against a trans subjectivity
well, i got three hours of sleep last night and woke up at 5am, so please forgive this post for any rambling or incomprehensibility! 🙂
i’ve been thinking about the stone and hausman articles all weekend; i’m going to write my paper about them. there is so much to those articles… so much that’s really rad and progressive, especially in stone, but also quite a lot of assertions i found troubling. many other people have mentioned these on the blog so far… here’s my takes.
both of the articles were rooted in an attempt to trace the historical development of transsexuality in relation to technological developments, both discursive and practical. hausman seemed to proceed primarily from a critique of the mainstream acceptance of gender as an ahistorical totality and, like the academics mentioned by stone, deployed the transsexual body/condition as a discursive “battlefield” on which to pitch her arguments. hausman attempted to create a new and “potentially threatening” (p. 9) account of transsexualism not as a disorder but as a technologically-mediated and technologically-en”gendered” set of self-manipulative practices by agentive subjects. while i was fascinated by hausman’s detailed accounts of the relationships between trans patients and the medical establishment, i felt that her overwhelming focus on arguing for technological advancements as the ultimate source of transsexualism, as well as her completely unequestioned reliance on a monolithic “transsexual narrative” (as critiqued by stone), denied the complexity, emergence, and multiplicity of trans subjectivities while paternalistically allowing them a homogenized “demanding subjectivity” (her terminology).
i felt stone’s focus was much more radical, and yet was plagued by even more problematic assumptions than hausman – unfortunate, because i really really liked her article! as attentive as hausman to the constructedness of “the trans narrative,” stone was far more commendable in the range and radicalism of her critique, noting both the flimsiness and the repressive function of the established “transsexual narrative.” furthermore, stone was much more attentive to the silencing and repressive origins of that narrative, which she insightfully described as heterosexist, cissexist, heteronormative, and privileging of whiteness. ultimately, i found a certain liberatory promise in stone’s thoroughly feminist indictment of the patriarchal dualistic gender system.
however. there were just so many things that made stone’s article difficult to fully endorse.
stone definitively states that passing is lying, and that trans people who pass and who attempt to pass are deluded by, and buying into, patriarchy’s gender binary system. this statement is, bizarrely, almost reminiscent of janice raymond’s absolutely horrifying statement to which stone’s essay is a response! (you know, that “transsexuals are men who “rape” genetic women” bullshit.) in asserting that passing is lying, stone does the following:
a) asserts that “truth” is inscribed on bodies, even when they are modified;
b) cites subjective human experience is the source of that truth;
c) thus infers that trans women are not real women, and trans men are not real men;
d) assumes that passing is a privilege which all trans people possess, or want/try to possess;
e) demands that trans people to take up the political burden of deconstructing the gender binary.
i was really shocked by this last assertion, which is the essence of stone’s posttranssexual manifesto (at the close of her article). not only does stone’s “gender bender” ideology assert a trans specificity, linked to a universal transsexual narrative of passing; not only does it demand that trans people define themselves as gender variants, and politicize their bodies in opposition to patriarchy; more than all of these, it is shockingly insensitive to the extreme violence, persecution, and exclusion most trans people face in contemporary society. passing is, for many trans people, the only refuge from society’s constant cissexist violence.
i don’t have much time or energy right now to articulate my response to these deep deficiencies in stone’s critique, so i’ll just sum it up in a simple sentence: All identities, and all expressions of identity, are legitimate and valid.
i’ve been waiting for the right time to post this video, but i think it’s now. this is the trailer for an amazing documentary which will be released this spring. it’s jules rosskam’s against a trans narrative – i can’t wait for it!
i think the most relevant part of the video goes from 3:40 to the end.
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Hey there. I don’t really have the time or frame of mind to engage in a huge, well-thought-out debate, but I just wanted to make a comment on what you said about passing. I think that you’re right in a lot of places – specifically, about how passing IS something that a lot of people feel they have to do, that they shouldn’t be frowned upon for it, and that it’s hard to expect them to take it up. This reminds me of the article about women in Peru who get facial surgery so that they can be more employable. In both cases, perhaps it would be ideal for the individual to stand up for what is really “right” (not having to conform to a western European standard of beauty, etc.), but it’s hard to ask that of an individual. I just wanted to look at the logic progression you put forth:
”
a) asserts that “truth” is inscribed on bodies, even when they are modified;
b) cites subjective human experience is the source of that truth;
c) thus infers that trans women are not real women, and trans men are not real men
”
I think that Stone’s point is more that “passing” is destroying a large portion of your history. If I got surgery now that made me a woman, and I wanted to “pass,” I would have to invent two decades of my life – and, as Stone says, I’d have to be destroying the two decades that I actually experienced. I think what she’s suggesting is that if “passing” is the goal of a transsexual – if the individual wants to pretend that she was born with a female body (in the m to f example) – then she is annihilating – Stone says needlessly – an enormous percent of her life experience. I don’t know what I think, or if I agree, but it seemed to me that that annihilation is what makes passing so problematic for Stone.
I hope I didn’t misread you too completely.
thanks for the response solomon!
what i’m critiquing is the notion that bodies equal truth, and that there is some kind of transcendental subjectivity – based on human experience – which supersedes momentary, individual, and relational iterations of selfhood. my critique draws primarily from poststructural theory, especially gilles deleuze. basically, since the renaissance, but much more so since the advent of modernity, Western culture has grounded the legitimation of all of its power structures – capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, etc. – around the maximization of freedom (privilege) for this particular kind of theoretical selfhood, which is marked by its transcendence, its integrity, its consistency, its irreducibility, etc.
part of the work, i feel, of deconstructing the systems of power that rule and oppress our world involves a critique of the conceptual identity on which they are founded. stone’s radical arguments in favor of multiplicity and against universalizing narratives are getting there; but ultimately she reverts to the model which i think her arguments could actually be used to fight. in asserting the transcendence, authenticity, and importance of unique subjective experience, she exalts these reactionary models and, tellingly, uses them as a launchpad for her other, more dangerous points: ie. that trans women are necessarily different from other women; that subjectivity is the ‘prize’ over which we are fighting (it’s not, at least i don’t think it is); and that some supposed “transsexual subjectivity” can and should be employed as a weapon in specific rhetorical battle. i don’t agree with any of that. so that ‘s why my comments are titled “against a trans subjectivity.”
i don’t really care if someone makes up their history. i don’t think there is some biological or experiential truth which must be faithfully preserved and narrated. we are reinventing ourselves, and being reinvented, constantly. i hinge liberation on liberating relationships, not on totalizing subjectivity
it’s 1pm and i gotta catch the bus to BMC. looking forward to talking about this more
-j
This whole discussion is really interesting. I’m not entirely sure at this point that I agree with what you, j, put forth as Stone’s argument (I’d have to look back at the text more closely). But, I’m really struck by this:
“i don’t really care if someone makes up their history. i don’t think there is some biological or experiential truth which must be faithfully preserved and narrated. we are reinventing ourselves, and being reinvented, constantly. i hinge liberation on liberating relationships, not on totalizing subjectivity”
I think I agree with you about this idea of reinvention and I think one of my frustrations as a woman (and perhaps this is true of people occupying other gender identities) is the way this totalizing subjectivity is so oppressive. There continues to be, even though scholars of all stripes have tried to dispell it, a narrative that says what it means to be a woman. Anyone who deviates from it–or conforms very narrowly to it!–experiences some kind of discomfort. If transsexual and/or transgender people do begin to make their histories known, rather than lying about it, however, perhaps that disrupts the very thought of a totalizing subject because they’ve disrupted the narrative. I don’t know, but it’s quite interesting to try to get my head around it. Looking forward to the paper!