“Transsexuality” and gender ratio in Poland: A case study on the East/West dichotomy

ABSTRACT

The article investigates scientific and journalistic discourses around differences in gender ratio among trans persons. The disparity between Poland and many other countries that was first noted in the 1980s was repeatedly associated with the different gender politics in the capitalist West and the (post) state-socialist East. Using Foucauldian methodology, the article claims that this discourse was constructed such that Poland’s ratio—and consequently Poland’s gender order—would always appear problematic, while Western countries were considered an invisible standard. Discourses around this ratio elucidate the role of heteronormativity and biological essentialism in the construction of the category of “transsexuality” in state-socialist Poland. The analysis also reveals that chronologies of LGBT and feminist movements had direct consequences for the theoretical and cultural spaces of trans identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Transsexuality
• transgender
• Poland
• ratio
• Eastern Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The article forces me to navigate between the medicalized, pathologizing language of 1980s and 1990s Polish sexology and today’s language of transgender studies. To avoid anachronism and ambiguity and to account for the enormous role of sexology in dealing with gender diversity in People’s Poland, I retain in this article the medical category of transsexuality. However, I modify the language used by sexologists. Namely, I use the term “transsexual man” instead of “female transsexual” (transseksualistka) to describe female-assigned persons diagnosed with transsexuality, and “transsexual woman” instead of “(male) transsexual” (transseksualista) for male-assigned persons diagnosed with transsexuality. Sometimes, the abbreviated adjectival form “trans” is used for stylistic convenience, although it was not used in Poland before the late 2000s.

2. Simultaneously, however, since the 1970s there have been positions within the Western feminist movement that spoke against the inclusion of trans women and—more broadly—against embracing transgender rights. This vocal minority attests to the further vulnerability of “transgender women” as an identity category.

3. See Szulc (2017), for a discussion of the beginnings of the gay and lesbian movement in Poland.

4. The “brain sex” theory—a popular science claim that statistical differences between males and females in abilities, interests, or sexual preferences are “hardwired” in the brains and thus unchangeable—became immensely influential in Poland in the 1990s. The Polish version of Anne Moir and David Jessel’s Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women (1989), a British pop-science bestseller, was published in a renowned scientific series and was reprinted almost every year throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In the Polish media, it served as the final scientific say about gender, providing arguments to explain and naturalize gender inequalities.

5. Węgrzyn (2013) provides the number of 203 settled gender reassignment cases for 2009–2012, which allows speculation that Grzejszczak’s (2013) study involved about 75% of all cases settled by courts.

6. For a discussion of the attitudes of 1970s and 1980s Polish sexology on gender, see Kościańska (2016).

7. Especially with the recent decline of LGBT and women’s rights (e.g. Buyantueva, 2018; Moss, 2017; Wilkinson, 2014), Russia is framed as anti-modern and essentially different from Europe (e.g. Wiedlack, 2017).

8. They concluded that the former were typically pleased about their sexuality and genitals, while the latter were much more miserable and dreamt of castration (Imieliński & Dulko, 1988, p. 162). Thus, the declared willingness to undergo surgical procedures was important in the diagnostic process.

9. Still, in contrast to what Meier and Labuski (2013) stated, the Polish case does not confound but supports Valentine’s previously mentioned claim concerning the different attitudes of the gay and lesbian movements to trans people (p. 301).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.