Becoming Culturally (Un)intelligible: Exploring the Terrain of Trans Life Writing

Abstract

This article offers a metatheoretical exploration of how we think through, understand, and categorize trans life writing. It explores Judith Butler’s theory of cultural intelligibility, the use of the waves metaphor, the conflation of trans life writing with coming-of-age and coming-out stories, and counternarratives of cultural unintelligibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Eva Karpinski for providing me with invaluable feedback on this article. I would also like to thank Professor Julie Rak for her guidance and support with the publication process.

Notes

1 “Trans” is an umbrella term that encompasses a spectrum of gender identities and embodiments of persons whose gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth. Trans includes, but is not limited to, those who identify as transgender, transsexual, nonbinary, Two Spirit, trans women, trans men, male-to-female (MTF), female-to-male (FTM), trans feminine, trans masculine, genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, and agender, among others. See Enke, Transfeminist Perspectives, 16–20.

2 Namaste, Invisible Lives.

3 Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 49.

4 Hemmings, “Telling Feminist Stories,” 117.

5 Butler, Gender Trouble, 185.

6 Prosser, Second Skins, 120; Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 209.

7 Butler, Gender Trouble, xxiii.

8 Stryker and Currah, “General Editors’ Introduction,” 159; Ellison et al., “We Got Issues,” 164; Hayward, “Don’t Exist,” 192.

9 See National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, Lesbian, 55.

10 The terms “transsexuality” (the condition) and “transsexual” (the person) are medical terms that refer to those who desire to undergo medical transition. I restrict the use of the terms to medical discourses or when an author uses the terms.

11 Hemmings, “Telling Feminist Stories,” 119.

12 Shotwell, “Open Normativities,” 990.

13 Vipond, “Resisting Transnormativity,” 21.

14 Kolmar, “History,” 234.

15 Schewe, “Serious Play,” 680.

16 Butler, Excitable Speech, 5.

17 Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 53.

18 Prosser, Second Skins, 124.

19 Shotwell, “Open Normativities,” 1004.

20 Butler, Excitable Speech, 5.

21 Butler, Gender Trouble, 23.

22 Spade, “Mutilating Gender,” 321.

23 See Raymond, The Transsexual Empire.

24 See Raymond.

25 See Raymond.

26 Prosser, Second Skins, 8.

27 Spade, “Mutilating Gender,” 321.

28 See Namaste, Invisible Lives.

29 Spade, “Mutilating Gender,” 321.

30 Prosser, Second Skins, 104.

31 For a trans person to “pass” is to be read by others as the gender with which they identify. I problematize this term because it suggests that trans persons are not who they say they are and it reinforces a hierarchy of normative and nonnormative trans persons. Furthermore, not all trans persons are able or desire to pass.

32 Gilbert, “Defeating Bigenderism,” 98.

33 Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 23.

34 Halberstam, Queer Art. See also Spoon and Coyote, Gender Failure.

35 See Bialystok, “Authenticity and Trans Identity,” 122. See also Jacques, Trans, 307.

36 Morris, Conundrum, 3.

37 Mock, Redefining Realness, 16.

38 Woolley, “‘Boys,’” 382.

39 See Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing.”

40 Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 62.

41 Meyerowitz, 62.

42 See Mock, Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty.

43 Mock, Surpassing Certainty, 60.

44 See Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual.’” See also Vipond, “‘100% Dude,’” 33, 41. For more on racialized bodies as deviant, see Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks.

45 See Elbe, Man into Woman.

46 Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual,’” 271.

47 Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 86; Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual,’” 270.

48 Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 86.

49 Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual,’” 271.

50 Skidmore, 271.

51 Califia, Sex Changes, 11; Stryker, Transgender History.

52 See Califia, Sex Changes. See also Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed; Rondot, “‘Bear Witness’”; and Stryker, Transgender History.

53 Henry, “Waves,” 103.

54 Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual,’” 271.

55 Kolmar, “History,” 234.

56 Rondot, “‘Bear Witness,’” 531.

57 Perhaps this is an unavoidable consequence as I, too, create a dichotomy between hegemonic narratives and counternarratives.

58 Henry, “Waves,” 105–106.

59 Califia, Sex Changes, 28.

60 See Califia, Sex Changes. See also Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed.

61 Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen, 207–208.

62 Morris, Conundrum, 21.

63 See Califia, Sex Changes, 11–48.

64 Martino, Emergence (emphasis added).

65 Prosser, Second Skins, 119.

66 Ames, Sexual Metamorphosis, 116 (emphasis added).

67 Mock, Surpassing Certainty, 110.

68 Nicolazzo, Marine, and Galarte, “Introduction,” 371.

69 Ames, Sexual Metamorphosis, xii.

70 Ames, xiv, xii.

71 Ames, xii.

72 Mock, Redefining Realness, 188.

73 Mock, 188.

74 Mock, 227.

75 Mock, 170.

76 Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 2.

77 Ames, Sexual Metamorphosis, xiv.

78 Ames, xiv.

79 Ames, xiv.

80 Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 53.

81 Butler, Excitable Speech, 15.

82 See Bono, Transition: The Story and Transition: Becoming; Bornstein, Gender Outlaw; Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen; Martino, Emergence; Mock, Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty; Morris, Conundrum; Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed; and Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back.”

83 See Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen; Martino, Emergence; Morris, Conundrum; and Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 8.

84 Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 23; Vipond, “‘100% Dude,’” 33.

85 Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 3. See Vipond, “‘100% Dude,’” 38.

86 Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 57.

87 Parker, quoted in Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 57.

88 Martino, Emergence, xi.

89 Martino, 134.

90 See Vipond, “‘100% Dude,’” 35–46.

91 Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 152.

92 Zimman, “‘Other Kind,’” 54.

93 Zimman, 54.

94 Zimman, 54.

95 Bono, Transition: Becoming, 2.

96 Hausman, Changing Sex.

97 Hausman, “Body,” 337.

98 Schewe, “Serious Play,” 681.

99 Spade, “Mutilating Gender,” 321–322.

100 Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 65.

101 Bornstein, 24.

102 Mock, Redefining Realness, 16.

103 Mock, 162.

104 Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 66.

105 Prosser, Second Skins, 69 (emphasis added).

106 Shotwell, “Open Normativities.”

107 Scott-Dixon, Trans/forming Feminisms, 15.

108 Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 129.

109 Schewe, “Serious Play,” 670.

110 Butler, Excitable Speech, 2.

111 Butler, 26.

112 Stryker, “My Words,” 245.

113 Stryker, 246.

114 Butler, Excitable Speech, 14.

115 Stryker, “My Words,” 246.

116 Butler, Excitable Speech, 29.

117 Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual,’” 271.

118 See Capretto, “TV Host.” See also MSNBC, “Laverne Cox.”

119 Schewe, “Serious Play,” 671, 684.

120 Mock, Redefining Realness, xv. See also Juang, “Transgendering.”

121 Mock, Redefining Realness, xvii.

122 Mock writes, “My experience with sex work is not that of the trafficked young girl or the fierce sex-positive woman who proudly chooses sex work as her occupation. My experience mirrors the vulnerable girl with few resources who was groomed from childhood, who was told this was the only way” (Redefining Realness, 177).

123 Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual,’” 271.

124 Skidmore, 276.

125 For an analysis of Bornstein’s discussion of sadomasochism, see Schewe, “Serious Play,” 671, 684–686, 688, 690, 693n25. See also Freiwald, “Becoming and Be|longing,” 48.

126 Mock, Surpassing Certainty, 21.

127 Schewe, “Serious Play,” 684.

128 Mock, “Being Pretty.”

129 See Mock.

130 See Mock.

131 See Mock.

132 See Mock.

133 Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual,’” 294. See also Juang, “Transgendering.”

134 Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 8.

135 Prosser, Second Skins, 174.

136 Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back”; Roen, “Transgender Theory and Embodiment,” 658.

137 Shotwell, “Open Normativities,” 1003.

138 Shotwell, 994.

139 Ellison et al., “We Got Issues,” 162.

140 Snorton and Haritaworn, “Trans Necropolitics.”