Undoing Gender (42 page)

See www.hrc.org. See also the The Intersex Society of North America at www.isna.org.

²
. Brandon Teena was killed on December 30, 1993, in Falls City, Nebraska after being raped and assaulted a week earlier for being transgendered. Mathew Shephard was killed (beaten and tied to a post) in Laramie Wyoming on October 12, 1998, for being a “feminine” gay man. Gwen Araujo, a transgendered woman, was found dead in the foothills of the Sierra mountains after being assaulted at a party in Newark, California, on October 2, 2002.

³
. See Kate Bornstein,
Gender Outlaw
.

⁴
. Frantz Fanon,
Black Skin, White Masks
, 8.

⁵
. Sylvia Wynter, “Disenchanting Discourse: ‘Minority’ Literary Criticism and Beyond,” in Abdul JanMohammed and David Lloyd,
The Nature and Context of
Minority Discourse
.

⁶
. See Sigmund Freud, “Instincts and their Vicissitudes.”

⁷
. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Body in its Sexual Being,” in
The
Phenomenology of Perception
, 154–73.

1. Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy

¹
. The Human Rights Campaign is the main lobbying organization for lesbian and gay rights in the United States. Situated in Washington, D.C. it has maintained that gay marriage is the number one priority of lesbian and gay politics in the U.S.

See www.hrc.org.

²
. Michel Foucault, “What is Critique?” in
The Politics of Truth,
50
.
This essay is reprinted with an essay by me entitled “Critique as Virtue” in David Ingram,
The Political
.

³
. “What is Critique?” 52

⁴
. Ibid., 52–3

⁵
. Ibid., 58.

⁶
. Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
The Phenomenology of Perception
.

⁷
. See
www.iglhrc.org
for more information on the mission and accomplishments of this organization.

⁸
. See Adriana Cavarero,
Relating Narratives
, 20–29 and 87–92.

⁹
. See Giorgio Agamben,
Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
, 1–12.

2. Gender Regulations

¹
. See Carol Smart, ed.,
Regulating Womanhood
.

²
. See François Ewald, “Norms, Discipline, and the Law”; “A Concept of Social Law”; “A Power Without an Exterior”; and Charles Taylor, “To Follow a Rule…”

³
. See, for instance, the scholarship of Randolph Trumbach and Anne Fausto-Sterling.

⁴
. See Luce Irigaray,
This Sex Which Is Not One
.

⁵
. See Kate Bornstein,
Gender Outlaw
.

⁶
. Dylan Evans,
An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis
, 202, my emphasis.

⁷
. See Vikki Bell,
Interrogating Incest
.

⁸
. Juliet Mitchell
, Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of
Freudian Psychoanalysis
, 370.

⁹
. On the relation between the social and the symbolic in relation to kinship, see Michel Tort, “Artifices du père”; “Le Diffèrend” (on file with author); and
Le
nom du père incertain
.

¹⁰
. Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis write under the entry, “Symbolique” in
Vocabulaire de la Psychanalyse
(439–441) that, “The idea of a symbolic order structuring intersubjective reality was introduced into the social sciences most notably by Claude Lévi-Strauss who based his view on the model of structural linguistics taught by F. de Saussure. The thesis of
The Course in General Linguistics
(1955) is that the linguistic signified does not take place internally to the signifier; it produces a signification because it is part of a system of signifieds characterized by differential oppositions.”

They cite Lévi-Strauss: “[E]very culture may be considered as an ensemble of symbolic systems which in the first instance regulate the taking place of language, matrimonial rules, economic relations, art, science, and religion.” Lacan makes use of the symbolic, according to the above authors, to establish that the unconscious is structured like a language and to show the linguistic fecundity of the unconscious. The second use to which it is put, however, bears more directly on our inquiry: “to show that the human subject is inserted in a pre-established order which is itself a symbolic nature, in the sense that Lévi-Strauss describes.”

In this view, one which is distinguished from other Lacanian expositeurs such as Malcolm Bowie, the sense of the symbolic as a preestablished order is in tension with Lacan’s insistence that there be an arbitrary relation between signifier and signified.

On some occasions, it seems, Lacan uses “the symbolic” to describe the discrete elements that function as signifieds, but other times he appears to use the term to describe the more general register in which those elements function. In addition, Laplanche and Pontalis argue that Lacan uses “the symbolic” “to designate the law (
la loi
) that founds this order.” The foreclosure of the “symbolic father” or “the Name of the Father” is such an instance of founding that is irreducible to an imaginary or real father, and which enforces the law. Of course, no one inhabits the position of the symbolic father, and it is that “absence” that paradoxically gives the law its power.

Although Malcolm Bowie maintains that the symbolic is governed by the symbolic law (
Lacan,
108), he also maintains that “the symbolic is often spoken of admiringly… it is the realm of movement rather than fixity, and of heterogeneity rather than similarity… the Symbolic is inveterately social and intersubjective…” (92–93). The question remains, though, whether the “social” sphere designated by the symbolic is not governed by “the Name of the Father,” a symbolic place for the father, which, if lost (the place, and not the father), leads to psychosis. What presocial constraint is thereby imposed upon the intelligibility of any social order?

¹¹
. See note 2 above.

¹²
. It is perhaps useful to note the important historical work that Georges Canguilhem has done on the history of the normal in
The Normal and the Pathological
. Ewald remarks that the etymology links the norm with mathematical and architectural prototypes. Norm is, literally, the Latin word for a T-square; and
normalis
means perpendicular. Vitruvius used the word to indicate the instrument used to draw right angles, and Cicero used the term to describe the architectural regularity of nature; nature, he claimed, is the norm of the law.

¹³
. See Cheryl Chase, “Hermaphrodites with Attitude.”

¹⁴
. This is a position put forward by Gayle Rubin in her essay “Thinking Sex: Towards a Political Economy of ‘Sex’,” which is elaborated upon by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in
Epistemology of the Closet
.

¹⁵
. I believe my own work runs in this direction and is closely allied with that of Biddy Martin, Joan W. Scott, Katherine Franke, and the emergence of transgender theory.

¹⁶
. See Jacqui Alexander’s important essay, “Redrafting Morality.”

3. Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and Allegories of Transsexuality

¹
. This essay appeared in a slightly different version in
GLQ
. I have incorporated suggestions made by Vernon Rosario and Cheryl Chase and am grateful to them both for the important perspectives they provided.

²
. See John Colapinto, “The True Story of John/Joan,” and
As Nature Made
Him
; Suzanne Kessler,
Lessons from the Intersexed
; John Money and Richard Green,
Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment
; Natalie Angier, “Sexual Identity Not Pliable After All, Report Says”; Milton Diamond and Keith Sigmundsen, “Sex Reassignment at Birth.” See also the videotape “Redefining Sex” published by the Intersex Society of North America (http://www.isna.org/) for important perspectives on the ethics of sex reassignment. For an excellent overview of this contro-versy, see Anne Fausto-Sterling,
Sexing the Body
, 45–77.

³
.
But I’m a Cheerleader
! (1999, Universal Studios, Director, Jamie Babbit).

4. Undiagnosing Gender

¹
. See Richard Friedman, “Gender Identity.” This viewpoint, however, maintains that the diagnosis describes a pathology; so in his view the diagnosis should not be kept only for instrumental reasons.

²
. See Robert Pela, “Boys in the Dollhouse, Girls with Toy Trucks,” 55. He argues that “the American Psychiatric Association has invented mental health categories—specifically, gender identity disorder—that are meant to pathologize homosexuality and to continue the abuse of gay youth.” He also cites Shannon Minter to the effect that “GID is just another way to express homophobia.” See also, Katherine Rachlin, “Transgender Individuals’ Experiences of Psychotherapy.”

She notes that “individuals may resent having to spend time and money for psychological services in order to obtain medical services. They may also have fears concerning speaking to someone who holds the power to grant or deny them access to the interventions they feel they need. This fear and resentment creates a dynamic between therapist and client which may have an impact on the process and outcome of treatment.” See also A. Vitale, “The Therapist Versus the Client.”

³
. It is important to note that transsexualism was first diagnosed in 1980 in
DSM-III
. In
DSM-IV
, published in 1994, transsexualism does not appear but is treated instead under the rubric of gender identity disorder (GID). The diagnosis as it currently stands requires that applicants for transsexual surgery and treatment show “evidence of a strong and persistent cross-gender identification, which is the desire to be, or the insistence that one is the other sex.” Moreover, “this cross-identification must not be merely the desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex,” but “there must also be evidence of persistent discomfort about one’s assigned sex or a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex.” The diagnosis “is not made if the individual has a concurrent physical intersex condition,” and “to make the diagnosis, there must be evidence of clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”

For more information, see http://trans-health.com, Issue 4, Volume 1, spring 2002; see the same journal on-line, Issue 1, Volume 1, summer 2001 for an important critique titled “The Medicalization of Transgenderism,” a five-part work by Whitney Barnes (published in successive issues), which very thoroughly and trenchantly covers a range of pertinent issues related to the diagnostic category.

⁴
. For a discussion on changes of nomenclature within the history of the diagnosis to differentiate those who are considered to be “gender dysphoric” from the start from those who arrive at this conclusion in time, see “The Development of a Nomenclature,” in the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s
The Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders
.

⁵
. Richard Isay, “Remove Gender Identity Disorder from
DSM
.”

⁶
. See, for example, Friedman, “Gender Identity.”

⁷
. Jacob Hale, “Medical Ethics and Transsexuality.” See also Richard Green: “Should sex change be available on demand?” That was hardly the issue in 1969, as the nearly insurmountable hurdle then was professionally endorsed reassignment. If gender patients can procure surgeons who do not require psychiatric or psychological referral, research should address outcome for those who are professionally referred versus the self-referred. Then an ethical issue could be, if success is less (or failure greater) among the self-referred, should otherwise competent adults have that autonomy of self-determination? Later he asks, “should there be a limit to a person’s autonomy over body?” (“Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, 1966–1999”). Green also applauds the fact that some transgendered individuals have now entered into the profession, so that they are the ones making the diagnosis and also electing the medical benefits.