Week One: Introduction to a Genderqueer Points of View
The first week of the course is meant to provide a common jumping
off point for everyone in the class and to familiarize students with
the language specific to the movement. The structure of week one is
inverted with the expectation that there is no homework due for the
first class.
- A. Discussion
"A Subversive Glossary", Riki Anne Wilchins
--vocabulary relating to trans issues
- What do you know about transgender issues and
gender-difference?
- Why is this course relevant?
- B. Seminal Texts
"17 Things You DON'T Say To A Transexual", "What Does It Cost To Tell
The Truth?", "Imaginary Bodies, Imagining Minds", "A Fascism of Meaning",
Wilchins
- What does it cost provides an introduction to one person's lived reality
of gender-difference and how society reads the body?
- Imaginary bodies is
about the difficulties of speaking about a transgendered body and the
limits of categories.
- Both of these texts might be a starting point for
a discussion of the recognition of violence experienced as a result of
trans-ness and how to discuss that with respect.
- 17 things introduces humor and provides a disarming way to engage the
discourse.
- C: Seminal Texts cont.
Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein
Important points:
- Kate's refusal of a consistent, coherent, legible gender.
- The distinction between gender and sexual preference
- What do the performance pieces tell us about gender?
- What are the subjectivities performed?
Week Two: Visibility and Visuality: The Performance of Trans
- A: Trans-Looks
Body Alchemy, Loren Cameron; "Portrait Gallery", Leslie Feinberg;
"Imitation and Gender Insubordination", Judith Butler
- A discussion of trans may be informed by the subtext,
what does it look like?
-
This is by no means an exhaustive representation.
- Is this a subjectivity
legible by culture?
- How does it locate itself?
- What is its relationship
to the body?
- Does this break the rules and what are the results?
- How are
these images narratives of hope and a call for community?
- B: Trans Performance and Its Legibility
The Crying Game; "The Scorpion and the Frog", Amy
Zilliax; "Black Femmes Fatales...", James
- How does the intersection with race inform Jude's representation, performance
and subjectivity?
- How does the narrative treat disclosure and issues of
legibility with relation to Fergus/Jimmy?
- C: Discussion
- As Jude's hair held symbolic value for her identity construction, how do
you self-identify and what helps you perform that identification?
Week Three: Performed Subjectivities
- A: Three performances
M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang; "Videotape", Wilchins;
"A Man in the House: The Boyfriends of Travesti Prostitutes", Don Kulick
- How does Song's performance of the ideal woman disrupt binaries? How does
gender relate to desire?
- How can desire be constructed with relation to
trans issues?
- How do rules intersect with these performances?
- B: Trans through Time
Orlando; "Transgender, Transgenre, and the Transnational:
Sally Potter's Orlando", Anne Ciecko
- How is the performance of gender defined by social interaction and by a
partner?
- Is magical realism necessary to conceive of transgender?
- How do tropes of nationality intersect with gender difference?
- C: Discussion
- How does your national/ethnic identity influence your gender
identity/performance?
Week Four: Borderline Narratives
- A: On the Gender Border
Stone Butch Blues, Feinberg
- How do class and geography inform the gender presentation here?
- How does
Jess clash with the borders defined by lesbian feminism, butch-femme, and
the labor union?
- What is the text's relationship to eroticism?
- Can the shared experience of violence define a subjectivity?
- B: The Negotiation of Borders and Categories
"One is Not Born a Woman", Monique Wittig; "Passing", Carole-Anne Tyler;
"Why Identity Politics Really, Really Sucks", Wilchins
- What happens when gender is conceived of as a class?
- What is transgender's
relationship to passing?
- Is passing passe?
- Is identity politics passe?
- C: Discussion
- How do power dynamics function in Stone Butch Blues?
Week Five: Transsexual Autobiography
- A: The First Wave
"The Story of My Life", Christine Jorgensen; Second Serve, Renee Richards;
"Body, Technology, and Gender in Transsexual Autobiographies", Bernice L.
Hausman; "Transsexual Autobiography: The First Wave", Pat Califia
- Why is the narrative of the Jorgensen similar to a well made play or a
mystery serial?
- How do the Hausman and the Califia engage in dialogue?
- B: Documentary
You Don't Know Dick: Courageous Hearts of Transsexual Men, Northern Lights
Productions; "Unheimlich Manuvers: The Genres and Genders of
Transsexual Documentary", Christie Milliken
-
How are available gender stereotypes included in the subjectivity performance
of both the FTMs in the film and in the other readings?
- C: Discussion
- Do already circulating gender tropes inform your gender performance and
if so, how?
Week Six: Erotica
- A: Pulp Erotica
Roughriders website, especially "Slow Burn", Raven Caldera, "Eroticism: On
the Uses of Difference", Wilchins
- How does this erotica engage with the narrative form of the romance novel?
- Why are the differences/similarities important?
- B: PoMo Erotica
"Lines in the Sand, Cries of Desire", Wilchins; Justify My Love,
Madonna;
"Uses of the Erotic", Audre Lorde; "Stroking My Inner Fag", Jill Nagle;
"Leatherdyke Boys and Their Daddies", C. Jacob Hale
- How does erotica disrupt binaries?
- What can be extrapolated from Lorde's
lesbian-feminist text to read with trans erotica?
- What constitutes trans erotica?
- How does Madonna's pop culture text intersect with trans?
- C: Discussion
- Does erotic expression and desire ever follow a norm?
Week Seven: How Do We Read Trans Subjectivity?
Week Eight: The Body
- A: Can we lose it?
Nearly Roadkill, Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan
- How does the decision not to perform a gender influence interaction,
desire, disclosure?
- B: Did we really lose it?
"The Virtual Body in Cyberspace", Anne Balsamo
- Does cyberspace recodify gender tropes?
- Are we all cultural dupes?
- What are the limits of language?
- C: Discussion
- Why is the body important?
- What does its absence change?
- Relate a cyber experience.
Week Nine: The (Inter)sexed Body
- A: Biology
ISNA and Intersex Voices homepages; "The Five Sexes", Anne Fausto-Sterling
- How does language influence these subjectivities?
- B: Culture
"One Percent On the Burn Chart", David Valentine and Wilchins; "New Debate
Over Surgery on Genitals", Natalie Angier
- What comes of the alliance of intersex and trans?
- Why is intersex genital mutilation constructed as a defense against
homosexuality?
- How does that serve the parents?
- C: Discussion
-
How would you speak to a medical conference about intersex issues?
Week Ten: The Medical Establishment
- A: The Social Construction of Science
"Society Writes Biology/Biology Constructs Gender", Anne Fausto-Sterling;
Brain Sex "Quiz", Anne Moir and David Jessel; "Bem's Sex Role
Inventory"
- Why is society invested in constructing gender?
- B: Surgical Requirements
"Harry Benjamin's Standards of Care", Harry Benjamin; "Sex! Is a Verb"
and "Our Cunts Are Not the Same", Wilchins
- Are standards of care necessary?
- How do they influence sex reassignment
surgery?
- How does surgery influence subjectivity?
- C: Discussion
- Describe an experience where you felt tension between a social requirement
for your gender and your own personal preference for expression.
Week Eleven: Gender Identity Disorder
- A: All in Our Heads?
The Last Time I Wore A Dress, Daphne Scholinski; DSM IV excerpt
- The olitics of GID.
- Children may be victimized but adults need the
diagnosis for surgery, and insurance reimbursement, although it may be
stigmatizing - what to do?
- B: GID in French, and Parental Dysphoria
Ma Vie En Rose.
- The French take on GID: is this a trans subjectivity?
- How does the narrative subvert realism?
- Why would this assist the project?
- C: Discussion
- Write a policy recommendation for GID.
Week Twelve: Feminism Responds to Transsexuals and the Medical
Establishment
- A: Backlash or Ally?
The Transsexual Empire, Janice Raymond
- Why does Raymond attack the medical establishment?
- What is her relationship to trans issues?
- Can her arguments be relevant for trans activism?
- B: Response
"The Menace Response to Janice Raymond", Wilchins
- C: Discussion
- Write an essay entitled "The Feminist Empire: The Making of a Fe-male"
Week Thirteen: At A Crossroads With the Queer Movement: Activism and
Contemporary Politics
- A: Yea or Nay?
"Birth of the Homosexual" and "The Gay Games Controversy", Wilchins;
Transgender Nation, Michelangelo Signorile; "Transgendered Like Me",
Gabriel Rotello; "New Genders and Pansexualities", Zachary Nataf
- Why should the Gay/Lesbian/Bi movement engage with the Trans movement?
- What does it mean to link a politics of gender with a politics of sexuality?
- B: Trans(Action)
Transgender Warriors, "Chapters 14-15", Feinberg; "The Menace in Michigan
and Photographs from a Movement", Wilchins
- Teaming up theory and activism.
- Brainstorm ways to be politically/socially
active.
- C: Discussion
-
Create an activist group to outreach your family/work/friends on trans
issues.
Week Fourteen: Ownership and Access
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