Congress Paper Abstract

"Always a man": gender discourses as identity formations in Dutch cross-dressing and Boston transgender populations

Adrianne Dana, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. U.S.A 

Email: Dana@binah.cc.brandeis.edu, stabet@mediaone.net

Based on ethnographic investigations conducted with cross-dressing members of a Dutch transformation center in Amsterdam and data acquired during ongoing fieldwork with the transgender community in Boston, this paper explores how variations in the dominant gender and sexuality discourses create and perpetuate prevailing conceptions of personal identity and group affiliation in these populations. In the United States, transgenderism, as an expandable category, acts as an umbrella concept, which subsumes and accommodates a spectrum of gender, sexual, and social identities and communities. This invites the instantiation and embodiment of a multiplicity of identities and behaviors that reflect this diversity in the labels that define individuals, influence the sexual practices in which people engage, and determine the nature of social networks and organizations with which they align themselves. In contrast, the predominant gender discourse in Holland, where the concept of transgenderism is relatively insignificant, suggests a dyadic perception of gender role and identity. Dutch gender and sexually dysphoric individuals are either oriented toward transsexualism and eventual government supported sexual reassignment surgery or relegated to the unsubsidized, socially marginalized category of fetishistic crossdresser. Here, government facilitation, contrary to popular conceptions of Dutch liberalism and tolerance, may actually contribute to the perpetuation of binary gender distinctions as individual identity and praxis are required to conform to more essentialized and biologized notions of sex and gender.

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