Third Wave Feminism and Transgender

Strength through Diversity

Edward BURLTON Davies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351608077
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Feminism and transgender, as social factions or collective subjectivities, have historically evaded, vilified or negated each other's philosophy and subjectivities. In particular, separatist feminist theorists have portrayed the two 'sides' as consisting of mutually incompatible aims and subjectivities. These portrayals have worked to the detriment of both feminism and transgender.

Third Wave Feminism and Transgender considers what positive outcomes on society in general, and the law as it pertains to gender in particular, may emerge from the identification of and cooperation between third wave feminism and transgender. Challenging the 'internecine exclusion' between and within each faction, Davies shows that queer-inspired philosophical third wave feminism promises to be an inclusive social discourse providing a substantial challenge to mutual exclusion. Indeed, this book explores the span of maternal relations, including womanism, ethics of care and semiotic language and subsequently reveals how gender variant people can highlight the gendered operation of conventional ethics.

With a focus on Carol Gilligan and Julia Kristeva as key instigators of a philosophical third wave of feminism, this enlightening monograph will appeal to students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as women's studies, transgender studies and gender law.

1 Introduction

Potential for a transgender/third wave feminist coalition

1.1 Investigating connections: potential for a coalition

This book addresses the problem of alienation between what might be called the factions of transgender and feminism by asking four key questions. First, the book asks whether these factions are inevitably mutually exclusive. Second, it asks if a quest for the root causes or ‘aetiology’ of gender variance could or should be pursued in order to explain any mutual exclusion. This is followed by a questioning of the usefulness of ‘separatist’ discourses pertaining to gender, discourses that are often constructed by sub-factions of transgender and feminism.

Discourses are conglomerations of ways of representing the world, influenced by a social theme, such as religion, the family, law or medicine. Separatist discourses exclude anyone from the discourse who doesn’t fit into a preordained identity profile, a profile significantly maintained by the separatist discourse in question. ‘Faction’, in the context of this book, refers to the living embodiment of a smaller and organised discourse within the larger discourses of gender and feminism; specifically, the individuals and groups who put into play and embody the discourses of transgender and third wave feminism.

Discussion of the first three questions lead to answers to the fourth key question of whether there is potential for an inclusive trans and third wave feminist coalition that can escape from separatist discourses. These four key questions are discussed below.

Question 1: Should we challenge internecine exclusion between transgender and feminism?

‘Internecine’ (of or relating to conflict or struggle within a group) exclusion between and within factions and sub-factions of transgender and feminism needs to be challenged in order to assess any potential to turn negative reverse discourses into positive reconstructing discourses. Reverse discourses are taken to be a simple reversal of oppressive discourses that reverse the flow of oppressive power, for example an oppressive feminism may reverse the oppression of women to create oppression of men. Reconstructing discourses challenge reverse discourses without creating new oppressions as a result. The opportunity to reconstruct (what is for many) oppressive discourse, such as the discourse of heteronormativity, would come from the process of finding and exploiting chinks in its explanatory ‘armour’.

Transgender and feminism might be described as movements, philosophies and/or collective identities or as all three coming together to form a faction or social discourse. Mutual hostility has occurred between the factions when the ideology of one is perceived as contrary to the interests of the other. This exclusion may operate because the factions are assumed by many to be only associated with certain sexual identities. For instance, feminist author Janice Raymond influentially argued that feminism belongs only to women,

Women take on the self-definition of feminist and/or lesbian because that definition truly proceeds from not only the chromosomal fact of being born XX, but also from the whole history of what being born with those chromosomes means in this society.

(1979:116)

Both Sheila Jeffreys (1997) and, later, Germaine Greer (2000) reinforced a divide between feminism and transgender when claiming that gender transition is a conservative gender-role reinforcing procedure, based upon bodily mutilation and, according to sociologist Sally Hines, ‘… in 1997, Sheila Jeffreys offered explicit support for Raymond’s position in her article “Transgender: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective,” which refueled the feminist attack on transgender’ (Hines, 2005:60).

The editor of Trans/Forming Feminisms, Krista Scott-Dixon, described how responses in a 2001 Canadian feminist magazine article were hostile to the notion of trans people’s involvement with feminism,

Trans was positioned as something antithetical or irrelevant to or at least outside of feminism, and the notion that trans people could be feminists, feminists could be trans allies or that there could even be something called transfeminism has been poorly considered.

(Scott-Dixon, 2006:23)

Hines also noted how, ‘second wave feminism has been largely hostile to transgender practices’ (2005:57), perhaps referring to what we can now identify as a philosophically, rather than chronologically, based second wave of feminism as not all feminists who were active in the time of the second wave would have held this opinion and some contemporary feminists will hold this opinion.

Conversely, trans people have often displayed hostility to feminism. For instance, Monica, a participant from the author’s online discussion site, the Transstudy, described all feminists as political fanatics who only criticise, and who will bend the truth to suit their own cause (Mar 18, 2005). She narrated a particular dislike for trans-unfriendly feminists,

… There is only one capacity in which I should wish to serve transphobic feminists, namely as their taxidermist. … Nothing would give me more satisfaction than to leave the lot of them tastefully arranged in a glass case, all stuffed and mounted.

(Monica Mar 9, 2006, in <Transpregnancy>)¹

Hostility to feminism from trans people and their supporters can derive from conflating all feminisms with feminism. For instance, in the following quote Tina Vasquez seems to be referring to separatist feminism, rather than all feminism,

It has been said that feminism has failed the transgender community. It’s hard to disagree. Trans women have been weathering a storm of hate and abuse in the name of feminism for decades now and for the most part, cisgender feminists have failed to speak out about it or push against it.

(20 May 2016)

However, she later states that, ‘our feminism loves and supports trans women and that we will fight against transphobia’, indicating her recognition of trans-friendly feminisms.

Hines noted common feelings of exclusion post-transition trans men and women gained from philosophical second wave feminists, while those who may be identified as philosophically third wave feminists, with a notable queer influence, were generally perceived as more inclusive, ‘In particular, both [trans men and women] draw on experiences of rejection from second wave feminism, while more positive stories are told about relationships with contemporary feminism as informed by queer ideology’ (Hines, 2005:75)

Exclusion has also occurred between sub-factions within each faction, hindering the possibility of forming a cohesive subjectivity (‘subjectivity’ is taken by the author to mean identity as an evolving phenomenon) based movement. For instance, ‘Queer theorists have shown how traditional lesbian and gay theory and politics have been (and often remain) exclusive towards those whose identities fall outside of that which is deemed to be “correct” or “fitting” …’ (Hines, 2005:61),

They [lesbian and gay friends] laughingly talked about my dating Alexie and asked me if I knew that she was “really a man” who was clearly confused because she took hormones, lived as a woman … . I lost my words and felt like the freakish object they were making her out to be.

(Johnson, 2013:55)

This kind of in-group internecine exclusion is examined in Chapter 6, in relation to the situation of transitioning people on one hand and what some transitioning people have labelled as ‘transgenderists’ on the other. Such in-group exclusion, this time within the group known as ‘women’, also applied heavily in the lives of black women in the USA and UK who felt excluded from what they saw as the elitist discourse of second wave feminism in the 1960s and 70s.

Internecine exclusion may severely hinder the development of transgender and feminism since excluding large portions of the population from either faction will profoundly limit their potential for social change. Both transgender and third wave feminism have been challenged as not being real movements or factions just as feminists and trans people have often been challenged as not being real women and men, sometimes, as we have seen in the above quotations, by those hailing from the other faction. The author seeks to present the realness of each faction partly by challenging the ‘realness’ of discourses such as separatist feminism and heteronormativity.

Question 2: Should we just accept gendered subjectivites rather than search for their aetiology?

The author presents the factions and related subjectivities of transgender and third wave feminism as ‘real’ because they exist as evolving phenomena, rather than being identifiable by fixed definitions. The author questions the quest for the aetiology or precise definition of the essence of gender and, following (those construed by the author to be) third wave philosophers such as Judith Butler, Carol Gilligan, Julia Kristeva, Susan Stryker, Sandy Stone and Stephen Whittle, proposes that it is a more fruitful and positive goal to concentrate on ways of accepting gender variance, rather than defining it.

Jennifer Harding stated that the kind of gender variance known as transsexualism was pathologised by the imposed voice of many medical and psycho-analytical practitioners in the early twentieth century and was then described in the late twentieth century as ‘Gender Dysphoria’ at the expense of encouraging self-representations from trans people themselves (1998). In the 1950s to 1970s, treatment for gender transitioning trans people moved from the area of intersex medicine to being a sub-interest of psychiatry and many trans people accepted their classification into a mental health condition. This enabled access to hormonal treatment and surgery via the consent of psychiatrists and general practitioners, but also came about because some psychiatrists thought this classification to be true. The label ‘transsexualism’, as a mental health disorder, first applied in the DSM III (1980), was later changed to ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ in DSM IV² (1994). Both gave the impression of trans subjectivity as a failing of identity caused by the individual’s psychological being, or as a phenomenon induced by family upbringing. All these imposed definitions led to denied choice for trans people wishing to articulate what they themselves felt about their gendered being.

The personal life story provided by transsexual patients to their transition specialists, adapted to help ensure smooth access to medical reassignment as noted by Sandy Stone, became informally known as the ‘plausible personal history’, informed by ‘The Obligatory Transsexual File’ (1991). This was a life story informed by a carefully collected scrapbook of article clippings by each transitioning person, often collected over a lifetime of personal gendered behaviour. As Stone discovered, reassignment specialists eventually realised that potential gender transitioners matched criteria to be accepted for medical transition because they were constructing such files and were reading sexologist Harry Benjamin’s (1966) definitional criteria for ‘transsexualism’ in order to construct an acceptable story of gender dysphoria.

Developed narratives of gender variance emerging since the 1990s encouraged people to reinterpret trans subjectivity as healthy and functional, rather than pathological. This mode of narrative seems to have been notably influenced by Michel Foucault who, in the 1970s, proposed that personal subjectivity, including sexual subjectivity, was negotiated in reciprocal relationships of power rather than being an essential element of the subject (1998[1978]), an idea later backed up a growing number of researchers such as Tracey Lee (2001). Lee suggested that, as at 2001, the medical profession retained the sway of power in relationships with transitioning people but also suggested that trans men had found chinks in the power relationship in which they could provide their own input. Foucault argued that power is never absolute since there is always the potential for its critics or those it oppresses to find and exploit its Achilles heel or chinks in its discourse armour (Prado, 2000). In this way, new or newly revealed subjectivities can surface from social suppression once a concerted move is made to narrate and negotiate them into discourse. Even those silenced by oppressive discourse can locate and exploit these chinks, ‘…silencing is rarely complete as individuals and groups find creative ways to expose unequal power relations and unjust social arrangements’ (Yep and Shimanoff, 2013:140).

Similarly to Foucault, Judith Butler theorised that social and self-definitions of sexual subjectivity could lead to actual subjectivity. Butler’s argument was a challenge to conventional accounts of sexual subjectivity which maintained that this subjectivity is entirely located and developed within the individual, and, that sex, gender and sexuality all cause each other in a biologically and developmentally fixed manner,

… “the body” is itself a construction … Bodies cannot be said to have a signifiable existence prior to the mark of their gender … Some feminist theorists claim that gender is “a relation,” indeed a set of relations, and not an individual attribute.

(Butler, 1999[1990]:13)

Butler’s theory, and other social constructionist accounts of gender formation, can be used as a challenge to images of gendered aetiology that have been overtly and covertly provided by medical and legal discourses over the last few centuries.

A contribution by Transstudy participant Clarette follows Butler’s theory by suggesting that people actually follow gendered scripts, meaning socially shared accounts of the essence of gender, in order to construct what is usually taken to be biologically given gender. However, Clarette thought that these scripts are not easily identifiable,

My point is more that scripts have not been immediately available even for those who do not wish to be known as trans people. Of course, large aspects of their developing scripts may be rather less available to those who steer clear of established social scripts, for whatever reason, but that should not be regarded as indicating that it is somehow easy to just adopt “the other script” in the course of transitioning – or following transition.

(Clarette Jun 17th, 2006, in <The Paper>)

In this quote, Clarette suggests that the process of changing one’s own gendered script is not easy but she acknowledges the existence of these scripts and the fact that they may be subverted through chinks in the armour of discourse. In Chapter 8 thought is given to how scripts that produce essentialised gendered identities may be circumnavigated by those who do not fit into conventional gendered discourse.

In 1967, Harold Garfinkel discovered that those who contravene taken-for-granted social behaviour and appearance, given in social scripts, can reveal how social customs guide and shape our lives. These customs are otherwise socially invisible because of their apparent normality and ‘common sense’ nature. Other social scientists followed Garfinkel’s lead in order to ‘uncover the unwritten rules by which all social actors guide their lives’ (Namaste, 1996: 24). Ki Namaste described how social scientists, influenced by the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies, for instance in the work of Stuart Hall, investigated relationships between lived experience and representation to show more fully how subjectivity is socially constructed from real-life interaction (1996).

In addressing a particular instance of the social construction of sexual subjectivity, Namaste criticised Butler’s earlier work for providing interpretations of trans subjectivity and society not related to the actual lived conditions of trans people’s lives (Butler later provided much support for trans subjectivity in her book Undoing Gender). Namaste argued that Butler overlooked the context of gender drag performance in favour of imposing her own theoretical definitions of how drag performativity stood as a challenge to gender stereotyping. Namaste also criticised Marjorie Garber for reading trans lives at an academic distance (1996). For instance, Garber’s interpretation of ‘transvestite’ as merely a metaphor for crisis of gender category shows how ‘transvestite’ is not discussed as a real-life subjectivity. In this way, Namaste and other progressive gender theorists have highlighted a need for open and evolving discourse that includes accounts from the social subjectivities in question.

Contrasting with humanities-based queer theory and feminist research that has philosophised at a distance from trans lives, the disciplines of tran...