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Journal of Homosexuality Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjhm20
Making Space for Trans Sexualities Carla A. Pfeffer
a
a
Department of Social Sciences, Purdue University North Central, Westville, Indiana, USA Published online: 09 Apr 2014.
Click for updates To cite this article: Carla A. Pfeffer (2014) Making Space for Trans Sexualities, Journal of Homosexuality, 61:5, 597-604, DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.903108 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2014.903108
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions
Journal of Homosexuality, 61:597–604, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0091-8369 print/1540-3602 online DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.903108
INTRODUCTION
Making Space for Trans Sexualities CARLA A. PFEFFER Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
Department of Social Sciences, Purdue University North Central, Westville, Indiana, USA
Exciting work has begun to emerge addressing trans sexuality and partnerships. Miranda Bellwether’s (2010) inaugural zine, Fucking Trans Women (Issue #0), broke ground by centering trans women’s perspectives and experiences around sex and sexuality—including instructional guides on actual sexual practices. The quarterly print zine, Original Plumbing, edited by Amos Mac and Rocco Katastrophe, debuted in 2009 and expanded to the internet in 2010. Original Plumbing features first-person accounts and photography of the lives and experiences of trans men, including focus on sex and sexuality. Morty Diamond’s (2011) edited volume, Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Binary and Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox’s (2008) edited volume, Trans People in Love, each make contributions to featuring the voices and experiences of trans people and their partners as they discuss sex and relationships. Tristan Taormino’s (2011) edited volume, Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica centers explicit narratives about trans sexuality. An expanding genre of trans-focused and trans-affirmative pornography has also emerged through Handbasket Productions, Morty Diamond Productions, Pink & White Productions, S.I.R. Video Productions, and T-Wood Pictures, to name just a handful. In academic scholarship on LGBTQ sexualities, however, “trans” too often remains present in acronym only1 , with very real consequences for inclusion and exclusion both in terms of trans personhood as well as to moving studies of gender and sexual identities, and sexual practices forward (Moore, 2013). When trans sexuality does appear within academic scholarship, it most frequently focuses on forms of sexuality considered problematic, pathological, and/or connected to health risk (e.g., theoretical and empirical work on “autogynephilia” and trans sexual labor). The work in this volume engages with current debates existing within trans sexualities academic communities, including “autogynephilia,” in order to deconstruct and perhaps even reframe these debates. We do not shy away from provocation, the “crass,” or the materiality and corporeality of sex and sexuality. 597
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
598
C. A. Pfeffer
As sociologist Kevin Walby writes about the importance of studying sex and sexual practices from academic perspectives: “[We] must start with bodies coming together, their parts and fluids, the interactions between bodies and the meanings produced therein’’ (2012, p. 10). In this special issue, we focus critically on sexual identities and practices among trans individuals and their partners to begin to fill the existing lacuna in academic scholarship and theorizing around trans sexualities. This volume of scholarship works toward conceptually disentangling gender and sexual identities as it simultaneously reveals the myriad ways in which they are interdependent and mutually constitutive. The work herein complicates notions of “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “transgender,” and perhaps even identitiarian notions of gender and sexuality altogether. The authors featured in this volume explore how trans social actors “do” masculinity, femininity, and androgyny in the context of sexual identities and practices and how the gender and sexual identities of trans people and their partners may be socially (mis)“read,” (mis)recognized, and (mis)understood. Some have asked: Why situate a special issue on trans sexualities within The Journal of Homosexuality given the frequent erroneous conflation of transgender identity and homosexuality. This is certainly a valid question and there is doubtlessly much education left to do across both mainstream and academic communities. However, I would point to both the journal’s history and contemporary scope to answer this query. The initial publication of the Journal of Homosexuality in 1974 was groundbreaking, the first academic journal to specifically focus on “queer” sexuality. Today, the substantive content of the journal regularly stretches far beyond the confines of “homosexuality,” showcasing scholarship across a diverse array of gender and sexual identities. This special issue continues in the journal’s tradition of pushing the boundaries and edges of how we think about sex and sexualities. We consider possibilities for both sexual fluidity and stability in the lives of those who are trans and their sexual partners, and discuss relationship configuration and sexual power dynamics within trans partnerships—from monogamous to polyamorous, kink to vanilla. The work featured in this special issue discusses the roles of language, discourse, social context, and physical and community spaces in shaping sexual identities and practices among trans people and their sexual partners. While some of the work in this volume addresses trans engagement with sex work, it does so to offer and compel more holistic conceptualizations of trans sex workers and more grounded perspectives toward harm-reduction approaches. The intent of this special issue is to offer a diverse cross-section of substantive topics connected to trans sexuality that is simultaneously cross-national, cross-methodological, and cross-disciplinary. Some of the authors featured herein self identify as trans, while others self identify as cis (non-trans). The contributing authors to this volume reside in Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States and their
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
Introduction
599
disciplinary affiliations range across anthropology, communications, English, film studies, gender studies, linguistics, philosophy, photography, psychology, public health, and sociology. In this volume, we bring trans bodies and perspectives back into conversations about sex and sexuality as we confront assumptions about materiality and embodiment. In the following paragraphs, I am excited to offer brief snapshots of each of the featured articles in this “Trans Sexualities” special issue. Talia Mae Bettcher turns upon its head the oft-repeated Gender and Sexuality 101 refrain that gender and sexual identities are entirely distinct categories. Drawing from erotic structuralism and a phenomenological approach, Bettcher forges two important pathways (1) outlining the key logical errors riddling theories of “autogynephila” and (2) considering the undertheorized ways in which our sexualities largely depend upon the erotic charge of thinking of not only others, but of ourselves as particularlygendered beings in relation with and to other particularly-gendered beings. Bettcher’s work here also performs the important function of considering the materiality of trans people’s bodies in sexual interaction and all of the dynamically-embodied sexual re-imaginations that are possible in the context of flesh, blood, synapses, silicone, and rubber. One lingering question that emerges from Bettcher’s analyses is: just how stable is the gendered erotic self? What do we make of gendered erotic selves that are fluid or perhaps even multiple? Lucas Cassidy Crawford blends discourse and architectural analyses to consider the cultural focus on restroom access and plumbing metaphors to make sense of trans bodies and trans people’s sexual desirability to others. Crawford begins with the provocative question: Is the restroom to transgender identity as the closet is (was?) to gay and lesbian identity? Crawford argues that the discursive focus on restrooms speaks to the marking of certain bodies (e.g., trans bodies, Black bodies) as shameful—requiring cleansing and erasure—at the same time that the normative imperatives underlying such cleansing and erasure are culturally and architecturally obscured. Yet Crawford’s work also considers how building social and material spaces (including restrooms) that disrupt these taken-for-granted normative imperatives may hold the potential to not only render them more visible, but generate possibilities for creating other forms of representation of self and others. Sara Davidmann’s work moves us from textual to visual consideration of a broader diversity of trans sexualities and partnerships. The use of photographs to depict the lives and everyday realities of trans people and their partners in the United Kingdom, Davidmann argues, allows for greater embodiment and fuller representation. By establishing a collaborative method, whereby those being “studied” collaborate in an ongoing way in both constructing and narrating the visual images that will represent them, a less spectacularizing and “othering” form of visual representation of trans people and their partnerships may emerge. Davidmann’s images
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
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C. A. Pfeffer
and participant narratives include dyads and triads; those who are monogamous and those who are polyamorous; those who are gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, and queer; kink-identified and not kink-identified; parents, soon-tobe-parents, and childfree. By demonstrating the diverse configurations and dynamics of these partnerships and families, Davidmann considers the complex ways in which gender and sexual identities intersect and are always mutually constitutive. Tamar Doorduin and Willy van Berlo utilize semi-structured in-depth interviews with twelve trans research participants (roughly evenly divided between those on the transfeminine and transmasculine spectrum) from the Netherlands to provide a thematic analysis of the ways in which gender identity and transition may be related to sexual experience, functioning, and identity. For example, some sample participants reported experiences of sexual ambivalence, aversion, and sadness when attempting to reconcile disjunctures between gendered identities and physical embodiments during sexual encounters and these feelings did not always disappear once hormone administration and gender-confirming surgeries were obtained. Participants also reported changes in their levels (or intensity) of sexual desire during hormone therapy and sexual adjustment periods as surgical genital reconfiguration required participants to re-learn what personal and interpersonal sexual activities brought pleasure and sexual response. Doorduin and van Berlo’s sample participants also described renegotiating their sexual identities as they navigated the gender transition process, in some instances reporting periods of self identification as asexual and experiencing (or re-experiencing) gendered sexual-developmental milestones such as puberty. Elijah Adiv Edelman and Lal Zimman’s work, read alongside Doorduin and van Berlo’s, offers a dialogue about the ways in which gendered and sexual embodiments may be reconciled in the lives of trans people. While Doorduin and van Berlo note the potential for schisms or conflict to occur between gender and sexual identities, Edelman and Zimman explore possibilities for consistency and resignification. For example, rather than experiencing particular genitals (e.g., a “vagina”) as limiting one’s ability to self identify as a man, internet-mediated transmasculine discourse reveals the way in which genitals may be discursively resignified (e.g., as a “bonus hole”) as not only adequate, but as an aspect of exemplary manhood. Through critical discourse analysis drawing upon sociocultural linguistics, Edelman and Zimman demonstrate the neoliberal underpinnings of this discourse as trans men compete in a gay sexual marketplace in which they, as sexual subjects, position their bodies as “value-added.” Sel J. Hwahng and Larry Nuttbrock blend ethnographic and longitudinal quantitative data, with 650 respondents from New York City, to begin to hypothesize why transfeminine people of color face disproportionate HIV risk and to develop methods for addressing this risk. Taking a more holistic, lifecourse, sociostructural approach for understanding risk and harm
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Introduction
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reduction, Hwahng and Nuttbrock’s analysis reveals racism and cissexism’s association, most notably, with employment and housing inequalities in the lives of transfeminine people of color. These inequalities are further associated with greater likelihood of finding paid employment through alternative economies, including sex work (serving clientele who are primarily white, cisgender men). Hwahng and Nuttbrock find evidence that childhood histories of abuse are not uncommon among the transfeminine people of color in their samples, who report being targeted for such abuse when they are socially “read” by family members as gender or sexually non-conforming. Important to the analysis are considerations of the ways in which histories of racism and colonialism may condition such responses among family members. These findings speak to the critical importance of combating racism, sexism, heterosexism, and cissexism at the societal level while simultaneously developing public health harm reduction approaches that address both historical and contemporary experiences of these intersectional inequalities in the lives of both transfeminine people of color and their families. Laura E. Kuper, Laurel Wright, and Brian Mustanski utilize a case study narrative analytic approach to focus on youth of color who were categorized as female at birth and who come to identify as “stud.” While sometimes classified under the “transgender” umbrella, relatively little is known about the particular intersections of race, gender, and sexual identities among members of this group. Kuper, Wright, and Mustanski find that, among their sample participants, “stud” exists as a somewhat parallel identity to “butch” insofar as participants maintain simultaneous female and masculine self identification and generally report a preference for “femme” or feminine sexual partners. As transgender identities proliferate and grow more visible, however, those who are “butch” and “stud” may increasingly be misrecognized by social others as transgender. In this analysis, Kuper, Wright, and Mustanski detail members of their sample expressing (dis)identification with categories such as “transgender,” “lesbian,” and “gay,” urging further consideration of the processes of gender and sexual identity signification at the intersection of other identity categories such as social class, race, ethnicity, and geography Kristen Schilt and Elroi Windsor draw upon participant observation and 74 in-depth interviews with trans men to develop a sociological theory of “sexual habitus,” the constellation of sexual practices and potential sexual partners with which and whom one engages across time. Schilt and Windsor note that sexual habitus of the trans men in their sample often shifted during transition (from one set of sexual practices to another and/or the gender of one’s sexual partners). Among their sample participants, transition tended to focus primarily on aligning gender identity with outer social appearance and, for many, had little if anything to do with surgically altering genitalia. Indeed, very few sample respondents reported having genital surgeries and phalloplasty was particularly rare. Further, many of Schilt and Windsor’s participants reported that as they were increasingly socially recognized as
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men by others, their perceived importance of having a surgically-constructed penis diminished. The trans men in Schilt and Windsor’s studies held sexual identities across the spectrum that, in some cases, shifted as they transitioned. Their reported sexual practices also sometimes shifted or were reinterpreted depending upon the gender and sexual identities of their partner(s). Trans men described generally fulfilling sex lives with partners across the sex and gender spectrum, prompting reconsideration of phallocentric assumptions about gendered embodiment and sexual satisfaction. Eliza Steinbock blends process philosophy, trans theory, and film analysis to analyze trans-affirmative “docuporn” or “pornumentary” and conceptualize non-identitarian sexualities. In this instance, Steinbock focuses on the notion of trans “entities”—real-life couple Papí and Wil—and their “nasty” love. In particular, the film involves threesomes, role-playing, and BDSM interspersed with the actors’ thoughts on gender transition, racial politics, polyamory, and scenes from their everyday lives both as individuals and a couple. Wil and Papí refer to themselves as “trans entities” and Steinbock teases out the possibilities that attend to self conceptualizations that focus on dynamic processes rather than static identities. Cultural assumptions about the sexual “nastiness” and “excess” of Wil and Papí stemming from their brownness, their kinkiness, their transness and their polyamory are juxtaposed with a narrative style and visual focus that forces the viewer to simultaneously attend to their caring for one another, their daily lives, and their personal and political beliefs and ideologies. Ultimately, Steinbock proposes, these conceptualizations of trans “entities” and “nastiness” produce possibilities for different kinds of love and ways of being than current normative and identitarian cultural politics generally envision or allow. Avery Brooks Tompkins confronts the notion of “tranny chasers,” a colloquial term used to describe individuals—especially, but not exclusively, cisgender individuals—who tend to prefer trans people as sexual and/or romantic partners. Employing digital ethnographic and participant observation methods to examine trans-focused social media and conferences, Tompkins queries what effect the “tranny chaser” label may have on trans and trans-allied communities and social networks. Tompkins find that the “tranny chaser” label generally assumes that the person being so labeled fetishizes trans identity. Yet the subjects of Tompkins’ analyses (cisgender women partners of transgender men) consistently refute such claims, arguing that erotic, affective, and romantic preference for trans partners does not insinuate fetishization of the trans identity of said partners. There was a slippery slope as many individuals discussed that exclusive or intentional preference for trans partners would indicate fetishization or troubling focus on an aspect of identity that some trans people, themselves, may not wish to have placed at the foreground. Tompkins postulates that the “tranny chaser” label has emerged, in large part, due to (1) the limited lexicon for expressing trans-focused desire in contemporary cultural discourse, and (2) a denial of the erotics of transness within trans community. Tompkins argues for a
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sex-positive revaluing of transness that does not require the denial of desire for transness, trans people, and trans embodiments, noting the potential of trans-produced, trans-focused, and trans-affirmative pornography to serve as a potential cultural model for such a revaluation. Tompkins further asserts that critical dialogues between cis and trans people around the “tranny chaser” label must occur so that we may disentangle truly exploitative or fetishizing relationship dynamics from those that are not. I am grateful not only to the sixteen authors who penned the ten groundbreaking articles in this volume, but to John P. Elia, the Editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, whose support and commitment to the importance of this project was palpable. Tremendous gratitude is also due to the eight Special Issue Editorial Board members for this volume, who spent many hours poring over the wealth of submissions we received, selecting the articles that would be featured, and offering feedback to authors to further develop and sharpen their work. Walter O. Bockting, Nicola R. Brown, Aaron H. Devor, Marcia Ochoa, Tam Sanger, Julia Serano, Susan Stryker, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz are each recognized for their own notable contributions toward studies of trans identity and communities and I could not be more honored to have the opportunity to work with each of them. Ultimately, I hope that this special issue is only the beginning of a turn toward expanding theoretical and empirical scholarship focusing specifically on trans sexualities. If this volume contributes to catalyzing more theoretical and empirical work on trans sexualities, inspires more voices to join the conversation, and prompts broader consideration of the critical importance of academic scholarship on sex, sexual interaction, and all of its slippery, confusing, and exciting entanglements, it will be doing important work indeed.
NOTE 1. Several notable exceptions to this general trend include Nicola R. Brown’s (2010) “The sexual relationships of sexual-minority women partnered with trans men: A qualitative study” in the Archives of Sexual Behavior; Aaron Devor’s (1997) FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society; Tam Sanger’s (2010) Trans People’s Partnerships: Toward an Ethics of Intimacy; David Schleifer’s (2006) “Make me feel might real: Gay female-to-male transgenderists negotiating sex, gender, and sexuality” in Sexualities; Jaye-Cee Whitehead’s (2013) “Sexuality and the ethics of body modification: Theorizing the situated relationships among gender, sexuality, and the body” in Sexualities; and Colin J. Williams, Martin S. Weinberg, & Joshua G. Rosenberg’s (2013) “Trans men: Embodiments, identities, and sexualities” in Sociological Forum.
REFERENCES Bellwether, M. (2010). Fucking trans women (issue #0). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Retrieved from: https://www.createspace.com/4397843. Diamond, M. (Ed.). (2011). Trans/love: Radical sex, love & relationships beyond the gender binary. San Francisco, CA: Manic D. Press, Inc.
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Mac, A., & Katastrophe, R. (Eds.). (2009). Original Plumbing Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.originalplumbing.com. Moore, M. R. (2013). LGBT sexuality and families at the start of the twenty-first century. Annual Review of Sociology, 39(1), 491–507. O’Keefe, T., & Fox, K. (Eds.). (2008). Trans people in love. New York, NY: Routledge. Taormino, T. (Ed.). (2013). Take me there: Trans and genderqueer erotica. Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press. Walby, K. (2012). Touching encounters: Sex, work, and male-for-male internet escorting. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Journal of Homosexuality Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjhm20
Making Space for Trans Sexualities Carla A. Pfeffer
a
a
Department of Social Sciences, Purdue University North Central, Westville, Indiana, USA Published online: 09 Apr 2014.
Click for updates To cite this article: Carla A. Pfeffer (2014) Making Space for Trans Sexualities, Journal of Homosexuality, 61:5, 597-604, DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.903108 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2014.903108
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions
Journal of Homosexuality, 61:597–604, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0091-8369 print/1540-3602 online DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.903108
INTRODUCTION
Making Space for Trans Sexualities CARLA A. PFEFFER Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
Department of Social Sciences, Purdue University North Central, Westville, Indiana, USA
Exciting work has begun to emerge addressing trans sexuality and partnerships. Miranda Bellwether’s (2010) inaugural zine, Fucking Trans Women (Issue #0), broke ground by centering trans women’s perspectives and experiences around sex and sexuality—including instructional guides on actual sexual practices. The quarterly print zine, Original Plumbing, edited by Amos Mac and Rocco Katastrophe, debuted in 2009 and expanded to the internet in 2010. Original Plumbing features first-person accounts and photography of the lives and experiences of trans men, including focus on sex and sexuality. Morty Diamond’s (2011) edited volume, Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Binary and Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox’s (2008) edited volume, Trans People in Love, each make contributions to featuring the voices and experiences of trans people and their partners as they discuss sex and relationships. Tristan Taormino’s (2011) edited volume, Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica centers explicit narratives about trans sexuality. An expanding genre of trans-focused and trans-affirmative pornography has also emerged through Handbasket Productions, Morty Diamond Productions, Pink & White Productions, S.I.R. Video Productions, and T-Wood Pictures, to name just a handful. In academic scholarship on LGBTQ sexualities, however, “trans” too often remains present in acronym only1 , with very real consequences for inclusion and exclusion both in terms of trans personhood as well as to moving studies of gender and sexual identities, and sexual practices forward (Moore, 2013). When trans sexuality does appear within academic scholarship, it most frequently focuses on forms of sexuality considered problematic, pathological, and/or connected to health risk (e.g., theoretical and empirical work on “autogynephilia” and trans sexual labor). The work in this volume engages with current debates existing within trans sexualities academic communities, including “autogynephilia,” in order to deconstruct and perhaps even reframe these debates. We do not shy away from provocation, the “crass,” or the materiality and corporeality of sex and sexuality. 597
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
598
C. A. Pfeffer
As sociologist Kevin Walby writes about the importance of studying sex and sexual practices from academic perspectives: “[We] must start with bodies coming together, their parts and fluids, the interactions between bodies and the meanings produced therein’’ (2012, p. 10). In this special issue, we focus critically on sexual identities and practices among trans individuals and their partners to begin to fill the existing lacuna in academic scholarship and theorizing around trans sexualities. This volume of scholarship works toward conceptually disentangling gender and sexual identities as it simultaneously reveals the myriad ways in which they are interdependent and mutually constitutive. The work herein complicates notions of “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “transgender,” and perhaps even identitiarian notions of gender and sexuality altogether. The authors featured in this volume explore how trans social actors “do” masculinity, femininity, and androgyny in the context of sexual identities and practices and how the gender and sexual identities of trans people and their partners may be socially (mis)“read,” (mis)recognized, and (mis)understood. Some have asked: Why situate a special issue on trans sexualities within The Journal of Homosexuality given the frequent erroneous conflation of transgender identity and homosexuality. This is certainly a valid question and there is doubtlessly much education left to do across both mainstream and academic communities. However, I would point to both the journal’s history and contemporary scope to answer this query. The initial publication of the Journal of Homosexuality in 1974 was groundbreaking, the first academic journal to specifically focus on “queer” sexuality. Today, the substantive content of the journal regularly stretches far beyond the confines of “homosexuality,” showcasing scholarship across a diverse array of gender and sexual identities. This special issue continues in the journal’s tradition of pushing the boundaries and edges of how we think about sex and sexualities. We consider possibilities for both sexual fluidity and stability in the lives of those who are trans and their sexual partners, and discuss relationship configuration and sexual power dynamics within trans partnerships—from monogamous to polyamorous, kink to vanilla. The work featured in this special issue discusses the roles of language, discourse, social context, and physical and community spaces in shaping sexual identities and practices among trans people and their sexual partners. While some of the work in this volume addresses trans engagement with sex work, it does so to offer and compel more holistic conceptualizations of trans sex workers and more grounded perspectives toward harm-reduction approaches. The intent of this special issue is to offer a diverse cross-section of substantive topics connected to trans sexuality that is simultaneously cross-national, cross-methodological, and cross-disciplinary. Some of the authors featured herein self identify as trans, while others self identify as cis (non-trans). The contributing authors to this volume reside in Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States and their
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
Introduction
599
disciplinary affiliations range across anthropology, communications, English, film studies, gender studies, linguistics, philosophy, photography, psychology, public health, and sociology. In this volume, we bring trans bodies and perspectives back into conversations about sex and sexuality as we confront assumptions about materiality and embodiment. In the following paragraphs, I am excited to offer brief snapshots of each of the featured articles in this “Trans Sexualities” special issue. Talia Mae Bettcher turns upon its head the oft-repeated Gender and Sexuality 101 refrain that gender and sexual identities are entirely distinct categories. Drawing from erotic structuralism and a phenomenological approach, Bettcher forges two important pathways (1) outlining the key logical errors riddling theories of “autogynephila” and (2) considering the undertheorized ways in which our sexualities largely depend upon the erotic charge of thinking of not only others, but of ourselves as particularlygendered beings in relation with and to other particularly-gendered beings. Bettcher’s work here also performs the important function of considering the materiality of trans people’s bodies in sexual interaction and all of the dynamically-embodied sexual re-imaginations that are possible in the context of flesh, blood, synapses, silicone, and rubber. One lingering question that emerges from Bettcher’s analyses is: just how stable is the gendered erotic self? What do we make of gendered erotic selves that are fluid or perhaps even multiple? Lucas Cassidy Crawford blends discourse and architectural analyses to consider the cultural focus on restroom access and plumbing metaphors to make sense of trans bodies and trans people’s sexual desirability to others. Crawford begins with the provocative question: Is the restroom to transgender identity as the closet is (was?) to gay and lesbian identity? Crawford argues that the discursive focus on restrooms speaks to the marking of certain bodies (e.g., trans bodies, Black bodies) as shameful—requiring cleansing and erasure—at the same time that the normative imperatives underlying such cleansing and erasure are culturally and architecturally obscured. Yet Crawford’s work also considers how building social and material spaces (including restrooms) that disrupt these taken-for-granted normative imperatives may hold the potential to not only render them more visible, but generate possibilities for creating other forms of representation of self and others. Sara Davidmann’s work moves us from textual to visual consideration of a broader diversity of trans sexualities and partnerships. The use of photographs to depict the lives and everyday realities of trans people and their partners in the United Kingdom, Davidmann argues, allows for greater embodiment and fuller representation. By establishing a collaborative method, whereby those being “studied” collaborate in an ongoing way in both constructing and narrating the visual images that will represent them, a less spectacularizing and “othering” form of visual representation of trans people and their partnerships may emerge. Davidmann’s images
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 14:34 23 February 2015
600
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and participant narratives include dyads and triads; those who are monogamous and those who are polyamorous; those who are gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, and queer; kink-identified and not kink-identified; parents, soon-tobe-parents, and childfree. By demonstrating the diverse configurations and dynamics of these partnerships and families, Davidmann considers the complex ways in which gender and sexual identities intersect and are always mutually constitutive. Tamar Doorduin and Willy van Berlo utilize semi-structured in-depth interviews with twelve trans research participants (roughly evenly divided between those on the transfeminine and transmasculine spectrum) from the Netherlands to provide a thematic analysis of the ways in which gender identity and transition may be related to sexual experience, functioning, and identity. For example, some sample participants reported experiences of sexual ambivalence, aversion, and sadness when attempting to reconcile disjunctures between gendered identities and physical embodiments during sexual encounters and these feelings did not always disappear once hormone administration and gender-confirming surgeries were obtained. Participants also reported changes in their levels (or intensity) of sexual desire during hormone therapy and sexual adjustment periods as surgical genital reconfiguration required participants to re-learn what personal and interpersonal sexual activities brought pleasure and sexual response. Doorduin and van Berlo’s sample participants also described renegotiating their sexual identities as they navigated the gender transition process, in some instances reporting periods of self identification as asexual and experiencing (or re-experiencing) gendered sexual-developmental milestones such as puberty. Elijah Adiv Edelman and Lal Zimman’s work, read alongside Doorduin and van Berlo’s, offers a dialogue about the ways in which gendered and sexual embodiments may be reconciled in the lives of trans people. While Doorduin and van Berlo note the potential for schisms or conflict to occur between gender and sexual identities, Edelman and Zimman explore possibilities for consistency and resignification. For example, rather than experiencing particular genitals (e.g., a “vagina”) as limiting one’s ability to self identify as a man, internet-mediated transmasculine discourse reveals the way in which genitals may be discursively resignified (e.g., as a “bonus hole”) as not only adequate, but as an aspect of exemplary manhood. Through critical discourse analysis drawing upon sociocultural linguistics, Edelman and Zimman demonstrate the neoliberal underpinnings of this discourse as trans men compete in a gay sexual marketplace in which they, as sexual subjects, position their bodies as “value-added.” Sel J. Hwahng and Larry Nuttbrock blend ethnographic and longitudinal quantitative data, with 650 respondents from New York City, to begin to hypothesize why transfeminine people of color face disproportionate HIV risk and to develop methods for addressing this risk. Taking a more holistic, lifecourse, sociostructural approach for understanding risk and harm
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reduction, Hwahng and Nuttbrock’s analysis reveals racism and cissexism’s association, most notably, with employment and housing inequalities in the lives of transfeminine people of color. These inequalities are further associated with greater likelihood of finding paid employment through alternative economies, including sex work (serving clientele who are primarily white, cisgender men). Hwahng and Nuttbrock find evidence that childhood histories of abuse are not uncommon among the transfeminine people of color in their samples, who report being targeted for such abuse when they are socially “read” by family members as gender or sexually non-conforming. Important to the analysis are considerations of the ways in which histories of racism and colonialism may condition such responses among family members. These findings speak to the critical importance of combating racism, sexism, heterosexism, and cissexism at the societal level while simultaneously developing public health harm reduction approaches that address both historical and contemporary experiences of these intersectional inequalities in the lives of both transfeminine people of color and their families. Laura E. Kuper, Laurel Wright, and Brian Mustanski utilize a case study narrative analytic approach to focus on youth of color who were categorized as female at birth and who come to identify as “stud.” While sometimes classified under the “transgender” umbrella, relatively little is known about the particular intersections of race, gender, and sexual identities among members of this group. Kuper, Wright, and Mustanski find that, among their sample participants, “stud” exists as a somewhat parallel identity to “butch” insofar as participants maintain simultaneous female and masculine self identification and generally report a preference for “femme” or feminine sexual partners. As transgender identities proliferate and grow more visible, however, those who are “butch” and “stud” may increasingly be misrecognized by social others as transgender. In this analysis, Kuper, Wright, and Mustanski detail members of their sample expressing (dis)identification with categories such as “transgender,” “lesbian,” and “gay,” urging further consideration of the processes of gender and sexual identity signification at the intersection of other identity categories such as social class, race, ethnicity, and geography Kristen Schilt and Elroi Windsor draw upon participant observation and 74 in-depth interviews with trans men to develop a sociological theory of “sexual habitus,” the constellation of sexual practices and potential sexual partners with which and whom one engages across time. Schilt and Windsor note that sexual habitus of the trans men in their sample often shifted during transition (from one set of sexual practices to another and/or the gender of one’s sexual partners). Among their sample participants, transition tended to focus primarily on aligning gender identity with outer social appearance and, for many, had little if anything to do with surgically altering genitalia. Indeed, very few sample respondents reported having genital surgeries and phalloplasty was particularly rare. Further, many of Schilt and Windsor’s participants reported that as they were increasingly socially recognized as
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men by others, their perceived importance of having a surgically-constructed penis diminished. The trans men in Schilt and Windsor’s studies held sexual identities across the spectrum that, in some cases, shifted as they transitioned. Their reported sexual practices also sometimes shifted or were reinterpreted depending upon the gender and sexual identities of their partner(s). Trans men described generally fulfilling sex lives with partners across the sex and gender spectrum, prompting reconsideration of phallocentric assumptions about gendered embodiment and sexual satisfaction. Eliza Steinbock blends process philosophy, trans theory, and film analysis to analyze trans-affirmative “docuporn” or “pornumentary” and conceptualize non-identitarian sexualities. In this instance, Steinbock focuses on the notion of trans “entities”—real-life couple Papí and Wil—and their “nasty” love. In particular, the film involves threesomes, role-playing, and BDSM interspersed with the actors’ thoughts on gender transition, racial politics, polyamory, and scenes from their everyday lives both as individuals and a couple. Wil and Papí refer to themselves as “trans entities” and Steinbock teases out the possibilities that attend to self conceptualizations that focus on dynamic processes rather than static identities. Cultural assumptions about the sexual “nastiness” and “excess” of Wil and Papí stemming from their brownness, their kinkiness, their transness and their polyamory are juxtaposed with a narrative style and visual focus that forces the viewer to simultaneously attend to their caring for one another, their daily lives, and their personal and political beliefs and ideologies. Ultimately, Steinbock proposes, these conceptualizations of trans “entities” and “nastiness” produce possibilities for different kinds of love and ways of being than current normative and identitarian cultural politics generally envision or allow. Avery Brooks Tompkins confronts the notion of “tranny chasers,” a colloquial term used to describe individuals—especially, but not exclusively, cisgender individuals—who tend to prefer trans people as sexual and/or romantic partners. Employing digital ethnographic and participant observation methods to examine trans-focused social media and conferences, Tompkins queries what effect the “tranny chaser” label may have on trans and trans-allied communities and social networks. Tompkins find that the “tranny chaser” label generally assumes that the person being so labeled fetishizes trans identity. Yet the subjects of Tompkins’ analyses (cisgender women partners of transgender men) consistently refute such claims, arguing that erotic, affective, and romantic preference for trans partners does not insinuate fetishization of the trans identity of said partners. There was a slippery slope as many individuals discussed that exclusive or intentional preference for trans partners would indicate fetishization or troubling focus on an aspect of identity that some trans people, themselves, may not wish to have placed at the foreground. Tompkins postulates that the “tranny chaser” label has emerged, in large part, due to (1) the limited lexicon for expressing trans-focused desire in contemporary cultural discourse, and (2) a denial of the erotics of transness within trans community. Tompkins argues for a
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sex-positive revaluing of transness that does not require the denial of desire for transness, trans people, and trans embodiments, noting the potential of trans-produced, trans-focused, and trans-affirmative pornography to serve as a potential cultural model for such a revaluation. Tompkins further asserts that critical dialogues between cis and trans people around the “tranny chaser” label must occur so that we may disentangle truly exploitative or fetishizing relationship dynamics from those that are not. I am grateful not only to the sixteen authors who penned the ten groundbreaking articles in this volume, but to John P. Elia, the Editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, whose support and commitment to the importance of this project was palpable. Tremendous gratitude is also due to the eight Special Issue Editorial Board members for this volume, who spent many hours poring over the wealth of submissions we received, selecting the articles that would be featured, and offering feedback to authors to further develop and sharpen their work. Walter O. Bockting, Nicola R. Brown, Aaron H. Devor, Marcia Ochoa, Tam Sanger, Julia Serano, Susan Stryker, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz are each recognized for their own notable contributions toward studies of trans identity and communities and I could not be more honored to have the opportunity to work with each of them. Ultimately, I hope that this special issue is only the beginning of a turn toward expanding theoretical and empirical scholarship focusing specifically on trans sexualities. If this volume contributes to catalyzing more theoretical and empirical work on trans sexualities, inspires more voices to join the conversation, and prompts broader consideration of the critical importance of academic scholarship on sex, sexual interaction, and all of its slippery, confusing, and exciting entanglements, it will be doing important work indeed.
NOTE 1. Several notable exceptions to this general trend include Nicola R. Brown’s (2010) “The sexual relationships of sexual-minority women partnered with trans men: A qualitative study” in the Archives of Sexual Behavior; Aaron Devor’s (1997) FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society; Tam Sanger’s (2010) Trans People’s Partnerships: Toward an Ethics of Intimacy; David Schleifer’s (2006) “Make me feel might real: Gay female-to-male transgenderists negotiating sex, gender, and sexuality” in Sexualities; Jaye-Cee Whitehead’s (2013) “Sexuality and the ethics of body modification: Theorizing the situated relationships among gender, sexuality, and the body” in Sexualities; and Colin J. Williams, Martin S. Weinberg, & Joshua G. Rosenberg’s (2013) “Trans men: Embodiments, identities, and sexualities” in Sociological Forum.
REFERENCES Bellwether, M. (2010). Fucking trans women (issue #0). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Retrieved from: https://www.createspace.com/4397843. Diamond, M. (Ed.). (2011). Trans/love: Radical sex, love & relationships beyond the gender binary. San Francisco, CA: Manic D. Press, Inc.
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Mac, A., & Katastrophe, R. (Eds.). (2009). Original Plumbing Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.originalplumbing.com. Moore, M. R. (2013). LGBT sexuality and families at the start of the twenty-first century. Annual Review of Sociology, 39(1), 491–507. O’Keefe, T., & Fox, K. (Eds.). (2008). Trans people in love. New York, NY: Routledge. Taormino, T. (Ed.). (2013). Take me there: Trans and genderqueer erotica. Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press. Walby, K. (2012). Touching encounters: Sex, work, and male-for-male internet escorting. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
