Gender Pioneers or the Monsters of Prime Time?

Mediating Transsexual Characters from High Theory to Low Culture

There is an unrelenting theme in the American popular television that

represents transsexual people as “Frankensteinian” characters. Story lines

about transsexuals in CSI and Nip/Tuck, for example, empty trans-characters of

identity, personality, and portray transsexual people as “monsters” for public

display. “High Theory” also tends to use transsexuals for their liminal social

positions. Both high and low discourses, thus, relegate the transsexual body to

an empty signifier of difference. What is missing from both “high” and “low”

discourses, then, are the voices of transsexual people and their lived

experiences. There is a tentative link between “high” theory and “low” (television)

culture in that both presume to “know” transsexuality, yet in a practice of illusion

politics they both tend to erase the lived experiences of transsexuals leaving

readers and viewers with a partial picture of what transsexuality is and what it

means to the people who are marginalized by such labels. This paper delineates

some of the persistent critical issues in the lives of transsexuals, including

marginalization, oppression, violence, and identity misconceptions, to push

beyond the ways in which the bodies of transsexual people are “read” in both

high theory and low culture. By bringing gender theorists Judith Butler and

Bernice Hausman in conversation with transsexual theorists Susan Stryker and

Viviane Namaste, this paper argues for a “text” that more fully represents

transsexual people as lived beings with experiences beyond their gender and

gendered identities.

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 The paper is divided into four sections, which I will not be able to explore

fully in this venue. For the purposes of this talk I will focus on three areas of my

paper, FIRST) I’ll discuss television and will briefly address the most watched

episode of CSI, Crime Scene Investigation. This is representative of “low

culture.” (low culture is defined on handout). SECOND) I’ll illuminate

discussions of the transsexual body in “high theory,” (also defined on the

handout). THIRD) I’ll look at representations about transsexuals by transsexuals.

Mainly I will be looking at information coming from memoirs and the reality TV

genre.

I feel like I should interject here and talk for a minute about the archive: I
started this project in a seminar thinking that I could look at all of the
representations on that list, but quickly realized that I was constructing a project
of dissertation proportions. I had to pare it down, so I followed a theme that I was
intrigued by that surfaced repeatedly, the monster, and I chose to focus on CSI,
because I am a fan of that show and was very disappointed and appalled by the
all time most watched episode of that particular prime time TV crime drama. I
have provided a list for your benefit on the handout of the representations of
transsexuals in popular culture that I could find, which I am sure is not
exhaustive. I forgot to list the L-word, but like Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch
Blues—which I did list—the L-Word is debatable about whether or not it is
representing transsexuality—I am more inclined to think that these are about
transgender people.

Television

While current gender theory provides a plethora of information to scholars

about the gendered lives of transsexuals, perhaps there is no wider reaching

audience than that of popular television. As of ten years ago more than ninety

percent of American households had one or more television sets (Richard

Campbell (2003) p. 173); now more than 48 million households have digital cable

service. One study showed that American children between the ages eight to

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eighteen watch three or more hours of television per day and found that more

than 60% of programs contain violence (Schmidt 2006, p. 290). Media produces

both “viewers and citizens” with shared ideals, world views, and narratives that all

work together to structure a popular imagination where “the social construction

has come to stand in for an imaginary original reality” (Julie D’Acci (1997) article

“Television, Representation, and Gender” argues p. 373, 375). Television

literally produces and reproduces distinct images, which can be read as texts,

made available to masses of people promoting a certain standard embodiment of

humanity. The danger with the popular imagination is that these social

institutions, found in television for example, are often reproduced indefinitely

creating an almost unitary world—a Baudrillardian “hyperreality”—that is

determined solely by mass mediated images where the reproductions become

more “real” than original lived reality (Baudrillard, 1994). This paper seeks to

illuminate this “hyperreal” unification of transsexual people for what it is: a way

that hegemony subjects often disempowered people to a dominant legible

paradigm.

At the time of the original writing of this paper Transsexuals appeared on

non-cable television only on rare occasions and are visible with token

appearances on cable television shows, like Nip/Tuck on the FX Network or in

HBO’s The L Word, (debatable), but are recently enjoying the spotlight in reality

based TV (you will find a list of shows on the handout). As I said, I focused on

CSI –the paper includes a deep reading of the episode, which I will condense

here. CSI is a version of the classic “whodunit” entertainment genre, but

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episodes focus upon figuring out how crimes are committed using the latest

forensic technologies as a means to discover who committed the crimes. The

particular episode under scrutiny here is the one hundredth, entitled “Ch Ch

Changes,” episode eight of season 5 (2004). TV.com (2006) indicates that

“31.46 million viewers tuned in” to this particular episode in particular “making it

the most watched episode in the show's history ” (Neilson). The show is

currently in its 9th season on CBS. The premise of this episode is to solve a

crime, but the running theme is the atrocity of transsexuals who are implicated as

either “abnormal” or homosexual in nearly every scene in an ironic contrast to the

statement of Dr. Lavelle (who ends up being the murderers) who wants

transsexuals to be seen as quote “normal.” Endquote. In this episode,

transsexuals are made into monsters by their very constructedness—literally in

the secret frankensteinian lab of Dr. La velle--, but also in their perceived

connection to homosexuality. Throughout the show the CSIs investigating the

crime indicate a persistent fear of transsexuality expressed in homophobic and

trans-phobic jokes. “For the record,” exclaims one agent, “I really like having a

penis,” as if someone—the audience, his co-workers—are reading him as less of

a man by his very involvement with people who are constrained by their penises.

There is also a persistent refusal throughout the episode to call

transsexuals by the gendered pronouns of their choice; essentially these acts by

the show’s main characters rob the already liminal characters of any agency in

the expression of their identities constraining them to a firm “biological sex by

birth” paradigm. Actors rely on heterosexual principles to elicit information from

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potential witnesses teasing men who refuse to speak to the CSIs as perhaps

quote “preferring stick” endquote and refusing to follow quote “traditional values”

end quote (Zuiker, 2004).

Investigators actually find the murderer by testing semen found in the

mouth of the victim Wendy. This leads to the “shocking” moment when

investigators find out that Dr. Lavelle is a trans-woman who has not yet had

“bottom” surgery. The CSIs then interview Lavelle’s husband and repeatedly

marginalize him for being homosexual by highlighting his wife’s penis with jokes

like “your wife is still packing” and eventually make him repeatedly admit to

several different investigators that he enjoys fallating his wife (Zuiker, 2004). The

agents in making Lavelle’s husband repeat this information were playing up his

non-normative and read as homosexual behavior. FTM Matt Kailey (2005) in Just

Add Hormones is perhaps too positive in his declarations that transsexuals are

more visible now than ever in the media (p. 13). The show seemingly

participates in the “good deed” of increasing the visibility of transsexuals in prime

time television but in a deep reading it is obvious that the show erases their

complex lived experiences through continual marginalization in the show’s focus

on trans-sexualities—or the emphasis on trans-character’s “same sex” partner

relations—but also in the repeated refusal to acknowledge trans-character’s

desired gender pronouns. Additionally, perhaps in an effort to make the show

more palatable, the “monster” Dr. Lavelle was played by a “real” woman, non-

trans actor Lindsay Crouse, whereas no attribution is given to the dead

transsexuals Wendy or Vern, although through flashbacks their characters are

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quite developed. Similarly, numerous “real” “tranny” characters appear in the

show but none are listed in the DVD credits. This projects the illusion that “all is

right” in the “real” world.

This method of erasing the complexity of transsexual’s lives through

physical and metaphorical violence and homophobia may be a response to what

Viviane Namaste (2006) in Genderbashing calls an “invasion” of public space by

non-normative people (in Stryker, p. 588, 589). Because transsexuals are non-

normative in the expression of their gender they are perceived as a threat to

normative societal structures. Transsexuals are victims of violence due to the

conflation of their gender identities (how they identify themselves) into a

perceived homosexual (same sex partner relations) reading, which threatens the

heterosexual norm (in Stryker 2006, p. 587); Both public and private spaces are

policed by gender norms upholding quote “the binary opposition between men

and women” end quote that is intimately intertwined in the ideology of the

heterosexual paradigm (Namaste in Stryker, 2006, p. 590). People who fall

outside of the socially sanctioned standard for gender are targeted for violence

because they threaten the structured state of heteronormative behavior.

Susan Stryker attributes the perceived danger of her presence in public

spaces to be due to the quote “unnatural” end quote medical construction of her

body, while Judith Butler posits that the incoherent gendered nature of

transsexuals makes them “illegible,” thus less human (Butler, 2004, p. 58;

Stryker, 2006, p. 245); perhaps this illegibility makes transsexuals more

susceptible to hate crimes. When transsexuals are heterosexual their gender is

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often conflated with a perceived sexuality that falls outside of normative behavior

making them targets for violence. Since gay bashing conflates two separate

issues—gender and sexuality—into a problem focused on abnormal sexual

behavior, Namaste (2006) advocates for the renaming of the term “gaybashing”

to “genderbashing” (p. 596). The term “gay” bashing deflects the fact that

violence against gay, lesbian, intersexed, and transsexual people is really rooted

in the apparent destruction of gender norms within the heterosexual paradigm: it

is a gender crime, not a sexual crime (Namaste in Stryker, 2006, p. 596).

CSI participated in the conflation of gender and sexuality issues by

repeatedly making homophobic jokes to elicit information from witnesses and

alluding to the non-normative sexual choices of witnesses, especially men, to

coerce them into answering questions about the crime. (I should say here that

humor is used in the formula of the show to deflect the horror of their job as

CSIs). The trans-characters were living their lives before the CSIs insisted upon

pigeonholing them into a homosexual paradigm due to the perception of non-

normative sexual practices, ultimately forcing gender incoherence on viewers.

Gender was conflated with sexuality in a politics of illusion (defined in the

handout) where sexuality trumps or becomes gender. Further, Dr. Lavelle (who

ended up murdering two transwoman) was providing a service to people who

could not afford to “legitimately” transform their bodies by establishing her own

“outside” medical practice, which was construed as the laboratory of a “mad”

doctor. FTM matt Kailey (2005) writes that female to male surgery including

“chest reconstruction, a complete hysterectomy, and a complete phalloplasty”

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can cost up to $100,000 in the United States (p. 77). This figure does not

account for the lifetime of hormone intake required to regulate and maintain

gender reassignments. Not everyone with “Gender Identity Disorder” can afford

“treatment”; therefore alternate means of transitioning can seem attractive in light

of the overall monetary cost.

Transitioning is not a matter of choice, argues FTM Kailey (2005), “if the

incongruity between a person’s gender identity and his or her body and social

roles is strong enough, he or she will transition or die” (p. 20). While Kailey does

not provide sources for his claims, he states that many transgendered suicides

are due to suffering and shame in not being able to transition; access to

adequate medical care is a central issue in the transsexual community, and often

insurance does not cover gender transitions (Kailey, 2005, p. 21).

TransGeneration (2005) a reality TV series not available on networks that

I could see, as opposed to the TV crime drama, follows four college students who

are in different stages of their transformations, but the take away point of the

series is that transsexuality is not the fundamental identity for each of these

young students, especially for people who are also marginalized by poverty,

race, and differing abilities. For Raci, a MTF1 student at UCLA, her position as a

Philippino is just as central to her life as her marginal economic position and her

reality as a deaf woman in a hearing world. In the documentary

TransGeneration (2005), Raci is extremely insecure about her voice because she

is deaf but more so about her poverty and lack of resources, which leads to her

body insecurities. Raci has difficulty maintaining her hormone regime because
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MTF is an abbreviation for a transsexual who has transitioned from male to female.

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she is unable to get hormones for lack of insurance coverage (Simmons, 2005);

she then turns to the streets to acquire drugs illegally and is clearly afraid that

she will be poisoned, but her desire to “fit in,” to avoid “stereotypes,” and to

“pass” trumps all fear (Simmons, 2005). Raci eventually locates a large queer

resource center in Los Angeles that purchases hormones for poverty stricken

transsexuals, including those living on the streets, and her hormonal intake is

restored safely. This queer standard that posits transsexuals as recognizable

only through the lens of gay or lesbian politics is deleterious according to Viviane

Namaste (2005), a Canadian transsexual scholar, for its “lack of respect for the

lives of [transsexuals] who are heterosexual” (p. 20).

Namaste privileges essentialist points of view, because they allow the

focus of scholarship and activism to be taken off trans-bodies and placed back

on institutions. She wants to be considered a woman, not a gender radical

(Namaste, 2005, p. 6). Lucas, a FTM2 student from Smith College, in

TransGeneration (2005), underscores Namaste’s view: “When I identify as trans

it validates that I am abnormal. I don’t want to be seen as a trans-person”

(Simmons, 2005). Each of these trans-people wants to be seen as “normative”

women and men whose genders and bodies are not the locus for a movement

toward social change. Anthropologist Mary Douglas claims that symbolic ritual

creates societal unity (Beynon and Dunkerley, 2000, p. 470); people in the

culture at large recognize “the powers and dangers credited to social structure

[which are then] reproduced in small on the human body” (Beynon and

Dunkerley, 2000, p. 470). Social unity then is created through the construction of
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FTM is the abbreviation for a transsexual person who has transitioned from female to male.

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signifiers like gender norms, which are then played out through dress and

behavior. As Douglas indicates with her theory of the sign, these two markers for

gender in America can make individuals normative or non-normative, and

therefore safe or not-safe, leading to what Namaste called genderbashing.

Conclusion
Gender theory about transsexuals is inevitably a debate couched in

discussions based mainly on and about the bodies of hyper-gendered people.

The bodies of transsexual people are hyper-gendered because of the emphasis

discourses place upon their gendered states of being above all else; therefore,

perhaps there is no more liminal space than a transsexual’s body due to the

minimizing and/or essentialist viewpoints asserted by feminist and gender

theorists in terms of the transsexual state of being. Bernice Hausman (2000)

writes “while transsexualism may seem to transgress what we think of as

traditional gender roles, the practice of ‘sex change’ relies on normative

recountings of gender as an ontology” (p125). This gender philosophy is the

essence of debates over the bodies of transsexuals which ultimately decide for

them whether or not they deserve full “personhood” based upon their “legibility”

(Butler, 2004), which sometimes can manifest itself in the inability to get

identification cards or driver’s licenses. Transsexuals must seek assistance from

both the psychological and medical fields to feel a sense of self recognition, but

also to achieve full personhood in the culture at large. These theories and

discourses place transsexuals in no-person’s land without a safe space in which

to seek refuge: one is either “illegible” or too constrained by their choice of

legibility.

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 Current American television also has a hand in reducing transsexuality to

a state of being that is “not quite right,” which often ends in a crescendo of

violence upon the bodies of transsexuals. Prime time television programs like

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation relentlessly empty the social and medical

realities that transsexuals face in the hegemonic “regulatory regime” and instead

depict trans-people as “Frankensteinian” characters—monsters or mad doctors—

who threaten the heteronormative status quo. The popular imagination

condenses personal issues erasing all other dimensions of lived experience like

race, sexuality, ability, age, and economics constructing trans-characters (and

the trans- actors themselves) as monsters that are absent identity, personality,

and context. Trans-people are displayed and used for their liminal positions. This

lack of historical context and judgment due to the constructedness of the

transsexual embodiment is also evident in the work of highly regarded gender

theorists Judith Butler and also in the work of Bernice Hausman.

Hausman (2000) refers to transsexuality as a sort of “antidote” to the

“coercion” of the cultural institution, but is critical of the process; she writes

(1995) that transsexuals are failed “gender outlaws” who reify the hegemonic

binary (p. 197). While gender reassignment adheres to a too essentialist state of

being for some theorists, others posit that the liminal space trans-people reside in

can (and should) be used actively as another sort of antidote to hegemony.

Butler (2004b) argues that one’s liminal embodiment could be used as a political

strategy and can “become a site of contest and revision” complicating the

necessity of gendered identities, or identities at all, which are only “instruments of

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the regulatory regime” (p. 121, 126). In the privileged refusal to acknowledge the

impending violence read in the non-normative identities of transsexuals these

scholars are accused of participating in colonization of the “other.” Viviane

Namaste (2005) in Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity,

Institutions, and Imperialism asks frankly “where would Judith Butler be if she

couldn’t talk about us [as privileged sites of identity] (p. 18)?

Clearly, there is much work to be done by gender, transgender, and

feminist theorists of every camp. Although it is helpful to be critical of theoretical

works, criticism to spite the work of others seems antithetical and unnecessary to

the “cause,” which is proliferating knowledge and access to knowledge. There is

a tentative link between “high” theory and “low” (television) culture in that both

presume to “know” transsexuality, yet in a practice of illusion politics they both

tend to erase the lived experiences of transsexuals (trans people are talked

about, but they don’t speak) leaving readers or viewers with a partial picture of

what transsexuality is and what it means to the people who are marginalized by

such labels.

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