Foreword by Stephen Whittle, from The Transgender Studies Reader (quotes interspersed with my babble)

The Transgender Studies Reader

Edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle

Routledge, 2006.

This began as quote poaching, then I started rearranging the quotes and seeing interesting things in the new juxtapositions, and that led to some dictation and some thinking and wandering and much else. 

Also note - and cut & paste that nifty trans symbol, ⚧

"Increasingly we presume that language, as another predeterminant of humanity, overrides the determinant of biological sex: that is, a person is the gender they claim to be, regardless of sex status. But the language of sex and gender is inherently limited. As trans people challenge their exclusion from language, and therefore from basic human rights, sex itself is increasingly becoming an unsafe foundation for the legal foundation of the order of human life."(xiii)

"Having a sex is apparently a prior determinant of being human, but as such it begs the meaning of what 'human' is."(xiii)

Does sex need laws?

I'm not sure what that question is about. I heard it. So I wrote it. (dictation)

One can object to the question in so many ways and sidestep imagining any answer. 

One can tarry over the terms and the options of relating them. So many inflections, contexts, would have beens… 

The safest course is to understand it as you like and/or walk away.  

To say what sex "means" so as to consider the question as such ties one back into laws of various orders, yet we know it is not a free-for-all - as much as that fantasy is available in the culture - that is to say, whether one is born into a body that accords with their desire, or not, does not seem an issue of choice in the usual sense of that term.

At a tangent from that - but again (dictation) - I just heard it, 

…Neither is who you want to fuck.

Perhaps we need more space simply for not knowing?

Is it just the largely contingent emergence of law-like behaviors that have outgrown their utility but which sprang from out of greater potentialities at some point in the past and those potentials are now needed once again? 

Too utopian? all that foggy ancient wisdom potential once the b-movies move on it?

Sorry, I am not terribly in control of the throughput just now. After the above, I slept reading this sleeping this and now this, here. 

Kinda the beginning of Swann's Way, but less dreamy perhaps - doesn't everyone have that? that thing where you are so deep into the text that your sleep is an extension, your thought perhaps clopping along at the characteristic pace of what you'd been reading? 

Where could I stand to pronounce on what is or is not legitimately of the human?  I laugh at me for thinking it.

As to the limitations to our language for sex and gender, and he could have added orientation and expression etc etc (both terms seem to provoke endless internal descriptions and exponential external ramifications)… yes, of course. 

But how to be alert to and differently responsive to the places where it breaks down so frequently with negative consequences for bodies, lives, etc.? That is the question that needs answering. 

⚧ 

"For the trans person’s understanding of the self, the question becomes whether gender, at the heart of self-understanding, can be theoretically recuperated. It is all very well having no theoretical place within the current gendered world, but that is not the daily lived experience. Real life affords trans people constant stigma and oppression based on the apparently unreal concept of gender." (xii)

"This new politicization forged a determination to change the world, by every means possible, for the next generation of trans youth. Significant changes have indeed taken place. At the very least, where once there was pure ignorance and prejudice of trans issues, we now see informed prejudice and discrimination, which is more easily addressed through the courts and legislature."(xii)

One is placed regardless of how they would place themselves. If that accords, so easy not to even recognize it happening. Indeed, would it not simply seem to be how things are if what you thought was what everyone else asserted? Ought I to have said 'how things were'? it is what I first typed (is that dictation?) (yes, it's dictation)

The first of these quotes seems to argue that, viable or not, recuperable or not, unreal of not, gender remains a social mandate.

Gender (and sex) would then be one of the things that those subjects supposed to believe, believe in. & as difficult as it is to combat the beliefs which are supposed by subjects, themselves merely suppositional - I'd argue that this is a better situation than one where we had compelling evidence that all but a few of 'us' do in fact believe. It's better as what supposes subjects are supposed to believe is largely a fantasmatic construction based upon the this or that person's grasp of the cultural dialogue about whatever (sex & gender, in my example)… & thus a construct that is only as strong as the individual who supposes such other believing subjects own need for this belief. 

Is that clear?

Probably not.

Ok, the idea is an development of Lacan's concept of the subject supposed to know, i.e., the analyst. Analysands, of necessity impute knowledge to their analysts (at least neurotics do, not sure this applies to every structure). The end of analysis, if it goes well, requires the fall of the analyst, the moment when the analysand recognizes that it is they, the analysand who has done all the work, all the analysis, and is the only one who can declare that things are over, that the symptom has been interpreted, etc. None of that supposed knowledge was the analyst's at all, it all belongs to the analysand. So far so lacanian…

Žižek is the one who develops this into the subject supposed to believe. My example will be yard mowing, I think I took this specific example from Levi R. Bryant who used it  years ago on the Lacan listserv, but I like it so much because of certain personal experiences with 'yard nazis' in the Chamblee part of the greater ATL. Anyway, let's say you live in a housing development sort of neighborhood and you really do not like mowing the yard, in fact you find it a waste of time, after all the grass hurts no one when allowed to grow, so what's the big deal? But you nonetheless believe that the neighbors are all deeply invested in lawn lengths as falling between certain parameters which your own grass has woefully exceeded. You note that your grass is the longest of any yard's on the block and you conclude that all those other subjects (everyone else in your hood) believe there is a length for grass which is simply too long. Grumbling you mow your yard under the imagined pressure of the neighborhood, though in theory every single local resident might feel exactly as you do. 

Great theory. Likewise, it can be very useful in explaining why people do certain things - say with regard to the stock market. 

But… when I lived in Chamblee, though my ex supposed the subject of the hood to have certain feelings about the yard, I didn't give it much thought at all and in time the landlord was given a letter of complaint by one of our neighbors about the height of our grass.

That fact is maybe funny at this point though, right?

But that, as that quote I keep tossing around goes: "Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives. This trend shows no sign of abating" (Gwendolyn Ann Smith, p90 - in Beemyn & Rankin, The Lives of Transgender People) …or as Whittle puts it above "life affords trans people constant stigma and oppression" - the only strategy that makes any immediate sense against this is education, or dare I say consciousness raising. 

Yes, I too am squirming at that.

So, while I am in no way suggest that an strategy of educating people should be in any way diminished, just as I don't think that symptoms of unconscious desire can be explained away as irrational or counterproductive or whatever (as this addresses only the conscious ego), so too, educating - perhaps especially when it's motivations are to 'raise consciousness' seem very likely to produce in some of the 'astudied' formations of desire that are reactive, built upon the Imaginary and expressed through aggressivity. 

The Discourse of the University 

Calling those who are to be 'educated' the "astudied" is also a Lacan quote, or pun, neologism… which emerges in Seminar XVII when he is discussing the Discourse of the University. Across the top line of the discourse we see S2, knowledge in the position of the agent, the operator of the discourse. The agent as knowledge addresses an other who is the object cause of desire. In one scenario, consider the teacher (filled with "positive" intentions) speaking on behalf of all that they know (that people are just people no matter where you go, that being gay or straight of bisexual or asexual, intersexed or transgendered or transsexual or genderqueer or of any height or weight or race or ethnicity or by approximation to ideals of beauty - that none of this should matter) and aiming to convince the student, or students, thus the (objet petit a)-students, those who the teacher wishes to usher into hir own libidinal attachment to this set of beliefs. The lower level of the graph shows us something else… 

Below the agent is S1, the master signifier - that thing you reach when you keep asking yourself why you believe ____ to every given answer… You reach that which you believe because you just do (damn it!). (& I suspect that when it comes to things like transphobia or homophobia, misogyny, racism, etc… that while some of these have visible 'superstructures' of Imaginary and Symbolic contents - that what makes them so often expressed through violence is the very same thing that makes them difficult to change simply by presenting arguments - these would of course be unconscious investments). But here, in the University Discourse, though the agent will stage, launch and purport to defend the content of their speech with logic and stats and reasoning and examples, the motive will ultimately be otherwise. There will be a belief that is believed simply because it is believed, a belief which can't be uttered and owned as the agent's own without it invalidating the working of the discourse itself. & then, on the right hand side, regardless of how the other responds to the discourse, to the extent that they do respond, the excess, the waste product of having been interpellated by the discourse here produces a deepening of the split within the subject ($). 

Things start getting relatively hairy at this point. That is, in my use and my understanding (undoubtedly both open to critique) none of these discourse models is transparent within a given sample of speech or text. Lacan is careful to distinguish discourse from speech at the beginning of the seminar. But just a statement can mean differently in differing contexts, so too the same utterance could function within multiple discourses. And just as, for Freud - unlike the grocery store line 'dream handbook'  with its many X means Y claims about 'symbols' and so forth - an element of the dream text has no determinate meaning in advance of its interpretation in the context of the dreamer's own associations… what precise S1 is repressed in this or that Teacher's discourse when they are speaking as the agents of knowledge is going to have to vary from person to person. Just the same, the product of the Uni Discourse, the deepening or furthering of the split within the subject ($) might be experienced as alienating and painful - furthering one's sense of being unable to put one's suffering into words - or it might come as a relief, as when - after countless doctors and no answer to what ails you, a diagnosis is finally given. A 'diagnosis' of one sort could serve to anchor a claim that your suffering is absolutely and utterly not your fault, thus freeing you from guilt or stigma, but how many of us notice that this also denies us any agency? That these new signifiers which are the meaning of our suffering are not open to our agency, they require our submission. 

All of this makes me wonder again at the "new style" of Master signifier that Lacan speaks of in Seminar XVII. 

&, at the same time, whether there might be a way to saturate the culture with images and narratives and concepts which would not be prone to being experienced as a University Discourse at all. & looking at Whittle's thoughts above, where he writes "where once there was pure ignorance and prejudice of trans issues, we now see informed prejudice and discrimination" I find myself asking whether - given the understanding that is afforded by the subject supposed to believe, whether there might be a way to target that? 

Bear with me, I am struggling to make this make sense for myself as well. 

That is, rather than a Uni Discourse scenario, where I would be trying to make you invest in the beliefs and positions which underpin the many things I am concerned about (already a rather suspect aim, no? even if I am promoting peace and love…) that instead, I ask myself what is it that contributes to certain beliefs (the people phobias and isms mentioned above) being believed - supposed (imputed to) - some them ('everyone', 'most people' 'right wingers' 'vegans' etc) and how that impression might be altered. Essentially - to stick with the trans context (but it could be applied to any I suppose) How to make it appear that regardless of what phobia or fear or rage or whatever you may feel in your black little heart, that everybody knows that is totally wrong because everybody knows that trans people are people just like every other kind of people are people. 

Or who knows, maybe that's just a shoddy containment strategy, after all, what white person doesn't know to not use the N-word and does that in itself prove that there is less racism? 

Nope.

But, perhaps it does equate to "informed prejudice and discrimination" and thus to not sucking quite so thoroughly? 

⚧ 

"I am part of the cultural crisis of the new millennium."(xiv)

"It is now possible, simply by 'telling' or theorizing my own life and the lives of other trans people, for me to build an academic career based on the fascination of the 'Other' with people like me. It is their obsession that has given us the opportunity to use the power of the media to tell our stories, to theorize our lives, and to seek equality and justice."(xii)

Irony here too in lots of ways, too many to compass. But the central one being that the academic activism against Othering is to some degree facilitated by that very Othering. 

Does that mean they might be able to cancel out eventually? 

That was probably a dumb question.

On the grumpy side, if - as seems so amazing obvious - one's sex/gender/whatever - is so tightly wrapped up in one's subjectivity that relatively minor infractions of the ordering principles assumed to depend upon it leads all too often to explosions of dangerous affects - rage, violence, etc.. in light of this, it seems unlikely that it will be, in any sense of the word, easy, to make large scale alterations to.

But then it is also pretty easy to point to significant changes and developments and so forth as well. 

& this seems to lend itself to various narratives which, at the extreme, are utopic in character. & that troubles me as I'm just too much of a curmudgeon to invest in a time share in Utopia without a lot of skepticism being work through first. Though I suppose that I needn't take that narrative seriously in order to recognize that positive social changes have occurred. 

I may be doing Whittle a small disservice here in that he sets up the one line above, "I am part of the cultural crisis of the new millennium" with some care, and does not deliver this line with the sort of I am trans hear me roar, vibe that it has when floating alone and out of that context.

But, I wanted it to resonate like that.

I wanted, dear (largely hypothetical) reader, for you to feel some crisis. If, that is, you were not already.

⚧ 

"Frequently, many non-trans theorists have used trans identities to support constructivist arguments. But increasingly, trans people are questioning whether the deeply held self-understandings they have can be entirely due to nurture and environment." (xiii)

"...the formal psycho-medical theories are falling rapidly by the wayside, and nothing has appeared in their place except some very limited evidence of biological differentiation that is so problematic that it cannot yet be said to have any proof value." (xiii)

Not sure where to step. There is a tension between these two quotes that I can sketch in big dumb strokes but it feels like it needs a definitive question to cut through it somehow. Both concern the body, or almost the bodies of the body - the empirical body of science, the imaginary body of ego identification, the erotic body of drives and merger, the raced, sexed, aged, coded bodies that are all ours, each of us, specifically, particularly, to the culture, etc.

I've aired my concerns about biological explanations for transgender phenomenon, how they might have some benefits and aid in some efforts for recognition but that they also open the door to scary places - places where something would be fixed or prevented or 'hygienically' cleaned-up and corrected. 

But, to spend much time concerned over such things now is also foolish. The "limited evidence" at the moment "is so problematic that it cannot yet be said to have any proof value." If such evidence were to arise… then one can start asking how much the trans persons' agency has been taken away by the scientific account of cause.

More interesting to me, though still not the intervention between these two quotes I was hoping for, if one has a "deeply held self-understanding" going back to the moment when one was operating in language but hardly only just… does this in itself argue for a nature, rather than nuture argument? I'm not trying to adjudicate the answer based on whether this is or is not a valid supporting claim, just wondering about the somewhat catch-all character of "deeply-held understandings."

I guess as so many of my deeply-held understandings have been proven limited, if not wrong, through the years.

Also here is the recognition that the default assumption of mental illness of one kind or another is on the outs - though it seems to me that many trans people still have to reckon with it's lingering effects.

Then there is the business about the 'non-trans theorists' which, if I deserve the mantle theorist, I'll surely also rate non-trans or cis-gendered. Though whether I'll be caught making a constructivist arguments (not usually my thing) is less obvious. I get that trans people can quite legitimately feel like objects of convenience for theorists of all sorts, but I'm holding out for the possibility that I, as a non-trans person, might eventually have something meaningful to say (this issue deserves a post of its own, and to refer to a number of other writers about this question). But I will note that I am somewhat nervous about that issue - given that Patricia Elliot writes of the many criticisms she has be treated to - and I read her book thinking about what a great job she did of not being potentially offensive.

⚧ 

"In recent years, embracing the trans community and its culture has led us to an exciting position at the cusp of one of the most significant social and political changes in the postmodern world. The struggles of trans people could have significant impact on all of our freedoms, depending upon who wins the war of ideologies surrounding the meaning of gender and sex."(xiv)

"But the questioning that trans people present to others’ identities is a growing challenge to all who place their confidence in the binary rules of sexed lives: man/woman, male/female, masculine/feminine, straight/gay."(xiii)

Doesn't the mere existence of trans people suggest that there is so much about being human that most humans do not have even any ideas about? 

Likewise, in other areas of thought, when an idea (the ether wind) for example finds it's experimental invalidation (the Michaelson-Morely experiment - though it was intended to measure the ether wind's direction and speed, not to find that it was not there at all) there might be some squawks about it, but it tends to get dropped (witness: the theory of the humors,  phrenology, neuroscience… ok, joking about that last one, sort of…) and yet copious counter evidence to the conceptual adequacy of our conceptions of sex and gender, male and female, masculine and feminine are all over the place and yet… The terms are no sensed by most as discredited and untrustworthy. 

Why not?

⚧ 

"The work of trans academics and theorists is increasingly moving trans people away from the discredited status of being mentally disordered, towards having expert knowledge of those who struggle to maintain the current strict gender regime, referred to by Kate Bornstein (1997) as 'gender defenders'."(xiii)

"The empirical and sociological analyses undertaken have shown that it is only by understanding and accepting that linguistic barriers still exclude the vast diversities of trans and non-trans identities, that we can possibly begin to accept that gender, like race, simply does not exist other than as an idea that has gained immeasurable power within the economies of social discourse."(xiv)

. . . so like money? that is, Whittle mentions "the economies of social discourse" and characterizes gender as something that does "not exist other than as an idea that has gained immeasurable power"… How different is that to the money form itself? 

Here is much of a paragraph from a piece I wrote on Žižek's "How did Marx invent the Symptom" which is the last chapter of Mapping Ideology (Žižek ed. - and to which my page references refer) and also included in The Sublime Object of Ideology. & here is that entire text from back in July 2011 (while I was basking in the lovely heat of New Orleans), it's gonna be rather thick with missing context (sorry):

Users of money understand that currency is simply paper (and coins, metal), that it gets old, wears down, etc. Yet “in the social effectivity of the market we none the less treat coins as if they consist of an immutable substance” (303). Žižek evokes the notion of disavowal and stages it for this case as “I know that money is a material object like others, but still... [it is as if it were made of a special substance over which time had no power]” (303). Žižek opines that Marx never solved this problem, that of the “sublime material” or the “immutable body” of money (303). “This immaterial corporeality of the ‘body within the body’ gives us a precise definition of the sublime object” though Žižek insists that we must recognize how the “postulated existence of the sublime body depends upon the symbolic order” that its very immutable nature is “sustained by the guarantee” of the symbolic (303). 

(…) 

But the same blindness is present in every act of exchange in which we “misrecognize the socio-synthetic function of exchange: that is the level of the ‘real abstraction’ as the form of socialization of private production through the medium of the market” (304). Given this “the social effectivity of the exchange process is a kind of reality which is possible only on condition that the individuals partaking in it are not aware of its proper logic” (305). Žižek dubs this “the fundamental dimension of ‘ideology’” (305). As such “a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence” is what we must see as ideological (305). This in a sense, turns the conception of false consciousness ‘on its head’. “'Ideological’ is not the ‘false consciousness’ of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by ‘false consciousness’” (305). At last the symptom enters the discussion here as Žižek offers a “possible definition” of it as “a formation whose very consistency implies a certain non-knowledge on the part of the subject” as when, by virtue of analysis and interpretation the subject brings this knowledge to consciousness, the symptom dissolves (305). 

…OK, I know that might have come from out of left field, but let's play substitution games for a bit and see what happens.

Users of the ideas sex and gender understand that these things are not simple binary terms, that there are intersexed bodies, that gender attributes are culturally specific and mutable, they understand that these concepts are increasingly out of sync with the bodies and subjects around us and that they're wearing out. Yet, in the social effectivity of symbolic exchange we none the less treat assigned sex or gender as if they were the unmediated and inescapable evidence of those concepts as bodily substance. So then yes, this is a disavowal, "I know very well that feminine is a culturally specific set of beliefs about what characterizes the female, and that this concatenation of ideas is largely contingent, but still… [it is as if, when I read a body as female, I know it through and through, I know it as "feminine".] This would make of "sex" or "gender" something quite like a "sublime material" or an "immutable body" beyond the anatomical. This immaterial corporeality "Gender" (or is it "Sex"?) of the ‘body within the body’ gives us a precise definition of the sublime object (read: objet petit a) though the postulated existence of the sublime body depends upon the symbolic order, such that its very immutable nature is sustained by the guarantee of the symbolic. (…)

[To be clear, the Symbolic is not immutable at all - and Žižek knows this very well - he is referring to the way in which subjects treat the Symbolic, how it works within a discursive situation for example, or in fantasy - as the big Other. It is this Imaginarization of the Symbolic which leads us to credit it so thoroughly, as an Other without lack, a Symbolic where every answer could in principle be found, a fantasy world where "the truth (really is) is out there". Object a's place as sublime within fantasy or social discourse is sustained by that, but they (the object and the Symbolic) are not of the same stuff, the object is not Symbolic but Real.]

(…)

But the same blindness [that philosophy has to the unconscious] is present in every act of gendering in which we systematically misrecognize the socio-synthetic function of gendering: that is the level of the ‘real abstraction’ as the form of socialization of bodies through the medium of the categories language has as yet allowed for. Given this the social effectivity of the gendering process is a kind of reality which is possible only on condition that the individuals partaking in it are not aware of its proper logic. Gender then, pace Žižek, would display the fundamental dimension of ‘ideology’. As a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence. None of truly know what the hell sexual or gendered 'identity' is truly all about, but we can master the linguistic terms well enough to use them and navigate social discourses and even to find lovers, so to the extent it continues to "work" (at all) we treat it as a guide to essence as, all to often, we believe there is one and thus wish to speak of it. It is this that we must see as ideological. This in a sense, turns the conception of false consciousness ‘on its head’. A gender identity (of any sort) is not the ‘false consciousness’ of a social being but this being itself in so far as it is supported and socially-constituted by the ‘false consciousness’ that the historical moment and current state of the Symbolic and Imaginary allow when attempting to think Sex or Gender. Gender then appears as symptom,  a possible definition of which might be, a formation whose very consistency ("I am a man") implies a certain non-knowledge (of what being a "man" or "woman" or whatever would truly entail) on the part of the subject, as when, by virtue of an analysis yet-to-come and its interpretation the subject might bring this knowledge to consciousness and dissolve gender as symptom so as to assert it (or something like 'it') as sinthome, as the support needed for subject in order to be able to live, love, work, play without unnecessary suffering. 

⚧ 

Stephen Whittle

I'll let Stephen Whittle's text have the last word as I have been rambling so much above. There are a few things in the passage below that catch my eye. The 1st of these is the injunction to claim "the transsexualism of the self"… and my curiosity is as to whether this might be something that the non-trans person might also have a share in. I rather hope so. Of course there is also a bit of the manifesto here as well, and I do love manifestos when they're well done… even as I shy away from many utopian futures foretold. 

Anyway, this Foreward is a great read and raising many interesting questions that I didn't even allude to. Also, if you are curious about who this Stephen Whittle is, here are two links to find out [one and two]

"The public articulation of a trans voice and trans consciousness has not only influenced sex and gender studies, but it also impacted on trans people themselves, and has provided a collection of materials that coherently explain their own experiences as genuine. Amongst other things, it has created new ways in which to be an activist, as well as new ways of being trans. It is now possible:

• to acknowledge and fight the injustice of transphobia, and to be trans publicly in order to truly represent transphobia’s victims;

• to be in charge of what we do to our own trans bodies, and to take risks in the art of our bodies;

• to become queer, by refusing gender ascription and by claiming the transsexualism of the self;

• to turn away, ultimately, from the relative safety of queerness and go beyond that to claim a unique position of suffering; and finally,

• to welcome the rage afforded by that experience of suffering, a suffering that is part and parcel of being trans.

Teaching transgender theory is itself an activist process as well as an explorative process. The field is expanding exponentially along with the cultural changes that accompany it. It also poses a daunting problem—in order to hear the voices of trans people, as justice demands, one has to acknowledge the limits of sex and gender and move into a new world in which any identity can be imagined, performed, and named."(xv)