Transgender Identity: The Social Approach Model

In Susan Stryker’s (De)Subjugated Knowledges, she culminates a history of academic attention to transgender studies; tracking the field’s movement from abnormal psychology to its contemporary form of self-analysis and discourse (by which I mean that rather than being discussed by those outside of the trans community, transgender voices are now leading their own academic discussions). At a basic level, Stryker defines transgender studies as that which:

The therapist looked down at her clipboard, “It says on here you’ve been depressed, is this the reason?”

In “ Performing Gender Identity: Young Men’s Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity” by Deborah Cameron portray a very controversial theory in which Judith Butler discusses the idea of gender performativity. Butler clearly states that gender must constantly be reaffirmed and publicly displayed for gender rules to be maintained. This excerpt hints to the main idea illustrating that one’s sex is biological, but gender is constructed, learned, and performed. The main idea behind the term gender performativity is that, gender itself exists only as it is established and repetitively performed in society.

Scholars have been critical of the medical establishment’s and state’s involvement in constructing and policing of transgender identity. These kinds of pressing issues have occupied the small existing literature. There is not much information and studying what is being done on transgender in traditional areas, family studies research, such as their dating behavior and formation of intimate relationships in adulthood. There is little research on the issues around being parents, their children’s experiences with having transgendered parents, as well as relationships in the family as a whole, and relationships in work and school.

On its web site this week, Target announced, "[W]e welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity. ...Everyone deserves to feel like they belong."

“I am transgendered. I was born female, but my masculine gender expression is seen as a male…it’s the social contradiction between the two that defines

Judith Butler, in her essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution", claims that there is no gendered self. As opposed to Simone de Beauvoir, who believes that sex is biologically determined and gender is a social construct, Butler believes that sex can only be read through gender, making them both constructs. Butler argues that the male/female binary is unstable and invalid. She states that what is called "gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo" (Butler 901).

According to Judith Butler, gender is not biologically rooted but socially constructed. Gender is “a stylized repetition of acts […] which are internally discontinuous [so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (Butler 140-141). Gender is something learned from social surroundings, it is an imitation of the dominant conventions of gender.

This is not coincidental, as Queer Theory lent the movement a language that could describe a seemingly inexpressible experience many of its members shared. Through its capacity to imagine beyond categories, Queer Theory seemed to adeptly describe not only the mechanisms of gender transition but the political potential the transgender experience via its supposedly-innate ability to deconstruct the monolithic social index of the gender binary. Again, there should be no surprise that recent iterations of the trans movement have challenged the more traditional markers of being a Woman in Western Culture (visible biological signs, socially-controlled regulating behavior, etc.), and in doing so call into question the beliefs that have long constructed the given parameters of women’s (and, more directly, women’s-only)

In the commercial, it shows a variety of people such as transgenders, poor people, different races, queer, and more. None of these people knew the other, but they cooperated until the end because they saw each other through binary views (meaning you have only one choice or another) of one’s sex, gender, and sexuality. For example, the man and transgender interaction. The man saw the transgender as a woman and gained respect because she was ex-military; however, his face completely changed once he found out the woman was actually transgender. Transgender is “a contested umbrella term used to describe individuals whose gender expression and behavior do not match the binary system.” Despite him finding out, he made the effort to understand why

When it comes to Butler and based on her essay that we studied “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” where she introduced the term of gender performativity and based it on a feminist phenomenological outlook and suggested that this is based on experiences that we live. Butler accepts the notion of a "distinction between sex, as biological facticity, and gender, as the cultural interpretation or signification of that facticity". (Butler, Judith (1988). "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory".

The leading character Simone de Beauvoir initiated “one is not born but rather becomes a woman”. Based on the reading of de Beauvoir, Butler further argues a new concept that “gender subsumes sex which indicates that biological sex is also socially constructed”. Butler(1986) forms her new idea that “becomes a woman” is a “process of constructing ourselves” and it is “a purpositive and apropiative set of acts, the acquisition of a skill”. For Butler (1990), women can never “be” and gender is never a noun but a set of free floating attributes. Hence, gender is proved to be performative(p.18-24). Her idea co-relates with Nietzsche’s view of gender that there is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the expression of one’s gender(Butler, 1990, p.24-25). It seems to Butler that de Beauvoir defines “gender” ambiguously because she misses the performative character of gender. Butler claims that people need to understand the term woman “as the site of permanent openness and resignifiability”, which is different from de Beauvoir’s view that women are subjects in

Argued in Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003:15), living up to our gender is learning through a life-long process of socialization. Further supported in Kulick and Schieffelin (2006:352), one’s gender emerges over a lifetime through interactive process in which one accepts, rejects, or modifies the cultural and gender norms they are socialized in. These two arguments supported the idea of this essay’s research question in which cultural and social factors do contribute to gendering an individual, and in turn implicating the creation of a boundary that exclude transgenders from the society.

Judith Butler questions the belief that behaviors of either sex are natural. She proposes a rather radical theory that gender is performative and that sex is constructed. When gender is being performed, it means that someone would take on a role, acting in such a way that gives society the idea of their gender and constructs part of their identity. To be performative means that we produce a series of effects.Gender is constructed and is not in any way connected ‘naturally’ to sex.

Her essay deals with the conceptual presence of gender within society that functions as the primary element in expected behavioral roles. Drawing upon previous philosophic and psychoanalytic thought, Butler espouses a theory rooted in the concept of social agents that "constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all matter of symbolic social sign." (Butler 270) Butler asserts that gender is not based on an internal identity or self-definition, but rather on perceptory, reflective notions of performances. Gender itself, in its unstable temporality, is defined by Butler to be "an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts"--an ephemeral performance from which social constructs are formed. (Butler 270) In this analysis, Butler establishes the notion of gender as an abstracted, mass perception which is rendered concrete by the fact of its common acceptance. It is a shared reality of the public, it's existence is a consequence of society's mutual acknowledgment. In this light, Butler describes the concept as being purely temporal--the appearance and perception of gender constitutes its reality. As a result, the examination of gender construction is the examination of its performative, perception-based manifestation. Upon breaching the collective assumption of the actuality of gender, its mutual acceptability is undermined, rendered unstable, and therefore, non-existent.