I attended a two-day conference this week entitled "At the Intersection of Situations of Domination", that was inspired by Kimberlé Crenshaw's work on Intersectionality. Kimberlé herself was in attendance, and many of the graduate students including myself had the opportunity to get into some really interesting conversations with her, in large part inspired by some of the wackness that was flowing from the presenters. Following a panel entitled "Gender: A Necessary Legal Category?' a few of us got into a discussion about transfolk in France. In a stunning addition to the conversation, Kim mused, "could racial dysphoria exist?" (To put us all on the same page, let me explain oh-so-briefly where the question came from: transfolk are medically diagnosed as having gender dysphoria, which is the inability to reconcile what one sees in the mirror with how one feels inside. Kim asked if it was possible to diagnose and legitimate racial dysphoria.) We all stopped to think about it, and then time ran out as the second panel began. The question stuck with me, though--it was ridiculously provocative for many different reasons.
A quick google search can tell you that racial dysphoria is not a topic of discussion. The first result yields a post by a man barring all:
Gender dysphoria can only be recognized as a legitimate condition when there is a belief that there is a biological, "natural" way of being a man or woman, and that if there is an imbalance, it produces a feeling of being in the wrong body. Citing the example of Michael Jackson, Crenshaw believes in the possibility/existence of racial dysphoria (RD). She argues that similarly to a transperson not feeling at home in their gendered body, Michael Jackson is a case of someone not feeling at home in their raced body. Michael Jackson went through great lengths to change the physical color of his skin in order to match how he felt on the inside, and furthermore re-cast his biological heritage, completely eliminating any trace of "African" in him by "fathering" basically white children. (I have never, ever given much thought to MJ's transformation; this is Kim's take). The capacity of someone to go through such a process is arguably analogous to gender reassignment surgery.
Of course Racial Dysphoria treads a thin line between internalized racism and medical condition. For African descendent people who may suffer from this, it could be viewed as self-hatred at its worst, but RD arguably moves beyond skin lightening cremes and hair straightening. It it not merely the aspiration to European forms of beauty, but the conviction that one was not meant to be born into a given race whatsoever. It is not limited to non-white peoples either, as the above quote clarifies, but if, for argument's sake, there existed a greater number of people who wanted to "transition" from black or brown to white, then we must consider society. Indeed, we must consider society in both cases, gender and race.
What allows gender dysphoria to be pathologized, but not racial dysphoria? For those of us who took any social science class in college, we learned that race and gender are social constructions, ascribed characteristics that are attached to physical but inconsequential realities. In other words, what makes a man a man (tough, less emotional) or a black person a black person (athletic, better dancers) has nothing to do with their biology, but what society has so kindly filled in for us. Medical science, however, has divergent viewpoints. When it comes to sex differences, it is very easy to point to our cells for proof. At the chromosomal level, there is no denying that the world's population falls in large part into either an XX or XY (but not always). For this reason, gender dysphoria can exist as a medical condition because there is a biological "right or wrong", even as social scientists argue that gender is a social construction and that the only reason why there are even correlations between one's sex (male/female) and one's gender (masculine/feminine) is because society acts as if this correlation is natural. Hormones cannot account for everything, however. Estrogen does not make a girl like pink over blue, and Testosterone does not make a boy like climbing trees over playing house. This is precisely what science takes for granted, though. As a Black French transman in attendance at the conference explained, you have to "talk the talk" in order to get your hormones ("I always knew I was supposed to be a boy because I wanted to play with trucks") regardless of your truth. What science cannot answer is what produces the feelings of a person born a girl wanting to wear pants or a person born a boy wanting to wear a skirt, to put it very crudely and Eurocentrically? There must be something else in operation that we have chosen to ignore because of the medical establishment's insistance on a black/white definition of sex and gender. Perhaps the boy who would like to wear a skirt isn't the problem, but rather the society that only gives him two options to express his/her/hir's gender identity.
Racial Dysphoria faces much larger hurdles. Social science and medical science seem to be somewhat in agreement that race does not exist at the cellular level (although you will still find studies that naturalize race in both fields). As a result, science has no medical basis for diagnosing someone who feels born into the wrong race. At best it would be a psychological issue. Moreover, mainstream social science would not stand for such a diagnosis because it would affirm the existence of race at the biological level, something they worked so hard to disprove (especially as they were in large part responsible for creating that link in the first place). The funny thing is, by refusing to believe in the possibility of someone not feeling at home in their race, scientists and others end up affirming the existence of a race that one must belong to. In other words, by telling me that my RD is actually internalized racism, you are admitting that I am part of a race and forcing me to accept that as natural.
For those that would argue, Yes, of course you are part of a race, because society sees you as a raced subject (or a less academic-y version of that), race continues to operate in the way it does because there is generally a correspondance to the way I see myself (as a Black woman) and the way society interprets me (as a Black woman). There are of course plenty of people see themselves as one thing and society sees them as something else; met a graduate student last week that expressed his frustration at being mis-took for a white person rather than his identity as a Black North African. Is that racial dysphoria? In this case, no, because the "mis-interpretation" occurs because of pre-conceived notions of what a Black North African would look like, not because the person is trying to fit in to what he isn't (but this goes down another path, I know, and I can't go into it here.) What if, however, he did not have the family heritage or passport to back him up? What if he was born to white parents in France, and claimed a North African identity? How would that change his claim? If he feels North African/Black, why is that less valued than someone feeling that they were born the wrong gender?
This begs an analysis of race, but how do I even approach the topic without becoming reductivist? The examples I have provided rely on binary notions of race (i.e., White/Black). I don't want to preclude that any person suffering from racial dysphoria is White/Black and desires to become Black/White, in the same way that its not fair to assume that people born male/female are only trying to become female/male. Furthermore, the US is quite a particular context, given the history of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and the current era of mixed-background identity, multiculturalism, and "post-racism". Black culture is being appropriated at the same rate as Black people are being victimized and incarcerated. The Tea Party movement is gaining ground as a result of (and not despite) its thinly-veiled racist platform. It is a difficult task to situate racial dysphoria within all this, but our inability to even really conceive of it, not to mention the general lack of a critical discussion on shifting notions of race and racial identity outside the nooks and crannies of academia, is proof that we still have a long way to go in unpacking Race. The same goes for the way we talk about Gender, and our long embattled history with identity and performance. Indeed, the separation made here relates directly to the problem that Kimberlé has pointed out over and over again: Race and Gender are not distinct fields, but intersect and overlap. We must ask ourselves why they end up being tackled separately when they are operating simultaneously, and even using similar frameworks.
This is the point: medical science, among other things, is a major culprit to our inability to think about different forms of dysphoria, because at the end of the day, they are similarly based. No one knows what causes gender dysphoria, although many theories exist (theories that are often quite sexist). It is more of a deeply-rooted conviction that one was not born the correct sex. This conviction could be shared by those who feel that they were born the wrong race. The major difference is treatability. Since science has advanced to the point where we can accomodate people's desires to change gender, and it is therefore viewed as a treatable medical condition. Aside from Michael Jackson, however, no one I know of has ever been able to "treat" their race. Since race isn't viewed as a fixable physical problem, it is relegated to psychology, and turned into an individual issue rather than a potential condition faced by many. But the questions are still the same both both: What does being a girl feel like? What does being a boy feel like? What does being Black feel like? What does being White feel like? In order to even begin answering those kinds of questions, we have to look at the level of discourse, at the level of culture, society. But the point isn't to answer those questions, but to question why haven't asked them. When we can start getting to the bottom of our assumptions, then the issue won't be whether racial dysphoria is real, but why the categories of gender and race exist in the first place.
A quick google search can tell you that racial dysphoria is not a topic of discussion. The first result yields a post by a man barring all:
Now, this is probably going to end up poorly for me, but I would hope that General Bullshit will have enough restraint to at least allow civil discourse to prevail. If not, I'd ask that the mods keep the trolls to a minimum please. That said....The comments are fairly uninteresting, but that's not the point. Can this man's plea be legitimated? Why or why not? How is this different from gender dysphoria? I can anticipate some of the responses, so indulge me a little.
I bring this up because I feel as though the APA's decision to remove transexualism and gender dysphoria from the DSM adds a precedent, and having struggled with this for years, I need to come out with it now. I'm mentally and African, but I'm physically caucasian. I'm not simply a wigger who feels like appropriating African American culture, I genuinely feel as though, internally, I'm entirely African. I'm not sure I can explain the mechanics involved, but I'm sure it's akin to gender dysphoria in that while I may physically express one thing, my mental make-up is entirely different.
Now what I'm wondering is, what are steps to move towards "transitioning"? I'm not talking about the physical (hormones and surgery for transexual individuals) aspect, I'm more interested in the aesthetic (becoming "passable") side. Can GBS recommend literature to read? I've procured "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" but I'm not really a "music" kind of guy, I'd rather read a book. Ideas?
Gender dysphoria can only be recognized as a legitimate condition when there is a belief that there is a biological, "natural" way of being a man or woman, and that if there is an imbalance, it produces a feeling of being in the wrong body. Citing the example of Michael Jackson, Crenshaw believes in the possibility/existence of racial dysphoria (RD). She argues that similarly to a transperson not feeling at home in their gendered body, Michael Jackson is a case of someone not feeling at home in their raced body. Michael Jackson went through great lengths to change the physical color of his skin in order to match how he felt on the inside, and furthermore re-cast his biological heritage, completely eliminating any trace of "African" in him by "fathering" basically white children. (I have never, ever given much thought to MJ's transformation; this is Kim's take). The capacity of someone to go through such a process is arguably analogous to gender reassignment surgery.
Of course Racial Dysphoria treads a thin line between internalized racism and medical condition. For African descendent people who may suffer from this, it could be viewed as self-hatred at its worst, but RD arguably moves beyond skin lightening cremes and hair straightening. It it not merely the aspiration to European forms of beauty, but the conviction that one was not meant to be born into a given race whatsoever. It is not limited to non-white peoples either, as the above quote clarifies, but if, for argument's sake, there existed a greater number of people who wanted to "transition" from black or brown to white, then we must consider society. Indeed, we must consider society in both cases, gender and race.
What allows gender dysphoria to be pathologized, but not racial dysphoria? For those of us who took any social science class in college, we learned that race and gender are social constructions, ascribed characteristics that are attached to physical but inconsequential realities. In other words, what makes a man a man (tough, less emotional) or a black person a black person (athletic, better dancers) has nothing to do with their biology, but what society has so kindly filled in for us. Medical science, however, has divergent viewpoints. When it comes to sex differences, it is very easy to point to our cells for proof. At the chromosomal level, there is no denying that the world's population falls in large part into either an XX or XY (but not always). For this reason, gender dysphoria can exist as a medical condition because there is a biological "right or wrong", even as social scientists argue that gender is a social construction and that the only reason why there are even correlations between one's sex (male/female) and one's gender (masculine/feminine) is because society acts as if this correlation is natural. Hormones cannot account for everything, however. Estrogen does not make a girl like pink over blue, and Testosterone does not make a boy like climbing trees over playing house. This is precisely what science takes for granted, though. As a Black French transman in attendance at the conference explained, you have to "talk the talk" in order to get your hormones ("I always knew I was supposed to be a boy because I wanted to play with trucks") regardless of your truth. What science cannot answer is what produces the feelings of a person born a girl wanting to wear pants or a person born a boy wanting to wear a skirt, to put it very crudely and Eurocentrically? There must be something else in operation that we have chosen to ignore because of the medical establishment's insistance on a black/white definition of sex and gender. Perhaps the boy who would like to wear a skirt isn't the problem, but rather the society that only gives him two options to express his/her/hir's gender identity.
Racial Dysphoria faces much larger hurdles. Social science and medical science seem to be somewhat in agreement that race does not exist at the cellular level (although you will still find studies that naturalize race in both fields). As a result, science has no medical basis for diagnosing someone who feels born into the wrong race. At best it would be a psychological issue. Moreover, mainstream social science would not stand for such a diagnosis because it would affirm the existence of race at the biological level, something they worked so hard to disprove (especially as they were in large part responsible for creating that link in the first place). The funny thing is, by refusing to believe in the possibility of someone not feeling at home in their race, scientists and others end up affirming the existence of a race that one must belong to. In other words, by telling me that my RD is actually internalized racism, you are admitting that I am part of a race and forcing me to accept that as natural.
For those that would argue, Yes, of course you are part of a race, because society sees you as a raced subject (or a less academic-y version of that), race continues to operate in the way it does because there is generally a correspondance to the way I see myself (as a Black woman) and the way society interprets me (as a Black woman). There are of course plenty of people see themselves as one thing and society sees them as something else; met a graduate student last week that expressed his frustration at being mis-took for a white person rather than his identity as a Black North African. Is that racial dysphoria? In this case, no, because the "mis-interpretation" occurs because of pre-conceived notions of what a Black North African would look like, not because the person is trying to fit in to what he isn't (but this goes down another path, I know, and I can't go into it here.) What if, however, he did not have the family heritage or passport to back him up? What if he was born to white parents in France, and claimed a North African identity? How would that change his claim? If he feels North African/Black, why is that less valued than someone feeling that they were born the wrong gender?
This begs an analysis of race, but how do I even approach the topic without becoming reductivist? The examples I have provided rely on binary notions of race (i.e., White/Black). I don't want to preclude that any person suffering from racial dysphoria is White/Black and desires to become Black/White, in the same way that its not fair to assume that people born male/female are only trying to become female/male. Furthermore, the US is quite a particular context, given the history of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and the current era of mixed-background identity, multiculturalism, and "post-racism". Black culture is being appropriated at the same rate as Black people are being victimized and incarcerated. The Tea Party movement is gaining ground as a result of (and not despite) its thinly-veiled racist platform. It is a difficult task to situate racial dysphoria within all this, but our inability to even really conceive of it, not to mention the general lack of a critical discussion on shifting notions of race and racial identity outside the nooks and crannies of academia, is proof that we still have a long way to go in unpacking Race. The same goes for the way we talk about Gender, and our long embattled history with identity and performance. Indeed, the separation made here relates directly to the problem that Kimberlé has pointed out over and over again: Race and Gender are not distinct fields, but intersect and overlap. We must ask ourselves why they end up being tackled separately when they are operating simultaneously, and even using similar frameworks.
This is the point: medical science, among other things, is a major culprit to our inability to think about different forms of dysphoria, because at the end of the day, they are similarly based. No one knows what causes gender dysphoria, although many theories exist (theories that are often quite sexist). It is more of a deeply-rooted conviction that one was not born the correct sex. This conviction could be shared by those who feel that they were born the wrong race. The major difference is treatability. Since science has advanced to the point where we can accomodate people's desires to change gender, and it is therefore viewed as a treatable medical condition. Aside from Michael Jackson, however, no one I know of has ever been able to "treat" their race. Since race isn't viewed as a fixable physical problem, it is relegated to psychology, and turned into an individual issue rather than a potential condition faced by many. But the questions are still the same both both: What does being a girl feel like? What does being a boy feel like? What does being Black feel like? What does being White feel like? In order to even begin answering those kinds of questions, we have to look at the level of discourse, at the level of culture, society. But the point isn't to answer those questions, but to question why haven't asked them. When we can start getting to the bottom of our assumptions, then the issue won't be whether racial dysphoria is real, but why the categories of gender and race exist in the first place.
1 comment:
I have had simliar thoughts before about race and gender.
I think a few things to consider would be the ways in which "racial dysphoria" is actually used as a tool against the trans and genderqueer community. I'm thinking specifically of a child psychologist who is a "specialist" in gender issues with children and adolescents. I can't remember his name right now, but he's big. (And also a huge asshat). Basically his argument is "if a Black kid thought he was White, we would try to make him comfortable in his race and wouldn't encourage and body modification" and thus his "therapy" consists of trying to force gender non-conforming kids back into their assigned gender box (and does it through some really fucked up ways).
Another is the real slipperiness of these terms. I'll admit I'm not very well versed in critical race theory, but in regards to gender and transgender, the separation between gender and sexuality is complicated. David Valentine in Imagining Transgender argues that the separation of gender and sexuality in the creation of the category transgender is raced and classed as white and middle class. That is to say, many poor people of color who might be labeled "transgender" by service and medical institutions, don't view themselves in the same way (e.g. as a woman and a gay male) or use the same terms (e.g. don't identify as trans).
Then, there is the diversity within the trans community. As you mentioned there are people with non-binary gender identities, several who are charting their own pathways beyond man and woman. Many trans people also are critical of the whole "trapped in the wrong body" meme and view this as a cissexist reading of their gender/body. Many also do identify with the "trans narrative" of "oh I knew from a young age I was ___". Some are even calling these two memes "trans-normativity."
I'm kinda rambling now though.
Anyways, I think this is a really complicated issue that involves race, culture, appropriation, power, language, gender, sexuality, etc. etc.
And to be a good social scientist, I would say to answer or examine these issues requires empirical research. Who are the people who experience racial dysphoria? How do they experience their subjectivity? How do "experts" talk about them? "treat" them? etc. Would be an interesting project (and difficult) for sure.
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