Patricia Mercader
Maître de Conférences en Psychologie sociale

Institut de Psychologie
Université Lumière-Lyon 2
Avenue Pierre Mendès-France
Case 11
F-69676 BRON CEDEX

patricia.mercader@univ-lyon2.fr

33 (0)4 78 37 53 53

Conformism and gender attribution :
analysis of some transsexual autobiographies

 

In this paper I will show that transsexuals who choose to write and publish their autobiography have to face a striking difficulty: they seek to convince their lectors that they  “really” or “truly” belong to a specific gender, while they disclose the usually incompatible fact that they were born belonging to the other gender, and that their genitals are not what they should. The arguments they use to deal with this incompatibility include conformist views about gender roles, acceptance  of a “natural” hierarchy between men and women, homophobia, references to a biologically determined gender identity, etc. The discursive and narrative structure of the autobiographies makes a wide use of what we might call a “tautology strategy”: presenting as obvious what is actually a paradox; in freudian words, this belongs to the primary, unconscious, processes.

I have worked on fourteen autobiographies with a transsexual theme. My analysis was qualitative, and my perspective psychosocial.

Why is it so difficult ?

I will start from some ideas that have been powerfully demonstrated quite a while ago by ethnomethodologists like Harold Garfinkel (1967), or Susan Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1978).

What members of our society consider as objective and real facts about gender (let us call it our “ natural attitude ” towards gender) includes some rules among which I will quote three : 1) there are two, and only two, genders ; 2) one’s gender is invariant ; and 3) genitals are the essential sign of gender (113). And in order to maintain a stable gender attribution of another person, it is necessary to see the natural attitude displayed (124).

Transsexuals write their autobiographies as testimonies, in order to convince the public to accept their claim of belonging “ truly ” to the “ other ” gender. But considering all this, it clearly appears that in order to “ pass ”, a transsexual should concentrate in having a firm first gender attribution made, avoid any transgression of the rules about gender (specially, hide the sex change and the incorrect genitals), and trust others to filter all particulars according to their first impression. Therefore, their writing in itself makes it very difficult, or even impossible, for others to share in the maintainance of their gender by confronting others with a blatant violation of the natural attitude. They have to use different strategies to fight this difficulty, this paradox.

Conformist views about gender roles

The most ovious aspect of this strategy is, in my opinion that they replace their impossible respect of the rules 2) one’s gender is invariant, and 3) genitals are the essential sign of gender by their very conformists views about gender.

They are very conscious of the existence of power relations and hierarchy between men and women. The female-to-male Mario Martino is as much delighted to give up any house work than she is to flirt with women or be allowed dirt talk with men. The male-to-female Jan Morris realises that men treat him more and more as an impotent child, and that he adapts to it : the more he is considered unable to drive backwards or open a champagne bottle, the more he feels unable to do it. But this inequality does not revolt them. Another male-to-female, Sylviane Dullak, writes about his childhood : “ I used to submit easily and to feel unable to fight. This tendancy to unquestioning obedience is originally a feminine character, while the male is rather defined by his combative personnality ” (20). Most people maintain such stereotypical belief and in the meantime experience meeting submissive men and agressive women without modifying their gender attributions about them, but the transsexual writers use the stereotype as an evidence in the process of gender attribution. It is also a way for them to appear as normal, and even hyper-normal, in some matter at least.

They also show an extreme or even militant homophobia, and the word phobia here must be understood in its medical and psychological meaning : confronted directly with homosexuality (an insult, a sexual proposition, a kiss...), the male-to-female Christine Jorgensen or the female-to-male Daniel van Oosterwyck run away, actually throw up, or even attempt suicide. The mere aspiration to as much normality as possible cannot fully explain such reactions. I would think that, like pre-freudian psychiatrists in the late nineteenth century, and like most moralists before and after this, transsexuals assume that homosexuals are not “ real ” men or women, that heterosexuality is part of the gender membership.

Man and woman, in the transsexual perspective, are so rigid and compact categories that they could be destroyed by any kind of deviance. The emphasis on the differences between them, and on the natural qualities of these differences, leads to the underlying assumption that man and woman belong to sort of different species. More important, it implies that no individual can be both masculine and feminine, part man- (or father-)identified and part woman- (or mother-)identified. This duality, called psychic bisexuality in psychoanalysis, is inherent to achieved development of the self, but necessarily creates occasions for many internal conflicts, thus avoided in the transsexual perspective.

Another advantage of the conformist attitude is that it provides some reference to external causes or responsabilities in attributing to the transsexual the gender they demand. The natural attitude implies that we do not choose our gender : it is assigned to us, on the basis of our genitals. The transsexual conformism replaces this by : on the basis of our “ normal ” behavior.

tautology as a fake solution to paradox

I would like to go a little further and present a particular narrative strategy, one I never found in any other kind of writing, and that I called, temporarily, “ tautology strategy ”. I mean that transsexual autobiographies tend to present situations in which the natural attitude unmistakably should lead the reader to make a certain gender attribution, and the author firmly asserts that in fact it leads to the contrary gender attribution, without any logical argument, but the assumption and repetition that “ it is obvious ”.

To illustrate my point, I will use The gender trap, by Chris Johnson and Cathy Brown (with Wendy Nelson). The themes are similar to those I just developed, and the rethoric is very visible. It is a very special book, about a transsexual couple : Chris and Cathy were once Anne and Eugene ; they met, fell in love at first sight, and decided to have a child before pursuing the sex changes they both desired.

Here is what they recall of their first and decisive meeting. First Anne :

“ The moment I saw him I was absolutely fascinated. I was attracted, very attracted indeed. But I’d only ever felt interested in two or three men in my entire life up to that point, including [my former husband]. And more recently it’d been women that I’d found attractive. How could I be drawn to both ? It was all racing through my mind. But then, looking at Eugene, watching him, I suddenly had this weird insight. There was a man — or was it a man ? Somehow the person I was looking at so intently seemed more than a woman. He attracted me as a woman might, not like a man at all. ” (98)

And now Eugene :

“ I immediately fancied her, which was strange in itself. I thought from the way she looked that maybe she was the liberated type, maybe a lesbian. But then I was struck by one thought — it’s not a she ! It’s a guy ! I know it’s a guy ! Somehow I felt certain she was a man, it was a dominating presence and I was sure I was right. I just knew, don’t ask me how, that she was different from all the others ant it threw me completely. ” (99)

You see what happens : an unexpected feeling occurs, that threatens to open a breach in the way they see themselves, and they immediately force a new coherence with a fantasy that is interpreted as a magic understanding of some hidden reality. And the reader is supposed to do the same : no arguments, no reasoning, only this affirmation, surrounded in all the book by allusions, as if nothing was more normal or common, to telepathic or visionnary powers… Nothing surprising in this world !

The first chapter of the book is even more remarquable : it relates their daughter’s birth, managing to imply that Anne, on the delivery bed, is really a man, and Eugene a woman. Let’s note that Eugene’s telepathic power is mentioned, without any specific comment, at the twelwth line of the text.

We learn that Eugene was the one who wanted the child most : he had “ found himself experiencing strong and impulsive urges which he could not explain. He began to suffer periodic and unashamed broodiness, an insistent need to have a child which could not be denied. Many women of childbearing age would identify with his mood : a maternal instinct that no man could ever fully understand ” (14).  As for Anne, her pregnancy “ was to be the most unnatural period of her life. […] “Most pregnant mothers look awkward and uncomfortable, but I looked terrible, completely out of shape and entirely unnatural.” ” Then, in the hospital “ she was suffering a hundredfold the indignity of giving birth. For it was tantamount to asking any man to experience childbirth, a notion he would undoubtedly find quite alien. Anne was no exception ” (16).

These lines give a beautiful example of how the reference to nature is manipulated in these texts. Wanting a child can only be the expression of a physical need (periodic broodiness, maternal instinct), which is reserved to women (stereotype treated as unquestionnable reality), therefore Eugene is a woman. Pregnant Anne looks worse (in her own view) than other pregnant women, so her pregnancy is unnatural ; she experiences childbirth as an alien indignity, which is a feeling reserved to men (another stereotype, pushed to an extreme point), therefore she is a man, and an ordinary one, as the wonderfull “ Anne was no exception ” points out. One would like to add Quod erad demonstrandum, but the main characteristic of this rethoric is that it does not use demonstration, but false obviousness and mere belief instead.

Conclusion

In clinical words, we might say that we are in the world of primary process, where the principle of no-contradiction is ignored, the pleasure principle prefered to the reality principle, and the words taken at face value, as if they were things^[1]. The author does not appeal to the reader’s reasoning, and even aims at interrupting this reasoning. This strategy aims at imposing to the reader, as an unquestionable reality, what is actually the intimate truth of the author. This confusion between truth and reality is very important : there is a huge difference between sharing someone’s internal truth (“ I understand that you feel a man trapped in a woman’s body ”) and accepting it as a factual reality (“ If you say that you feel a man trapped in a woman’s body, then I accept that you are one ”). Most autobiographies deal with sharing truth, but transsexual ones deal with transforming others’ view of reality by sheer force.

The stereotypes about gender appear in these texts in all their defensive fonction : avoidance of psychic conflict, and of recognition of individual differences, reduced to compact and compelling categorisations.