Lesbian Generations—Transsexual... Lesbian... Feminist...

Abstract

Lesbian Generations— Transsexual... Lesbian... Feminist... Susan Stryker I interpreted quite literally, perhaps tooliterally, Leila Rupp's kind invitation to "speak informally for about ten minutes" in the roundta ble on lesbian generations by putting the emphasis on "informally" and extemporizing some rather haphazardly organized thoughts on what generation of lesbian I considered myself to be. The venue being the Big Berks and the personal, of course, still being political, I assumed in framing my remarks that an ample amount of autobi ographical reflection would be, it not original in its methodological implications, then intelligible or at least excusable under the circum stances. When my turn came to speak, I offered an impromptu per formance in which I sought to cite generational, ethnic, national, and class-based competencies of lesbian identity, while simultaneously ironically distancing myself from those very norms through a calcu lated and strategic cultivation of affect. By which I mean to say: I tried to make people laugh, and I was pleased to have succeeded through a variety of techniques (gesture, expression, phrasing, timing, embod ied context) that don't render well on the printed page. You had to be there — but what follows is a loose rendition of that performance into text. I tried to be funny (1) to demonstrate that lesbian feminists can, in fact, have a sense of humor, and (2) because ironic distancing—a self-protective critique from within of something I actually care about FeministStudies39, no. 2. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 375 376 Forum: Lesbian Generations being part of—has been a mode of survival for me as the particular sexual and gendered subject that I am. As decades of feminist injunc tions to be mindful of intersectionality have taught us, all identities are complicated; none can be articulated in monolithic purity and isolation, nor can the messily lived complexity of identity's inter mingled attributes be disarticulated and hierarchically arranged other than by conceptual and narrative operations that are always political and often violent. While I don't deny that my whiteness, upward eco nomic mobility, level of educational and professional attainment, or coastal cultural mores inform my lesbian identity, these intersec tions have not been particularly difficult to occupy; they are, after all, forms of privilege. Being transsexual—well, that's presented more of a challenge. Being transsexual and lesbian, with one identity being no more or less ontologized than the other and no more or less con structed, has been a fraught identitarian intersection indeed. Hence, as Donald O'Conner put itso eloquently in Sincjin' intheRain, "make 'em laugh." Contemplating other approaches to this conversation just makes my stomach churn. Taking things too literally, by the way, such as the way I took Leila Rupp's invitation to participate on the lesbian generations roundta ble, is something transsexuals are often accused of doing—literaliz ing that which is properly metaphorical. For example, I might, when called upon to do so, defend my practices of embodiment or stake my claim to gender authenticity by protesting that Simone de Beau voir herself said, "One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one," to which a critic would reply, "But she didn't mean it like that. Why do you always have to be so literal?" I was born in 1961, which means I'm turning fiftythe summer that I'm writing this. I graduated from high school and started college in 1979. The words feminist, lesbian, and transsexual were the labels available to me in my native English at the time that I was doing my formative identity work, and they all stuck. Eventually. Transsexual was the one I consciously wrestled with from the earliest age. I came across the term in a Dear Abby advice column published in my hometown newspaper in southwestern Oklahoma in the early 1970s when I was about eleven. I had always felt transgendered, but had never before that moment seen reflected back to me from the world one scrap of evidence that such feelings might map onto an objective reality shared Forum: Lesbian Generations 377 by others, rather than being just a subjective perception of my own. I immediately rushed down to my public...