Transgender Paradigm
With the emergence of current transgender politics and transgender studies during the early nineties (in close connection with Queer Theory), a specific picture of the world was deployed in order to ground trans resistance. I call this the Transgender Paradigm.
Caution is (as usual) required. I do not mean to suggest an entirely uniform, homogeneous picture of the theory and the literature which emerged with transgender politics and transgender studies. There are obviously important differences and disagreements. However, it does seem fair to speak of certain assumptions which have acquired the status of starting-point. These ideas are probably most clearly and accessibly outlined by Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein. I want to present some of these ideas, as well as to point to some possible difficulties with them.
(1) Rejection of the Medical Model of Transsexuality. The TG-Paradigm involves rejection of the view that “gender dysphoria” (transsexuality and other forms of “trans-ness”) is a medical condition. The problem is not with the trans person, but with the culture at large. Expectations that all transsexuals adopt heterosexual orientation are rejected. Expectations that all transsexuals desire to have genital reconstruction surgery are rejected. Expectations that transsexuals try to pass as non-trans (by inventing a past and disappearing into the mainstream) are rejected. More generally, the medical (psychiatric, etc.) regulation of transsexuality is viewed as a form to regulate, control, and maintain the cultural binary.
Some Worries: The starting point is one which takes access to medical technologies of transsexuality for granted. This may involve some assumptions of
race-intersected forms of class privilege. It also assumes a largely U.S./European position (discarding the connection between medical discourses of
transsexuality as coloniality).
(2) The Gender Binaries as the Source of Oppression. In the Transgender Paradigm, the oppression of transgender people is almost exclusively explained in terms of a hostile cultural binary which requires that human beings be distinguished into male/masculine/men and female/feminine/women. The problem is not that there are only two categories (as opposed to five, or nine). The problem is that the categories are too rigid. Thus, there are people who do not fall easily into the rigid categories (such as transgender people). This theory of oppression thereby informs a related theory of resistance: In order to oppose this system, one needs to oppose the binary. In such a view, it would seem that trans people (or any people) who embrace the binary are part of the problem.
Some worries: (A) Do we really want to say that trans people who self-identify as real men and women are part of the problem? Are their self-identities really conservative and politically retrograde? If there is some resistance in this claiming of identities (in the face of hostile forces of invalidation), we certainly can’t tell based on this paradigm. (B) The TG-Paradigm automatically situates all trans people outside of the traditional binaries. Isn’t this to already invalidate some trans self-identities?
(3) Invisibility as the Problem/Visibility as the Solution: In the TG-Paradigm, the effect of the hostile binary is to push people who do not fall neatly into these two categories “out of existence” (i.e. “under the radar”) by forcing them to conform and punishing them if they do not do so. In this view, trans people are “erased” (wiped off the cultural map). The division of the word into blue and pink (boy and girl) forces the true realities of trans people into hiding. The solution: “Come out as Trans!” Declare oneself. “Smash” one’s way through the binaries to show the world that they are inadequate.
Some worries: (A) Is the problem always one of invisibility? Consider cases in which trans women are in vulnerable, visible places – subject to hostile
representation and attack. Here the problem is forced visibility, rather than invisibility. Perhaps we want a more nuanced account that doesn’t always identify
invisibility as the problem and visibility as the solution. (B) Are trans men (FTMS, and other folk originally assigned female at birth) culturally erased in
specific (possibly more salient) ways? By glossing the whole problem as one of invisibility, this specificity is again erased.
(4) The Collapse of the Sex/Gender Distinction: In the TG-Paradigm, the distinction between gender (as cultural) and sex (as biological) is rejected. Instead, both are viewed as culturally constructed “all the way down to the bottom.” This is not to deny that bodies can differ from each based upon physiological, biological features. The view, rather, is that there is no real sharp divide between “male” and “female.” Instead, this division is also instituted culturally. Thus, a person is proclaimed “boy” or “girl” at birth - sex is assigned (not discovered) in this view.
In order to point to the ways in which the distinction between male and female is culturally (surgically) constructed, theorists have pointed to the existence of interssexual people – who began organizing for rights around the same time the current TG-paradigm emerged.
In order to point to the ways in which the distinction between masculinity and femininity is constructed, theorists have pointed to non-Western cultures in which male-assigned individuals have been permitted to take up traditional “feminine” roles and female-assigned individuals have been permitted to take up traditional “masculine” roles.
Some Worries: Transgender has often been used as an example, metaphor, useful argumentative point. To what extent is interssexuality harnessed by transgender theory and politics and used only for the purposes of promoting transgender interests? To what extent have other cultures been romanticized, “othered,” and then simply used for the purposes of promoting a transgender vision?
(5) The Distinction of Gender and Sexuality. According to the TG-paradigm, sexual orientation and gender identity are very different things. This distinction is useful in pointing out that some trans women are bisexual or lesbians, and some trans men are bisexual or gay. Indeed, once one rejects the binaristic system of gender/sex, it seems that the categories of straight/bi/gay are likewise inadequate. This opens upon a whole range of sexualities.
A Worry: While it may be worth the theoretical and political separation of gender and sexuality, this distinction may be too artificial and forced. It may be worth also examining the interplay between gender and sexuality. This is obviously to return to a central feminist insight.