Good and Messy

Lesbian and Transgender Identities

Bibliographic Data

ID5083994
AuthorsMatt Richardson (0000-0003-3123-3416, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume39
Issue2
Pages371-374
Publication date2013-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0046-3663 • E-ISSN: 2153-3873
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/fem.2013.0047
OpenAlexW4205532492
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Forum: Lesbian Generations 371 4. Ruth Vanita, Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (New York: Pal grave Macmillan, 2005). 5. Ruth Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetryin India, 1780-1870 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 6. See Vanita, "Camping It Up: Jan Saheb and His School," in her Gender, Sex, and the City. Good and Messy: Lesbian and TranscenderIdentities Matt Richardson Of the list of questions that we have collectively considered, the one that most animates me is this: how do we address the contentious borders between lesbian and transgender identities, between passing women and transmen, and between gender identity and sexual iden tity? It is an interesting question because it forces us to acknowledge that these borders are not only contentious, but also messy. And I think that is a good thing. People are wonderfully creative in their gender expressions and sexual identities. For example, in working-class Black trans commu nities that I'm familiar with, some people who have been assigned female at birth are content to keep their bodies the same, but use male pronouns for themselves. Not everyone has the ability or the desire to change their birth-sex assignment physically, socially, and/or legally. However some people elect to be understood as men and identified as such, at least in some spaces and with selected people, as a possible way of inhabiting manhood. This kind of flexibility allows for trans people to gather multiple communities around them. One can be a (masculine) woman with certain family members, with employers, or FeministStudies39, no. 2. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 372 Forum: Lesbian Generations during interactions with the state but also have a section of one's life where one's manhood is validated with male pronouns. There is both an expansiveness and particularity to such locally created understandings of gender. The terms "dom," "stud," "aggres sive," and "butch" refer to female masculinity. However, these terms have cultural and regional specificity and some inventiveness with respect to pushing the boundaries of masculinity. For example, in the New York area "aggressive" is a nuanced identity that is multi-dimen sional. In addition to connoting masculinity, it can be used by people who embrace femininity a central component to their gender iden tity.1"Stem" (or the combination of "stud" and "femme") is a South ern African American term for someone who identifies as masculine and feminine. The alternative to such messiness is the impossible demand that everyone claim a non-normative gender or sexuality identify in the same way and call themselves the same thing. The globalization of the terms "queer" and "LGBT" can be critiqued for precisely such a reason, because the normative use of these terms functions as a colo nizing maneuver.2 The implicit pressure to use these terms in order to access funding, especially from international granting agencies, con torts the variety and expanded possibilities of local understandings into an often ill-fitting consistency and stability. Within the United States, people imagine themselves in terms other than the limited available sense of transition and trans-identification. For example, I have heard some US Black women say, "When I am applying for fund ing, then I am transgender. Otherwise, I'm just a woman." The fixed imagined borders between sexual identity and gender identity are enlivened by the inability to recognize that transpeople can also be lesbians and gay men. The quote above about being "just a woman" requires us to expand our understanding of the catego ries that are familiar to us. Trans people identify with, and mingle within, sexually diverse networks. When we think in restricted terms, we forget the fact that transpeople have been part of lesbian and gay communities for a long time. To draw an example from my own life: about twenty years ago, before I started my own transition, I was part of a lesbian and gay organization in northern New England. This was (and still is) a predominantly rural part of the country. At that time, I was a part of small band of lesbian and gay adults who tried to start Forum: Lesbian Generations 373 a youth group

Aesthetics · Art · Human sexuality · Identity (music) · Lesbian · Rite of passage · Sociology · Transgender · Anthropology · Gender Studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture

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