In this chapter, I provide a Gay liberation analysis of the phenomenon of transsexuality. To do so is to risk being greatly misunderstood – being labeled transphobic or, perhaps worse, a gay conservative. Nevertheless, transsexuality, in its more modern, politically correct incarnation of transgender, has shifted to the center of “gay rights” organizing in ways I find distressing. This crystallized for me during the 2007–2008 debates over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Transsexuals and their supporters rallied to condemn the legislation and its proponents, most notably Congressman Barney Frank.Such action seemed to me particularly hostile to Gay people, given that transsexuals already had/have greater antidiscrimination protections at the federal level than do Gays. In this and other obvious ways, transsexuality has become increasingly central to the “gay rights” movement and it is increasingly celebrated as a path to liberation by movement leaders and by the postmodern canon working to rob Gays of Self-possession even before we have it.

Definitions

Some definitions are in order. By “transsexual” I mean to refer to a person who believes that he/she is actually of the sex opposite to that of his/her body – a person whose “gender identity” or “psychological sex” does not comport with the actual physical body to which he/she was born. On account of this, he/she wishes to become the other sex, with its attendant gender convention, including dress, mannerisms, as well as bodily presence – thus living the sex and gender that are in his/her head. Transsexuality is the process, generally medicalized, by which this (re)gendering of biological sex is accomplished, often involving, for the male-to-female transsexual, castration, a penisectomy, estrogen therapy, and the creation of a vagina. Breast implants, hair removal, a tracheal shave (to remove the visible Adam’s apple), and various facial feminization procedures are also often undertaken in order to make the transsexual’s appearance more conventionally gendered-feminine. By focusing on this medicalized process, I mean to draw a distinction between the transgenderism that has always been a part of Radical Gay culture – for example, the gender bending of femme Gay men, as seen in the likes of Harry Hay, or butch Lesbians, represented by Jess Goldberg in Leslie Feinberg’s autobiographical novel Stone Butch Blues – and transsexualism. With Gay transgender, the object is to be differently gendered – to challenge gender – not to become the other gender by disciplining the body into heteroarchal gender prescriptions. Gender disruption – indeed destruction – has always been a goal of Gay liberation.