TÓPICOS/TRANSSEXUALIDADE

The writings of Butler and Garber have defined the terms of debate on transgendered people within American cultural studies of 1990s: terms wherein transvestites and transsexuals function as rhetorical figures within cultural texts; terms wherein the voices, struggles, and joys of real transgendered people in the everyday social world are noticeably absent (...) The presentation of transgendered issues within queer theory does not account for the quotidian living conditions of transgendered people. The political objections to this field are clear: queer theory begins it analysis with little thought of the individuals designated as the objects of study. At best this perspective is an unfortunate and unacceptable oversight; at worst, it belies a kind of academic inquiry that is contemptuous and dismissive of the social world(Namaste 2000:16).

By attending to the ways in which knowledge about sexuality is organized in law, medicine and sexology, Foucault shows how specific sexual identities, such as that of the homosexual, have been manufacturated in a variety of institutions (idem:17).

Para Foucaul todas as identidades são produzidas pelo poder, o poder tem uma natureza produtiva e controladora (idem:17), ao ponto da homossexualidade se ter servido dos mesmos discursos que a discriminavam, para se legitimar. Foucault chamou a este processo de uso da linguagem de reverse discourse (Foucault 1978 in Namaste 2000:17).

Foucault em L´Histoire de la Sexualité e Derrida em De La Grammatologie colocam questões de como o discurso acaba por produzir o seu próprio sujeito, o primeiro referindo como os homossexuais foram produzidos pelo próprio discurso médico e jurídico (reverse dircourse) e Derridas como os Nambikwaras (estudados por Lévi-Strauss) são trazidos a uma existência social através dos nomes próprios, in both instances, the inquiry concerns itself with the social institutions and taxonomic practices that produces subjects (idem:20-21).

Outra abordagem, é a etnografia institucional:

Like Smith and O´Brien, Ng´s study focus on the institutional relations that order the experience of their subjects (idem:48).

George Smith begins with the everyday experiences of seropositive people and goes to outline how theses experiences are not addressed within the Ontario government´s management of AIDS epidemic. This is a reflexive approach to sociology, wherein the experiences, perceptions, and needs of the community under investigation occupy a central component of the research (idem:48).

Janice Raymond sustenta a posição de que os transsexuais foram fabricados pela medicina, In her view, psychiatric evaluation as well as the availability of surgery function to produce transsexuals (idem:33).

Sociólogos como Dwight Billings e Thomas Urban advogam igualmente a posição de Janice Raymond, incluindo aqui um elemento económico, o de que a indústria capitalista da medicina criou a transexualidade, nomeadamente através das intervenções cirúrgicas, como por exemplo a amputação genital (idem:33 e Billings e Urban 1982:272-273).

Sobre o género, tópicos de reflexão

(…)the law produces and then conceals the notion of a “subject before the law” in order to invoke that discursive formation as a naturalized foundational premise that subsequently legitimates that law´s own regulatory hegemony (Butler).

The sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders. Assuming for the moment the stability of binary sex, it does not follow that the construction of “men” will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that “women” will interpret only female bodies (idem).

The “coherence” and “continuity” of the “person” are not logical or analytical features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility. Inasmuch as “identity” is assured through the stabilizing concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality, the very notion of “the person” is called into question by the cultural emergence of those “incoherent” or “discontinuous” gendered beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined (idem).

Aquele a quem falta o falus é aquele que é o falus, aquele que é necessário para a confirmação do próprio falus, por outras palavras aquele que é o falus na sua extensão. A mulher é o falus e não quem o tem. A mulher é o reflexo do poder ilusório da autonomia masculina, ou seja, sem ela esse poder não se confirma.

Let us say that these relations will resolve around a being and a having which, because they refer to a signifier, the phallus, have the contradictory effect of on the one hand lending reality to the subject in that signifier, and on the other making unreal the relations to be signified (Lacan).

The incest taboo presupposes a prior, less articulate taboo on homosexuality. A prohibition against some heterosexual unions assumes a taboo against nonheterosexual unions. Gender is not only an identification with one sex; it also entails that sexual desire be directed toward the other sex. The sexual division of labour is implicated in both aspects of gender – male and female it creates them, and it creates them heterosexual (Butler).