UU III Joy if NICI will leap you touch her arm (conde- scendingly? flirtatiously? power-testingly?). It makes her angry. If you are tempted to tell her that she is sick and is taking the easy way out ... Think about that ... Think about that real hard. Report on the 0 Doc. 645, 61st Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO), vol. 15, p. 83; Laughlin, The Work-A-Day Girl, pp. 51-52. 35. Investigator's Report, 2150 Eighth Ave., January 12, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 36. Investigator's Report, La Kuenstler Klause, 1490 Third Ave., January 19, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 37. Investigator's Report, Bobby More's, 252 W. 31 Street, February 3, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 38. Investigator's Report, Remey's, 917 Eighth Ave., December 23, 1916, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 39. Donovan, The Woman Who Waits, p. 55. 40. Edwin Slosson, “The Amusement Business.” Independent 57 (21 July 1904): 139. 41. Investigator's Report, Clare Hotel and Palm Gardens/McNamara's, 2150 Eighth Ave, January 12, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 5.7 Heterosexuality Questionnaire Gay and Lesbian Speakers' Bureau The following list of questions has been circulating among the gay and lesbian communities for some time. We gratefully acknowledge the anonymous person(s) who created it and present it here as an example of inverting the question. 5.6 When You Meet a Lesbian: Hints for the Heterosexual Woman Indiana University Empowerment Workshop ... . . be Do not run screaming from the room this is rude. If you must back away, do so slowly and with discretion. Do not assume she is attracted to you. Do not assume she is not attracted to you. Do not assume you are not attracted to her. Do not expect her to be as excited about meeting a heterosexual as you may about meeting a lesbian ... she was probably raised by them. Do not immediately start talking about your boyfriend or husband in order to make it clear that you are straight ... she probably already knows. Do not tell her that it is sexist to prefer women, that people are people, that she should be able to love everybody. Do not tell her that men are as oppressed by sexism as women and women should help men fight their oppression. These are common fallacies and should be treated as such. Do not invite her someplace where there will be men unless you tell her in advance. She may not want to be with them. Do not ask her how she got that way ... Instead, ask yourself how you got that way. Do not assume that she is dying to talk about being a lesbian. • Do not expect her to refrain from talking about being a lesbian. Do not trivialize her experience by assuming it is a bedroom issue only. She is a lesbian 24 hours a day. 1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality? 2. When and how did you first decide that you were a heterosexual? 3. Is it possible your heterosexuality is just a phase you might grow out of? 4. Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex? 5. If you've never slept with a person of the same sex and enjoyed it, is it possible that all you need is a good gay lover? 6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react? 7. Why do you heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your lifestyle? 8. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Can't you just be what you are and keep it quiet? 9. Would you want your children to be heterosexual, knowing the problems they'd face? 10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers? 11. Even with all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiral- ling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals? 12. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex? 13. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone was heterosexual like you? 14. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you fear s/he might be inclined to influence you in the direction of her/his leaning? 15. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality? Shouldn't you at least try to develop your natural, healthy homosexual potential? 16. There seem to be very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed to help you change if you really want to. Have you considered aversion therapy? . UU III Joy if NICI will leap you touch her arm (conde- scendingly? flirtatiously? power-testingly?). It makes her angry. If you are tempted to tell her that she is sick and is taking the easy way out ... Think about that ... Think about that real hard. Report on the 0 Doc. 645, 61st Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO), vol. 15, p. 83; Laughlin, The Work-A-Day Girl, pp. 51-52. 35. Investigator's Report, 2150 Eighth Ave., January 12, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 36. Investigator's Report, La Kuenstler Klause, 1490 Third Ave., January 19, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 37. Investigator's Report, Bobby More's, 252 W. 31 Street, February 3, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 38. Investigator's Report, Remey's, 917 Eighth Ave., December 23, 1916, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 39. Donovan, The Woman Who Waits, p. 55. 40. Edwin Slosson, “The Amusement Business.” Independent 57 (21 July 1904): 139. 41. Investigator's Report, Clare Hotel and Palm Gardens/McNamara's, 2150 Eighth Ave, January 12, 1917, Committee of Fourteen Papers. 5.7 Heterosexuality Questionnaire Gay and Lesbian Speakers' Bureau The following list of questions has been circulating among the gay and lesbian communities for some time. We gratefully acknowledge the anonymous person(s) who created it and present it here as an example of inverting the question. 5.6 When You Meet a Lesbian: Hints for the Heterosexual Woman Indiana University Empowerment Workshop ... . . be Do not run screaming from the room this is rude. If you must back away, do so slowly and with discretion. Do not assume she is attracted to you. Do not assume she is not attracted to you. Do not assume you are not attracted to her. Do not expect her to be as excited about meeting a heterosexual as you may about meeting a lesbian ... she was probably raised by them. Do not immediately start talking about your boyfriend or husband in order to make it clear that you are straight ... she probably already knows. Do not tell her that it is sexist to prefer women, that people are people, that she should be able to love everybody. Do not tell her that men are as oppressed by sexism as women and women should help men fight their oppression. These are common fallacies and should be treated as such. Do not invite her someplace where there will be men unless you tell her in advance. She may not want to be with them. Do not ask her how she got that way ... Instead, ask yourself how you got that way. Do not assume that she is dying to talk about being a lesbian. • Do not expect her to refrain from talking about being a lesbian. Do not trivialize her experience by assuming it is a bedroom issue only. She is a lesbian 24 hours a day. 1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality? 2. When and how did you first decide that you were a heterosexual? 3. Is it possible your heterosexuality is just a phase you might grow out of? 4. Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex? 5. If you've never slept with a person of the same sex and enjoyed it, is it possible that all you need is a good gay lover? 6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react? 7. Why do you heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your lifestyle? 8. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Can't you just be what you are and keep it quiet? 9. Would you want your children to be heterosexual, knowing the problems they'd face? 10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers? 11. Even with all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiral- ling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals? 12. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex? 13. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone was heterosexual like you? 14. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you fear s/he might be inclined to influence you in the direction of her/his leaning? 15. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality? Shouldn't you at least try to develop your natural, healthy homosexual potential? 16. There seem to be very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed to help you change if you really want to. Have you considered aversion therapy? . 226 Sexualities and Genders 5.8 Aligning Bodies, Identities, and Expressions: Transgender Bodies Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore en sa and who wisi What do we do about as female, or girls w tical theorist P hansgender” has bec Sites whose gender pectations for thei mansgender people as who move away ver (trans-) the bo gender. Some peopl trongly that they p them to live; others clearly defined or from the conventic upon them. (2008, Gendered norms and expectations pressure all of us to create gender-appropriate bodies, and most of us work hard to comply most of the time. Western societies do not have third genders or sexes, as some other societies do (Herdt 1994). We expect people to be “women” or “men” “female” or “male” not “other” We organize society on a two-gender system that most people believe is based on a clear-cut two-sex biology with a clear path to the “appropriate” or socially acceptable gendered body The way we interact with others of the same or different gender reflects the “natural attitude," which assumes that there are two and only two sexes, that everyone is nat- urally one sex or the other no matter how they dress or act and will be that sex from birth to death, and that you can't really change your “natural sex (Kessler and McKenna 1978, 113-114). Those who believe that sex differences are biological believe that most gendered behavior emerges from this biology. The gendered social order and the many processes that go into the production of gender differences are not seen as powerful forces that shape bodies, identities, and behavior. In actuality, not only is biological sex not the ultimate determinant of gendered bodies and behavior, but some people construct gendered bodies that do not fit the sex declared at their birth. Birth sex, the pronouncement of a newborn's (or fetus's) biological sex by birth attendants or sonograms is the foundation of the subsequent gender socialization of individuals. That is, those who are assigned male at birth are called boys and are supposed to feel, behave, and look masculine. The same process is supposed to turn female babies into feminine girls. But throughout our lives, many of us resist the gendered expectations of our original sex categorization at birth by varying our gendered expressions. For instance, a woman might wear a man's suit; a girl might play on the boys' football team. Quite often, these actions, or transgressions from the normative, are open to social commentary or ridicule to remind the person of the breach of gendered expectations. In October 2009, a female Mississippi high school senior, Ceara Sturgis, was barred from appearing in the yearbook because she wore a tuxedo in her senior photo (Adams 2009). A National Honors Society student and an out lesbian, Ceara was attempting to wear clothing that made her feel comfort- able. This act of dressing was so transgressive to her community's gender norms that she was rendered invisible. Breaching gendered expectations through our embodied activities is something many of us do to varying degrees without questioning the veracity of our birth sex. The term for those who live in the sex assigned at birth is cis-sexual; their social status is cis-gender. There are people though who do question the truth of their Transgender is a co ander identity does iers to practices o transsexual wa merchangeably. Tra person who uses r Bodies. MTFs, or transwo their lives as women birth but live the their bodies congru constant ways. Som Some do only "top their gender status the way they dress, culturally appropria Like all of us, tra their gender comm or F boxes make in exclusively binary means changing op Birth certificates a identity document one's birth certifica old you are, and bureaucratic hoop Sexualities and Genders 227 birth sex and who wish to live in a way that more truthfully represents who they are. What do we do about people who feel that they are boys when their birth certificate says female, or girls when their birth certificate says male? Political theorist Paisley Currah suggests that since the early 1990s, the term Transgender” has become most commonly used to describe people in the United States whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to social expectations for their birth sex (Currah 2006). Historian Susan Stryker defines transgender people as those ... who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over (trans-) the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain that gender. Some people move away from their birth-assigned gender because they feel strongly that they properly belong to another gender in which it would be better for them to live; others want to strike out toward some new location, some space not yet clearly defined or concretely occupied; still others simply feel the need to get away from the conventional expectations bound up with gender that were initially put upon them. (2008, 1) Transgender is a complicated concept because it refers to both people whose gender identity doesn't conform to the expectations of their birth sex, and it also refers to practices of non-conforming gender expression. Prior to the 1990s, the term transsexual was more commonly used, and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. Transsexual is also used, most often, to describe a transgender person who uses medical methods, hormones or surgery, to transform their bodies. MTFs, or transwomen, are individuals who were assigned male at birth but live their lives as women. FTMs, or transmen, are individuals who were assigned female at birth but live their lives as men. For transgender people, the pressure to make their bodies congruent with their chosen gender is reinforced in myriad small and constant ways. Some may take hormones to bring about some physical changes. Some do only “top surgery” and leave their genitalia intact. Many legally change their gender status to their chosen gender, and most change their appearance and the way they dress, talk, and act. They may also change their first names to be more culturally appropriate to their chosen gender. Like all of us, transgender people want to be accepted as full-fledged members of their gender community. Forms that require individuals to place themselves in M or F boxes make indicating gender compulsory; the information that is required is exclusively binary and presumably permanent. To change this identity legally means changing one's birth certificate in societies that have that documentation. Birth certificates are "breeder documents” because they are the basis of all other identity documentation, such as passports. One's legal identity, as testified to by one's birth certificate, establishes whose child you are, where you were born, how old you are, and your sex. A transgender person must jump through many bureaucratic hoops in order to have identity documents that match their gender al Before and After: Class and Body Transformation* expression and identity. In some jurisdictions, you cannot change your birth certificate at all, and in other jurisdictions, genital surgery is required to change this certification (Currah and Moore 2009). Julia Serano Reconstructing Bodies There are various surgical and hormonal methods transsexual people use to con struct bodies that will fit the norms for their chosen gender. Sometimes, what is changed are genitalia and usually secondary sex characteristics that result from hormonal input at puberty. Together, these are often called “sex changes" and the process “sex reassignment." There is not a one shot, or a one-size-fits-all surgical procedure for transsexual people. As anthropologist Eric Plemons (2010) has written: If we were to believe the childhood lesson that what makes boys boys and what makes girls girls are penises and vaginas respectively, it would follow that changing sex was primarily a genital affair. In fact, medical interventions meant to change sex involve hormonal as well as surgical interventions. Further, the category “sex reassignment surgery" describes a whole host of procedures that include operations on the genitalia but are not limited to them. Though any of these operations may be performed for a number of conditions, these operations (including genital restructuring) are only con- sidered “sex reassignment” when they are performed on a person who has been diag. nosed as transsexual. In addition to genital and chest reconstructions, male-to-female transsexuals may have operations to raise the pitch of their voice or to shave down a prominent Adam's apple, to reconstruct their hair patterns, or to soften their jaw line or brow. Female-to-male transsexuals may choose to have operations to produce a more square jaw line or prominent brow, or may have implants that approximate more defined musculature, such as pectoral or calf implants. Independent scholar and artist Transsexual lives are full of obstacles - childhood isolation, denial, depression, com Ing out, and managing our gender difference in a less than hospitable world. We have to navigate the legal limbo that surrounds what “sex” appears on our driver's licenses and passports, which restrooms we can safely use, and who we are allowed to marry. Many of us face workplace discrimination, police harassment, and the constant threat of violence. Yet the media focuses very little on any of this. Instead, TV shows and documentaries about transsexuals tend to focus rather exclusively on one particular aspect of our lives: our physical transitions. Such transition-focused programs always seem to follow the same format, which includes rigorous discussions of all of the medical procedures involved (hormones, surgeries, electrolysis, etc.) and plenty of the requisite before-and-after shots. Before I transitioned, I found these programs predictable and formulaic, but I also found them helpful to a certain extent. As someone who had often thought about changing my sex, they gave me a certain understanding of what I might be able to expect if I were to pursue such a path myself. But of course, I was a demographic anomaly. Clearly these shows were being made by and for people who did not identify with the trans person in the program and who were not contemplating sex reassignment themselves. Back then, I never really questioned why a non-trans audience might be so interested in the minutiae of the transitioning process and trans-related medical procedures. Now, after five years of living as an out transsexual, I have come to realize that these documentaries and TV programs reveal an even deeper underlying compul slon on the part of many cis-sexual people, one that goes way beyond natural curiosity, to dwell almost exclusively on the physical aspects of the transition process when contemplating transsexuality. Like most transsexuals, I have scores of anec dotes that highlight this tendency: During the question and answer session at a literary event, after reading a piece about the murder of trans woman Gwen Araujo, I was asked by an audience member if I had any electrolysis done on my face; after I did a workshop for college students on binary gender norms and the way we project our ideals about gender onto other people, a young woman asked me several questions about whether or not I'd had a “sex change operation”; after creating switchhitter.net, my coming-out-as-trans Web site, I received an angry email from a stranger complaining that I did not put any before-and-after pictures up on the site, as if the 3,700-word question and answer section and the 4,500-word mini autobiography describing my experiences being trans wasn't sufficient for that person to fully grasp my transsexuality - he needed to see the changes firsthand. Despite the multiple ways individuals may modify their bodies, “many people transition using only hormones and/or non-genital surgeries (such as double mas tectomies for transgender men, breast implants for transgender women). Others transition and live full-time in their new genders without any body modification at all” (Currah and Moore 2009, 125). Still others modify their bodies outside of the parameters of the binary gender system posited by medical professionals (Spade 2003), by circumventing the medical industrial complex or not ascribing to the medicalized narrative that is required to receive care. The public tends to be extremely curious about the details of transgender trans formations. In the following excerpt, Julia Serano, a male-to-female transgender, examines the sensationalism surrounding the physical transitions of transsexual people and their sex reassignment surgeries. In this piece, Serano illustrates through media analysis and personal reflection on her own transition how the cultural obses sion with surgical details confirms how obsessed we are with preserving assump tions and stereotypes about sex and gender. Excerpted from Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating w/ Femininity, pp. 53-59, 61-64. Copyright © 2007 by Julia Serano. Published by Seal Press. Reprinted with permission. Of course, it's not just strangers who ask to see before and after shots of me, When friends, colleagues, or acquaintances find out that I am trans, it is not uncommon for them to ask if I have any "before" pictures they can see, as if I just so happen to keep a boy photo of myself handy, you know, just in case. I usually respond by telling them that before I transitioned I looked exactly like I do now, except that I was a boy. They never seem particularly satisfied with that answer. These days, whenever people ask me lots of questions about my previous male life and the medical procedures that helped facilitate my transition to female, I realize that they are making a desperate and concerted effort to preserve their own assumptions and stereotypes about gender, rather than opening their minds up to the possibility that women and men do not represent mutually exclusive cate- gories. When they request to see my “before” photos or ask me what my former name was, it is because they are trying to visualize me as male in order to anchor my existence in my assigned sex. And when they focus on my physical transition, it is so they can imagine my femaleness as a product of medical science rather than something that is authentic, that comes from inside me. I know that many in the trans community believe that these TV shows and docu mentaries following transsexuals through the transition process serve a purpose, offering us a bit of visibility and the rare chance to be depicted on TV as something other than a joke. But in actuality, they accomplish little more than reducing us to our physical transitions and our anatomically “altered” bodies. In other words, these programs objectify us. And while it has become somewhat customary for trans people to allow the media to use our “before” pictures whenever we appear on TV, this only enables the cis-sexual public to continue privileging our assigned sex over our subconscious sex and gender identity. If we truly want to be taken seriously in our identified sex, then we must not only refuse to indulge cis-sexual people's compulsion to pigeonhole us in our assigned sex, but call them out on the way that they continuously objectify our bodies while refusing to take our minds, our persons, and our identities seriously. masculinity. Like most of us, they support rather than challenge the gendered social order. Other trans gender people have mixed gender presentations, or want to live openly as “transgender.” What would happen if a third category - “transgender” – was added to the familiar Iwo? Rather than weakening the power of categories to control heterogeneous and diverse lives, the establishment of another category starts the cycle of boundary definition and border disputes all over again. New categories also enter the political arena with demands for social recognition and distribution of rewards and privileges. Older identity-based political groups of gays, lesbians, transgender, and intersexed people argue that the new groups undercut their claims of discrimination and siphon off economic resources. As this chapter demonstrates, all gendered bodies to varying degrees must engage with the larger gendered social order. Transgender people are often forced to account for themselves in deeply private ways or in humiliating detail. This act of accounting for oneself demonstrates the depths of social expectations of our gendered bodies and how our culture reproduces gender binaries. By learning about the experiences of transgender people, we can better understand the ways all gendered bodies are produced at the intersections of the material and the symbolic, the flesh and the self. Note 1. The terms come from the Latin prefix cis, meaning “on the same side.” Contrasted to trans, cis refers to the alignment of gender identity with assigned gender. References and Recommended Readings Critical Summary Multiple genders, sexes, and sexualities show that the conventional categories are not universal or essential, nor are the social processes that produce dominance and subordination. Border crossers and those living on borders have opened a social dialogue over the power of categories, and their resistances, refusals, and transgrese sions have encouraged political activism. The goals and political uses of community and identity have not been uniform Those whose bodies don't conform to norms – hefty, tall women and short, slender men - don't want to change their bodies or their gender; they want gender norms to expand. Some MTFs and FTMs modify their bodies surgically and hormonally and walk, talk, dress, and gesture convincingly in order to embody femininity or Adams, Ross. 2009. “Senior Yearbook Photo Causes Controversy.' WJTV.COM. http://www2. wjtv.com/jtv/news/local/article/senior_yearbook_photo_causes_controversy/43650/. Ames, Jonathan (ed.). 2005. Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs. New York: Vintage. lernstein, Fred A. 2004. "On Campus, Rethinking Biology 101" New York Times, Sunday Styles, 7March.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/style/on-campus-rethinking-biology- 101.html?sec=health. Bettcher, Talia, and Ann Garry. 2009. “Transgender Studies and Feminism: Theory, Politics and Gendered Realities.” Special Issue of Hypatia. 24 (3). Bornstein, Kate. 1994. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge. Broadus, Kylar. 2006. “The Evolution of Employment Discrimination Protections for Transgender People,” in Transgender Rights, edited by Paisley Currah, Richard Juang, and Shannon Price Minter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brown, Patricia Leigh. 2005. “A Quest for a Restroom That's Neither Men's Room Nor Women's Room.” New York Times, 4 March, A14.
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