Binaries

19 of the 28 research participants articulated a non-binary viewpoint in that they did not think the old gender roles and stereotypes still applied in society. Some of the research participants held a binary viewpoint that people should be either male or female, and behave like either women or men. Such a binary understanding of gender roles and categories was articulated by nine participants representing a spectrum of ages, all of whom except Rita, are on the GRS trajectory: Carina, Grace, Carrick, Dolores, Helen, Rita, Sally, and Tristan. Jessica who has ‘fought and nearly won the right to be treated as a she’, is very scornful of what she regards as the ‘alien’ need for gender neutral pronouns.

I want to be she ... I have issues with androgyny - these are the people that are fighting for gender neutral toilets, who are saying: I don’t want to be he or she, I want to be ze [gender neutral pronoun describing someone who doesn’t fit into the man or woman gender binary]. I think can I not win first and then you can have your space age alien stuff? Let me get mine first. I would never have fought for ‘I want to be ze’….

A non-binary understanding of gender roles and categories was articulated by nineteen participants: Alex, Boxer-Rider, Cory, Iain, Ivy, Justine, Kylie, Lady G, Lily, Phoenix, Renee, Rihanna, Sara Wolf, Sindy, Sabrina, Suzy, Vida, Vaughan, and Wendy. Most of these respondents regard gender as a continuum, even those who have undergone full GRS such as Boxer-Rider, Lily, Phoenix, Vida and Vaughan. As Iain puts it: ‘you

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

136 are whatever you feel like being or doing’. Similarly Wendy says: ‘There’s an infinite number of possibilities and permutations, so I think it’s totally wrong just to assume binary, you know divisions… anything goes.’ Sara Wolf who works as a carer:

‘Nobody cares about men working in the care profession now…it was very much a woman’s profession until recently, until heavy industry closed really. So I think that in terms of jobs and things like that – then roles are very, very fluid you know’. Sindy articulates her sense of the superfluous in gender roles thus:

I don’t really feel there are any traditional male and female roles. I think when we were hunter/gatherers there may have been arguments for the physicality being different - defining certain roles. But now we’re all in the same fucking office doing the same work.

Some gender queer participants criticised the current UK legislation for reinforcing the gender binary. Iain: ‘There is no protection in the UK legislation for gender queer, intersex, or third gender. In terms of the Equality Act you have to be either male or female - it doesn’t accept anything in between.’ Alex: ‘The UK legislation is not open to people like me...the gender queer folk don’t get the level of protection that perhaps they should get in terms of the Equality Act, and the idea is still that you should be either male or female.’ Thus Alex aptly exposes the absolutist absurdity of UK legislation not dealing with bodies it cannot categorise, and so that which is not classifiable becomes abject and outside the law. UK equality legislation, and legal gender reassignment, are based on a medical model, tied in with a binary understanding and reinforcement of the gender system as it stands. Bornstein emphasizes the main element of the binary gender system: ‘The current gender system relies heavily on everyone’s agreement that it’s inflexible. Key to doing away with gender is the ability to freely move into and out of existing genders and gender roles’ (1994:121).

Lady G who has now completely transitioned and lives ‘full time female’ in a new house in a new area while awaiting GRS, can pass fully as female, and so she is the only participant currently living her life in stealth, in the context of her new neighbourhood where no-one is aware her gender attribution at birth was male. Garber suggests that the transvestite desire to ‘pass’ ‘marks the point of deliberate transgression’, whereas it signifies its opposite with transsexuals (Garber, 1992:49).

Although most of the transsexuals in the current study would have preferred to ‘pass’

in their new lives thus conform to the gender binary, this was easier for the FtMs. It

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

137 was often not possible for older MtF participants because the changes that testosterone generates masculinize a body and are irreversible. Thus given the exigencies of embodiment, most of the MtF research participants were realistic in their assessment of the impossibility of becoming ‘invisible’ (all traces of masculinity removed) and fully accepted as female. Some had come out to their families with varying degrees of acceptance, and some had left their families behind. Some transvestite/cross-dresser participants continued to lead double and sometimes multiple lives due to the conflicting demands of work and family, some choosing a different form of stealth in that they did not reveal their trans identities either to their families or at work. They kept one set of social relationships for their ‘real’ transgender lives and a separate set of social relationships for ‘play’.

Of interest for the research was the perception of participants of gender power dynamics in society from the opposite end of the gender continuum post-transition. Do FtMs gain more control over their lives and access to male power? Boxer-Rider’s take on the importance generally attached to gender is: ‘it seems to be about power …and in our recent human history that’s male power’. Do MtF participants perceive a loss of the power and value that their male role had attributed to them in society? Because most of the MtF participants had transitioned later in life, they acknowledged that they would not pass as ‘real’ women and therefore the question did not apply, or rather the attitudes of other people would be more to do with the judgement of gender incoherence, not fitting into a male/female category, rather than their presentation as women. Vida said that she felt she was treated differently in general since transitioning and: ‘I have noticed a difference in that a man’s opinion seems to carry more weight especially in the workplace’. Lady G at nearly 70 presents a fascinating account of life experienced on both sides of the gender divide, and conveys a sense of anthropological strangeness towards the conventional roles still expected of women in West of Scotland, where according to her, traditional macho male attitudes can be combative and threatening to other males, but not to females. Lady G who does pass and has always socially presented as a woman, has however lived most of her working life as a man in the workplace - where she drives a heavy duty articulated truck. Her response is enlightening to the question of experiencing a change in gender power relations post-transition: ‘Yes certainly! I find men are far less aggressive, polite even, towards

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

138 women than they are towards other men. Main reason being they don't see women as a threat like they do other men.’

Many of the MtF participants had not reflected on changing power relationships post-transition, and it is possible that the challenges of negotiating daily life in a social role that had to be completely learned from the base upwards, while grappling with social attitudes towards their gender presentation that did not necessarily pass public scrutiny as ‘authentic’, could have preoccupied them to the extent there was little time left for reflection on power and gender roles. The sample of six FtM was too small to make any generalisations from the findings.