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Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People
Invisible Lives is the first scholarly study of transgendered people—cross-dressers, drag queens and transsexuals—and their everyday lives.
Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased , or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law.
Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased , or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law.
320 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 27, 2008
The perfect book to wrench an undergraduate Gender Studies student's head out of masturbatory gender theory clouds. I admire Namaste's illustration of the material realities of trans/gendered experiences. This is a necessary counterpoint - and complement - to those poststructuralists who would have us believe that "gender doesn't matter," "everyone is trans" or "gender isn't real".
March 28, 2019
Bad world! This was very upsetting! I kept having to take breaks! Now I am mad at a bunch more stuff than I was before! Or it affirmed that I should be mad at it!! Extremely good book
April 14, 2024
Namaste's book argues that transgender peoples are not produced by either medical or psychiatric processes but rather through a complex process of erasure that seeks to deny them recognition in society. While a fascinating approach too often the argument is mired in the over-complicated language that Namaste uses in the book. The book wants to straddle the line between semiotic theory and lived experience and is not really successful at either.
This book is centrally concerned with research on transgendered people. The word ‘transgender’ is an umbrella term used to refer to all individuals who live outside of normative sex/gender relations-that is, individuals who gendered self presentation (evidence through dress, mannerisms, and even physiology) does not correspond to the behaviours habitually associated with the members of their biological sex. A variety of different identities are included within the ‘transgender’ label: cross-dressers, or individuals who wear the clothes associated with the ‘opposite’ sex, often for erotic gratification; drag queens, or men who usually live and identify as gay men, but who perform as female impersonators and gay male bars and leisure spaces; and transsexuals, or individuals who take hormones and who may undergo surgery to align their biological sexes with their genders. [1] 1
Even when nontransexual women, transexual women, and males and drag are allowed in gay male establishments, they remain peripheral to the activities at hand. Drag queens, for example, are tolerated as long as they remain in a space clearly designated for performance: the stage. According to Michelle de Ville, interviewed in the fans scene Fuzzbox (circa 1990), ‘the drag queen in the gay world is meant to be on stage or ‘walking’ the streets. Don't get off the stage, baby! It's like the bird in the Gilded cage.’ 10-11
For instance, she [Anne Bolin] maintains that a specifically transgender identity is a relatively recent phenomenon, which can be understood with reference to three factors: ‘(1) the closing of University affiliated gender clinics [in the United States], (2) the grassroots organizational adoption of a political agenda, and (3) social alternatives to embodiments of femininity as somatic frailty.’ [14. Bolin, “Transcending and Transgendering,” 462] 26
In The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, Janice Raymond argues that transsexuals are created through medicine. [41. Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon, 1979)]. 33
Consider again the analysis of transexual activists Gobeil and Ross that transsexuals are erased from the work of ASOs through the use of sex identity categories-“men” and “women”-preclude pre-operative, non-operative, and post-operative transsexuals. 50
This book suggests that erasure is a defining condition of transexual and transgender people. Challenging critics and queer theory and objectivist sociology, I believe that academics need to shift their focus radically, investigating some of the unremarkable aspects of transexual lives in a variety of cultural and institutional sites. Whereas previous medical and psychiatric discourses produce transsexuals, I suggest that transexual and transgendered people our produced through erasure, and that this erasure is organized at a micrological level, in the invisible functions of discourse and rhetoric, that taken for granted practises of institutions, and the unforeseen consequences of social policy. 53
Currently in Anglo America, transgendered identities are conceived as a function of lesbian/gay identity politics. This framework does not respect the diverse way transexual and transgendered people make sense of themselves. 64
As Halberstam demonstrates, Anglo-American discussions about transexual and transgendered people habitually assumed that we should be politically aligned with lesbian and gay communities, that we should organize ourselves according to their model. This position ignores the ‘community’ work in which transsexuals are already engaged: collecting money to be used for posting bail when transexual and transvestite prostitutes are arrested; reclaiming the bodies of transsexuals from the city morgue; Sharing information about hormones, doctors and surgeons; showing one another their scars and their bodies; educating one another about police entrapment of prostitutes; providing shelter for transsexuals rejected by friends, Family, and social services; offering tips on preparing for surgery; and cleaning and cooking for a friend recovering from an operation. These are among the invisible actions performed by transsexuals to support and sustain one another. 65
Canadian activist Mirha-Soleil Ross articulate an important distinction between Canadian and American transexual and transgendered people:
One thing that's interesting about Canada as opposed to the U.S. is that the activism that's very visible and thriving and alive and strong here [in Canada] revolves a lot around access to social services…[A] lot of the organizations and the programs that are out there right now, and that are very visible, are started by people who come from the street and that's a very big difference from the U.S….[P]ersonally I feel it's resistance to the hegemony of the transgender American discourse… so that's interesting in Canada, it's something to be happy about. [55. Mirha-Soleil Ross, presentation at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, June 1998] 66
Transsexuals obtain their hormones on the street for several reasons. First, it is extremely difficult to find a Doctor Who is willing to prescribe hormones. This creates a situation in which transsexuals by their home runs on the street even when they would like to secure them through a doctor and have their health monitored…161
The transsexuals in this survey expressed their need to “prove” themselves as “really” transexual in the eyes of their psychiatrist and doctors. Even when they found doctors who would prescribe hormones willingly, most transsexuals were expected to provide letters and supporting documentation from a psychiatrist. 163
Transgendered people read what psychiatrists write about them-who they are, how they live, why they are transsexuals-in order to facilitate their access to hormones and/or SRS…
The skewed nature of interactions among transgendered people and their caregivers is amply illustrated in the sociological literature. Ethno-methodologist Harold Garfinkel presented the case of Agnes, biological male who presented herself to the UCLA neuropsychiatric clinic in the late 1950s with a scrotum, penis, and breasts, and who both lived and identified as a woman [11. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 116-85, 285-88] 192
Several years following her surgery, Agnes revealed that she had been ingesting oestrogen since the age of twelve. This new information additional light on her case. Agnes had carefully constructed her presentation or self to the doctors, psychiatrists, and other professionals at UCLA, understanding that a diagnosis of intersexuality would facilitate her access to vaginal constructive surgery. She was not, however, a “true” intersex individual, despite the conferral of that label to her case by prominent American psychiatrists. Agnes was a transexual. 193
The Clarke GIC has an active flight list of approximately 300 patients, meaning that about 300 people consult them at least once a year…. The GIC has established guidelines for their patients to be eligible for SRS. The individual must live in the chosen gender (the “opposite sex”) full-time for at least two years. The GIC requires that this person provided written documentation supporting this claim. People can work, study, or do volunteer work full-time in order to meet this requirement. People can also engage in a variety of these activities… as long as the total is equivalent to full-time worker school. This requirement is commonly referred to as the real life test.
After one year of cross living, the individual becomes eligible for hormones. An endocrinologist associated with the GIC monitors the health of clients who obtained their hormones through the GIC. After two years of cross living, the individual becomes eligible for surgery. Before being recommended for surgery, however, a candidate must fulfil several other conditions: be legally divorced, once married; be at least 21 years of age; have no evidence of psychosis; and have no recent record of criminal activity. 198-199
An interview in the transgendered magazine Chrysalis Quarterly [CQ]…203
This book is centrally concerned with research on transgendered people. The word ‘transgender’ is an umbrella term used to refer to all individuals who live outside of normative sex/gender relations-that is, individuals who gendered self presentation (evidence through dress, mannerisms, and even physiology) does not correspond to the behaviours habitually associated with the members of their biological sex. A variety of different identities are included within the ‘transgender’ label: cross-dressers, or individuals who wear the clothes associated with the ‘opposite’ sex, often for erotic gratification; drag queens, or men who usually live and identify as gay men, but who perform as female impersonators and gay male bars and leisure spaces; and transsexuals, or individuals who take hormones and who may undergo surgery to align their biological sexes with their genders. [1] 1
Even when nontransexual women, transexual women, and males and drag are allowed in gay male establishments, they remain peripheral to the activities at hand. Drag queens, for example, are tolerated as long as they remain in a space clearly designated for performance: the stage. According to Michelle de Ville, interviewed in the fans scene Fuzzbox (circa 1990), ‘the drag queen in the gay world is meant to be on stage or ‘walking’ the streets. Don't get off the stage, baby! It's like the bird in the Gilded cage.’ 10-11
For instance, she [Anne Bolin] maintains that a specifically transgender identity is a relatively recent phenomenon, which can be understood with reference to three factors: ‘(1) the closing of University affiliated gender clinics [in the United States], (2) the grassroots organizational adoption of a political agenda, and (3) social alternatives to embodiments of femininity as somatic frailty.’ [14. Bolin, “Transcending and Transgendering,” 462] 26
In The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, Janice Raymond argues that transsexuals are created through medicine. [41. Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon, 1979)]. 33
Consider again the analysis of transexual activists Gobeil and Ross that transsexuals are erased from the work of ASOs through the use of sex identity categories-“men” and “women”-preclude pre-operative, non-operative, and post-operative transsexuals. 50
This book suggests that erasure is a defining condition of transexual and transgender people. Challenging critics and queer theory and objectivist sociology, I believe that academics need to shift their focus radically, investigating some of the unremarkable aspects of transexual lives in a variety of cultural and institutional sites. Whereas previous medical and psychiatric discourses produce transsexuals, I suggest that transexual and transgendered people our produced through erasure, and that this erasure is organized at a micrological level, in the invisible functions of discourse and rhetoric, that taken for granted practises of institutions, and the unforeseen consequences of social policy. 53
Currently in Anglo America, transgendered identities are conceived as a function of lesbian/gay identity politics. This framework does not respect the diverse way transexual and transgendered people make sense of themselves. 64
As Halberstam demonstrates, Anglo-American discussions about transexual and transgendered people habitually assumed that we should be politically aligned with lesbian and gay communities, that we should organize ourselves according to their model. This position ignores the ‘community’ work in which transsexuals are already engaged: collecting money to be used for posting bail when transexual and transvestite prostitutes are arrested; reclaiming the bodies of transsexuals from the city morgue; Sharing information about hormones, doctors and surgeons; showing one another their scars and their bodies; educating one another about police entrapment of prostitutes; providing shelter for transsexuals rejected by friends, Family, and social services; offering tips on preparing for surgery; and cleaning and cooking for a friend recovering from an operation. These are among the invisible actions performed by transsexuals to support and sustain one another. 65
Canadian activist Mirha-Soleil Ross articulate an important distinction between Canadian and American transexual and transgendered people:
One thing that's interesting about Canada as opposed to the U.S. is that the activism that's very visible and thriving and alive and strong here [in Canada] revolves a lot around access to social services…[A] lot of the organizations and the programs that are out there right now, and that are very visible, are started by people who come from the street and that's a very big difference from the U.S….[P]ersonally I feel it's resistance to the hegemony of the transgender American discourse… so that's interesting in Canada, it's something to be happy about. [55. Mirha-Soleil Ross, presentation at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, June 1998] 66
Transsexuals obtain their hormones on the street for several reasons. First, it is extremely difficult to find a Doctor Who is willing to prescribe hormones. This creates a situation in which transsexuals by their home runs on the street even when they would like to secure them through a doctor and have their health monitored…161
The transsexuals in this survey expressed their need to “prove” themselves as “really” transexual in the eyes of their psychiatrist and doctors. Even when they found doctors who would prescribe hormones willingly, most transsexuals were expected to provide letters and supporting documentation from a psychiatrist. 163
Transgendered people read what psychiatrists write about them-who they are, how they live, why they are transsexuals-in order to facilitate their access to hormones and/or SRS…
The skewed nature of interactions among transgendered people and their caregivers is amply illustrated in the sociological literature. Ethno-methodologist Harold Garfinkel presented the case of Agnes, biological male who presented herself to the UCLA neuropsychiatric clinic in the late 1950s with a scrotum, penis, and breasts, and who both lived and identified as a woman [11. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 116-85, 285-88] 192
Several years following her surgery, Agnes revealed that she had been ingesting oestrogen since the age of twelve. This new information additional light on her case. Agnes had carefully constructed her presentation or self to the doctors, psychiatrists, and other professionals at UCLA, understanding that a diagnosis of intersexuality would facilitate her access to vaginal constructive surgery. She was not, however, a “true” intersex individual, despite the conferral of that label to her case by prominent American psychiatrists. Agnes was a transexual. 193
The Clarke GIC has an active flight list of approximately 300 patients, meaning that about 300 people consult them at least once a year…. The GIC has established guidelines for their patients to be eligible for SRS. The individual must live in the chosen gender (the “opposite sex”) full-time for at least two years. The GIC requires that this person provided written documentation supporting this claim. People can work, study, or do volunteer work full-time in order to meet this requirement. People can also engage in a variety of these activities… as long as the total is equivalent to full-time worker school. This requirement is commonly referred to as the real life test.
After one year of cross living, the individual becomes eligible for hormones. An endocrinologist associated with the GIC monitors the health of clients who obtained their hormones through the GIC. After two years of cross living, the individual becomes eligible for surgery. Before being recommended for surgery, however, a candidate must fulfil several other conditions: be legally divorced, once married; be at least 21 years of age; have no evidence of psychosis; and have no recent record of criminal activity. 198-199
An interview in the transgendered magazine Chrysalis Quarterly [CQ]…203
November 10, 2008
This profound book inspired me to write a paper on trans health care. I began thinking about what changes are needed in our culture in order to support the kind of care and attention specific to trans individuals in regards to health and wellness. My studies eventually led me to complete contract at Evergreen in 2004 on FTM transsexuals.
September 22, 2008
I loved the shit out of this book when I first read it. I was entrenched in social sciences literature and at the time it was refreshing to read a trans academic with so much shit to talk. I read it with my partner at the time and we never really could figure out how visibility and invisibility worked for her, what it meant to "erase" trans people, really. She urges literature on trans people to actually be about their everyday lives, but how "erasure" operates on a day-to-day level isn't clear in this text.
June 21, 2012
seminal book on trans issues, from a bit of a detached, but not dispassionate writer.
Read
October 10, 2014305.9066 N1742 2000
February 23, 2016
pretty good but not much new to me
also, haven been written 16 years ago, the language is outdated. a newer edition would be great.
also, haven been written 16 years ago, the language is outdated. a newer edition would be great.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews