e., women, females) prior to
the enforcement of gender role. Instead, in Butler's view,
biological sex is culturally instituted and in this sense "gender
all along." Prima facie this view seems counter-intuitive. One
way to motivate it is to recognize that contrary to the natural
attitude about sex (discussed above), human beings cannot always be
neatly divided into male and female. Indeed, once we recognize various
features which go into sex determination (chromosomal sex, gonadal sex,
genital sex, etc.) we see that sex is not a single, unitary,
easily-determined feature. Insofar as the natural attitude prevails,
however, individuals act *as if* the natural attitude were true.
Sex is now understood in terms of a particular attitude which shapes
everyday social practices. And to the extent that such an attitude
helps ground medical practices designed to surgically assign intersex
infants to one sex or the other, it appears that sexual dimorphism is
medically instituted. Insofar as bodies are made to conform to a
particular cultural ideology about sex--an ideology which governs
social practice--it makes some sense to say that biological sex itself
is, to this degree, "culturally instituted."




In Butler's view, whenever we discuss the body, we are also
always representing it in culturally specific ways. To speak of the
biologically sexed body as somehow prior to particular discourses
about it is to, in so doing, nonetheless ironically speak about
it *within some particular discourse* and hence to represent in
some way. According to Butler, sex is culturally instituted by
representing the body as the *natural container* of some inner,
gendered self. Sex is understood as the bodily indication that
concealed within it is the essence of either a woman or a man. For
Butler, this view is false. However, just as the natural attitude may
be treated as if it were true even though it is not, so, too, bodies
can be falsely treated as containers of gendered selves. To the extent
that this view is pervasive and regulative of human conduct, one
can--in this sense--say that sex is socially
constructed.




For Butler, behavioral manifestations of gender are often taken to
express a prior gender identity that is contained within a naturally
sexed body. Thus, feminine behavior is seen as expressive of an inner
feminine core (contained within the body sexed female). On the
contrary, in her view, such performances simply serve to generate the
fiction of a pre-existing gender identity as well as the fiction of the
sexed body qua natural container of this identity (1990, 178-9). This
is to say: Behavioral manifestations are prior to gender identity and
sexed body (rather than the other way around). The illusion of a stably
sexed body, core gender identity, and (hetero) sexual orientation is
perpetuated through repeated, stylized bodily performances that are
*performative* in the sense that they are productive of the
fiction of a stable identity, orientation, and sexed body as prior to
the gendered behavior (173).




This allows Butler to answer the charge that queer gender
performances merely replicate sexist gender role behavior. In her view,
*all* gender behavior is imitative in nature. Heterosexual
gender identity involves an instability that it attempts to cover over:
While it purports to be grounded in a naturally gendered core, it
amounts to nothing more than repeated attempts to imitate past
instances of gendered behavior (1990, 185). Thus, there is also a
subversive potential of queer drag and camp gender performance, in her
view, insofar as it can parody and thereby *expose* this
concealed imitative quality (1990, 174-6). As a consequence, Butler
welcomes the proliferation of queer gender behaviors that re-signify,
parody, and expose the mechanisms by which the fiction of normative
heterosexist gender is created (1990, 184-190).


### 5.2 Bodies that Matter




While Butler's theory was initially viewed by some as a kind
of gender voluntarism, it is clear that this is very far from her
actual view, further refined in *Bodies that Matter* (1993).
Butler clarifies that instead of a kind of voluntary theatricality
donned and doffed by a pre-existing agent, gender performance is
constitutive of the agent itself. For Butler, even though the self is
the mere effect of repeated gender performances, it is nonetheless
real: There are selves, they are socially constructed. What is strictly
fictional, for Butler, is the view that they are unified cores which
exist prior to gendered behavior. Butler does *not* want to deny
the existence of our psychic lives.




For Butler, gender performance is *citational* in that it
tacitly cites or draws on gender norms (1993, 12-3;
230-33). But it is precisely this citing of the norm *as*
authoritative which *confers* authority upon the norm (1993,
13). Indeed, the agent herself as the one who either willfully
complies or fails to comply with the authoritative norm is likewise
produced through this process of citation (1993, 13, 225, 232). Thus,
Butler sees the agent qua unified source of gendered behavior as
performatively constituted through repeated acts of gendered
behavior. This is to say: The 'agent' is, far from the
cause of gendered performance, its effect (1990, 184-5; 1991,
24; 1993, 232).




Such a view yields a kind of paradox: If the agent is the mere effect
of the repeated acts, then how are the acts themselves produced? The
concerns may be mitigated to some extent by recognizing that Butler is
interested in the very formation of self-identity as understood within
a psychoanalytic tradition. She follows Freud in seeing the ego as
formed largely through a process of complex identifications.
Identification, in this context, is to be understood as the stable
psychic "taking on" of perceived properties of a lost love
object (1990, 73-84; 1991 26-7). In this way, the lost
object becomes a part of the ego through a process of imitation: The
object is internalized (and psychically "preserved").




In Butler's view, the taboo against (heterosexual) incest presupposes
a prior taboo against homosexuality (which effectively constitutes
heterosexual desire as such) (1990, 82). Yet the taboo requires that
the loved object as well as the homosexual desire itself be given
up. In a process of melancholy the lost object is not grieved because
the desire cannot even be acknowledge in the first place. So the lost
object is internalized through this process of identification by which
the individual now psychically takes on the attributes of the lost
object, thereby acquiring a heterosexual gender identity (1990,
78-81; 1991, 26-7). In this way, imitation lies at the
root of the very formation of gender identity.




For Butler the term *psyche* applies to more than simply the
self or ego as constituted through gender imitation. In addition to the
conscious self, she is also interested in the psychic workings of the
unconscious as postulated in psychoanalysis. In Butler's view,
the psyche outstrips the performatively constituted agent insofar as
the repeated acts fail to entirely imitate the preceding ones and,
indeed, insofar as they must be repeated at all (1991, 24). Butler
allows for "psychic excess" which applies to that which is
both presupposed by and yet excluded by heterosexual gender identities.
For example, the love of the lost object discussed above cannot be
allowed into the heterosexual gender identity. Nonetheless it is part
of the psyche--is "psychic excess"--insofar as it is
essentially presupposed by and yet disowned in the formation of
heterosexual gender identity. Such excess manifests itself, for Butler,
in performative failures and in behaviors which expose the imitative
character of gender (24-5).




This involves a notable departure from the "double
consciousness" model of resistance (and identity) discussed
above. Rather than flagging the simultaneous blending of conflicting
cultural claims to form a subject position that is constituted by its
borderland status, Butler deploys the notion of "psychic
excess" and points to the re-significations of performance (as
within a historical chain) in ways that subvert a stable
subject position altogether. This means that Butler situates subversion
in disruptions which fail to imitate in the same way, which expose and
undermine the illusion of a stable self. Despite this difference,
however, both the notion of "double consciousness" and
Butler's theory of gender performativity similarly depart from
Raymond's view which postulates a self at least ideally freed
from oppressive machinations.




In light of her appeal to citationality, Butler further clarifies that
the subversive potential of gender performance is significantly
constrained since, in order for gender performance to be subversive,
it still must cite existing gender norms as norms (1993, 122-4,
226-7). This means that gender subversion is limited by the
history of past iterations of gender performance. Butler also allows
that there are ways in which gender performance can both replicate and
subvert sexist, racist, and heterosexist norms at once. For example,
she aims to defend an ambivalent picture of the culture portrayed in
Jennie Livington's 1991 film *Paris is Burning* which documents
the drag ball competitions of various 'houses' in New York
City, held by mostly black and latino/a queer men, transsexuals, and
queens (1993, 121-140).




Butler's discussion of the film is especially notable for its
explicit treatment of transsexuality. She is largely responding to bell
hooks who criticizes the film for the invisibility of the subject
position of the director (a white, Yale-educated, lesbian woman) in
shaping an objectifying spectacle of non-white gender and sexuality
(1992, 150-1) and the very behavior and attitudes of the individuals
documented in the film (147-50). Following in the tradition of Raymond,
hooks raises worries about the masculinity involved in the drag
performances (citing the competitive edge involved in the balls as well
as the celebration of sexual objectification) (148-9). Moreover, she
points out that white femininity seems elevated in these balls as the
canonical form of femininity (150). Butler, by contrast, aims to
highlight both subversion and the ways in which such subversion is
constrained and even erased through dominant heterosexist forms of
gender.




The bulk of Butler's defense of this ambivalence derives from
her discussion of the life and death of Venus Xtravaganza, a light
skinned Latina, and self-identified pre-operative transsexual woman.
Xtravaganza dreams of a happy, suburban, heterosexual life but works as
a prostitute and is ultimately killed. On the one hand, Butler sees the
murder as the effect of the dominant order to annihilate that which
subverts its (in this case, Xtravaganza's
"in-between" body and gender incongruence) (1993, 131). On
the other hand, Butler sees the murder of Xtravaganza as flowing from
her "tragic misreading of the social map of power" where
her hopes to live a happy life in the suburbs are shattered when she is
treated in the way in which women of color are treated (1993, 131).
While Butler sees Xtravaganza's life is genuinely subversive of
dominant regulations of gender, she also raises worries about the
nature of Xtravaganza's desire for gender realness as a
middle-class, heterosexual woman (133) . In Butler's view, this
desire is primarily an attempt to transcend race and class through
gender transformation (130).


### 5.3 Trans Critiques of Butler




Butler's theory has the advantage of answering Raymond's
assumption that all gendered behavior is inherently replicative of
sexist norms, by providing a theoretical basis for the subversive
potential of some queer gender performance and by jettisoning a view
which sees biological male/female sex as independent of culture. In
this way, her work is highly congenial to transgender theory and
politics. Yet Butler's theory also has some significant
difficulties which have led some trans scholars to voice strong
objections to her work.




Notably, Butler's theory leaves the charges of gender
replication entirely applicable to those trans people who see
themselves and who behave as "real" men and women, as her
account of Xtravaganza indicates. The tension involves her account of
gender identity as socially constructed as well as her account of
subversion (on the one hand), and the importance of gender identity and
gender realness to some trans people (on the other). To be sure, there
is no obvious theoretical tension here, since Butler can explain the
importance of gender identity and gender realness. The problem, rather,
is that this vision may not be politically useful for trans folk who
seek to emphasize the importance of gender identity and realness for
some trans people.




The tension seems to derive, in part, from the fact that
Butler's aims to defend some forms of queer gender behavior in
opposition to heterosexual gender behavior. In this model,
transgressive gender performance is closely wedded to non-heterosexual
sexuality (Prosser 1998, 31-32). In arguing that Xtravaganza is killed
because of her gender subversion, Butler must understand this as
breaking from demands of heterosexuality (Prosser 1998, 46). What is
missing from such an account is recognition of trans oppression as a
modality in some ways distinct from the heterosexism.




Perhaps more problematically, Butler's suggestion that
Xtravanganza is killed as a woman of color elides the specifics of
violence against trans women: Xtravangaza was not killed as a Latina
woman, but as a Latina transsexual, working as prostitute (Prosser
1998, 47, Namaste 2000, 13). Moreover, Butler's suggestion that
sex-change, for Xtravaganza, is an imagined vehicle to transcend her
economic and racial conditions fails to take sufficiently serious her
*transsexual* identity (Namaste 2000, 13-4). Indeed, both Jay
Prosser (1998, 50-55) and Viviane Namaste (2000, 14) argue that
Butler's treatment of Xtravaganza involves *allegorizing*
her life and death as a way to generate theoretical mileage for her own
views while failing to make room for her as a person who lived and died
as a transsexual. In addition to such concerns, deeper theoretical
worries about Butler's position are raised by both Prosser (1998)
and Namaste (2000).




Prosser (1998) takes issue with Butler's view at the
theoretical level of identity and body. For Butler, the acquisition of
a gender identity (along with the corresponding heterosexual desire)
involves the selection of certain bodily pleasures as acceptable and
the rejection of others as unacceptable (1990, 89-90). This selection
of appropriate pleasure is determined in such a way that pleasures do
not literally derive from a particular body part "where"
they are located (90-1). Rather the sexual pleasure derives from the
eroticization of that body part (i.e., by its role as an
*object* in erotic fantasy). In heterosexual
"incorporation" the eroticization of body parts is falsely
literalized where the body part is then construed as the
"container" and "source" of sexual bodily
pleasure (87-90). In this way, the subjective experience of one's
sexed body is nothing but a literalized fantasy.




In response to this account, Prosser claims that Butler misreads
Freud according to whom, he argues, the body ego really does arise
from the body (1998, 40-2). Prosser appeals to Didier Anzieu's
notion of the "skin ego"--the "inner
experience" of the body arising from bodily sensations--which
serves as a significant interface between psyche and body (65-67). This
allows Prosser to argue that transsexuals appeal to the notion of the
'wrong body' because it simply *feels* that way
(68-9). His account of body ego departs from Butler in emphasizing
bodily sensation and proprioceptive awareness, rather than the
visualization of bodily surface (78-9). Prosser deploys notions of
bodily *agnosia* (the neurological inability to track parts of
one's body) (78) and phantom limb experiences (84-5) to
help explain the way in which a transsexual's body image may not
accord with their actual body.




Prosser's view has the advantage of offering a more plausible
account of the body ego. Yet it is also worth remarking that little
attention is paid to the way in which social conceptions of the body
might impact the ego. By grounding transsexuality so thoroughly in the
body, Prosser's view does not appear well-equipped to accommodate
transsexual self-identifications as *woman* or *man*
where such identifications involve more than the body, but also social
role. In this way, Prosser seems to offer a conception of self (or at
least bodily self) which is implausibly independent of cultural
demands.




While Prosser's work primarily focuses on Butler's
psychoanalytic account of ego formation, Viviane Namaste's (2000)
focuses on Butler's account of queer drag as subversive. In
Namaste's view, Butler fails to heed to the larger social context
in which gay male drag is situated and through which gender is
regulated. Namaste points to the social facts that gay male drag
performance is often restricted to entertainment on the stage where it
is viewed as "mere performance." By contrast, gay male
sexual identity is not restricted to the stage and is not viewed as
"mere performance" (10-13). Given that Butler allows for an
ambivalence in subversion, however, it isn't clear that her view
cannot accommodate these social facts in the way that she theorizes
drag performance in *Paris is Burning*. Yet Namaste aims for a
deeper theoretical critique, charging Butler with departing from a
post-structuralist framework which situates such phenomena precisely
within a broader social analysis she sees lacking in Butler's
account (16-23).




By using drag as a way to represent and theorize all gender
relations, argues Namaste, Butler fails to examine the multiple concrete
ways in which gender is regulated in everyday life (20-1). It
isn't clear that this by itself undermines Butler's claim
that some gender behavior can be genuinely subversive (and indeed,
Butler does not point only to drag, but also butch/femme presentations
of gender). However, it may nonetheless raise worries about
Butler's attempt to offer a uniform theory of gender as
imitation. Given that degree of abstraction from concrete social
circumstance, it may be that Butler omits crucial elements of gender
that are specific to various concrete social practices.


### 5.4 Undoing Gender



Butler's more recent work has to some extent attempted to
mitigate some of the preceding concerns (2004). She indicates that she
has been informed by what she calls "The New Gender
Politics" (i.e., the activism initiated by intersexual,
transgender, and transsexual people) (Butler 2004, 4). Where the notion
of "doing" gender is central to her earlier work, the
notion of "undoing" now becomes central. She is concerned
specifically with the notion of the "human" and the fact
that some people are recognized as less human or, in some ways, not
recognized as human at all (2004, 2). Insofar as this is a function of
what counts as intelligible gender, one can be "undone" by
gender (rendered unintelligible or recognized as less human) (2-3).
Insofar as gender is relational, and for Butler now often involves
acting for another, one can be "undone" by those to whom we
are vulnerable (22-5). Thus, we may be undone through the loss of a
close friend, just as we may be undone through acts of phobic
violence.



Butler now seeks to find a balance between the demand for autonomy
(required by a democratizing ideal to which she explicitly subscribes)
and the fact that such autonomy does not flow from an atomistic self,
but rather its grounding in the particular ideologies and institutions
which necessarily connect us with others and deny certain individuals
the status of human (37-9, 223-7). Her demand, then, is to
distinguish norms which foreclose the possibility of livable lives for
those rendered marginal, and those which open up possibilities
"to live and breathe and move"(2004, 8, 31,219). In this
way, she aims to offer a more nuanced approach to the importance of
identity in democratic politics, explicitly taking up a "tension
that arises between queer theory and both intersex and transsexual
activism" which "centers on the question of sex assignment
and the desirability of identity categories" (7). Effectively,
then, Butler recognizes that insofar as queer theory aims to undermine
the "illusion" of stable identities while arguing against
the viability of a politics based upon identity categories, it is in
opposition to intersex and transsexual activism both of which are
centered upon identities (i.e., intersex identity and transsexual
identity). Conceding some ground, Butler recognizes that a livable
life "does require various degrees of stability" (8). Her
earlier work found subversion only in the *disruption* of
stable identity. She recognizes here, however, that without some
stability, life is not livable.



She also reconsiders her earlier appeal to drag. For Butler, what is
important about drag is only that it reveals the possibility that what
is taken as a given is really cultural and that it can be contested and
assigned new meanings (213-9). However, while her earlier view had
insisted more strongly upon the importance of subverting the norm
through its exposure as imitative, what now seem more important are
the different *kinds* of norms at stake, and whether they
conduce to possibilities of livable lives for those who are
marginalized.



Notably, Butler considers the political tension between those trans
activists who would oppose the Gender Identity Disorder as
pathologizing and paternalistic, and those who insist upon its
importance in securing access to medical technologies, recommending the
strategic use of the diagnosis. While the latter view underestimates
that degree to which such a move further empowers the existing
structural arrangement and inflicts damage upon those who undergo the
regulations (82-3), the former fail to see how, in practice, movement
away from some medical regulation is not going to be possible without
also completely undermining access to the technology (90-1). In
Butler's view, the institutional mechanisms which permit access
through medical regulation and psychological evaluation, allow for a
kind of culturally circumscribed access to autonomy, but only at the
cost of "undoing" oneself (91). Butler sees this bind of
"undoing oneself" in order to "do oneself" as
characteristic of the general way in which autonomy is both culturally
denied and bestowed (100-1).



While Butler's modified view in some ways eases the tension
between her theory of gender and the demands of trans politics, it is
worth noting that the theory does not deliver many details in
terms of trans oppression and possibilities for resistance. Her
discussion of Gender Identity Disorder is a case in point. It leaves us
with a powerful illustration of her theoretical claims about autonomy;
yet it does not offer much in terms of concrete political
strategies.


## 6. Technology and the Production of Gender



Bernice Hausman's *Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology,
and the Idea of Gender* (1995) aims to provide a feminist analysis
of transsexuality within a Foucauldian paradigm. While her theoretical
framework differs markedly from Raymond's, she also shares
Raymond's concern about transsexuality as well as her deep
distrust of medical intervention on the body.




For Hausman, the primary hallmark of transsexuality is the sheer
demand for transsexual surgeries through which transsexual subjects are
constituted *as such* (1995, 110)*.* As a consequence,
she sees transsexual subjectivity as entirely dependent upon medical
technology. In Hausman's view, transsexuals and doctors work
interdependently to produce "the standard account" of
transsexuality which serves as a "cover" for the demand for
surgery and to justify access to the medical technologies (110, 138-9).
Behind the "cover" there is only the problematic demand to,
through technology, engineer oneself as a subject. Because of this,
Hausman claims that transsexual agency can be "read
through" the medical discourse (110).




A corollary of her view is that the very notion of gender (as a
psychological entity and cultural role distinguished from sex) is a
consequence of medical technology, and in part, the emergence of
transsexuality. Rather than arising as a consequence of sexist gender
roles, Hausman argues, transsexuality is one of vehicles through which
gender itself is produced as an effect of discourses designed to
justify access to certain medical technology (140). In defending this
position, Hausman points to the historical emergence of the expressions
*gender* and *gender identity* in the work of individuals
such as John Money and Robert Stoller (discussed earlier). She sees
such historical developments not as moments of intellectual discovery
but as discursive development. It is the precisely the development of
this new gender discourse which ushers in gender and gender identity.
And such discourse is made possible, for Hausman, through the advance
in technology which allows surgical treatment of intersex and
transsexual individuals. In effect, gender and gender identity
discourse emerges as a way to motivate and justify the deployment of
certain medical technologies.




In light of this, Hausman critiques Butler for assuming an
ahistorical use of gender/sex in her attempt to read sex as
"gender all along." On the contrary, argues Hausman, gender
was a historical development (179). Prior to gender, argues Hausman,
the reproductive subject (i.e., woman or man understood within a
heterosexual framework) was understood in terms of the body as
signifier of sex. With the development of gender, the reproductive
subject (now understood in terms of heterosexual gender role) is taken
to signify gender identity (as the very ground for biological sex)
(187-88). Hausman resists Butler's (1990) call to proliferate
genders, then, and insists instead on a return to the notion of sex
(180).



A significant component of Hausman's account is that transsexual
agency is inherently complicit in the medical model (140). For Hausman,
transsexuals are defined by their desire for surgical conversion and
have their subjectivity constituted by and through medical accounts of
transsexuality. Beyond the medical model, no transsexual subjectivity
is possible at all, according to Hausman. Whereas Stone (1991) sought
to disrupt the traditional transsexual narrative by making room for the
experiences of transsexuals (captured in "double vision")
and by generating new hybrid ("genre-blending") narratives,
Hausman denies that there is anything further to be said (174).
Notably, Hausman appears to misrepresent Stone as claiming that there
is a single reality or truth to be told, concealed by the medical
narrative (146). However, she also appears to reject any possibility of
"double consciousness" and of trans resistance to the
medical model (195-6). This rejection, however, is empirically false as
is evidenced by Stone's observations about the subversive
activities in transsexual subculture (discussed above). Indeed, given
that Stone herself, a transsexual, seems capable of articulating an
account of self that exceeds and contests the medical model, it is
unclear why and how Hausman can deny that resistant transsexual
subjectivity is possible.



For Hausman, transsexual autobiographies serve the function of
justifying access to surgery through the deployment of medical
accounts. The purpose of such narratives is to compel the reader to
comply with the author's experience and to interpret her own life
in the same way (156). Indeed, Hausman argues, these very narratives
belie several contradictions and are actually self-defeating. For
example, Hausman notes a self-defeating tension between transsexual
claims to have always been "the other sex" all along and
the related demand for "sex-change" surgery (148). If one
was always that sex all along, then why sex-change surgery?



In response to this charge, Prosser (1998) argues that
autobiographical narrative is essential to understanding transsexual
subjectivity (103). In his view, autobiographical
narrative--required by the clinician, and then perhaps re-visited
through a formal autobiography--allows transsexuals to confer
intelligibility upon their lives. Such accounts, Prosser points out,
are always retrospective. And they involve a split between the
narrated self and the narrating self. Such tensions between claims to
having always belonged to a sex (on the one hand) and of going through
a process of surgical sex-change (on the other) are simply
constitutive of the types of tensions that arise in autobiographical
narrative (1998, 114-120).



Whether or not Prosser is correct, however, Hausman's
identification of self-undermining tensions is weak. A claim to have
always belonged to a sex and a claim to have become a sex through
surgery are only in tension if 'sex' is used univocally in
the two claims. But it isn't clear that this is so. If claims to
have always belong to a sex are used to flag a gender identity and
perhaps the sense that one ought to have born to the other sex (on the
one hand), while claims to have changed one's sex are used to
flag bodily transformation (on the other hand), then there scarcely
seems to be a self-defeating tension.



Hausman also briefly considers transgender politics as a possible
source of resistance to the medical conception of transsexuality. She
recognizes that the possibility of trans people working in a way that
is at odds with the medical regulation of gender is at odds with her
attempt to reduce transsexual subjectivity to complicity. In reply,
however, Hausman sides with Raymond in affirming that the sheer mix-and-match of
gender presentation does nothing to transcend gender, relying on an
unacceptable view of gender as in some ways voluntary (197-8). She also
notes that Bornstein (whom she sees as representative of all current
transgender politics) continues to make room for transsexual identities
and transsexual surgery, which she sees as fundamentally problematic
(198). Even if Hausman is right that some transgender activists adopt
this position about transsexuals, however, she hasn't fully
addressed the main point that there exist forms of trans subjectivity
which outstrip the medical model. And while she is certainly right that
not all gender blending is subversive, it isn't clear why none
is.



One of the notable outcomes of Hausman's work (as well as
Raymond's new introduction to *The Transsexual Empire*),
was a heightened recognition among trans scholars of the fragility of
transgender studies. Concerned by the continuing transphobia inherent
in some non trans feminist writers, C. Jacob Hale drafted
"Suggested Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about
Transsexuality, Transsexualism, or Trans" (1997) to assist
non-trans individuals in writing about trans people in ways that
avoided, rather than perpetuated, transphobic strategies and
representations.


## 7. Butch/FTM Border Wars and Border Zone Dwellers



To a large extent, (non-trans) feminist discussion of trans issues
seems to have circulated around the perceived problematic status of
trans people (and, in particular, transsexuals). Moreover, there has
generally been an over-emphasis on MTFs in particular. So it is worth
drawing attention to significant (trans) feminist views which have
emerged from disputes in subaltern communities among various non-gender
normative individuals, particularly those assigned female at birth.



Tensions among FTM-identified and butch lesbian-identified people had
been leading to politically charged disputes about the significance of
masculinity. For some lesbians, FTMs represented a betrayal of
womanhood and a desertion of lesbian community. For some FTMs, butch
masculinity was a lesser and perhaps "artificial"
manifestation of masculinity in contrast to the masculinity exemplified
by FTMs. Such competing ways of understanding masculinity led to what
have sometimes been called "Butch/FTM border wars"
(Halberstam and Hale, 1998).



Such conflict found articulation in a dispute over the gender identity
and sexual orientation of a young masculine-presenting
female-assigned-at birth individual, Brandon (Teena), who was slain in
Humbolt, Nebraska in 1993, when discovered to be "really a
woman." (Hale [1998a] argues that there is not good evidence that
Brandon used the name *Brandon Teena*. It has, however, become a
common way of referring to this individual. I place the name
*Teena* in parentheses to flag the problematic nature of this
linguistic construction). An article in the *Village Voice*, by
Donna Minkowitz entitled "Love Hurts. Brandon Teena Was a Woman
Who Lived and Loved as a Man. She was Killed for Carrying It
Off", led to the formation of Transexual Menace, a trans activist
group, which protested the perceived invalidation of Brandon's
identity as transgender person (Prosser 1997, 316).



Similar tensions arose in the academic literature. Judith
Halberstam's ground-breaking essay "F2M: The Making of
Female Masculinity" (1994) was the target of considerable
criticism from within FTM communities (Halberstam 1998a). Jay
Prosser's "No Place Like Home: The Transgendered Narrative
of Leslie Feinberg's *Stone Butch Blues*" (1995)
aimed to offer an academic reply to Halberstam's perceived
invalidation of FTM self-identities.


### 7.1 Female Masculinity



In "F2M" Halberstam seeks to undercut the representation of
FTM transition as a more radical form of gender crossing than others
(such as lesbian butch gender presentation) (1994, 212; 1998a, 289).
She points to the failure of the standard scheme (straight/ lesbian/
transsexual) in accounting for the multiple and highly specific forms
of identity and desire in "postmodern lesbian identities."
She argues against the notion of crossing from one category to another
in light of the proliferation of such identities situated at alleged
"crossings" (1994, 212). By this she means that such
identities can be taken in their own right as claiming ways of being in
the world that contest the very dominant categories that would situate
them as "crossings."



Halberstam claims that surgical intervention in the case of
"sex-change" serves to "fictionalize" gender
(i.e., render or expose as artificial) (1994, 216). Likewise, she
argues, alternative gender presentations involving attire or fantasy
can "fictionalize" gender, where in all cases the
"fiction" requires a reader (221). These
"fictions" may play a significant role in the identities
and desire of individuals. The upshot is that there is nothing
distinctive about FTM transsexuality in "fictionalizing"
gender. Rather a masculine performing butch lesbian, for example,
likewise fictionalizes it. "Sex-change" and
"cross-dressing" are largely on a par with regard to their
central importance to identity and desire.



In light of this move, Halberstam notoriously remarks, "We are
all transsexuals. There are no transsexuals" (1994, 212) in order
to underline the plurality of ways in which gender (as identity and
desire central) can be "fictionalized." This attempt to
undercut the specificity of FTM transsexuality drew fire from some FTM
circles and Halberstam later weakened her claim (1998a, 306). Her
point, however, (as she later explained), was to mark out space for the
notion of a *transgender butch* as a position which resisted a
continuum in which lesbian butch masculinity is represented as less
than the fully achieved masculinity of FTM transsexuals (1998a,
289).


### 7.2 No Place Like Home




In his reply to Halberstam, Prosser contrasts what he sees as the
oppositional positions of queer and trans. He takes issue with a
tendency in queer theory to represent gender/sex as performance and, in
Halberstam's work, fictions. (As has been noted, for some trans
people, the view that gender is unreal or artificial seems to undo
their very attempts to see themselves as "real men" or
"real women"). Yet, while there may be some grounds for
some political complaint with this theoretical account, Prosser falls
prey to a view which holds butch lesbian masculine presentation as
merely artificial or gender play, in contrast with the
"reality" and "depth" present in the case of
FTMs. In this way, he does not sufficiently differentiate between lived
lives that may (or may not) be described as "queer" (e.g.
butch masculinities) and an academic queer/postmodern theoretical
starting point (1995, 487). The latter may very well involve viewing
all gender as performance and identity as fictional. However,
"queer" lives (involving butch masculinities) need not be
viewed this way. To distinguish butch as artificial and transsexual as
real is to refuse to acknowledge the relationship of many butch
individuals to gender and identity.



Prosser's strategy for marking a trans theoretical vantage point
is to draw a contrast between the centrality of performance (in queer
theory) and narrative (for transsexual people). He correctly notes a
tendency in postmodern queer theory to raise questions about the
political role of narratives (1995, 484). Such narratives may be seen
to involve the illusion of a false unity and they may also involve
exclusionary politics. Yet narratives, according to Prosser, are
central to the accounts of transsexuals and such narratives involve the
notion of home and belonging (1995, 488). This appeal to narrative
seems in tension with a picture which underscores the fragmentation of
coherent narratives into diverse performances and which identifies
subversion with the disruption of narrative-based identities. Coherent
narratives, even if ultimately fictional, play important
intelligibility-conferring roles in the lives of transsexuals,
according to Prosser. And this cannot be well-accommodated in accounts
which aim to undermine such coherence.



In Prosser's view, transsexual narratives are driven by a sense
of feeling not at home in one's body, through a journey of
surgical change, ultimately culminating in a coming home to oneself
(and one's body) (1995, 490). In this way, the body and bodily
discomfort constitute the "depth" or "reality"
that stands in contrast to the view that body is sexed through
performative gender behavior which constitutes it as the container of
gender identity. In light of this, Prosser concludes that queer
theory's use of transsexuals to undermine gender as mere
performance fails to do justice to the importance of narrative and
belonging in trans identities.



Drawing on Feinberg's *Stone Butch Blues*, Prosser argues
that transgender (construed as a departure from traditional
transsexuality) likewise involves a narrative structure. In this case,
however, the narrative involves making a home of the in-between space
between man and woman (1995, 500). Since, however, it involves more
than mere performance (i.e., dysphoria concerning one's body) as
well as the centrality of narrative, it ought to be distinguished from
generic understandings of queer. He later alters his view slightly,
placing transgender in a liminal space between queer and transsexual,
admitting far more ambivalence around the notion of home and belonging
(1998, 177).



While Prosser may be right to emphasize the importance of narratives in
the identities of transsexual and transgender people, however, it is
hardly clear that he can maintain the fairly sharp lines he hopes to
draw between transsexual, transgender, and queer. The narrative
structure of identity (as well as notions of home and belonging) may be
important for many people (including queer-identified ones). And, while
for Prosser what is distinctive about transsexual/transgender
narratives is that they involve a feeling of bodily unbelonging, it
isn't clear why such dysphoria may not be present among non
trans-identified people. Moreover, his view seems to take for granted
the view that for trans people there is always a "home" to
which one might return (or, at least, imagine). Yet this is to assume
that trans people have the means by which to find this belonging (in
their bodies, etc.). Given economic realities, however, this is far
from clear. Indeed, given the meagerness of linguistic resources to
even explain trans experiences, it isn't obvious how, in some
cases, so much as an imaginary home might be formulated.


### 7.3 Finding Voice in the Borderlands



The work of C. Jacob Hale is a kind of philosophical intervention in
these borderland disputes. He offers one of the earliest theorizations
of trans issues from within the analytic tradition. And in some ways,
his perspective welds together trans, queer, and feminist sensibilities
from a distinctive queer, feminist, ftm vantage point. (Hale uses the
term *ftm* rather than *FTM* as a way to refuse the term as an
abbreviation of *female-to-male*. Instead, for Hale, it is a
community-specific term. This discussion of Hale will respect his
terminological decisions). His work centers around the analysis of
gender categories.



Hale (1996) examines Monique Wittig's (1992) contentious claim
that lesbians are not women. (Wittig's point was to turn on its
head the heterosexist view that lesbians fail to count as women by
arguing that lesbians step outside the oppressive category of woman
which requires heterosexual relations with men). Hale is one of the
first to defend the view (now adopted by many feminist philosophers)
that the category *woman* is what Wittgenstein called a
family-resemblance concept. The concept *woman*, in Hale's
view, has thirteen, differently weighted characteristics none of which
are necessary or sufficient for category membership (1996, 107-12).
This position enables Hale to then argue, pace Wittig, that some
lesbians are women, others are not, and for some there is no fact of
the matter (1996, 115).



In Hale's view, the category woman is inherently normative (1996,
104). Individuals who fall within it can be assessed on the degree to
which they conform to the thirteen characteristics. For Hale, the
category is governed by both positive and negative exemplars. Negative
exemplars serve to proscribe certain forms of behavior and threaten the
possibility of falling out of the category altogether (1996, 105). Yet
while the threat of falling outside of the category must be in place to
regulate conduct, owing to the cultural requirements of preserving the
prevailing common sense about gender, very few individuals must
actually fall outside of the category altogether (105-6).



Similarly, Hale argues, there is no single feature which can
distinguish between butch and ftm individuals (except, perhaps, the
sheer self-identification with the very labels *butch* or
*ftm*). Not all ftms self-identify as men and not all
butches self-identify as women, some butches identify more strongly
with masculinity than do some ftms, and some butches avail themselves
of body-altering medical technologies, while some ftms do not (1998a,
321-2). Hale also critiques "desire for a penis" as the
dividing line between butches and ftms (199a, 326-30): Such an attempt
erases complex butch desires as well as the idiosyncratic relationship
of ftms to their bodies while accounting for butch/ftm distinctions in
a phallocentric way. Additionally, it draws on a model of
"sex-change surgery" which is borrowed from male-to-female
contexts (in which "the surgery" is identified with genital
surgery) and thereby further promotes male-to-female dominance in trans
contexts (329-30). By this Hale means that "the surgery" is
typically used to refer to genital reconstruction surgery. However the
centralization of one surgery is especially problematic in ftm
contexts. Double mastectomy and hysterectomy are other important
surgeries. Indeed, "top surgery" (as it is sometimes
called) often figures more prominently in ftm contexts.



Instead, Hale suggests that both categories would be better analyzed
as family-resemblance concepts (1998a, 323). If so, claims Hale, it
would be better to speak of a border zone where the categories
partially overlap with each other than to search for a firm boundary
between the two (323). The model allows Hale to, perhaps in the spirit
of Anzaldua, speak of "border zone
dwellers"--individuals who live at the edges of multiple,
overlapping identity categories. He argues that given the evidence,
Brandon (Teena) appears to have been such a border zone dweller
(317-9). Attempts to claim the dead (or the living) who live in such
border zones, argues Hale, make it even harder for such individuals to
live there (319). It makes it more difficult to live there by
threatening to eliminate border zone space altogether by trying to
force individuals who occupy it into other frameworks. Similarly,
border zone dwellers may face pressure to claim identity categories
that do not work well and which threaten to erase the specifics of
their lived experiences (336). Such subject positions (constituted by
a lack of any central identity category) are important, albeit
difficult place to speak from (partially because there doesn't
seem to be any available language). Yet such specificity must be
maintained, argues Hale, partially through calling into question the
function of definitions and categories, partially through artistic
endeavor that attempts to creatively give voice to experiences not
well captured in the available language (336-7). Hale strongly urges
that butch/ftm border zones be "demilitarized" (i.e., that
different "camps" such as ftm community and lesbian
community stop trying to claim border zone dwellers as their own)
in order to make room for marginalized border zone dwellers themselves
(340).



Hale expands on his notion of the border zone dweller in order to
outline what it might be to articulate an ftm feminist voice (1998b).
He draws principally on Maria Lugones' notion of
'world'-travelling (Lugones 1987). In her view, those
marginalized by the mainstream may occupy different
'worlds' in which they may be constructed as different
persons. (A shift in self, for Lugones, constitutes a shift in
'world'). For Hale, then, border zone dwellers, those who
occupy 'dislocated locations,' may fit within different
categories ('man', 'ftm', 'butch',
'genderqueer' etc.) that attach to different cultural
'worlds' (1998b, 116-7). However, since these border zone
dwellers are marginal with respect to the categories, their fit in all
cases will be only limited and tenuous. In this way, Hale modifies
Lugones' conception of 'world'-travel (which does not
postulate such a tenuous fit into categories) (117). By contrast,
Lugones' conception insists upon the multiplicity of languages
and systems of meaning, which is de-emphasized in Hale's
model.




Hale argues that because many ftms have had experiences living as girls
or women, have a history of moving in feminist 'worlds',
and may be far more aware of the significance of masculine enactments,
there is a strong basis for wanting to avoid certain forms of
masculinity while embracing those which abide by feminist values
(1998b, 118). This requires, according to Hale, maintaining human bonds
with non-trans feminist women and travelling to their
"worlds" while continuing to recognize oneself as a border
dweller. This is difficult, however, given assumptions by non-trans
feminists who do not have the experience of certain forms of gender
oppression (such as transphobia) (118).



It also requires caution with respect to the types of identifications
one makes. For Hale, identification *as* a member of a category
involves both identifications *with* members of that group as
well as identifications *as not*-members of some other category
(119). There may be pressure, through uptake of the category ftm, for
example, to identify primarily with non-trans men and to dis-identify
with butch lesbians. Such pressure, for Hale must be avoided (119).
Identification *with* may operate independently of
identification *as* a member of category (on the basis of, for
example, historical ties). The making of such identifications must be
guided by the exercise of moral and political agency. In light of this,
Hale argues, gendered self-identities must be made secondary to moral
and political identifications (120).


## 8. Feminist Solidarity After Queer Theory



After Butler, there have been notable non-trans feminist contributions
to the study of trans issues, focusing largely on the issue of feminist
solidarity and trans identities. In marked contrast to the works of
Raymond and Hausman, these contributions constitute sincere efforts at
promoting trans and non-trans feminist coalition.


### 8.1 Secular Jews and Transsexual Women



Naomi Scheman (1997) examines the ways in which certain dominant forms
of normativity necessitate "abjected others" who are
required but rendered impossible and unintelligible to normatively
privileged selves. Scheman rejects the options of either claiming a
place at the center of normalized forms of life (from which one has
initially been excluded), or refusing to engage the dominant forms of
identity at all (by accepting one's "marginal"
status). Instead, Scheman aims to contest the normative center by
centralizing those who have been marginalized (126-7). With this in
mind, she begins with the assumption that marginalized lives "are
lived, and hence livable" (132).



Scheman draws on her own lack of clarity about Jewish identity, as a
secular Jew, in order to help trouble the unproblematic status of her
own gender. She sees a Jewish people conceptually required by
Christianormativity, and yet rendered unintelligible by its
representation of all religions as entirely conversion-based (1997,
128). Under such conditions, it becomes hard to explain what it is to
identify as a secular Jew. Likewise, she sees transsexuality as
involving a required incoherence. Since heteronormativity requires a
"natural" binary of women and men, transsexuals are
paradoxically defined by an insistence of having always been the other
sex all along and thereby required to deny their own histories (as
Stone argues) (138-9). In this respect, Scheman notes,
Christianormativity and heteronormativity are contrasting: The former
represents all religions as driven by choice and conversion, the latter
represents all gender as naturally determined at birth (142).



Both "Jewishness" and "womanhood" for Scheman,
can be understood as family-resemblance concepts (1997, 144). However
those who have been assigned to the category *Jew* on the basis
of ancestry or to a gender on the basis of birth form the basis of such
concepts without which the concepts would not exist at all (144). She
introduces the expression "perinatally pinked" to describe
those individuals who have experienced oppression as female from birth
and recommends it as a way to understand the need for
"womyn-born-womyn" space which she sees as intended for
healing the damage inflicted through natal assignment as a female in a
misogynist society (141-2).



Yet just as individuals may convert to Judaism and become a Jew,
Scheman suggests, MTFs may be understood to "convert" to
womanhood. In both cases, such individuals are no less real than those
who have been assigned the categories at birth (144). While she notes
several disanalogies (e.g., in the case of transsexuality one does not
simply *choose*, as one might convert to a religion), she also
suggests that by viewing sex/gender as more analogous to Jewishness in
this respect, some of its oppressiveness might be undermined (145). The
notion of joining a collectivity is important, for Scheman, because it
stresses the importance of shared bonds, values, and commitments. In
the end, this is what is most important, she argues: "The issue,
then, is not who is or is not really whatever but who can be counted on
when they come for any one of us: The solid ground is not identity but
loyalty and solidarity" (153).


### 8.2 Gender as Relational



Cressida Heyes continues this non-trans feminist project of finding
grounds for solidarity between (non trans) feminists and trans folk.
Following Hale, she argues that *woman* is a family-resemblance
concept, regulated in different ways for different political purposes
(2000, 84-5). And following Scheman, she notes that in some cases
differences between trans and non-trans women (such as being
"perinatally pinked") may need to be emphasized for
political purposes (93). She offers a critique of the non-trans
feminist positions of Raymond and Hausman, while also critiquing what
she sees as troubling tendencies in some transgender politics (such as
the work of Leslie Feinberg) to adopt a liberal conception of the self
as atomistic (2003). In this way, she seeks to find some middle, common
ground.



Heyes argues that both Raymond and Hausman are caught in the grip of a
picture which precludes any examination of their own gender privilege
while foreclosing the possibility of perceiving trans resistance (2003,
1095). This foreclosure is accomplished through assimilating all
transsexual subjectivity into to a hetero-patriarchal medical discourse
about transsexuality (2003, 1095). Using Feinberg's book
*Trans Liberation* as an example, Heyes also raises worries
about a transgender politics which says that individual gender
expression ought not be subject to criticism, restriction, or
oppression. She observes that gender is not merely an aesthetic style
or expression of an isolated self. It is relational and often embedded
in problematic systems of oppression. This means that forms of
masculinity involve interacting with women, for example, in particular
ways. Certain forms of masculinity involve misogyny. What it means to
be a "*real* man" may involve relating to women in
hostile, destructive ways. Such gender behavior *ought* to be
critiqued. What is missing from accounts which merely tout gender
freedom of expression, Heyes argues, is a rich "ethics of
transformation" which distinguishes between progressive
transformations from those who are oppressed and marginalized and
hegemonic (i.e., dominant; oppressive) forms of gender that only
further oppression and marginalization (2003, 1111-3).


### 8.3 Race/Sex Analogies



Heyes also examines the use of sex/race analogy in questions about
transsexuality and a hypothetical "transracialism." Recall
Raymond's rhetorical question "Does a Black person who
wants to be white suffer from the 'disease' of being a
'transracial?'" Such a question is intended to show
that, since "transracialism" is politically and morally
suspect, so too, is transsexuality. Christine Overall, by contrast,
argues the inverse of what Raymond claims, namely that those who accept
the morality of transsexuality ought to accept the morality of
"transracialism" as well (2004).



Heyes observes that Raymond's claim that "there is no
demand for transracial medical intervention precisely because most
Blacks recognize that it is their society, not their skin, that needs
changing" [1994, xvi] is actually empirically false (2003, 1102).
Cosmetic procedures *do* exist which aim to modify ethnically or
racially marked features (e.g. hair-straightening treatments,
nose-jobs, eye-lid surgery). Heyes points to Raymond's use of a
sex/race analogy to dismiss transsexuals as "capricious or
appropriative" (2006, 269). The analogy is used, Heyes claims, as
a basis for assessing the motivations and politics of individuals who
change identity in a way that problematically assumes that such
motivations may be based on a "transparent political evaluation
of its benefits and drawbacks" (ibid.).



While Overall offers a far more nuanced analysis, claims Heyes, she
still treats race and sex in a way that is abstracted from the
historical conditions and assumes that such history is irrelevant to
ethical assessment (2006, 269-70). In particular, Heyes argues that in
drawing analogies between race and sex there is a danger in not paying
sufficient attention to the contrasting histories of race and sex. For
example, since sex has been viewed as a core ontological fact in a
binary scheme, the conditions are in place for the possibility of
sex-change as well as medicalized transsexual discourse which
reinscribes this basic, ontological binary (2003, 1102; 2006, 2006,
277). By contrast, while race has also been viewed as a natural
category, there is another racial discourse which understands it as a
superficial feature under which human beings are all the same. This,
along with the lack of the same strict binary, does not provide the
same conditions which would make "transracialism" a similar
possibility (2003, 1103).



Heyes points to the historical role played by heredity in determining
race (but not sex). This mitigates against the possibility of
"transracialism" in a way that is not present in the case
of sex, she argues (2006, 271). Relatedly, changing race has a history
of being associated with "passing" which would leave any
"transracialist" subject to accusations of
"passing" in a way that is not present in the case of
sexual crossing (272). Heyes notes, then, that those promoting cosmetic
procedures which change ethnic or racial features take care to avoid
issues around racial betrayal by emphasizing individual self-expression
and aesthetics (273-4). By contrast, argues Heyes, since sex is not
viewed as hereditary, the possible of sex-change has been more viable.
Indeed, contemporary sex must be understood as partially constituted by
the history of technological developments in sex modification (as
"passing" has partially constituted race) that has
precisely *allowed* for such sex-change within the discourse of
pathology and internal gender identity (277).


### 8.4 Aspirational Identities




In considering the metaphysics of sex/gender transition
(i.e. transition from man to woman or woman to man), Christine Overall
(2009), critiques two accounts of it. Both accounts agree that, in a
way, there is no change of sex/gender at all. One remains the
sex/gender one always was. She calls both of these "masquerade
hypotheses" (12). In the first version, adopted usually by (some)
nontrans people, the trans person who transitions from one sex/gender
to another is merely donning a mask or engaging in a pretense that
effectively hides what they always really were (the "true
person"). In such a view, the trans person is represented as
either deceptive or deluded. In the second version, adopted usually by
(some) trans people, the trans person who transitions is merely
becoming what they always already were, through pulling off a kind of
bodily mask which fails to express what they are "on the
inside" (the "true person"). In both accounts,
sex/gender is invariant. Rather than changing sex/gender, one either
moves into the state of masquerade or out of it. Overall argues that
both the delusion and deception are implausibly applied to the diverse
lives of all trans people and, indeed, belied by the lives of many
trans people (13-14). She rejects the second masquerade account on the
grounds that it relies on a suspect metaphysics (14-18).




In Overall's view, by contrast, we ought to understand sex/gender
transition as analogous to "other life-changing and
life-enhancing aspirations for personal transformation and
self-realization" (19). Some of the examples she gives include
becoming an immigrant; joining a twelve-step program to give up
alcohol, joining a religion, becoming a mother. "Some goals and
aspirations," Overall writes, "are deeply felt and of
central value to particular individuals, and it is those goals and
aspirations that provide the dominant drives of the individual"
(19). In place of both masquerade views, she proposes that we view
sex/gender transition as an actual change in sex/gender. What remains
constant is not some reified gendered self. Instead, the person
"persists insofar as her way of being, after transition, is
desired and actively sought by her previous self, so that the way of
being after the transition grows out of the previous self, is
generated by the previous self, and can be understood in terms of
characteristics of the previous self" (20).




One unfortunate consequence of this view is that a trans man (for
example) cannot truthfully claim to be a man prior to
transitioning. To be sure, there is a sense in which being a man is a
core part of his identity both prior to transition and afterwards,
since becoming a man is a life-changing aspiration subsequently
realized. Her account is therefore importantly different from the
first masquerade account in that it takes seriously trans identities,
viewing them as striving for a kind of authenticity. But his claim to
be a man (or male) prior to transitioning is still false. To see this
more clearly consider that insofar as Overall (2009) effectively
defines sex in terms of genitalia (11), it follows that a trans man
who has not undergone phalloplasty has not yet changed his sex (and is
still therefore female, and possibly still a woman). The problem is
that, in part owing to its cost, many trans men elect not to have this
type of surgery. Nonetheless, they may still regard themselves as men
(and even male). This leaves open the possibility for the charge of
self-delusion or self-deception to re-emerge despite Overall's attempt
to avoid this.




Overall (2012) uses her conception of gender/sex
transition as aspirational, to undermine the view that trans and
cisgender people are very different from each other. Her goal in doing
this is not to elide the forms of violence and discrimination to which
trans people are subject as trans, but to call into question the view
that being cisgender is normal, while being trans is deviant
(252-3).




She distinguishes between acquired and aspirational identities. The
first are assigned or earned in such a way that no further work is
required to maintain them (255). For example, being a biological
mother is an acquired identity. Aspirational identity, by contrast,
requires constant work to maintain (256). For example, being a mother
(as in a caregiver for one or more children) requires constant
maintenance. Overall argues that gender identity (by which she means
the social categories boy/man and girl/woman) is aspirational in
nature. "One can aspire to exemplify a gender through the
aforementioned bodily styling, self-presentation, and gendered
activities, all of which must be ongoing for gender identity
maintenance" (256-57). She also argues that sex itself may be
becoming an aspirational identity (at least for some) insofar as both
cis and trans people alike seek out surgery and other medical
procedures (e.g. hormone therapy) to alter or augment the sexual
characteristics of their bodies (258).




Overall then argues that trans and cis people have the following
features in common (with regard to aspirational identity). Both are
immersed in a system of compulsory gender maintenance, both are
subject to constraints on how their gender identities are maintained
while also afforded various opportunities to express their identities,
both are subject to various dangers connected to gender maintenance
(e.g., trans people can be subject to transphobic violence for
"misrepresenting" their genital status, while cis women may
be subject to violence on the basis of their gender presentation),
finally (and contrary to a common assumption) both may experience
forms of continuity and discontinuity in their gender aspirations. For
example, a trans person may harbor gender aspirations of being a
girl/woman for most of their life, while a cis woman may, as a
consequence of feminism, alter her womanly aspirations. In this way,
Overall continues this non-trans feminist project of finding grounds
for solidarity between non-trans feminists and trans people.


## 9. The Phenomenology of Trans Embodiment


 Gayle Salamon's work (2010) concerns the phenomenology of gendered
embodiment and, in particular, trans experiences of dissonance between
"felt body" and the external appearance of the body. She
revisits the dispute between Judith Butler (who claims that the
gendered self is socially-constructed) and trans theorists, such as
Jay Prosser (1998) who, rather than taking transsexuality as evidence
of the constructedness of gender, points to it as evidence of
something that transcends such construction (1998, 7 and 65). Aside
from arguing that Prosser misreads both Freud and Didier Anzieu (2010,
39-40), Salamon defends the implausibility of viewing proprioceptive
awareness of the body as somehow culturally-transcendent. She argues
that the body postulated in such a view is ultimately unrecognizable
as human (88). In her view, "the same social forces that
constitute a body as culturally legible or illegible also shape the
very feelings of embodiment that would seem to be most personal, most
individual, and most immune to regulatory injunction" (77).


 Drawing on the work of Schilder (1950), Salamon sees one's body
image as not innate, but as built up over time through experiential
contact with the world (including interactions with other people). In
light of this, Salamon argues that the lack of fit between felt sense
of body and external appearance of the body experienced by some trans
people is, in fact, pervasive - relevant to trans and non-trans folk
alike: "The production of normative gender itself," she
writes, "relies on a disjunction between the 'felt sense' of the
body and the body's corporeal contours and . . . this disjunction need
not be viewed as a pathological structure" (2010, 2).


 Yet it is not clear how such an environmental account can explain
the genesis of trans experiences of "wrong"
embodiment. Consider that not all trans women possess a conscious
self-identity of being a woman (or a girl) from a very early age, and
not all trans men possess a conscious self-identity of being a man (or
boy) from early on. Imagine, then a trans woman who is raised to see
herself as male and to follow "the proper" gender
norms. This person should, in the environmental account, develop a
body image that would be described as roughly 'male.' For in
accordance with external gender norms and internalized gender
identity, this person will have generally had the types of interactive
worldly-experiences that would be expected to yield such an
image. Thus, if there's such an image that's incongruent with assigned
gender, it mustn't have been developed in that environmental way.


 In addition to possessing an internal perception of one's body,
however, one is also affectively invested in one's body. That is, one
takes an interest in it and has strong emotions about it. Salamon
writes, "Without that investment, our relationship to our bodies
is one of depersonalized estrangement: my sense of the
"mine-ness" of my own body-and, crucially, even my sense
of its coherence-depends on this narcissistic investment" (2010,
42). This provides a way to move beyond the limitations of
(socially-regulated) environmental experience insofar as such
affective attitudes are not subject to the same type of
worldly-constraint.




The challenge, however, is to explain this investment in such a way
that does not reduce to sexuality or forms of eroticism. Expressions
such as Schilder's *libinal investment* have strong sexual
connotations. And the worry is that an appeal to such notions will
reduce trans experiences of bodily dsyphoria to *sexual
feelings*. This is of particular concern in light of the long
standing tendency (as Salamon notes, 2010, 45) to construe
transsexuality in terms of sexual desire, to reduce cross-gender
identification to a kind of sexual fetish, and to elide trans gender
body dysphoria as a discrete phenomenon. Unfortunately in her
discussion of this issue, Salamon appeals to Butler's notion of the
morphological imaginary which itself actually does appear to privilege
the sexual. What remains to be explained - a serious lacuna - is the
non-sexual affective investment in the gendered body that presumably
must ground the disjunction between felt sense of gendered body and
the visual body in cases of trans bodily dysphoria. 




In her own account of sexual desire, however, Salamon is notably
careful to avoid reducing transsexuality to eroticism. She is merely
interested instead, in accommodating trans experiences of sexuality in
a way that is not invalidating (2010, 45). Salamon draws on
Merleau-Ponty's notions of the sexual schema and transposition. In
experiencing sexual desire, one is oriented toward an object of
desire. In transposition, one's body (that "houses") the
sexual desire comes to be replaced by (or itself actually becomes) the
desire itself. Salamon illustrates the point as follows. When I'm
thirsty and reach for a glass of water, "my arm, unbent and
reaching out, is no longer the location of my sensation but rather
becomes the gesture through which I am toward the other. The arm is
the conduit of desire, but not the seat of its sensation"
(54).




In Salamon's account, what's important is not the actual body part
itself, but its role in sexual desire, and this process of
transposition: "The join between desire and the body is the
location of sexuality, and that join may be a penis, or some other
phallus, or some other body part, or a region of the body that is not
individuated into a part, or a bodily auxiliary that is not
organically attached to the body" (2010, 51). In this way,
Salamon's appeal to Merleau-Ponty is similar to Butler's notion of the
morphological imaginary with respect to the role of the erotic in
incorporating the part through a form of sexuality (or, actually, the
whole way of being toward another). Notably, however, Salamon's
account allows her to show how one's "internal sense of
gender" can become capable of being witnessed by others in the
world. For rather than talking merely about an internal feeling, we
are talking about ways of being in the world, in interaction with
others.


## 10. Toward a Trans/Feminism




Many trans women, because they are *women*, are well acquainted
with mechanisms of sexism and sexual violence. Moreover, sometimes
sexism and transphobia can be blended together inseparably. For
example, some trans women may sometimes find that they are
stereotypically represented as prostitutes simply because they are
seen as *transgender women*. With such considerations in mind,
a trans feminist stance might involve taking the oppression of trans
women as its starting point. Several writers have outlined
distinctive "trans feminist" positions.


### 10.1 A Transfeminist Manifesto




Emi Koyama defines transfeminism as "primarily a movement by and
for trans women who view their liberation to be intrinsically linked
to the liberation of all women and beyond" (2003, 244). For
Koyama, transfeminism "stands up for trans and non-trans women
alike, and asks non-trans women to stand up for trans-women in
return", thereby embracing feminist coalition politics (ibid.).
Some of the issues of transfeminist concern, for Koyama, include body
image, violence against women, and health and reproductive choice.




Koyama deepens the discussion of the tensions, identified by Heyes,
between freedom of gender expression (on the one hand) and concerns
about the political implications of gender understood as relational
(on the other). While Koyama calls trans women to avoid the uptake of
sexist forms of gender as well as refusing any traditional appeal to
an essentializing gender identity, she also recognizes that trans
women can find themselves in situations in which uptake of traditional
forms of gender are necessary to secure access to medical
technologies, legitimation as "real women", and avoidance
of transphobic violence through passing (as non-trans) (2003). She
raises worries about the purist demand that a trans woman
eradicate *all* gender stereotypes in a society in which such
stereotypes pervade. She insists instead on the priority of larger
scale coalitional politics, leaving individual women to make their own
personal decisions about how to negotiate gender, free of judgments
about who does and does not count as a feminist (2003).




Koyama also takes up the issues of trans exclusion in the
"womyn-born womyn" policy of the Michigan Womyn's Music
Festival. Koyama criticizes the efforts of some post-operative trans
women to accept a "compromise" policy which would have
admitted only post-operative trans women. Such a policy, argues
Koyama, would unfairly advantage those trans women with greater
economic resources, and is consequently both classist and racist
(2006, 700). Koyama also argues that even if it is true that non-trans
women require their own space, this does not preclude the admission of
trans women into the festival, since while women of color have special
exclusionary space on the land, this does not require that white women
cannot enter the festival at all (701). Moreover, Koyama points out,
such special space for women of color does not exclude those women of
color who can pass as white (and thereby receive certain privileges)
(701). Indeed, Koyama argues, the exclusion of trans women is
inherently racist insofar as it is uses differences in experience to
rule out trans women, a policy which can only make sense if it is
presupposed that feminist solidarity requires a monolithically shared
experience (704).


### 10.2 Trans Woman Manifesto




Another version of trans feminist politics has been elaborated by
Julia Serano who distinguishes between traditional sexism (which she
sees as the belief that males and masculinity are superior to females
and femininity) and oppositional sexism (which she sees as the belief
that male and female, along with masculinity and femininity,
constitute exclusive categories) (2007, 12-3). Serano coins the
expression *trans-misogyny* to capture forms of discrimination
which pertain specifically to trans women which principally target
their perceived femininity (13). For example, Serano points to ways in
which some trans women are represented in the media as either sexually
predatory deceivers or pathetic, laughable, fakes (36). In Serano's
view, such representations derive largely from a sexist focus on the
feminine presentation of trans women and the tendency to view
femininity as artificial (43-44). Serano also provocatively
argues that the devaluation of feminine males is a distinctive form of
traditional sexism which she calls "effemimania" (129,
287).




Serano posits the existence of a "subconscious sex" to
capture the traditional notion of gender identity without requiring an
initial conscious awareness of "wrong body" which she
suggests is biologically grounded and largely limited to body rather
than social role (78-82). (In this way, her notion echoes
Prosser's appeal to "body ego.") Serano deploys the
term *cissexualism* to indicate the advantaging of those for
whom biological sex and subconscious sex are in alignment. The term
*cisgenderism*, by contrast, indicates the assumption that males
ought to be masculine and females ought to be feminine (where
masculinity and femininity are constituted by the set of attributes
typically associated with males and females respectively) (90). Serano
takes the position that while some forms of femininity may be socially
instituted, many feminine attributes may also be biologically grounded.
She writes:



> 
> 
> One would have to have a rather grim view of the female population
> to believe that a majority could so easily be "brainwashed"
> or "coerced" into enthusiastically adopting an entirely
> contrived of wholly artificial set of gender expressions. In fact, it
> seems incomprehensible that so many women could so actively gravitate
> toward femininity unless there was something about it that resonated
> with them on a profound level. (2007, 339)




There is a worry, however, about Serano's under-estimation of the
degree and depth of female subordination as well as her theoretical
failure to distinguish between "personal resonance" and
enforced social acquiescence. In Serano's view, many (non-trans)
feminists have engaged in negative assessments of femininity (viewing
it as strictly an imposed artifice) and thereby implicated themselves
in a form of sexism. Indeed, Serano claims that any feminist critique
of trans femininity is inherently anti-feminist:



> 
> 
> In other words, when we critique any gender as being
> 'good' or 'bad,' we are by definition, being
> sexist. After all, isn't what drives many of us into feminism and
> queer activism in the first place our frustration that other people
> often place rather arbitrary meanings and values onto our sexed bodies,
> gender expression, and sexualities? (2007, 360)




While Serano may be right to raise worries about the ways in which the
behavior of trans women has been unfairly judged, a position which
allows for no analysis of politically problematic gender behavior at
all seems to seriously impair feminism's critical force. The core
issue is that Serano does not see gender as fundamentally relational.
This allows her to view gender as something that everybody ought to be
free to express in any way they want to (free of judgment as
'good' or 'bad'). However, once gender is
viewed as relational, it seems entirely appropriate to raise feminist
worries about certain forms of masculinity that involve treating women
badly and certain forms of femininity that involve accepting poor
treatment. Once gender is recognized as relational (i.e., as involving
the treatment of other gendered people in particular ways), it can be
subject to ethical evaluation (e.g.,"that gendered behavior
involves hurting people"). For the very sake of trans women and
their safety, such a trans feminist intervention is surely
appropriate.




In fairness to Serano, she does not fail to note sexist relations
between men and women. Indeed, she offers a rich account of the
sexualization of trans women (2007, 253-262). In her view,
however, such negative relational features which accrue to femininity
flow from the inappropriate interpretation and evaluation of
femininity, rather than femininity itself. That said, the difficulty
is how one is to distinguish femininity as abstracted from such
relational social meanings. Even if such a project were possible, it
seems clear enough that feminists are concerned precisely by the
harmful forms of masculinity and femininity that are deeply implicated
in systems of social meaning. And it seems unfair to accuse feminists
who raise worries about such forms of sexism as themselves sexist, by
construing them as negatively assessing some culturally abstracted
form of femininity.


### 10.3 Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers


 Talia Mae Bettcher (2012a; 2013; 2014) argues against both the
traditional wrong-body account of transsexuality (in which gender
identity is taken as innate, allegedly determining one's
"real" sex) and the newer, beyond-the-binary vision that
emerged with the new transgender politics of the
nineteen-nineties. Both accounts invalidate trans identities, she
argues - the first, by invalidating the self-identities of trans
people who do not regard their genitals as wrong, the second, by
representing all trans people as problematically positioned with
regard to the binary (2013, 53). Moreover, both accounts fail on their
own terms. While beyond-the-binary politics tend to marginalize trans
people who position themselves within the binary, and therefore fails
as a complete account of trans oppression and resistance (2014, 387),
the wrong-body account fails to secure trans identity claims to belong
to their preferred gender categories (for example, she argues,
according to the dominant meaning of woman, an MTF who has had genital
reconstruction surgery is at best a difficult case (possibly a man
owing to chromosomes, possibly a woman owing to genitalia) (2014,
386). Bettcher's aim (2012a, 2014), then, is to provide an account of
trans politics that does not marginalize trans people who situate
themselves within the binary and that successfully grounds their
self-identity claims.




Instead of attempting to justify trans self-identity claims, Bettcher
(2012a) argues, such claims ought to be accepted as presumptively
valid as a starting-point of trans theory and politics (245-6). She
adopts the general view that (many) trans people tend to oppose the
meanings of mainstream gender terms and practices. In many trans
subcultures, she argues, the meaning of terms such as *woman*
and *man* are altered so that both trans men and trans women
turn out to paradigm instances of men and women respectively
(241). For example possession of XY chromosomes does not count against
trans woman's claim to womanhood insofar as a trans woman is a kind of
woman who tends to have XY chromosomes. As a consequence of this, an
MTF may count as a man in mainstream culture while she may count as a
woman in a resistant trans subculture (242). More deeply, Bettcher
argues (2009, 110-12), the shift in meaning involves not only an
expansion of the category, but also a change in use, reflected in the
grammar of first and third person assertions. It is no longer merely a
question whether the category is truthfully predicated of the object
in question. Instead, there is a first person, present tense avowal of
gender. For example, the claim "I am a trans woman" may be
an avowal of a deep sense of "who one is" (that is, of one's
deepest values and commitments) where defeasible avowals of gender are
presumptively taken as authoritative (2009, 110-12). The political
conflict, at any rate, is framed in terms of competing cultural
formations where the dominant one possesses institutional power and
the capacity to enforce a way of life and way of seeing the world,
regardless of the personal costs to the trans people involved and
regardless of subcultural socially practices which help give their
lives meaning (2009, 115; 2012, 243; 2013, 53-54; 2014, 388-90). (One
notable absence, in this view, is any account of how it is that trans
people are motivated to transition and to occupy such trans cultural
spaces in the first place. That is, there is no account of underlying
gender dysphoria).




Bettcher characterizes the nature of trans oppression largely in terms
of a form of transphobia she in earlier work calls the Basic Denial of
Authenticity (BDA) (2006b, 181) and in later work, reality enforcement
(2013, 58-9; 2014, 392). In this type of transphobia, the identity
invalidation of trans men and trans women is situated in discourses
about appearance, reality, exposure, discovery, and deception. For
example, a trans woman may be viewed as "really a man disguised
as a woman." Importantly, for Bettcher, the invalidation is
connected to forms of genital verification. Explicit genital
verification involves literally exposing or touching the trans person
inappropriately to determined "what they are really."
Implicit genital verification involves euphemistic questions and
claims ("Have you had the surgery?" "Are you male or
female?"). Reality enforcement takes two forms given by the
possibilities of the trans person being visibly trans or passing as
non-trans. In the latter case, trans individuals may be viewed as
deceptive (when "exposed"), while in the former case they
may be viewed as playing at harmless make-believe. Either way, she
argues, trans self-identities are invalidated (2007, 50-51).


 Bettcher argues that an account of transphobia which appeals only
to the imposition of a strict man/woman binary cannot account for
reality enforcement and leads to a restricted and problematic vision
of trans politics. Such identity invalidations often do not involve
perplexity on the part of the transphobe about how to situate the
trans person categorically. On the contrary, trans people are viewed
as "really men" or "really women" (2006b,
184-7). Moreover, she critiques transgender politics of
visibility. For given that reality enforcement always produces a
double-bind, Bettcher argues, such a politics may not always be
promising. Indeed, if it is impossible for trans people to tell the
truth because whatever they do ("pass" as non-trans or
"come out" as trans) yields the view that they are
fraudulent deceivers or pretenders, then it seems that it is not
possible to tell the truth in the first place(2006b, 188-90, 195). If
so, the demand to "tell the truth about oneself" would
seem misplaced.




Bettcher argues that by recognizing reality enforcement and resistant
responses to it, the perceived conflict (discussed earlier in this
entry) between theories which reduce gender to a social construction
and the political necessity of taking seriously trans identities which
claim gender realness can be better mitigated. Insofar as reality
enforcement has sway, trans people are inevitably constructed as
frauds or fakes (2006b, 194). But the general claim that all gender is
socially constructed simply does not address the specific ways in
which trans people are constructed as fraudulent. Bettcher argues that
once we recognize reality enforcement trans people who contest such
invalidation by claiming gender realness may also be viewed as
resistant to transphobic oppression, thereby undermining the tendency
(present in Butler) to dismiss such individuals as merely gender
reactionary or conservative (2014, 397-99). Indeed, the Wrong-Body
Account itself may be viewed as response to reality enforcement
through a kind of inversion where the body is now viewed as the
deceptive appearance which hides the true, concealed gender identity
(2014, 399-404).




A central thesis in Bettcher's account is that reality enforcement is
explained by the fact that gender presentation (taken as
"appearance") literally signifies physical sex and in
particular, genital status (taken as "deep reality"). If it
is true that trans people who "misalign" gender presentation
with sexed body are deceivers or pretenders, then those who
"correctly" align presentation with body tell the truth. In
light of this, Bettcher argues, there is a representational relation
between gender presentation and sexed body (2007, 52-3). Bettcher
draws attention to the irony that attire is intended to conceal one's
"privates" while it also serves to symbolically reveal that
which is private (2007, 53). Insofar as it is invasive to demand
private bodily information of a complete stranger, she argues, a
system, enforced by violence which requires the disclosure of genital
status is inherently abusive. In light of this, she argues, reality
enforcement is inherently bound up with sexual abuse (2006a,
205-6).



Bettcher introduces the notion of intimate
personhood (2012b) to further illuminate reality enforcement and its
grounding in gender presentation as genital representation. In this
view, people are given to us through forms of sensory (and discursive)
access that admit of interpersonal closeness (intimacy) and distance
(324). This access, she argues, and therefore intimate personhood
itself, requires the existence of normative interpersonal boundaries
on sensory access to bodies, while the actual structure of boundaries
is culturally contingent (325). In our culture, nakedness as a social
possibility and a form of self-presentation, she argues, is just as
socially-constructed as (public) gender presentation (322). It is
determined by the subjection of bodies to sex-differential boundaries
of privacy and decency boundaries which protect both the object and
subject of sensory access and which provide the underlying rationale
for public concealment (322-3). Female nipples, for example are
subject to boundaries on sensory access while male nipples are
not. Moreover, while a man seeing a woman's genitals may constitute a
violation of her privacy, a woman seeing a man's may involve his
committing an indecency offense against her (327). Thus, in her view,
just as there are two forms of public gender presentation, so there
are two sex-differentiated forms of nakedness (326) and her central
thesis that gender presentation communicates genital status becomes
the more refined view that clothed gender presentation represents
naked gender presentation through euphemistic means (329-330).


 Bettcher argues that this gender-genital representational relation
is part of a larger non-verbal system of communication that is used in
manipulative heterosexual sexuality. For example, feminine attire has
been used to excuse rape in "she asked for it"
defenses. In Bettcher's view, gender presentation as genital
representation is of a piece with this type of sexual
"communication": One reason for the communication of
genital status is to secure manipulative heterosexual sexuality (2007,
56). Notably, this yields specific difficulties for trans women which
arise at the intersections of sexism and transphobia. For example, a
trans woman who is passing as non-trans may be subject to sexualized
scrutiny (increasing her chances of being "read") (2006a,
207). Moreover, the very behavior which opens her to the double-binded
manipulations of (hetero) sexuality may appear necessarily in order to
avoid being exposed as a "deceiver" (2006a, 207).




Bettcher points to ways in which racist ideology, rape, and racist
accusations of rape intersect with each other. Consider the raping of
black women by white men and the lynching of black men (justified
through false accusation of having raped white women) as historical
tactics of racial subordination. Bettcher argues since reality
enforcement is involved in broader relations of sexual violence and
since such violence has been interwoven with racial injustice, reality
enforcement is likewise grounded in racial oppression (2007,
57). Indeed, Bettcher suggests that attempts to address transphobia
which fail to take seriously the realities of racial oppression (by
working uncritically with the criminal justice system, for example)
are bound to fail (2007, 58-60). Bettcher concludes that her
account can serve as a theoretical basis for anti-racist trans and
non-trans feminist solidarity (2007, 57-8). It can also
elucidate transphobic feminist representations of trans women as
deceivers and rapists as fundamentally drawing on a (hetero) sexist,
sexually abusive, and rape-facilitating system in which gender
presentation communicates genital status. Given the interconnection
between reality enforcement and sexist and racist forms of oppression,
it behooves non-trans feminists to question the political value of
deploying such representations.


## 11. Conclusion




While early (non-trans) feminist perspectives on trans issues were
marked by hostility, trans studies and politics have emerged in
complex reaction and interaction with feminist and queer theory and
politics as something to be recognized. As time has passed, it seems the
possibility of productive interplay between feminist and trans theory
and politics as well as solidarity between trans and non-trans
feminist is being realized. This suggests a promising future for trans
feminist philosophical investigations. In light of the history of
trans/feminist interaction, it seems that the self and its relation to
oppression and resistance will continue to be a fruitful topic of inquiry.