A Transfeminist Reply to Annalee Newitz's Gender Slumming
he emergence of transgenderality as a politically and culturally defined community in the 1990s has not gone unchallenged in recent cultural discourse. Amongst the first and most notorious polemic attacks on the transgendered identity was Janice G. Raymond's The Transsexual Empire (1979) which posited MTF transsexuals as the surgically altered spys of an insidious patriarchal army, 'designed and constructed to infiltrate, pervert and destroy "true" women'.1
While Raymond's book has been dealt with elsewhere, a more recent attack on transfemininity has been Annalee Newitz's 'Gender Slumming' (1993), a closely argued materialist examination of the relationship between transgenderality and capital. Dealing exclusively with Male To Female transgendered sub-cultures, Newitz notes that TGs have 'officially joined the ranks of publicly recognised "minorities", like homosexuals, women, or any number of racial and ethnic groups'. Laying down the foundations of her primary argument, Newitz theorises that the phenomenon of transfemininity is the result of a patriarchal/capitalist social order in which males are privileged and females disadvantaged through a class divided economy.
Newitz's premise follows, to some degree, recent feminist discourse on the construction of gender, arguing that 'Woman' (either as a class or as an individual identity) is an invention of a patriarchal culture, constructed to fit into behavioural and sociological roles subordinate to 'Man'. Under this system, women are unable to represent themselves except as heterosexist fantasies; 'femininity' is an artifice employed to repress and control women as an economic under-class.
Elaborating her argument further, Newitz claims that 'transgender' should be seen as a symptom of the 'illness' of capitalist patriarchy, in much the same way that 'Woman' is a symptom of the same socio-economic cancer. She argues that 'transgenders' become facsimiles of traditional women; 'socially disempowered, largely unemployed and eager to appear physically attractive'.
Under Newitz's schema, women are constructed as receptacles into which men can project their feelings of weakness, dependency, and worthlessness - emotions which traditional men are unable to accept, much less articulate due to social conditioning. These feelings are generated by his low status in the social or economic hierarchy. A man may be physically powerful as a male, but can feel degraded, powerless and emasculated in the workplace.
The solution for the conventional heterosexist male is to project these feelings into the body of a partner, spouse or girlfriend (or into all women), or to employ a fictional woman to house his self-abasement, through misogynistic media such as pornographic magazines or X-rated films.
The third alternative is to 'create' a feminine identity in which to store his psychological effluent. MTF transgenderists - according to this scenario - are simply men who construct a feminine alter-ego into which they can abject their negative emotions.
. . . male to female people are no longer able, for whatever reasons, to project their feelings of weakness and victimisation onto real or fictional women. But they continue to believe that certain feelings are masculine and others feminine. Rather than acknowledging that it is possible for a man to feel or act in ways associated with traditional femininity, the male to female transgender concludes that he must 'really' be female. What the male to female transgender rejects is not simply his own masculinity, but also any possibility for an equal division of labour between the genders. He becomes a woman precisely in order to deny the possibility that men might share with real women the same kinds of emotional and material burdens.
Newitz claims that transgendered 'men' are acting out an 'enforced gender identity' when they become 'women'. Gender is enforced in the sense that biological women are coerced, by the structure of phallocentric society, to live and move in a world constituted as a vast sexual fantasy. While the MTF chooses to play a feminine role in society, the role itself is one normally imposed on genetic females. This represents, in Newitz's mind, a form of gender 'slumming', similar to the supposedly 'yuppie' practice of visiting (or settling into) ghetto districts in order to appear avant-garde, or to reinforce their feelings of a 'natural' superiority over the underprivileged.
When a biological male becomes a woman, Newitz argues, he is lowering himself into a fantasy world of submission and passivity, reinforcing his belief that women secretly enjoy being oppressed, objectified, harassed and disadvantaged. This downward mobility is, once again, derived from an image of femininity represented by a capitalist sexual economy. Women form an underclass into which the MTF may descend; permanently or periodically.
. . . When a man is disadvantaged due to his class background, he often cannot attain the status gendered culture has promised him. A man can imaginatively compensate for this loss (by fantasizing) that as a woman, he naturally desires disempowerment.
Thus, the TG voluntarily submits to an ordeal of social and economic abjection in order to feel better about 'him'self. On the other hand, Newitz hypothesises, many transfemmes are obsessed with a narcissistic image of wealth and glamour. Transfemininity becomes, for them, an escapist flight from their everyday reality of poverty, unemployment and alienation:
Because we live in a culture which is largely dominated not just by men, but by the wealthy elite, I think therefore it is safe to speculate that becoming an 'authentic or 'real looking' woman, is, for a man, partly a way of displaying his economic power. That is, he spends money to dress up like a woman who owns fashion luxuries. And, when he dresses up or gets surgery, he also proves that he can afford to . . . accessorize two people . . . himself and his female self.
This compulsion for cosmetics and expensive clothing is a desire to appear conspicuously upwardly mobile - although the MTF TG may have come originally from the working class, s/he consumes like a member of the middle or upper classes.
Whether the fantasy is one of upward or downward mobility, Newitz believes it to be little more than the affirmation of a heterosexist and capitalistic cultural order. By becoming a stereotypical women, the transfemme is simply legitimising the economic repression of all females.
. . . Because the transgendered person and the slummer gain pleasure only as a result of social and economic divisions in material reality, they perpetuate a social system which forces many people to lose . . . both privately and publicly . . . freely chosen social mobility.
Newitz concludes that the transgendered community simply recreates, in microcosm, the inequalities and social injustices of the capitalist order. Transgenderality is, therefore, a sham, a retreat from an unacceptable reality. Transgendered males 'drop out' by dressing up, masquerading as a masculinist sex object; hiding behind the face and form of a 'girl' when they should, as socially disadvantaged men, be fighting for a society free of economically based class divisions.
Newitz's tightly written analysis suffers from several methodological flaws and some major misconceptions regarding the relationship of transfemininity to post-modern culture. It is highly significant that female to male transgenderality is not dealt with in the article. The reasons Newitz offers for this omission is that FTM transgenderism is less prolific than transfemininity; and that a woman's desire to dress like, behave as, or become a man is 'normal' in a society where men have all the advantages.
One must immediately question the supposition that FTM is considered somehow 'normal' by heterosexual society. By dismissing FTM transgendered behavior as somehow 'normal' she automatically casts MTF transgenderality as abnormal by comparison. Newitz thereby absolves herself of the need to criticise biological females on the same basis that she attacks biological males.
Another problem is that too much emphasis is laid upon 'class divided economy' as the 'first cause' of transfemininity. Newitz seems to posit transgenderality as a specifically urban, post-industrial phenomenon, a consequence of twentieth century western capitalism. No mention, so far as my reading revealed, was made of non-western, non-capitalist class economies.
While transgenderality is understood as a reaction against rigidly imposed patriarchal gender roles, the phenomenon is not restricted to western (capitalist) cultures. It is, in fact, something which crosses all class and cultural boundaries. As Garber has argued in Vested Interests (1990), the development of any gender dichotomous culture is invariably accompanied by transvestic practices of one form or another:
. . . transvestism is a space of possibility structuring and confounding culture: the disruptive element that intervenes, not just as a category crisis of male and female, but the crisis of category itself.
By dealing only with the phenomenon as it manifests in Western capitalist systems, Newitz tends to dismiss the importance of transgenderality within non-Western and tribal cultures, in which the transgendered individual is often privileged as a sacred or supernatural being. Class divisions exist in any society, often based on disparities of age or sex, but the elevated status of the transgendered in some tribal societies suggests that gender transition was related to spirituality rather than economic structuring per se.
I would argue that transgenderality has a psychological rather than socio-economic origin. Demographically, the phenomenon occurs in all class, racial and ethnic groupings, despite Newitz's claim that it represents a fantasised desire to ascend from the lower classes into a socio-economic elite.
Newitz characterises transfemininity as an adult male's retreat from an unacceptable material reality; a mature individual's inability to cope with the economic and cultural demands of manhood. She appears to discount the possibility that transgendered identity and sexuality emerges while the subject is still an infant; years before s/he is capable of making a conscious decision concerning the role s/he will play in society.
Transgendered behavior begins early in children; between four and five as a rule, although cases of cross-dressing and femininity has been observed in boys as young as three. The reasons why children develop transgendered personalities are still unclear, but it is generally accepted that a child begins to differentiate between the genders from about the age of eighteen months on.
Sex and gender are fluid and malleable concepts for the child at this point; it is not unusual for a little girl to temporarily adopt a boy's role (e.g. in 'dress-up' or 'house') or for a little boy to play with dolls or show interest in 'girls things'. Children will identify with one parent or another from time to time, trying out genders interchangeably for several months until a 'final' gender coalesces at the end of the so-called Oedipus Complex. According to most feminist literature on the subject, there is no reason why a child's gender should automatically correspond with the gender traditionally associated with its biological sex.
In the majority of cases, the cross-gendered behavior fades out over the next few years, due to conventional social conditioning as the child negotiates his or her way into heterosexual society. In a small number of cases, however, the child will identify with the gender of its sexual opposite, and its final identity will be resolved as transgendered: a biological female will become gender-masculine, conversely, a biological male will become gender-feminine. Of these, a smaller percentage will eventually emerge as transvestites, transgenderists or transsexuals.
While we may safely posit that a child is capable of differentiating between the genders after about eighteen months, it is extremely unlikely that the child makes a conscious choice regarding gender, let alone a decision informed by economic hierarchies.
Granted, all genders are cultural constructs; and, of course, gender is something which is learned and/or assimilated. But while the gender is constructed patriarchally, it would be ludicrous to posit that any child could deliberately construct his/her identity to conform to an economic/class/sexual stereotype at the age of three.
Newitz believes that men become women due to feelings of powerlessness and victimisation, their self-esteem effectively eroded by their low status within the labour hierarchy and/or the class system.
What then, do we make of male heterosexual transvestites; who are typically successful in their masculine role, both socially and professionally? Psychological studies invariably reveal male TVs as stable and secure in their relationships, motivated in business and education - not the sort of people who would describe themselves as 'powerless'. Under Newitz's theory, such men would feel secure in their manhood, and would have no reason to adopt a feminine role, even in private. Yet male to female cross-dressing is possibly the most common form of transfemininity in Western and non-Western societies.
On the other hand, it is true that many MTF transsexuals and transgenderists have reported feelings of helplessness and worthlessness. Most psychological studies confirm that MTF transgendered children experience an unusually high level of physical intimidation, sexual harassment, and social isolation, particularly during primary and secondary schooling. Perceived as being somehow 'different' by other children, the TG child is victimised for years. In adult life, the transfemme often becomes lonely and despairing.
However, MTF transsexuals and transgenderists consider themselves to be girls/women a priori. Self-doubt and low self-esteem come after their transgender identity is resolved in infancy. As the subject's transfeminine personality is established in early childhood, before the ordeals of heterosexist 'socialisation' begin, it unlikely that these feelings are linked to a 'failed' manhood.
Transgendered individuals quite literally struggle to retain their transfeminine personalities intact throughout years of homophobic abuse, violence and vilification. In this respect, the transsexual's final decision to enter society as a woman is not a failure of manhood, but rather a triumph of a predominantly feminine personality.
Throughout Newitz's paper, the word 'woman' is used to describe a sexist stereotype imposed upon biological females; she makes the assumption that when a transfemme projects a feminine identity, she is automatically constructing a damaging enforced stereotype.
I am prompted to ask why 'femininity' is seen to constitute a stereotype. Femininity and masculinity are both highly diverse constructs; not every feminine female is a Barbie Doll, nor every masculine male a Rambo. With the rise of a plurality of feminisms in the late eighties and early nineties, we now have a plethora of images available to women, and while many of these are feminine, very few of them are suggestive of a passive-submissive role. Women are also more than capable of constructing their own identities, appropriating elements of supposedly 'masculine' and 'feminine' appearance and behavior as they see fit. From a liberal feminist perspective, a strong, successful, intelligent woman can also appear quite feminine - this does not constitute a stereotype.
I have argued in earlier articles that there are no qualities which are intrinsically 'male' or 'female'. On the vast continuum of human behaviour there are innumerable elements which we might term 'masculine' or 'feminine'. Human beings are composites of these characteristics; no-one is exclusively 'man' or 'woman'.
Transfemmes are just as much composite beings as anyone else. Throughout her article, Newitz constantly draws a division between transgendered women and 'real' women. Although her views on precisely what defines a 'real woman' are never clarified, I suspect that Newitz is referring to a biological female. If this is the case, then Newitz has fallen into the patriarchal trap of employing a biologistic theory of sexual difference.
Biologistic theories have been used, since around 1830, to 'prove' that women are physically and intellectually inferior to men due to anatomical and neurological differences between the sexes. The male body, in this phallocentric scenario, is utilised as a standard against which the female body can be tested - and found wanting.
This has led to the present day polarised view of gender which feminists since Simone de Bouvoir have been attempting to expose as one of many masculinist 'myths' of male supremacy. Most modern feminist theory states that gender difference is not determined by biological sex or genitality; rather, difference is constructed by cultural and sociological influences.
The nature-versus-nurture debate has been carried well into the post-modern era: medical research into micro biological differences between male and female chromosomal and neurological structures has led to the belief that the 2% of differences between the sexes are somehow more important than the 98% of similarities.
When Newitz proposes that there is a 'real woman' below all the layers of culturally constructed woman, then logically there must be a 'real man'. If this essentialist system is predicated on physical and anatomical differences, then Newitz is simply offering yet another dualistic model of gender. She is saying, in effect, that women or a men are defined only by their genitalia.
Paradoxically, while Newitz states that 'Real' women can create 'masculine' personalities for themselves in order to challenge the prevailing patriarchal socio-economic order, she disallows the possibility that a man can legitimately create a feminine identity for the same purpose. A Man is a Man is a Man: he can never be a true Woman.
However, to give Newitz the benefit of the doubt, let us assume that her binary model of humanity is based on something other than biological difference; some unknown element or quality which defines true femaleness. Taking this mysterious X-factor into account, a Real Woman is a sharply delineated boundary or space which Real Men can neither comprehend nor occupy. A Real Man can never experience this essential difference, much less relate to it, other than constructing a fantasy-woman which he can impose upon the Real Woman.
By extension, this also means that the male and the female have no common ground; at the most basic and essential level, Man, and everything the word signifies is a closed door to the Woman. There can be no communication between the sexes, no place for an exchange of ideas. Masculinity and femininity, under this model, are non-negotiable states of being, they are not constructs, they are absolutes.
Newitz's argument leads inevitably to the conclusion that sexual differences are fundamental to Men and Women; gender differences, therefore, are a chasm dividing the sexes which can never be crossed from either side. In short, by claiming that there exist a 'Real Woman' in an essentialist sense, Newitz effectively contradicts her previous statement that gender is a construct which may be challenged.
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