Transgender Scholarship Proliferates

The late 1990s saw a rise in the number of scholarly texts exploring gender, transgender identity, and transsexuality, reflecting an increase in academic interest in transgender issues and the beginning of transgender studies in higher education.

Date 1990s

Key Figures

• Jay Prosser female-to-male transgender scholar
• Judith Halberstam (b. 1961), transgender scholar
• Dallas Denny (b. 1949), male-to-female transgender author

Summary of Event

Women’s studies and gay and lesbian studies paved the way for the emergence of the more expansive fields of queer studies and queer theory as areas of academic inquiry in universities and colleges in the 1990s, but not all scholars or activists were satisfied with how queer studies often neglected to examine transgenderism and transsexuality. Many scholars felt that transgender and transsexual issues and concerns were either enveloped, and subsequently erased, under the umbrella of homosexuality, were labeled complicit in maintaining the male/female binary system for classifying sexed identities, or both. In response, the late 1990s saw a proliferation of texts centered on transgender and transsexual concerns and the emergence of a new and distinct field of academic investigation called transgender studies.

Jay Prosser’s Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality (1998), was the first in-depth study of transsexual autobiography, detailing how narrative and body interact to illuminate transsexual identity. Prosser’s work examines the body and its borders, critiques poststructuralist theories about the body and its relationship to language, and then presents his own theories of the body as transsexual. He explores and discusses a number of transsexual autobiographies and two well-known works of fiction featuring transgender characters: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) and Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993). Prosser’s work also contains more than thirty photographs of individuals identifying as transsexual.

A variety of other scholarly works that helped to illuminate the numerous and varied facets of transgender studies were published in 1998. Judith “Jack” Halberstam’s book Female Masculinity was the first full-length study of its kind. In the book, Halberstam argues that, rather than merely imitating masculine characteristics, female masculinity constitutes its own unique configuration of various gender identity markers. The book presents a historical analysis of the development of female masculinity, starting with nineteenth century behaviors and progressing to the drag king performances of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It also includes numerous photos, including portraits, movie stills, and shots from drag king competitions.

Also published in 1998 was the fifth version of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s (HBIGDA) Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders, first published in 1979 (a sixth version was published in 2001). The manual, a guide for mental and medical health professionals who diagnose and treat individuals seeking gender reassignment, explores assessment and treatment for adolescents, psychotherapy, hormone therapy, breast and genital surgery, and post-transition follow up. In a significant development that improved the relationship between the transgender community and medical and other health professionals, the HBIGDA elected transgender and transsexual individuals to its board of directors in 1997.

Dallas Denny, a male-to-female (MTF) transgender woman, edited a collection of essays titled Current Concepts in Transgender Identity (1998), which explore developments in cultural and social theories about transgender experiences and examine advancements in medical treatment and technology. Essays address topics such as mythology, cross-cultural connections, free expression, cross-dressing, sexual orientation, family therapy, and hormone treatment. In 1994, Denny published Gender Dysphoria: A Guide to Research, an extensive bibliography that lists works of fiction and nonfiction, including book chapters, journal articles, and legal cases on what has been called "gender dysphoria." The term is generally used in medical settings to describe any distress experienced by transgender individuals due to a difference between their gender identity and the gender they were assigned at birth.

Also, new academic journals emerged in the late 1990s, adding to a group of already established academic journals that were beginning to address transgender studies and transgender theories. In 1997, The International Journal of Transgenderism made its debut, focusing on transgender issues and the social sciences. The academic journal GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, published a special edition of its journal on transgenderism, edited and introduced by Susan Stryker. Contributors to this issue include Halberstam, C. Jacob Hale, Cheryl Chase, and Katrina Roen. Topics ranged from the role of phenomenology in transgender studies, to questions of embodiment and politics, to mass-media dissemination of information about gender-change technology, to the "border wars" between butch lesbians and female-to-male (FTM) transsexual or transgender men. At least four other academic journals addressed transgenderism in the late 1990s: Social Text, Journal of Gender Studies, Velvet Light Trap, and Sexualities.

Significance

Transgender studies is still developing as a field of critical inquiry in universities and colleges, and its impact is still evolving, even beyond the academic sphere. The increase in transgender scholarship has opened the door not only to more academic studies of gender and sex identity but also to the inclusion of transgender issues in social and political commentary and to transgender civil rights. The foundation-laying work of the 1990s led to a marked increase in media coverage of transgender issues in the twenty-first century, though efforts toward equality continued to be resisted by many social conservatives.

In 2016, the field of transgender studies was further legitimized with the creation of the first endowed academic chair position dedicated to the field, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. The position was established through a donation from American philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, herself a transgender woman, and the inaugural chair was sociologist Dr. Aaron Devor, a transgender man.

Bibliography

Denny, Dallas, ed. Current Concepts in Transgender Identity. New York: Garland, 1998.

Denny, Dallas. Gender Dysphoria: A Guide to Research. New York: Garland, 1994.

Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues: A Novel. Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1993.

Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.

Hale, C. Jacob. “Consuming the Living, Dis(re)membering the Dead in the Butch/FTM Borderlands.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4, no. 2 (April, 1998): 311-328.

Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association. Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders. 6th version. http://www.hbigda .org/soc.htm.

Kaplan, Rose. "Jennifer Pritzker's Foundation Gives $2 million for Transgender Studies at Canadian University." Tablet, 21 Jan. 2016, www.tabletmag.com/scroll/196981/jennifer-pritzkers-foundation-gives-2-million-for-transgender-studies-at-canadian-university. Accessed 13 Jun. 2017.

Namaste, Viviane K. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Prosser, Jay. Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Prosser, Jay. “Skin Memories.” In Thinking Through the Skin, edited by Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Stryker, Susan. The Transgender Issue. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4, no. 2 (1998).

Stryker, Susan, ed. “Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10, no. 2 (2004).

Wilson, Robin. “Transgendered Scholars Defy Convention, Seeking to be Heard and Seen in Academe.” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 6, 1998.