Gay and lesbian cultures have transformed virtually every area of cultural activity in the last twenty years.The sexuality of today is magnificent in its scale and diversity. We might argue that the ascension of so-called 'transgressive' sexual cultures since the late 1960s has contributed to the erosion of patriarchal monosexuality.
But while lesbians and gays have achieved a considerable degree of political recognition in Western culture, they are not the only marginalised groups seeking acceptance and equal status.
Many sexual minorities - transvestites, transgenderists, transsexuals for instance, are still on the periphery of sexual tolerance. Many exist in a social and sexual vacuum.
'Transitional' sexualities, as we might describe them, are forced to live with the hostility of a heterosexist culture which sees the transgressing of gender stereotypes as the ultimate crime.
For some transvestites, particularly those who are closeted and do not venture out in public, sexual gratification is an important part of this expression. But, the sexual aspects of cross-dressing are of little importance to those transvestites who go out into the real world. For them, ìpassingî, or being accepted, as the opposite sex is the goal because ìpassingî validates their bi-gendered nature.
Transvestites tend to project a conventional image in public, and are typically heterosexual in their choice of partners.1 Many cross-dress in secrecy. Others inform their spouses or companions, but continue to dress up in private. Heterosexual couples engaging in cross- dressing as a form of foreplay is not unknown. 2
Transgenderists are individuals of either sex who choose to reconstruct their gender: a biological male who adopts a woman's life and sexuality, or a biological female who determines to live as a man. They dress, work, and interact socially in accordance to their gender-choice. Transgenderists are a distinct category from transvestites; they are not simply cross-dressers who have determined to go public, but rather people who have made a conscious gender decision independent of their physiological sex.3
Transgenderists reject the patriarchal model of sex and gender: masculinity and femininity are cultural constructs, not immutable absolutes. In their relationships, transgenderists do not generally see themselves as homosexual, as their biological sex is irrelevant to their gender- choice. A female who assumes a male identity becomes a man. From this viewpoint, if he takes a female partner, the relationship could be described as heterosexual. On the other hand, an MTF transgenderist who takes a female lover would be described as a lesbian, due to the interaction of assumed gender and sexual orientation.
Transsexuals are people who undergo sex reassignment, surgically and chemically reconstructing their anatomies in accordance with their gender-choice. The operation in the male involves surgically altering the penis into the shape of a labia and the creation of an artificial vaginal passage. Testes are usually removed in order to permanently reduce testosterone levels, and the body's 'feminine' appearance is further enhanced with hormone treatments and (in some cases) breast implants. In a female, the operation is considerably more difficult, requiring the removal of the breasts and internal reproductive organs, the closure of the vagina and the building of an artificial penis out of living flesh and penile implants (phalloplasty).4 Testosterone is used to complete the reconstruction, changing the individual's muscle tone and prompting the growth of body and facial hair.
Many transsexuals are transgenderists prior to reassignment.
Constructions
Traditional patriarchal culture allocates sex, gender and sexuality purely on a biological basis: a human being is either a male or a female, a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. The presence or absence of a penis determines social and political status; the phallus represents power within a phallocentric society, sexual power is therefore rendered as masculine. Although this system divides humanity into two primary groups - male and female - sexuality is nonetheless attributed entirely to the male. Man is considered the 'stronger' sex, men are consistently represented as sexually aggressive and assertive, while women are believed weak and submissive; passive receivers of men's sexuality.
Deviation from these dualistic sexual archetypes is considered a perversion within patriarchal culture. A man is masculine and a women feminine, both have specific roles to play, and no crossing of gender boundaries is permitted. Gays and lesbians are therefore classified as perverts or transgressive sexualities; beings existing outside of the heterosexist continuum.
One major problem facing transvestites, transsexuals and transgenderists is one of representation. Heterosexist society constantly portrays them as homosexual. Effeminacy is invariably equated with homosexuality, therefore a man wearing a dress and acting like a woman must be gay. If a woman looks or behaves like a man, she is considered a lesbian. If she dresses like a male and takes female partners, then she has to be a lesbian.
Transsexuality is often depicted as the greatest betrayal of sex and gender, the ultimate rejection of biologically determined sexual identity. Sex reassignment is, arguably, the greatest threat imaginable to phallocentric society. Castration fears aside, transsexuality physically shifts the balance of power within masculinist ideology: through sex reassignment, women may gain possession of the phallus, men may surrender it voluntarily. As the phallus represents cultural, political and sexual power to the conservative male, reassignment surgery symbolically negates the deeply rooted illusions forming the foundations of patriarchy.
As mentioned above, transvestites do not usually classify themselves as gay or lesbian. Transvestites are typically heterosexually oriented individuals who cross-dress for sexual gratification, transgenderists and transsexuals regard themselves as either men or women, male or female. Many admit to feeling uncomfortable with their biological sex.
The feminist rhetoric of the past three decades has fragmented the phallocentric vision of the gendered body. Where gender and sexuality were once thought biologically determined, sexual difference is now understood in terms of social and cultural construction. Masculinity and femininity are little more now than images within a heterosexist world picture. Happily, this picture is no longer monosexual.
Visuality
In the postmodern period, plurality is rapidly becoming the prevailing norm and otherness the rule rather than the exception. The sexual landscape is now populated with a profusion of significant others, as Andrea Dworkin noted as early as 1974:
. . . We are, clearly, a multi sexed species which has its sexuality spread out along a vast continuum.5
The transition from monosexuality to multisexuality has been traumatic for many; heterosexuals have had to adjust to the concept of being only one amongst many legitimate alternatives. Paradoxically however, western sexual culture is still dominated by the male gaze. Gender, eroticism and identity are judged in purely visual terms, and those terms are determined almost invariably from a masculine subjectivity. A woman is not a woman unless she looks like a woman (ie like a lingerie model or a Barbie doll), a male can't be a real man unless he appears masculine.
The visual prejudice of patriarchal culture disadvantages anyone who attempts to disrupt conventional gender codes. Transgenderists and transsexuals are judged almost entirely on the way they look. One may consider herself a woman, in the conceptual and psychological senses of the word, but, possessing a masculine physique, society at large sees her as nothing more than a strange, sexually confused male wearing a dress. The problem is (apparently) less severe for the biologically female transgenderist. However, while society is generally tolerant of unisexual clothing styles, the sight of a female with hair on (or under) his/her arms, legs or face is considered repulsive in the extreme. Again, the transgenderist or transsexual is not considered a 'real' man, but a testosterone enhanced woman.6
The privileged status of the masculine vision in Western culture means that many transitionals are forced to live in a socio-sexual limbo. For instance, as mentioned above, a biologically male transgenderist who retains a masculine 'look' will be dismissed as a poor imitation of a woman. She will be ostracized as a monster by heterosexist men, viewed with suspicion by other women, and regarded as a pathetic joke by both. Denied solidarity with either gender, the transgenderist can exist only as 'other' - something approximating images of conventional man or woman, but never quite accepted as either.
Postmodernity
Conceptually speaking, transitional sexuality may be linked to postmodernism in terms of constructed identity, and the subject's consciousness of lifestyle as an expression of culture. Transvestites, transgenderists and transsexuals are each concerned, to varying degrees, with the appropriation of gender-signifiers and the critique of patriarchal modes of representation.
Their articulating forms are (amongst others) language, fashion, performance and their own bodies. They derive their images from traditional and pop-cultural sources, and, having an exceptionally broad range of imagery and style to draw upon, may be judged as ahistorical in the postmodern sense. As transitional sexuality occurs in a broad spectrum of class and nationality, the practices may be described as multi-cultural.
In deliberately crossing gender boundaries, they are deconstructing conventional models of sexual representation. There is a clear parallel between transitional sexuality and the performance art of feminist artists like Linda Sproul or Karen Finley. Female performance artists frequently engage in sexual role-playing to make their point. Karen Finley, in several of her performances, has played both the aggressor and the victim of sexual abuse, alternately strapping on dildos or smearing her body with filth as she exchanges subjective positions and genders.7 In the area of popular entertainment, Madonna's gender-crossing performances, featuring both stage-transvestism and sexually aggressive gestures (such as grabbing her crotch), have highlighted the culturally mediated nature of sexuality.
A transitional's lifestyle is an extension or variation of this performance principal; their gender-lives become an artform, their bodies art-objects. The transvestite and the transgenderist reject patriarchally imposed gender constructions; the transsexual rejects biologistic theories of the human body. All three are postmodern critiques of phallocentric and essentialist views on masculinity and femininity.
Textuality
The social isolation experienced by the transitional is problematic in both cultural and sociological terms. Transvestites often keep their activities secret from their partners, transgenderists and transsexuals are sometimes lumped together in sort of sexual apartheid. But the socio-sexual limbo mentioned above is not the full extent of the problem. Transitionals are rarely recognized as members of a political subculture, unlike gays and lesbians.
Gender transition has only recently been discoursed as a form of cultural articulation, and only then under the label of so-called 'queer theory', by politically active gay artists such as Juan Davila. While Davila is an excellent theorist (as well as a painter and performance artist; cross-dressing and adopting female identities on occasion), transitionals, as outlined previously, rarely consider themselves gay, and should, perhaps, be discussed on a different theoretical basis.
Part of the problem is terminology. Words such as 'transvestite', 'transsexual', or 'transgenderist' carry the same connotations of pathology, alienation and transgression as the word 'homosexual' did twenty years ago. Transitional sexualities have no equivalent of the word 'gay'. The word 'drag' does not adequately cover all three groups - each of which could be broken down into finer distinctions.The word which comes closest to being a politically correct generic term is 'transgendered', which would cover both the TG and TS communities, but may not adequately describe transvestites or gay/lesbian cross- dressers.
Language, as theorized by Lacan and most French theorists of the postmodern period, mediates sexuality and gender according to a centralized masculine subject. Under this linguistic system, non-heterosexuals will inevitably be represented as Other or Andropoda. As long as the dominant subject remains male, transitionals will continue to be marginalised to the edge of acceptable sexual culture. Putting it more simply, language presents a cultural and sociological barrier to transitional sexuality.
Conclusions
In a time of plurality and multisexuality, transgenderists, transsexuals and transvestites are still 'written off' as insignificant others. Mainstream heterosexual society tends to view them as eccentric sexual practitioners or perverts. While tolerated as a minority, few take them seriously as a 'genuine' alternative sexuality.
On the other hand, biologically male transvestites and transgenderists have been studied with alarm by some commentators, who believe them to be frivolous or damaging caricatures of women, conforming to pornographic sexist stereotypes. Others consider sexual transition to be a twisted form of male narcissism: men seeking themselves, becoming the object of their own desire.
While such criticism may be valid in some cases, it seems unlikely that it could be true in every case. For many transvestites, cross-dressing is a primary form of sexual expression. To censor transvestites or transgenderists on this basis, ie that the sight of a man posing as a woman (or vice-versa) is offensive to certain political interests, would be similar to prohibiting gays or lesbians from kissing in public. As a society which (theoretically) values its sexual freedom and tolerance, we cannot deny any particular group the right of expressing its sexuality in a socially acceptable manner.
Nor may we deny any the right to reconstruct their gender/sexual identity, as is the case of transgenderists and transsexuals. As Kate Linker hypothesized in 1984,8 gender need no longer be something strictly imposed and controlled by society; through language and self representation, we now have the potential to create, maintain or transform our individual sexuality.
References
1But not exclusively heterosexual; cross-dressing gays and lesbians are not uncommon. MTF 'Drag Queens' are gay males, often possessing an unmistakably masculine physique, who dress in lavish, sometimes outlandish female costume. This 'masquerade', which combines elements of masculinity and femininity with no attempt to pass, is viewed by some observers as the most extreme form of gay flamboyancy. Both drag queems and cross-dressing lesbians play an important role in postmodern/post gendered society, challenging patriarchally defined 'norms' of gendered behavior.
2 Whether cross-dressing between couples as foreplay constitutes 'true' transvestite behavior is a debatable point, as 'classic' sexual transvestism is most often performed in isolation. For the purposes of this essay, however, we will assume that cross-dressing between heterosexual couples is a form of tranvestism.
3 There is, of course, a degree of overlap in these two areas, as some transvestites do become transgenderists in their maturity. Decisions of this sort are patently postmodern; the emphasis being on lifestyle and the constructed nature of identity.
4 Walters, William, and Michael Ross (ed.), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986, p. 112. A scrotum is also fashioned to hold artificial testes.
5 Dworkin, Andrea, Woman Hating, Dutton, New York, 1974, p. 174. My emphasis.
6 In some cases, hormone treatments and cosmetic surgery are effective enough to allow the transitional to move through society relatively free of the visual bigotries imposed by the male gaze.
7 Marsh, Anne, 'Wicked Women in Performance', Agenda, Special Issue, no. 28, Summer 1992/3 pp. 45-52.
8 Linker, Kate, 'Representation and Sexuality',in Brian Wallis (ed.) Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1984, p.401. To be more precise, Linker was discussing women's capacity to transcend the limitations set by patriarchal culture:
. . .As a subject in process, in language, woman is at liberty to counter anatomy and with it, the claims of essential femininity, freeing herself from the fixed terms of identity by recognition of its textual production.