Transsexuals’ Embodiment of Womanhood

Abstract

This article draws on in-depth interviews with nine white, middle-class, male-to-female transsexuals to examine how they produce and experience bodily transformation. Interviewees’ bodywork entailed retraining, redecorating, and reshaping the physical body, which shaped their feelings, role-taking, and self-monitoring. These analyses make three contributions: They offer support for a perspective that embodies gender, further transsexual scholarship, and contribute to feminist debate over the sex/gender distinction. The authors conclude by exploring how viewing gender as embodied could influence medical discourse on transsexualism and have personal and political consequences for transsexuals.

Transsexuals' Sexual Stories

“…The first author became acquainted with interviewees during 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork at a support group for crossdressers, transsexuals, and significant others. The interviews and fieldwork, along with transgender community publications, email lists, an online support group, support group newsletters, transgender social movement organizations' appeals, and activist speeches, were part of a larger IRBapproved research project that has examined collective narration in support group meetings (Mason- Schrock, 1996); social movement mobilization (Schrock et al, 2004), and the subjective experience of bodily transformation (Schrock et al, 2005). The present study focuses on interviews because they were the only data to include narratives of intimate life.…”

“…Although support groups help mitigate transsexuals' fear and loneliness (Bolin, 1988;Feinbloom, 1976;Schrock et al, 2004) and changing their material bodies can evoke increased feelings of authenticity and confidence (Gagne et al, 1997;Rubin, 2003;Schrock, Reid, & Boyd, 2005), it should not be surprising that transsexuals in the contemporary political context carefully plumb their sexual biographies for evidence that confirms they are indeed "true" transsexuals. As Plummer (1995) points out, understanding the historical and political context in which people tell sexual stories helps us understand how and why people construct narratives of intimate life.…”

Gender Expression as a Reflection of Identity Reformation in Couple Partners Following Disclosure of Male-to-Female Transsexualism

“…Transsexual persons who do disclose their identity will then often embark upon exploration and experimentation toward finding personal comfort and coherence within their newly emerging identity (Bockting & Coleman, 2007;Lev, 2004). Steps are taken to increase signifiers of femininity or masculinity to create authentic self-expression (Gagné, Tewksbury, & McGaughey, 1997;Morgan & Stevens, 2008) and to present with increasing conviction (Dozier, 2005;Schrock, Reid, & Boyd, 2005). In turn, enacting a convincing gender expression and receiving affirming feedback from others signifies achievement and further validates and authenticates transsexual persons' gender identity (Crawley, 2008;Dozier, 2005;Iantaffi & Bockting, 2011;Rubin, 2003).…”

Transsexual emergence: gender variant identities in Thailand

“…Schrock, Reid and Boyd (2005) emphasise that 'bodies be our friends or enemies, a source of pain or pleasure, a place of liberation or domination, but they are also the material with which we experience and create gender' (317). Namaste (2000) and Rubin (2003) also move transgender scholarship toward understanding the link between bodies and subjectivities.…”