University of Chicago doctoral student, J. Ckristafer Baker, supervised by Dr. Judith Farquhar, will undertake research on the relationship between personal and institutional constructions of culturally accepted ideas of male gender in the United States. Previous research on gender-identification reveals a tension between personal and mainstream (institutionalized) understandings, raising the question of where cultural norms originate. The research is designed to contribute to answering that question.
The research will be carried out in northern California. Research methodologies will include participation in the social and political life of differently identified men, ethnographic interviews, archival research into medical and legal management, and monitoring news and popular media. The overarching goal of this project is to investigate the microprocesses by which gender categories are constructed and maintained, and how they connect to legal, medical, psychotherapeutic, social-service, and educational practices.
The research will make important theoretical contributions to understanding the sources of cultural norms, which has significance for developing appropriate cultural policy and regulation, as well. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.
This project has just entered the transcription, analysis and write-up stage, and the following is only a brief summary of findings that will undoubtedly become more nuanced as the writing progresses. At this stage, trends in participants’ responses and attitudes toward medical procedures, daily gendered practice, interactions with State institutions, and social roles provide preliminary foci for analysis. First, of thirty-three participants only one expressed intent to pursue genital surgery. Several expressed interest, but intent was dependant on surgical progress to the degree that it is possible to create a fully-functioning penis. All participants placed greater emphasis on testosterone therapy and chest-reconstruction, which more immediately render gendered bodies by producing or eliminating physical characteristics such as facial hair, voice modulation, body-fat redistribution, and breast tissue. A cursory analysis of this trend (which is markedly different from earlier related literature) suggests personal understandings of gendered embodiment may be changing with progressive generations of transmen, at least among those living in an urban environment that permits, if not encourages, transgender identification. It also complicates psychoanalytical models regarding the significance of both the literal and symbolic "phallus". Second, despite their choice to forego genital surgery, most participants (particularly those who have begun testosterone therapy) "pass" socially as men, furthering the argument that "gender" is a dialectic: a process of gender-identification on the part of the subject and gender-recognition on the part of the interlocutor, which reifies the gender of both the subject and the interlocutor. This process of mutual reification complicates the notion of "passing" and interrogates the very stability of gender categories. "Passing" is usually understood as a subterfuge. If gender is indeed a dialectic—if it is about the interlocutor interpreting the visible without knowing what is not visible—then "passing" requires the cooperation of both parties. In other words "passing" is not a passive process. If anyone who believes that being "male" means "has a penis" infers that someone who does not have a penis is "male," then we must question the integrity of the gender categories that inform that inference. We must question, as this project hypothesizes, whether gender categories classify bodies and practices, or in fact produce bodies and practices. Third, participants’ responses regarding government recognition of a their gender varied considerably, and only a few of those born in a state that allows the sex on the birth certificate to be modified expressed a desire to do so. This may be particular to the region, as changing the sex on your driver’s license in California does not require a change of birth records, but only certification by a licensed medical practitioner. Also, more recent changes at the Federal level have made it less difficult to change one’s sex on a U.S. passport. Nonetheless, this trend also points to the importance of "the visible": I-9 documentation (Employment Eligibility Verification necessary for legal employment in the U.S.) typically requires either a passport, or the combination of a Driver's License and Social Security card (which does not state "sex"). Only in the absence of these documents does verification call for a birth certificate. And under ordinary circumstances official and unofficial demands for identification (traffic violations, purchasing alcohol, entering an age-restricted establishment) are satisfied by the presentation of a driver’s license, making it a more "visible" means of identification. Fourth, despite an evident desire to acquire recognizably male bodies through testosterone therapy or "top" surgery, participants’ understandings of what it means to be a Man rarely refer to physical characteristics. When asked if they identified as "men," very few participants were comfortable using the term without first defining it themselves. Traditional definitions of "man" were burdened by too much negativity and violence, and several participants expressed a desire to re-define, both for themselves and others, the meaning of the category. When asked to articulate their own definitions the majority of participants focused on the "role," on what a man "does," using language that nearly always indexed self-empowerment and responsibility: phrases such as "a man can defend himself," "stands up for what he believes,’’ "protects" himself and those he loves"; men are described as "independent," "confident," "decisive," and "present". What is most startling about these statements is how "Woman" is negatively constituted by these descriptions, and how it leads to questions regarding what informs our cultural understandings of gender categories. This project's focus on embodied practices and its insistence on understanding the Subject as a Body may lead to a new and novel approach to theorizing Gender, and perhaps help us understand the myriad ways 'Gender' overlaps other generative categories (i.e., Race, Ethnicity, Age, Disability) that describe (or perhaps inscribe) stylized forms of embodiment that, like Gender, can become vectors by which "members" of that category are marginalized.
