How
has queer theory influenced the ways we think about gender?
In
this essay, I aim to examine the ways in which ‘queer theory’, as a theoretical
approach, has influenced, and at times advanced, our understandings of
‘gender’. In particular, I will be paying attention to the ways queer
theorists, such as Butler, have problematized and deconstructed the ‘sex/gender
distinction’ within her work, Gender
Trouble, in 1990. Developing these ideas, I aim to show that the queer
approach to gender has allowed for better trans and non-binary inclusion within
the study of gender due to its refusal to accept biologically determinist
theories of gender. However, queer theory has been critiqued by trans and
non-binary scholars, for its lack of attention to the material conditions of
transgender lives – often featuring disproportionate violence and
discrimination compared to the cisgender (non-trans) community (Hines, 2007; MacDonald,
1998; Monro, 2005; Namaste, 2000; Stryker & Whittle, 2006). Following an
examination of these problematic effects of queer theory, I hope to provide a
remedy to the critique by blending an intersectional and materialist analysis
of non-normative gender identities with the deconstructive and non-naturalizing
elements of queer theory. It is my aim to show that a combination of methods,
both feminist and queer can provide the most compelling and exhaustive analysis
of gender.
Since
its inception, feminist theory has centered ‘gender’ as one of, if not, its
principle category of analysis. However, in recent decades, the development of
queer theory has instigated fresh insights and interventions into the study of
gender. For the purposes of this essay, gender is understood here in a
dimorphic fashion. Firstly, as a tool for political analysis; secondly, as an
identity –a person’s lived experience of gender as a woman, man, both or
neither etc. Queer theory can be understood as having originated in the context
of the 1980’s HIV/AIDS activism, a dissatisfaction with the white-centric,
economically privileged LGB rights movement and the feminist ‘sex wars’ over
pornography, BDSM and censorship (Morland and Wilcox, 2005:7). In
terms of its theoretical nature, queer theory distances itself from LGBT
studies and feminist theory due to its anti-identarian and postmodern approach.
According to Halley (2006:113), queer theory “tries to dissociate male bodies,
masculinity, and superordination from each other, rendering sexuality a domain
in which sex, gender, and power are highly mobile.” Whereas, LGBT studies and
feminism have posited that the oppression of their subjects is based on a
shared identity, experience or subjectivity, queer theory aims to destabilize
the assumed borders, boundaries between different identities using a poststructuralist
analysis – whether that be the homo/hetero dichotomy examined famously within
Sedgwick’s work Epistemology of the
Closet (1993) or
the oppressive hierarchical relationship between women and men theorized within
much of feminist theory (Jeffreys, 2009; MacKinnon, 1983). In
opposition to identity politics, queer theory has situated itself as at odds
with what cultures considers ‘normal’ or ‘normative’. As Halperin notes, “queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the
normal, the legitimate, the dominant,” (1997: 62). By situating itself at odds
with the dominant culture, queer seeks to problematize the way practices and
behaviours are interpreted, regulated and prohibited by the state and by
society – often, but not limited to sexual and gender expressions.
In
order to examine queer theory’s recent interventions into the study of gender,
one must turn back to feminist interpretations, which are considered one of the
foundations of our knowledge on the subject. This is not to say that ‘gender’
within feminist theory is a homogenous or uncontested terrain. As Hawkesworth (2006) noted, feminist scholars have
defined gender in numerous contexts, from an attribute to a type of social
organization and as an ideology to sex roles, power differentials, and analytic
categories. Indeed, gender has been theorized by a host
of ‘feminisms’ including materialist, radical, liberal and postcolonial
feminists to name a few (Connell, 2002; MacKinnon, 2007; Mohanty, 2003). However,
most feminist theorists are somewhat unified in understanding gender as a
socially constructed set of values or norms which determine how ‘men’ and
‘women’ relate to themselves and one another. Traditionally, naturalizing
approaches to feminism contested male dominance - as institutionalized by the
gender binary - by questioning the supposed ‘‘naturalness’’ of the
subordination of women as a result of their supposedly physical vulnerability (Nagoshi and Brzuzy, 2010). Some
radical feminists, such as Raymond, considered gender through a firmly
“biological approach… [in] which ‘sex’ is chromosomally dependent and thus
secured at birth. From this perspective, ‘gender’ is seen as the coherent
expression of biological sex,” (Hines, 2007:18). This analysis posits the
corporal as the primary site of sex, gender and oppression due to the ability
of men to exploit and abuse women’s bodies through sexual violence (MacKinnon, 1982). From this interpretation, both sex and gender
are stable, fixed categories and form a causal relationship in which one’s sex
necessarily determines one’s gender. It is this particular interpretation,
which I will be focusing on within the paper.
Arguably,
the principle intervention of queer theory into the study of gender is the
deconstruction of the sex/gender distinction by Butler (1990) in her seminal
work Gender Trouble. In an attempt to
destabilize feminist notions of ‘women’ as a stable vehicle for feminist
emancipatory politics, Butler examines the assumed distinction between ‘sex’
and ‘gender’. Here Butler critiques the traditional understanding of ‘sex’, wherein
sex denotes the biological, anatomical and chromosomal ‘facts’ of the body,
which dichotomously designate some bodies as male and others as female. As
noted previously, the radical feminist tradition constructed sex and gender as
separate but interrelated in that sex is destined by biology while gender is
cultural, i.e. if you are assigned female at birth you will be expected to
adhere to feminine gender norms. In
opposition to this, Butler aims to deconstruct and problematize our
understandings of the sex/gender divide in two ways, which I will examine in
turn.
First,
Butler poses the question: how do we know that sex is ‘natural’ fact while gender
is ‘culturally constructed’. Butler answers this by arguing that sex is in fact
culturally constructed too. Indeed, when one considers the feminist critiques
of objectivity and reason within political and social sciences, it becomes
reasonable to claim that ‘science’, and particularly the studies of biology in
which sex is ‘based’, is not objective and that the sexes have been
historically and discursively constructed so that they seem as though they have
always existed as natural facts (Butler, 1990; Hughes, 1995). Butler states that biological sex has ‘no ontological
status apart from the various acts which constitutes its reality,’ (Butler, 1990: 10). Indeed, she goes further by
arguing that the ‘sex/gender distinction’ collapses upon itself and that sex
was in fact gender all along (Butler, 1990: 7). Following
this thread, if we are to accept the assumption that gender is socially
constructed while sex is biological, Butler asks how can there be a stable
causal relationship between the two? If gender is radically independent from
sex in its socially constructed origins, Butler argues that gender becomes a
‘free-flowing artifice’ which is not necessarily dependent on sex (Butler, 1990:7). In
other words, how can gender and sex relate to one another in such a strict,
invariable and consistent way if the two are produced from different origins? Thus,
if gender and sex were socially constructed all along and have no direct
relationship to the body as previously claimed, it follows that any body may
present as masculine, feminine, or a combination of both. There are no essential attributes determining the sex
distinction between man and woman, instead the sex distinction is caused by the
illusion of gender maintained by repetition of gendered acts.
If
we take gender to be a ‘free flowing artifice’, one must question why certain
bodies adopt certain gender formations and how does this gendering operate? For
Butler, gender operates through a process known as ‘performativity’ (Butler, 1990: 25). Gender,
in this sense, is not a stable ‘noun’ but instead always ‘doing’ (Butler and Salih, 2002: 50).
Nevertheless, this is not to say that there is a subject acting out the
gendering process. Instead, there is no ‘natural body’, which pre-exists its
cultural formation. In addition, Butler is keen to note that gender
performativity is unlike other cultural productions in that it is ‘a set of
repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory framework’ (Butler, 1990: 25).
This inclusion illuminates how gender can be seen as a hierarchical, oppressive
structure wherein individuals have little agency to break free from normative
gender stereotypes and highlights how an analysis of gender cannot solely focus
on the results of gender - in terms of our relations to others – but also how
gender operates itself as a regulatory and prohibitive social institution.
While
the theory of performativity has great potential for our understandings of gender,
it is the deconstruction of the ‘sex/gender divide’ from Butler, which I wish
to develop further due to its ramifications for theorizing trans and non-binary
gender identities. As I have noted previously, radical feminists have held onto
the dyadic, binary and biologically determined interpretation of gender and
this has often resulted in erasure and alienation of trans and non-normative
identities within their analysis of gender. As Monro
states: “[…] feminism is problematic as a basis for analyzing trans in that its
locus rests on male–female categorization” (2000: 36). In other words, if there
are only two sexes (male and female) and gender is an expression of sex, then
logically it must follow that there will only be two genders (men and women). Furthermore,
due to the assumed biological rooting of gender one cannot possible exhibit a
gender that does not conform to their assigned sex at birth. However, due to
the substantial research into the subject and testimony from the trans
community, this is clearly not the case – there are many whose gender does not
align with the sex they were assigned at birth and there are those who do not
conform to the gender norms expected of them by society (Hines, 2007; Monro and Warren, 2004; Monro, 2000). Similarly,
Monro and Warren
notes: “Transgender poses a serious threat to feminism. Feminisms, particularly
radical feminism, are based on the notion of an unequal gender-binaried system.
Transgender scrambles gender binaries and opens up the space beyond or between
simple male–female categorization,” (2004: 354). Therefore, when we collapse
the ‘sex/gender divide’ and consider sex and gender to be both socially
constructed one is presented with multiple, varied and flexible ways of knowing
and experiencing both sex and gender. In contrast to radical feminist
approaches, Butler’s deconstruction holds the potential for various
presentations and lived experiences of masculinity and femininity, which are
not tied to biological sex. In support of this, Hines notes: “These ideas can
be incorporated into a contemporary understanding of transgender that allows
for a multiplicity of embodied gendered identities and expressions,” (Hines, 2007: 22–23).
While
queer theory has provided a necessary insight into the workings of the
sex/gender system and the formation and expression of non-normative genders
through performativity, these developments have not come without criticism from
transgender and non-binary theorists. Regardless of whether queer theory has
provided us with a theoretical framework to understand how transgender
subjectivities come to be, it has often failed to attend to the ways trans and
non-normative identities are subordinated within the gender hierarchy and wider
society. Indeed, it is arguable that queer theory has often failed to provide a
material analysis of gender, which articulates how gender acts a hierarchical
institution within culture. As MacDonald
notes:
In
its promotion of transgender identity as a transcendence of identity,
postmodern theory assimilates transgender to its own intellectual project
through presenting transgendered experiences as chimera, play, performance or
strategy. It does so at the expense of investigating the actual lives,
political demands, or feelings expressed by transgendered people of having an
identity that is often experienced as ‘authentic’ or ‘integral’ and that it is
considered to be neither ‘chosen’ originally nor ‘performed’ strategically. (MacDonald,
1998: 4)
In other words, what
is the value of a theory of gender, which provides abstract possibilities for
freedom, yet fails to account for or address the lived experiences, oppression
and subordination of those it seeks to analyze? Indeed, this critique takes aim
at the postmodern roots of queer theory and resembles much of the criticism
originally put forward by feminist theorists. Historically, materialist feminism
was understood as synonymous with socialist and Marxist theories of capitalism,
patriarchy and the state. These theories stood in opposition to radical
feminism’s focus on gender difference, instead situating women’s oppression as
a result of the capitalist mode of production. While there has undoubtedly been
a turn away from Marxist and socialist feminisms in recent years, one should
not ‘reduce the material to capitalist economic relations,’ (Jackson, 2001: 283).
Rather, a materialist analysis within the context of analyzing non-normative
gender identities, would attend to trans and non-binary experiences of economic
exploitation, low-waged labor, physical abuse, sexual violence, housing
vulnerability, access to health care and education. Indeed, this change in
approach could be understood as a localizing and specifying of the social and
economic inequalities experienced by trans and non-binary communities. Thereby
inherently conforming to queer theory’s postmodern dismissal of ‘grand
narratives’ and ‘objective truths’, while still addressing the particular
oppression faced by trans and non-binary people on the basis of gender
hierarchy. By incorporating a materialist analysis into the queer understanding
of gender, one would be able to deconstruct biologically determinist and
trans-exclusionary practices while also addressing how adoption of the ‘sex/gender
divide’ manifests in the material lives of trans people.
In addition to a lack
of materialist analysis, queer theories have often neglected the specific social,
political locations and specific differences of their subjects – particularly
in terms of race, class and disability. Indeed, the transgender and non-binary
community - like all cultural subjects -
are constructed in relation to multiple variables such as gender, sexuality,
‘race’ and ethnicity, class, age, transitional time span and geographical
location (Hines, 2007: 49). As Nagoshi and Brzuzy note:
If multiple oppressed social identities are merely the
product of multiple social forces, all of which can be queered, there is no
explanation of how individuals navigate these multiple identities, nor is there
a basis for using these identities as a source of empowerment for opposing
oppression. (2010:434)
Arguably the most
productive tool for examining multiple oppressions and positionalities is ‘intersectionality’,
first coined by Crenshaw, a critical race theorist, in 1989. In recent years,
intersectionality has gained prominence within feminist and wider sociological
research and has illuminated how gender, as a category of analysis, is
reflexively constituted by other factors. Collins
argues that intersectionality is the ‘‘analysis claiming that systems of race,
social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually
constructing features of social organization, which shape Black women’s
experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women’’ (2000: 299) However,
the aim is not only to argue that, for instance, a black trans woman is
oppressed by both gender binarism and racism; but also to highlight how racism
and the gender binary intersect to create a co-constituting additional form of
oppression. While Crenshaw originally utilized intersectionality to examine how
black women in the US are discriminated by the legal system due to their double
marginalization, the tool is clearly applicable here also. Indeed, it is
particularly productive when used to illuminate the specific differences
experienced by trans and non-binary identities who inhabit various
positionalities. Thus,
when examining the oppression of the trans and non-binary community through an
intersectional analysis, one must examine how positionalities (e.g., race, social class, ethnicity, disability etc.)
intersect to inform various formations of gender and gender expression. Examining
how trans people of colour in the US constitute intersectional subjects, de Vries (2014:4) states:
The identities experienced,
performed, and resisted by trans people serve as reflections of the
multidimensional ways in which institutions and social systems combine and
produce specific positions and facets of inequality…Trans people in the USA change genders in relation to
androcentric, middle-class, white-normative, and heterocentric cultural
narratives.
Indeed,
working class trans people of colour in the USA are disproportionately targeted
for violence and state sanction with the trans community - particularly
those who are underemployed and/or people of color- experiencing incarceration
at higher rates than cisgender persons and, when incarcerated, are often placed
in a prison incongruent with their gender identification (Johnson, 2013: 141). In
addition to this, transgender and non-binary prisoners are often denied access
to hormone treatment in spite of legislation purported to protect such
treatments and experience sexual violence at significantly higher rates than
cisgender inmates (Wallace, 2007). Considering this, it becomes clear that
gender, as both an analytic category and a self-defined identity, are not only
fluid, multiple and dynamic within themselves, but also highly reflexive and
malleable due to its intersection with other social and political locations and
positions. Trans and non-binary genders cannot be understood solely in terms of
gender dominance and hierarchy, but also through the lens of race, class, ethnicity,
age, etc.
Perhaps the most
illuminating example of how a queer theory of gender is incomplete without
additional materialist and intersectional analysis is the critique of Butler’s
‘Gender is burning’ (1993), which examines the film, Paris is Burning (1991). A documentary which bares the lives of Black
and Latino gay men, drag queens and trans people of colour in the Harlem
house/ball scene (Haritaworn, 2008: 3). Butler accepts the film as an ethnography and
critiques which bodies, behaviors and identities are most ‘transgressive’ and
ultimately ‘queer’; thus representing the problematic practice of ‘queering
from above’ as examined within Haritaworn's work (2008: 3).This
‘queering from above’ can be seen as a lack of both intersectional
positionality and empirical, materialist analysis; ultimately resulting in a
white-centric, classist and cis-orientated interpretation of trans
subjectivities and lives (Haritaworn, 2008: 3). Therefore,
a truly representational and critical understanding of gender must incorporate
the queer deconstruction of ‘stable’, essentialist categories of sex and
gender, the materialist attention to lived experiences of oppression and the
intersectional lens which focuses on the specificity and difference between and
within assumed communities of queer, trans and non-binary genders.
In
sum, I have argued that queer theory has been presented a persuasive and
immensely productive intervention into gender theory due to its theoretical
potential for inclusion and analysis of non-normative gender identities and
expressions. By deconstructing the sex/gender divide, Butler allows for
multiple gendered embodiments and expressions. This presents an invaluable
development in our understandings of gender, which have often been rooted in
biologically determinist, radical feminist analysis which foster
trans-exclusion and erasure within gender theory. Nevertheless, no theory is
without its criticisms. Transgender theorists and feminists alike have
critiqued queer’s emphasis on meta-theory rather than lived experience and
material oppression. I hope to have shown that this criticism can be overcome
by incorporating the feminist tools of intersectionality and materialist
analysis which attends to the lived experiences of discrimination and violence
faced by trans and non-normative gender identities while also paying close
attention to the specific differences between and within the trans community.
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