Belief in Essence: A Reexamination of Sex, Gender and Sexuality
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Lin, Ting-Chi
Abstract
For decades, the dominant anti-essentialist (also called constructionist) queer theorists have established a paradigm of gender fluidity in queer study. They criticize essentialism and stress the opposition between essentialism and constructionism concerning cross-gendered subjects, of which cross-dressers and transsexuals are often used as examples. In order to validate their arguments, theorists often assume that observers must have experienced ambiguity or uncertainty when they see cross-gendered subjects. Drawing on the experiences of both the audience of cross-dressing performances and partners of transsexuals, this thesis argues that those observers are capable of holding “multiple consciousness,” which means that they can perceive birth-assigned sex, physical sex and gender characteristics at the same time. As long as the observers know the cross-dresser’s physical sex or the transsexual’s birth-assigned sex, it is viewed as the inalterable essence of the cross-gendered subjects by the observer. Inevitably affected by prior knowledge, observers seldom experience the ambiguity or uncertainty as queer theorists argue. Any physical characteristic or behavior is therefore “gendered” according to that “prior knowledge” of the cross-gendered subject’s physical or genetic sex. However, observers do not perceive the essence purely. Their perceptions are unavoidably influenced by social stereotypes about sexual differences. This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is about the audience’s perception of physical sex in cross-dressing performances. In this chapter, I demonstrate how the use in Elizabethan and Jacobean England of boy actors cast as females and the use in Restoration England of actresses as males encouraged the audience to notice the physical sex of the performers. Furthermore, the audience’s published reflections on the performances of the world-famous Takarazuka Revue in Japan reveal that the audience is still able to read the physical bodies clearly even when the costumes are designed to conceal the actresses’ female bodies. The second chapter is concerned with transsexual relationships, focusing on the partners’ preference for a certain physical sex or birth-assigned sex of the transsexuals. Lana in the film of Boys Don’t Cry and Theresa in the novel of Stone Butch Blues are taken to discuss how the partners may stick to physical sex as the fundamental essence of a pre-operative and a post-operative transsexual. Pat Califia’s realization of his transsexual friend’s birth-assigned sex and examples of some transmen’s partners are applied to illustrate how genetic sex eventually replaces physical sex to be the fundamental essence. Many partners’ fixation on genetic sex turns out to be deeply affected by culturally rooted stereotypes. In Chapter Three, these prevalent and problematic stereotypes are discussed and made clear. Stereotypes are readily apparent in the gendering of sexual violence, which can mostly exemplify how the perception of gender is determined by the knowledge of the physical sex of those involved. In sexual violence women are often considered victims while men are often seen as perpetrators. Radical feminist arguments and anxiety on the “power” that is begotten to men with their male genitalia reveal the general assumption that perpetrators of sexual violence are primarily associated with male-bodied people solely. Sharon Marcus’s argument is used to point out how females are always immediately “gendered” and “sexualized” in sexual violence. In the end, I use the performances of The Constant Couple, the play of The Flirting Scholar, and two Taiwanese productions of Measure for Measure (both directed by Lu Po-shen) to demonstrate how sexual violence or threat is mitigated when the actresses take the perpetrating male roles.
Subjects
cross-dressing
transsexual
sexual violence
physical sex
observers
partners
Type
thesis