Abstract
Gender identity is critical to every individual; it is self-defined and yet affected by culture and society at large. Gender identities are formed through public and private spaces. Of the two traditions of thinking (essentialist and constructionist) about sex and gender, constructionist formulations are based on performance theory. It believes that sex and gender are viewed as not residing in the individual but are found in “those interactions that are socially constructed as gendered as opposed to essentialist tradition. Within performative theory, gender is a process rather than something naturally possessed. This study explores the process of formation of gender or social role in female-to-male (FTM) transsexual. It will do so by exploring the factors that add to the formation of a gender role as seen through sartorial style, mannerisms, body language, and other aspects that influence one’s presentation of self. It includes the process of construction of FTM transsexual’s corporeality through performative attributes in order to approximate masculinity and come in accord with the social role of a man. The themes that are discussed in the analysis emerged after a careful reading of FTM autobiographical narratives. The instances are extracted from FTM autobiographical narratives; Becoming a Visible Man, The Testosterone Files, Both Sides now and the publication of these narratives range from 2005-2006.
Highlights
Gender identity is critical to every individual; it is self-defined and constructed by culture and society, at large
Green describes the very nature of gender roles and gender identity and confirms that the concept of passing as a man or woman is crucial for transsexuals and cisgenders both
Critic Talia Bettcher’s (2014) idea of ‘wrong body’ in transsexuality involves a misalignment between gender identity and the sexed body
Summary
Beauvoir makes a point that “one becomes a woman, but always under a cultural compulsion to become one” (Butler, 1999, p.8). Butler (1999) emphasizes on the constructed nature of sex and gender She deconstructs the innate basis of one’s gender identity and considers gender as ‘performative’, which can essentially come into expression through repetition of acts, utterances, habits, and gestures. Performativity is not about the singular act, but plural acts and the discursive process of configuring the body that presents individuals as male or female, masculine and feminine. In this sense, masculinity is not seen in an essentialist perspective for men who possess physiologies and corporeality. Female masculinity has shattered the essentialist and fixed domains of masculinity, it has portrayed that even if individuals are bound to social roles of man and woman, and gender identity is what distinguishes them from one another
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