Butler Revisited: Trans, Nonbinary and Intersectional Experiences

 bell hooks: Is ParisBurning?

• In a misogynist, racist culture, black men in "drag" portray black women with ridicule.
• They feel emasculated by white supremist culture (feel like symbolic women) and so act hyper-masculine and display high levels of homophobia and hyper-masculine aggression.
• also can be a critique of the hyper-masculine sensibility in Black Culture
• When objects of admiration become fetishized version of rich white women, they cease to be subversive if they ever were.
• What is hooks critique of Jennie Livingston, the director?
• what is the significance of her identity?
• Does she ignore intersectional issues?
• Are Balls supporting the hegemony?
• How do you feel about Hooks representation of (mostly White) audiences reaction to the film as funny? Did you think it was funny? Tragic?
• What do you make of Dorian Carey in the film? How does hooks analysis fit into her critique of Livingston?
• Did you find the film to be about spectacle or struggle?
• Is the ballroom schene inherently subversive?

Against Performativity

• How is a performativity which proposes a lack of a "subject" critiqued?
• "In articulating gender as a social performance, Butler loses sight of what makes trans people so important. It is our biological differences that compel her to attempt to explain us in the first place. We have taken the biology which was used to situate us in a given location of the social order – our bodies – and turned them into a site of resistance against that order. Butler therefore has it backwards when she writes ‘The loss of gender norms would have the effect of proliferating gender configurations.’ In fact, it is gender non-conformity – our active proliferation of gender configurations – that is destroying gender norms. "
• Further, our bodies do not exist in one of two possible sexual modes which are then, at the social level, divided into the genders that inscribe meanings not otherwise present onto that biological dichotomy. The dichotomy itself is false. In early infancy, the difference between a ‘penis’ and a ‘clitoris’ is a quantitative measurement. The apparent qualitative distinction is created by a violent destruction of the middle ground that bridges the two through the surgical mutilations of intersex babies. Then over the course of a child's development numerous environmental and biological factors typically cause that mere quantitative distinction to develop into a qualitative difference in one direction or another.
• This condition is by no means unique to trans people – Hortense Spillers articulates ungendering in the condition of chattel slavery, C. Riley Snorton formulates it at the intersection of Blackness and transness, and Audre Lorde relates it to disability through the experience of breast cancer. I analyse it here with particular regards to transness, on the understanding that ‘gender conformity’ cannot be understood in totality through gender alone.

TOMBOIS

• At home, tombois are given a certain level of autonomy and mobility that they would likely otherwise not receive as gendered women. Tommi discusses his habit of “sleeping here and there” 
•  although tombois do engage in masculine practices, they are still viewed by society as women. Therefore, tombois are able to engage in activities with their girlfriends that biological men would be shamed for participating in.
• Tombois’ sense of self transgresses normative notions of masculinity and femininity. Furthermore, their positionality differs from other men, and despite the differences, Tombois do not feel less masculine because of it.

Nonbinary Identity

• Gender is cultural. Anthropologists have identified dozens of identities, in societies ancient and contemporary, that don’t fit into our current Western definitions of male and female, from India’s Hijra to Italian femminielli and Native American two-spirits. 
• Is gender a spectrum? What about the legalityof gender identities and what is the relationship to the physical body?
• Is there subjectivity outside of culture?

Hijras of India

• The history of the hijra, (defined as “effeminate ‘other'”), in India is intertwined with religion, general cultural recognition and acceptance of the hijra’s existence within society (Patel 2010:836). 
• Many religious texts (i.e., the Ramayana and the Mahabharata) refer to the existence and working of the hijra within Indian communities (Patel 2010:840). 
• The hijra are directly associated and devoted to the Hindu Mother Goddess, Bahuchara Mata who governs their existence and function within Indian society (Patel 2010:840).

The Western Binaries Stay In The West..

• The hijra is considered to be apart of a ‘third gender’ which identifies with feminine roles, characteristics, and the use of the pronoun ‘she’, yet at the same time being neither male nor female (Patel 2010:863).
•  This third gender is the equivalent of the  West’s transgender definition, yet hijras are not expected to go through a formal sex change operation (i.e., Do not receive a vagina in exchange for a penis, in this case its a lose-lose sex organ situation – no room for indecision here!). 
• This process of transitioning into the third gender is reserved only for males to females not female to male.

Be Sure, There’s No Room For Indecision Here!

• Hijras are recognized as an ‘intersex’ gender that do not identify as homosexuals, yet engage in technically homosexual acts with men while acting as females. 
• Under India’s anti-sodomy law the sexual acts of two men are illegal and used to discriminate against and suppress the hijras already marginalized position. Within male homosexuality there exists two groups – Panthis (masculine men who penetrate) and Kothis (feminine men who are penetrated) (Patel 2010:839). 
• Hijras are expected to conform completely to their feminine role culturally and religiously, unlike the Western definition of homosexual (Patel 2010:839). Making the decision to become a hijra is not made lightly, yet there are two forms of hijras that exist.

Just A Little Off The Top…. Wait, What?!

• Men who want to become Hijras must go through a process called nirvan (A title presumably associated with the Hindu religions desire to attain nirvana defined as – 
• “A state of supreme liberation and bliss, contrasted with samsara or bondage in the repeating cycle of death and rebirth” (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Nirvan). 
• This process is a ritual where castration of the male penis takes place. To become a hijra not all have to commit to losing their genitalia though they still must reject their masculinity and fully commit to a completely feminine lifestyle (Patel 2010:836).
• The process of complete castration is a very ritualized act when one wants to transition from a man to a hijra – the in between gender. 
• This is represented as a period of rebirth for a male who wishes to go through the process of becoming a hijra. 
• This is done by a dai ma – or a midwife after days of seclusion and preparation.
•  The “patient” is made to sit naked on a stool while entering into a trance-like state by continually repeating Mata (The Mother Goddess). 
• The midwife ties a string around the genitals and then makes two diagonal cuts severing both the penis and testicles and places a stick into the urethra to keep it from closing. 
• The newly born hijra is then left to bleed freely for it is seen as the maleness leaving the body and being replaced with their new identity (Patel 2010:835; Nanda 1999:27-28).

You Want To Be A Third Gender? You Want To Live In Our Community? You Better Work Hijra!

• Once the hijra has completed all of the ritual processes she then enters the hijra community or the gaharana (Patel 2010:840).
• These members of the community live together for protection purposes and also because they do not interact directly with general society. 
• Many of the hijra women are excluded from outside work, finding much of their income and livelihood stemming from prostitution and sex work (Patel 2010:841). 
• Aside from sex work, hijras also perform badhai – A tradition that uses hijras to bless babies and weddings (births – literally, and birth of new life together), yet this is more of a supplemental income to their work in prostitution (Patel 2010:837).
• Due to their seclusion and general marginalization, different pressures are put on the hijras because they are socially accepted but not represented within the legal workings of society. 
• They suffer from discrimination, sexual assault (by police officers, so nobody is there to protect them from the perpetrators whom also happen to be the protectors…), and due to the nature of their work they are affected health problems and HIV/AIDS (Patel 2010:853). 
• It is supposed that the hijra population has one of the highest percentages of those affected by HIV/AIDS at 18.1% (there are 2.5 to 3 million of suspected cases of HIV/AIDS in India) (Patel 2010:852). 
• The issue here is a never ending cycle of the spread of aids – because they have limited to no access to healthcare many infected hijras go untreated, transmit the infection to their clients, and then their clients go home and infect their wives, and it is passed along in a sort of domino effect (Patel 2010:857).

Full Circle

• The gender binaries of the West and the third gender of India differ from each other, yet there seems to be some unfair weight placed on hijras who are affected by HIV/AIDS. The HIV/AIDS epidemic historically stigmatized the homosexual population within the U.S. just as the hijras in India bear the brunt of the HIV/AIDS epidemic there. 
• Hijras, though socially accepted within India, are in a disadvantaged position within society and construct their new feminininites in constrained and marginalized ways. 
• Though these men go from a highly advantaged position in India’s patriarchy (by being men) to the lowest notch on the totem pole (by being not men or women, but feminine), the hijras construction of their third gender are essential to Indian culture and historical expression of transgender identities and way of life.

Barak Obama's Transgender nanny in Indonesia

Film (interview with filmmaker)

Back in the 1600s, before Islam even made its way to Indonesia, there was a tradition of cross-dressing priests on the island of Sulawesi. This tradition has helped the warias find more of an acceptance in modern day Indonesia. Everyone knows a waria personally or at least knows what “waria” means (as opposed to “gay” which can still befuddle some Indonesians). One of the biggest celebrities in Indonesia– on the scale of Oprah– is a waria by the name of Dorce. 

This doesn’t mean, however, that the warias are universally accepted. Religious extremists like the FPI make it their business to cause trouble for the waria community. Warias continue to be disadvantaged in areas of education, health care, and job opportunities. And though warias can make it big in entertainment or become the breadwinners of their families, parents rarely rejoice when they learn that their son is a waria. To be a waria is to live a life of contradictions. 

Tales of the Waria has been seen on PBS and several film festivals, including Outfest and Frameline. It received an audience choice award from the Barcelona Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and Best Documentary from the San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Director, Kathy Huang, explains more about the film in "Tales of the Waria: Inside Indonesia's Third-Gender Community" on Huffington Post.

In Indonesia biological men who believe that they are born with the souls of women are known as "warias." The term is a melding of two Indonesian words: "wanita" ("woman") and "pria" ("man"). As a group, warias are diverse, encompassing what we in America might call cross-dressers, transsexuals, drag queens, and effeminate gay men. What unites them is an irrepressible feminine spirit. 

I first learned about warias in 2005, when I saw a newspaper photograph of a gorgeous waria who had won a beauty contest in Jakarta. I knew about the "ladyboys" of Thailand, but I had no idea that transgender people could live so openly in Indonesia, a country with the world's largest Muslim population. Like many Americans I had this notion of Islam as being oppressive and particularly unforgiving toward sexual minorities. How could a community of warias possibly exist?

Three years later my curiosity as a filmmaker got the better of me.... I landed in Makassar, a coastal city in eastern Indonesia known for both its strong Muslim faith and historic openness toward transgender individuals.

I quickly discovered that warias in Indonesia are different from transgender women in the United States. For religious reasons, many are not interested in sex-reassignment surgeries. As one waria explained to me, "We believe we were born as men and must return to God as men." Warias also hold notions of womanhood that would dismay modern feminists; for many warias, the height of happiness is to find a "laki-laki asli," a manly man, and to spend their days looking after him.

Huang originally began with the intent of making a film about religion, but points out the complexities of understanding cultures from the outside. To Huang's credit she adapted her plan in collaboration with her subjects.

As an American entering the scene, my initial interest had been in the role Islam played in warias' lives. How did they negotiate their faith with their lifestyles? How did the members of their religious community receive them? When I approached warias with the idea of making a film on this topic, they were unenthused. "What for?" one waria asked. For them, religion was not a source of conflict in a way that an outsider might imagine.

In another interview,"Interview with Filmmaker Kathy Huang" on the Clyde Fitch Report, Huang says,

I think there have been people who have watched my film and are disappointed because they assume that they are going to come in and watch these transgender women harangued and abused by the Muslim community around them. Instead, you see something a little bit more complicated: a society where warias are both accepted and marginalized. People don’t always know how to interpret that; it’s so multi-layered, it’s not as simple as just, “Islam is bad” or “Islam is good.”

In "Q&A with Tales of the Waria director, Kathy Huang" by Mandy Hu from Hyphen Magazine, Huang says,

I think a lot of American audiences are surprised by what they see. Sometimes if I tell people about the premise of the film, their eyes widen and they say, “Life must be awful for the warias, with them being Muslim and all.” But the story is never as easy as that. We have this idea in the West that Islam is oppressive and unyielding. But the Islam you see in the film is largely tolerant. It’s not uncommon for warias to be out in the open and even celebrated.