Whipping Girl - Commentary II

I've tried to write this commentary several times, and each time that I have written it, I have found myself getting bogged down in the details and quid pro quos.

Through to Chapter 7, Serano speaks quite harshly of the treatment that a lot of transsexuals experience at the hands of therapists. She comes very close to advocating for removal of the condition entirely from the DSM, but stops just short of that.

Let me start off by saying that I am sympathetic to those who have experienced the kind of hostile treatment that Serano describes, and has often been attributed to the dubious methodology of people who follow J. Michael Bailey's theories. There is nothing more damaging to someone's sense of self than finding a therapist who claims that they are lying at every turn.

However, I disagree quite strongly with the idea of simply removing transsexualism from the DSM. Transsexualism is a somewhat unique condition in the world of mental health concerns. Unlike a lot of situations that lead people to seek out a therapist's help in life, the transsexual's situation actually will ultimately lead to bringing the services of multiple professionals into the picture - including psychologists, physicians and surgeons; but also can involve lawyers, public service officials and other individuals. There can be little question that some kind of common lexicon is useful in facilitating communication between these varied professionals.

The physician that is prescribing hormone therapy may be quite comfortable monitoring the response of the body's endocrine system to the hormones, but may well not feel that he or she has the appropriate training and background to understand whether the patient is adapting to the changes that the hormones bring with them appropriately. When one considers the legal and ethical bindings placed upon medical practitioners, it should come as no great surprise that many are reluctant to get involved in a situation that they do not feel they understand.

Quite rightly, the WPATH Standards of Care demands that the various professionals involved in an individual's transition be in regular communication with each other.

As Radha points out in her post 'Gaming Therapists, Gaming Ourselves, the therapy process can be a catalyst for learning a great deal about oneself. A positive relationship with a therapist can be an amazingly constructive process - one which enables an person to move beyond their immediate assumptions about themselves and to be completely honest with themselves - both in terms of their strengths and weaknesses (and yes, there is an amazing amount of strength to be found in the vulnerability of admitting to your own failings - the reality of that is left as an exercise to the reader).

I would like to see the definition of transsexualism (or more broadly transgenderism) in the DSM to continue to evolve. In the DSM IV, it is only in its third incarnation, and it has morphed considerably from the original definitions in the DSM II(?), mostly in response to the emergence of more data that has broadened the range of experiences that clients have described.

It is unfortunate that there are so many who mistakenly assume that the presence of a diagnostic category in the DSM means that someone is 'ill'. A more reasonable view of the DSM is that it describes psychological conditions - a lexicon more than anything else. In fact, if one peruses the chapters of the DSM for a while, it is not difficult to understand that it contains a great many conditions which we would agree do not constitute a serious impairment of an individual's ability to function, but may need to be described in order to draw a complete picture of the factors an individual is facing. Here, I believe the APA and related professional bodies have a significant amount of 'marketing' work to do. Society still bears a surprising degree of fear and stigma to 'mental illness', and the professional societies involved have not been very successful in breaking that pattern. One of the key things they could - and should - do is spend some time explaining the DSM's purpose and intentions in layman's terms. (There are only a few of us outside the mental health world willing - or able - to wade through the dense terminology of that book's prefaces)

The transsexual bears a responsibility to find a therapist that they can work with. We are all individuals, and it is no surprise that not everybody can work effectively with every therapist. Therapists and medical professionals are responsible for ensuring that they become educated about the treatment of transsexuals - the transsexual should not be the person trying to educate the professionals; and similarly, finding a therapist should not be an 'underground experience'. Too few therapists publicize that they are willing and experienced with transfolk, which often makes the process of finding a therapist traumatic in its own right.

Those professionals who see themselves as 'gatekeepers' rather than as partners with their clients need to adjust their perspective. In the case of transsexuals, the client is usually quite aware of their condition and what they need to achieve. Gatekeepers are not what is needed - constructive help is. Sometimes that may mean pointing out the 'cracks' in the patient's plans or timelines; but more often than not, it means helping the patient piece together the resources they need.

Whipping Girl - Commentary Part I

Whipping Girl is an interesting book that explores the intersection between gender, feminism and transsexuality in some interesting ways. I'm in the midst of reading it, and this post is "part one" of a series that I will be writing as I make my way through this book.

Since this series will be written as I make my way through the book, I will not promise that my commentary in later chapters are entirely consistent with what I write today - I reserve the right to have the author persuade me to agree with her perspective where I disagreed earlier.

Introduction, The Transwoman Manifesto and Chapters 1 - 4

The first thing I really like about this book is the author's wonderfully powerful view of the feminine:

In this book, I break with past attempts in feminism and queer theory to dismiss femininity by characterizing it as "artificial" or "performance". Instead, I argue that certain aspects fo femininity (as well as masculinity) are natural and can both precede socialization and supersede biological sex. ... No form of gender equity can ever truly be achieved until we first work to empower femininity itself. - p. 6

To me, this is a powerful statement - it not only encapsulates what I have always felt is deeply wrong with other social/theoretical models of gender. Second, it also encompasses the transsexual narrative in a constructive way, instead of simply attempting to dismiss it by declaring it invalid.

Julia Serano, the author, is deeply critical of how the media and pop culture present transsexuals. With some good reason:

... While Oprah Winfrey's conversation with Boylan was respectful and serious, the show nonetheless opened with predictable scenes of women putting on eye makeup, lipstick and shoes, and the interview itself was interspersed with "before" pictures of Boylan, as if to constantly remind us that she's really a man underneath it all.

Mass media images of 'biological males' dressing and acting in a feminine manner could potentially challenge mainstream notions of gender, but the way they are generally presented in these feminization scenes ensures tha tthis never happens. The media neutralizes the potential threat that trans femininities pose to the category of "woman" by playing to the audience's subconcious belief that femininity itself is artificial. p. 43

Observationally, I think that Ms. Serano is quite correct in her perception that the media misses the mark quite badly when it comes to portraying transwomen (in particular). However, I do not agree with her attribution of the poor presentation to an implicit malice.

I suspect that it is not malice at all, rather it is in fact ignorance and misunderstanding that is being demonstrated. In general, the media tend to focus on the visual. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that television in particular is completely the wrong media when it comes to presenting transsexual issues for this reason. It is easy to identify and pick up on the physical changes that a transwoman goes through as she makes her way through transition. That said, the physical changes are in many respects a reflection of the inner person that is being revealed through transition. Although a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes a thousand words is greater than any picture will ever be.

While the television producers (or movie producers, for that matter) think they are doing transsexuals a favour with shows like the Oprah episode Serano references, we have to remember that most of the production staff on these shows are not themselves transgender people. That means that they suffer from the basic misunderstandings that most non-transsexual people have about transsexuals. The natural instinct is to gravitate towards those aspects of the journey that are easy to grasp, and quietly ignore the subtle, but vitally important aspects that are difficult to articulate, much less understand. When it can take many transsexuals years to understand themselves, is it any surprise that a fifteen minute segment on Oprah, or the portrayal in a movie, is somehow superficial and limited?

Serano's discussion of the influence and effects of hormone therapy is fascinating. It provides a series of insights into how hormones influence gendered behaviour, and yet also underscores the reality that gender is no more defined by hormones than it is by the shape of one's body, or the interests that one has.

On the other hand, those who are eager to have popular presumptions about hormones confirmed will probably be just as disappointed to hear what has not noticeably changed during my hormonal transition: my sexual orientation; the "types" of women I am attracted to; my tastes in music, movies, or hobbies; my politics; my sense of humor; my levels of aggression, competitiveness, nurturing, creativity, intelligence; and my ability to read maps or do math. While it would be irresponsible for me to say that these human traits are entirely hormone-independent (as it is possible that fetal hormones potentially play some role in predisposing us to such traits), they clearly are not controlled by adult hormone levels to the extent that many people argue or assume. p. 72

To this point in the book, I like where I think the author is going.

My biggest criticism is the degree of hostility or malice that she seems to attribute to the portrayal of transsexuals in general by the media. I suspect that where a sincere effort has been made (e.g. not Jerry Springer), the reality is that the problem is actually a combination of ignorance combined with the limitations of visual media in addressing something the non-visual aspects of human experience - namely that which goes on in our heads.

Her perspective on gender as it intersects reality, as well as the theoretical spaces of queer theory and radical feminism aligns well with my own thoughts on the matter - and go a long distance to putting down the claim by some feminists that transsexuals do not perform meaningful analysis of the concepts of gender and equality. (more on this later...)