This post discusses Sandy
Stone’s “Posttranssexual Manifesto.”
As a whole, this article
is quite intense, it is hyper-academic, and absurdly dense. It
has been 25 years since this was published and it shows, it’s a great example of
what Susan Stryker was referring to in her introduction to the Transgender Studies Reader 2 in terms of
what trans academia was focused on in the 90s and early 2000s. A major tenant
of trans studies that I have noticed as I read pieces like this one that are from
20+ years ago, as well as essays from just 5-10 years ago, is that their life
cycle seems to be very short. As soon as one phrase or theory develops, another
one comes to replace it. It makes me wonder if this is a result of the truly
radical thinking that happens in this community, which accelerates creation, or
if because so much of trans history has been subjugated that we are having to
play catch up now, which leads to a great deal of turnover as we move from one
concept to the next. Going off of this, the use of the word transsexual was
somewhat startling to me. Though it is technically correct in this context, as
Stone is specifically talking about trans people and their relationships to
their bodies and the medical world, but that word is so far removed from the
lexicon of today that it is strange to see, which dates the piece in a very
obvious was.
One of the major threads
through this article is the agency of trans people. Stone gives examples of
some of the first stories told by and about trans people in recent Western
history. The overarching theme in these stories, mostly memoirs, seems to be a
dramatization of transition, with a definitive before and after that keeps the
boundaries of gender firmly in place. This story is for the medical community
and mainstream society at large to introduce the concept of transsexualism to
them while keeping gender firmly cemented in one’s genitalia as they are wont
to believe is true. Along with these gendered bodies seemed to innately come
the gendered characteristics we associate with femininity (as this article centered
mostly on trans women), things like clothes, make up, and heterosexuality. Stressing the point that
a trans woman is the same as a cis woman once she has gone through the
appropriate steps, therefore a trans woman loves dresses and lipstick and men because
that is something inherent to women. This introduced the idea of trans
identities to the mainstream crowd without shaking their understanding of
gender too much. These people were born in the “wrong bodies,” but once a
doctor righted biology’s wrongs, trans people were just like everyone else.
Something that is alluded
to throughout this piece is the violence and trauma the medical community has committed
against the trans community. For so long, transsexualism was a medical and psychological
diagnosis, something that necessitated institutionalization and careful examination.
Stone says that “transsexuals are infantilized, considered too illogical or
irresponsible to achieve true subjectivity, or clinically erased by diagnostic
criteria” (11) which is something I feel is still true today. Cis people, who ironically
are those most focused on bodies and genitalia, love to question trans people’s
merit to say that they don’t identify with their gender assigned at birth and
question their decisions to alter their bodies, certain they will live to
regret their choices. These people are so captured by the popular definition of
gender that they cannot imagine a person who lives outside of it for a reason
other than severe mental illness.
Overall, Stone’s point,
the meaning behind the “post transsexual,” is the breaking of the binary. She
posits that the focus on keeping gender so fiercely binary is for the comfort
of others, not the trans people themselves. Therefore, she wants trans people
to forget the binary altogether and live comfortably in a body that is not
easily gendered one way or another. This thesis, to me, is both extremely
closed minded and ahead of its time. The concept of the “posttranssexual” is
similar to what we now call non-binary. Though NB people have always existed,
it is a relatively recent term and is foreign to many both inside and out of
the queer community. Her idea of existing outside of the binary is something
that is still quite radical and not entirely accepted today; however, her insistence
that trans people live outside the binary is incredibly presumptuous. To live a
life where your gender is not immediately apparent to those who see you is to
live a life in danger. Dismissing what cis people think is dismissing trans
people’s ability to hold jobs and have reliable housing and to be safe in the world. Violence has
always been a major problem for trans people and ignoring this to make a point
about the socially constructed nature of gender ignores the everyday reality of
trans people.
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