Sue E. Generous: Toward a Theory of Non-Transexuality

Abstract

Sue E. Generous: Toward a Theory of Non-Transexuality David Valentine Why do those of us who are non-transexuals choose not to have sex-reassignment surgery (SRS)?1 I ask this apparently counterintuitive question—framed in terms of choice — as a male non-transexual who has conducted ethnographic research on transgender and transexual politics over the past twenty years. This has been a period in which transexual ity in particular has become a central trope for theorizing gender, sexu ality, embodiment, and most importantly for this essay, human agency. This development is in turn embedded in a longer history of debate over SRS among medical professionals, feminists, and ethicists (not to mention legislators, insurance companies, and the general public) with varying framings, but essentially revolving around the issue of transexuals' moral agency in undergoing SRS. The impetus for asking a question about non-transexual agency, though, stems from dozens of informal conversations I have had over the past decades with both female non-transexual (FNT) and male non-transexual (MNT) feminist and queer friends and colleagues about what is framed as the choice of SRS. What has struck me most about these conversations — over coffee or drinks at a conference in Chicago or in a bar in Greenwich Village — has been a widespread political and personal conflict that non transexuals are willing to express to me, sotto voce, not just as someone Feminist Studies38, no. 1 (Spring 2012). © 2012 by David Valentine. 185 186 David Valentine studying the politics of transexuality but also as a fellow non-transex ual. The arc of these conversations goes something like this: initially, I am convinced of the seriousness of my FNT or MNT friend's concern for, and their personal and political support of, transexuals and in particular their unqualified support for transexuals' right to undergo SRS. Usually, this avowal is in the form of a narrative in which my fellow non-transexual has stood up for a transexual friend or colleague. While I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of these narratives, they are often told as a kind of overture to a coda that generally comprises two questions. First, my non transexual friends want help understanding the desire to undergo SRS. This is the big question: Why? Why choose to do that to your body? And the second question—the one that is usually expressed quietly, even if we are alone—is not far behind: What are the politics of this (that is, the politics of SRS)? Even though as a pragmatic political act, they say, they would step up to the line to support a transexual person's right to SRS, in the end isn't it politically retrograde (they say), choosing to reshape a body to conform to societal expectations of what it means to be a man or a woman? Of course, not all feminist and queer non-transexuals express these concerns or pose these questions, but I have had this conversation enough times with such non-transexuals that I have been compelled to consider their theoretical and political import.2 My conversations with these feminist and queer FNTs and MNTs are complicated for a range of reasons, not least of which is that they are well versed in queer and feminist theory and can match me citation for cita tion. We can agree, invoking Judith Butler's argument that the sexed body is always already gendered and that all gendered and sexual subjects make themselves and are made within a stratified political economy of embod ied gendered and sexual signification.' In this way, we can agree, tran sexuals and non-transexuals share a set of practices of self- and other making. But when we turn to SRS, things get trickier. I think that part of the reason for the difficulty is that the making of sex/gender, as it has been understood since the publication of Butler's Gender Trouble, is privi leged as a performative and discursive process (Butler's exemplar of gender performativity is, significantly, drag and not SRS). Consequently, my FNT and MNT friends will invoke their genderings of their own bodies David Valentine 187 and practices as evidence of sex...