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Abstract
This article is based on empirical research which was undertaken as part of the Sci:dentity project funded by the Wellcome Trust. Sci:dentity was a year-long participatory arts project which ran between March 2006 and March 2007. The project offered 18 young transgendered and transsexual people, aged between 14 and 22, an opportunity to come together to explore the science of sex and gender through art. This article focuses on four creative workshops which ran over two months, being the ‘creative engagement’ phase of the project. It offers an analysis of the transgendered space created which was constituted through the logics of recognition, creativity and pedagogy. Following this, the article explores the ways in which these transgendered and transsexual young people navigate gendered practices, and the gendered spaces these practices constitute, in their everyday lives shaped by gendered and sexual normativities. It goes on to consider the significance of trans virtual and physical cultural spaces for the development of trans young peoples' ontological security and their navigations and negotiations of a gendered social world.
Este artículo está basado en una investigación empírica que fue llevada a cabo como parte del proyecto Sci:dentity, financiado por el Wellcome Trust. Sci:dentity fue un proyecto de arte participativo de un año de duración, que se desarrolló entre marzo de 2006 y marzo de 2007. El proyecto les ofreció a 18 personas transgenerizadas y transexuales de entre 14 y 22 años, una oportunidad para juntarse para estudiar la ciencia del sexo y el género a través del arte. Este artículo centra su atención en cuatro talleres creativos que se llevaron a cabo durante dos meses, siendo ésta la fase de “participación creativa”. Ofrece un análisis del espacio transgenérico creado, el cual fue constituido a través de las lógicas del reconocimiento, la creatividad y la pedagogía. Luego, el artículo explora las formas en las que estas jóvenes personas transgenéricas y transexuales se desenvuelven en las prácticas sexuales, y los espacios generizados que estas prácticas constituyen en sus vidas de todos los días, formadas por las normatividades generizadas y sexuales. Luego considera la significancia de los espacios culturales trans, virtuales y físicos, para el desarrollo de la seguridad ontológica de las jóvenes personas trans y sus recorridos y negociaciones de un mundo social generizado.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Sci:dentity project team and participants. Thanks also go to Kath Browne, Sally Hines, Catherine Nash and Sara Davidmann and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in the development of this article.
Notes
1. Throughout this article certain terms are used that need explanation for the sake of clarity. Trans is used in this report to include transsexual and transgender. Transsexual is a medical term used to refer to a person who identifies as a gender which is different from that which they were assigned at birth. Transsexuals usually undergo a medical process of sex reassignment through the use of surgery and the administration of hormones. Transgender is a more colloquial term used to describe a person who feels that the gender assigned to them at birth is not a correct or complete description of what they feel. Transgender can be used to describe a wide range of gender expressions, which are a variation from the norms of society (for example including masculine or ‘butch’ women, feminine men, cross-dressers). Genderqueer is also a colloquial or community term that describes someone who identifies as a gender other than ‘man’ or ‘woman’, or someone who identifies as neither, both, or some combination thereof. In relation to the male/female genderqueer people generally identify as more ‘both/and’ or ‘neither/nor’, rather than ‘either/or’. Some genderqueer people may identify as a third gender in addition to the traditional two. The commonality is that all genderqueer people are ambivalent about the notion that there are only two genders in the world.
2. Wotever describes its events as aimed at people who are ‘friendly, respectful and ok with all kinds of gender and sexualities… most people are LGBT, but it doesn't stop our non LGBT & Q friends, co-workers, family members etc to come along and have a good time with us… and we all realise that we all transition and can change gender, sexuality and friends’ (Wotever Citation2009). Similarly the Transfabulous Arts organisation describes itself as providing ‘the opportunity for the transgender community to celebrate their artists while also participating in the creation of art during workshops’. Its definition of ‘transgender community’ is an inclusive one. It welcomes any transgender person or those questioning their gender, their families, friends, colleagues, supporters etc. (Transfabulous Citation2009). Its events invariably include a wider community of the families, friends, lovers and admirers of trans people.
3. The Wellcome Trust is an independent biomedical research charity. Sci:dentity was funded as part of the Wellcome Trust's Pulse programme, which supports arts projects which work engage young people with biomedical science and encourage them to tackle complex, emotive issues.
4. The project was conceptualised and led by Catherine McNamara. Jay Stewart was the documentary maker for the project. Together the project team had training and professional experience in applied theatre, participative arts, mental health work and youth and community work with LGBT and non-LGBT youth. I was responsible for the participatory evaluation of the project. This involved participation, observation, working with the participants in formulating the research element of the project, designing evaluation methods (which included blogging and keeping log books, one-to-one and group interviews and evaluation workshops). The project was evaluated by myself using evaluation tools developed at the centre for Urban and Community Research by Alison Rooke, Ben Gidley and Imogen Slater as part of the Hi8us project, Beyond the Numbers Game. This research project looks at the efficacy of existing performance measures for participatory media work and developing an alternative approach to making the case for the value of creativity in general, and participatory media in particular, as a tool for engagement and social inclusion. Central to this work is developing rigorous ways of evaluating the significance of movement, embodiment, cultural and social capitals in arts and media work.
5. See Rooke (Citation2006, Citation2007a) for a fuller discussion of the project and its participatory evaluation.
6. The participants were recruited through LGBT youth groups, groups aimed at specifically supporting trans youth (Mermaids) and Social Services departments. Many of the young people came with the consent of project workers and social services care workers rather than parents. The young people aged under 18 who were in the care of their parents varied in the extent to which they told the parents that they were attending a project aimed at trans youth. Many participants preferred to tell friends and family that they were attending an arts project aimed at LGBT youth rather than trans youth as this may have caused difficulties at home. The few cases where young people aged under 18 had the consent of care or youth workers rather than parental consent raised ethical dilemmas for the project staff. This required consultation on a case-by-case basis with the other responsible adults working with these young people and careful consideration of the balance between the potential benefits of the project for the young people versus potential recriminations or difficulties that may arise. This dilemma is clearly not limited to the project and can apply to work with LGBT young people under 18 in general. However, due to the sensitive nature of the project, and the potential subsequent use of images and a documentary produced as part of the project, issues of consent, image release and matters of confidentiality required careful ongoing negotiation and dialogue. It is worth noting that by the end of the first phase of the project most participants had begun to broach the issue of feeling trans with their parents. Many parents and care workers came along to the performance and exhibition at the close of the first phase of the project. For several of the youths this was a ‘coming out’ moment. It is also a reflection of the participants increased confidence about their gender identity gained through participation in the project.
7. Throughout this document participant's names have been changed in order to protect their anonymity.
8. The experts who kindly agreed to participate in the project were Prof. Andrew Levy and Dr. Richard Curtis.
9. The term ‘gender dysphoria’ has a particular trajectory (see Ekins and King 2006, and Hines Citation2007 for further discussion). The term is used amongst medical professionals to refer to a sense of dissonance between one's physical sexed body and one's gender identity.
10. Referring to a NHS gender specialist.
11. For example, an incident that happened London's gay pride celebration in 2008, when a trans woman was denied access to the women's toilets in Trafalgar Square and asked by stewards to show her gender recognition certificate as evidence of her female gender, a certificate of entitlement. Similarly in New York City a black butch lesbian was thrown out of the women's toilet of the Caliente Cab Company in the West Village, in the midst of pride celebrations. While LGBT pride is ostensibly an event which opens up predominantly heterosexual public space to queer bodies, clearly these spaces are not as utopian moments as some of the queer community would prefer to imagine. The trans body clearly troubles the gender binaries that both heteronormativity and homonormativity rest upon.
12. TG is short hand for transgender.
13. See Browne and Lim (Citation2009) for a discussion of the idea of gender as ‘felt’ and sensed as a way of doing justice to research respondent's complex testimonies regarding their gender.
14. Representational fora such as London's Metropolitan Police LGBT Advisory Group (an independent group of LGBT people who advise and monitor the metropolitan police) worked with the participants, in the development of a trans subgroup. Four Sci:dentity youth went on to be involved in the development of the Department of Health's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Advisory Group's (SOGIAG) trans work stream. This group has been established as part of the Department of Health's Equality and Human Rights team, which seeks to make healthcare in the UK more accessible to LGBT people.