“This chapter honors the legacy of Feinberg’s work and turns attention to the many ways in which trans, variously understood, has emerged as an important and powerful queerness, a way of claiming a right to self-determination in terms of gender expression and identity as fundamental to the human experience.”
a chapter deeply interwoven with Leslie Feinberg’s relation to identity and gender and hir sense of the LGBTQ+ community in the United States.
- complexities of gender → nuance; changing pronouns in different contexts
- pronouns and preconceptions: avoiding assumptions about a person you’re about to meet or you’ve just met
- Feinberg: “in an all trans setting, referring to me as ‘he/him’ honors my gender expression in the same way that referring to my sister drag queens as ‘she/her’ does”
- avoiding categorization and definition of transgenderism: gender expression should be a guaranteed freedom to humanity
- refusal of one-issue politics; compared to library classification/categorization
- “transgender liberation”
- Marxist-oriented theoretical position under Feinberg: Stone Butch Blues
trans history
- trans history under perverse presentism: precedents for modern transgender identities
- cultures: Zuni We-Wha, South Asian hijras; māhū of Hawai’i, muxe Zapotecs, two-spirit
- Korean Shamanism, baksu mudang; see below
- comparing to lack of monolithic cultural context of American transgenderism
- solidarity vs. lack and loss; building a new community from middle and common ground vs exclusion and focus
- Feinberg’s community in Buffalo, New York: a butch-femme organized community that chose to organize and identify by those labels rather than as lesbians or as women
- Andy Marra: trans activism and understanding with connection to cultural heritage and ancestry (baksu mudang)
timeline
- 1860s: drag ball subculture in Harlem for Black trans people and drag queens
- continuing through renaissance in 1920s and 1930s with modern variations persiting
- 1890s: Magnus Hirschfeld and Roland Reeves
- mid-20th: Virginia Prince, etc.
- June 1969, Stonewall: Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera
- 1960–1970s: queer drag pageantry
- 1980s: NYC drag ball scene
- 1990: Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston; see 1980s
- 1990s: substitution of dated medical terms with transgender
- 21st century: fluidity of transgenderism
ball culture
- counterculture to queer pageants in 1960s and 1970s
- modeled after Renaissance balls and haute couture, high fashion
- themes, categories, and “house” groups with a leader (“mother”)
- ball houses are reflections of actual shelters and caretaking, referencing house and mother structures
- It should be noted that the role of houses and mothers is not facetious, as many of the participants are young queer individuals who have been kicked out of their homes, are experiencing homelessness, or have no other place to find food or shelter. So, in effect, Ball houses are actual places where young LGBTQ individuals are taken in to provide shelter, and they are looked after and instructed by mothers, who serve as parental guides.
- precedence for modern drag shows, LGBTQ+ popular culture and terminology
- Crystal LaBeija: notable host of balls and house founder; Paris is Burning
trans theory
- “a variety of diverse ways of thinking about and embodying gender”
- transitioning physically, dysphoria, mobility and fluidity, uncategorized; gender variance
- “For Stryker and other trans theorists, such as Halberstam, trans is about trans formation, about embracing possibilities for change, and about using different technologies to create satisfying lives. As she puts it, “To make that gender transition, you confront the possibilities and potentials and terrors and dangers of what it means to radically transform” (Sanders). She does not deny the existence of gender dysphoria or the deeply felt need of some trans people to undergo medical transition. Rather, Stryker, and Halberstam, understand transness as about the queer potential of embracing radical transformation as a way of life”
- “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix”, Susan Stryker
- trans studies outside of the field of medicine
- Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, Jack Halberstam
- instead of “[imposing] ever more precise calibrations of bodily identity” (labels, classification, desire for human knowledge), “think in new and separate ways about what it means to claim a body”
- “away from the housing of the body and toward the notion of ‘transition’—perpetual transition—[…] a possibility where the future is not male or female but transgender”
- expansion of trans definition to include models of life that embrace transition, potential, identity, intimacy, desire; expansion to include transition between organizations and reject categorization
- remembering and appreciating trans history; adaptations, community, and “messiness” of past trans lives vs. trans visibility in modern day
- using the past as inspiration for future innovations; never implied in text of hierarchy vs. loss
- intersectionality vs. “transgenderism […] as a white phenomenon”: diversity between classes, races, and cultures in the definition of trans
- “bathroom issue” parallel to 20th century bathroom segregation; “public bathrooms have often been a ‘charged’ space for regulating race and gender, often at the same time”
- an inability to afford “gender play” and to tout transgenderism or identity; see homelessness numbers of transgender and queer youth
- gender non-conformity and non-binary identity
I get this question every interview: "What is your preferred pronoun?" and all of that. I'm me. That's my preferred pronoun. I tell people all the time, it don't matter if you call me "he", "she", "it", whatever. I know who I am and that's all that matters.
trans challenges
- transphobia
- Human Rights Campaign: highest numbers of fatalities (44 in one year in US, most Black or Latine)
- Transrespect Versus Transphobia project
- hate crimes where image of gay and trans people are placed into an umbrella image
- trans athlete discrimination; gender tests, authenticity, scrutiny in several degrees of organization
- Chris Mosier and Megan Youngren
- transmisogynist aggression
- anti-queer sentiments within communities of color overlapping between homophobia and transphobia
- trans misogynoir: intersectionality of misogyny, transphobia, and anti-Black racism
- “panic defense”, “fear and panic”
- TERFism
- the power of gender constructs as one of the most important forms of social and political control
- “The anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times. So, the TERFs will not be part of the contemporary struggle against fascism, one that requires a coalition guided by struggles against racism, nationalism, xenophobia and carceral violence, one that is mindful of the high rates of femicide throughout the world, which include high rates of attacks on trans and genderqueer people”
- “In all these cases, a common thread is misogyny. Any trace of femaleness in men can provoke hostility and violence born of the fear of being seen or treated as a woman. Gayness in men, for example, has often been despised because no man should permit another man to penetrate him. Similarly, cis men feel victimized by trans women, fooled into believing they are “real” women and so enticing them to engage unwittingly in gay behavior. Transmen pose their own problems for cis transphobes. In transitioning from female to male, transmen can be seen as attempting to “steal” male privilege from born men. In addition, trans men and butch women, in their embodied female masculinity, represent a threat to cis men, who must compete with them for the affection of femme women, who presumably would otherwise be attracted to cis men. Understanding the interlocking dimensions of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny must be the first step in creating a society that is not only more equitable but that honors the choices and right to self-determination that is at the heart of much queer and trans activism.”
linked readings
- “I Want a President” by Zoe Leonard
- “When there is rage, there is still hope”