Before I start, I'd like to do an exercise with the audience and would like your assistance in this. Will everyone who's a woman (no matter how you spell it) please raise their hands.

[All of the audience and speakers raise their hands]

Thank you. Now will everyone who's Christian please raise their hands.

[A few people raised their hands]

OK. Are there any Jewish women here? Please raise your hands.

[Fewer people raise their hands]

Thanks. Now, anyone who's pagan.

[A few people, and the speaker raised their hands]

Good to see someone other than just myself here. OK, anyone who's lesbian or bisexual, and out.

[A few people including the speaker raised their hands]

And now anyone who's male, that is, a transgendered woman.

[The speaker, and Elizabeth Riley raised their hands]

And lastly, anyone who's alive.

[Everyone raised their hands]

Do I see a few dead people in the audience? Good, if you're alive it means that you can all listen to what I have to say. Thanks for your participation. What the preceding shows is just how easily we identify with labels. Now I study visual arts, not sociology or anthropology. My talk today is based on my own experiences in the general and queer community, with an appreciation of signs and symbols gained from studying art theory. It's about the nature of labels, passing, and my responce to this.

In a recent artwork of mine, I used some of the following list of labels that have been used to describe me:

artist; bisexual; crone; daughter; eccentric; epileptic; friend; galla; geek girl; human being; Laura Seabrook; male; middle aged; outgoing; pagan; pre-operative; queer; shy; single; subgenius; transgender; transsexual; trekker; university student; western australian; witch; woman and writer.

The artwork was entitled "Labels are for Tin Cans". In it, I made my own image into a range of "Home Brand" products.

[The speaker passed a sample of this into the audience]

You'll notice that some of the labels I've mentioned are not normally thought of in that way, like my name or the fact that I'm a university student. Others seem only to be accurate at certain times in my life, like middle-aged, pre-operative, or once again, university student. But they're labels all the same. And no one label ever encompasses all the qualities that a person possesses - their function is to do the opposite - provide a shorthand way of dealing with other people.

Now even if you don't label yourself, other people probably will. Labels in themselves are nothing new or even bad. They are just an easy means by which we handle information about the world and each other. It's so much easier for most people to refer to others by using labels than it is to examine them too closely. That takes time and effort, and these always seem to be in short supply.

Allied to the idea of labels is that of "passing". This is the reaction to the effort you put into your appearance and behaviour. I first read about passing in a book called Freaks, as follows:

There is, that is to say, no agreement among those traditionally called Freaks about what they would like for programmatic reasons to be called now; only a resolve that it be something else. Those who still earn a living by exhibiting themselves in side shows apparently prefer to be called "entertainers" and "performers" like tight rope walkers and clowns. But larger numbers of "strange people" do not want to be considered performers or indeed anything special or unique. They strive therefore to "pass," i.e., to become assimilated into the world of "normals" either by means of chemotherapy, like certain Dwarfs and Giants, or difficult and dangerous operations, like some Hermaphrodites or joined twins. (pp.13-14)

I read this in 1973 when I was 16 and at the time I didn't think that passing would be something relevant to myself. But I was already in a state of denial over being transsexual. This didn't end until 1994, when I began my gender transition. Up until that time, I'd felt myself to be a fake - male but not a man. When I finally began my transition I "came out" not just as a woman, but as me. Internally I have the gender identity of woman, and initially it was very important that I be recognised as such, so I considered passing to be vital.

Now some transgendered people think that three things validate you as a woman: Passing -- that is, not being detected as being transgendered; Sex with men -- if they find you attractive then you're doing something right; Having your own vagina -- you must be a woman if you've got one, right?

But really none of these do because: People will perceive others differently, depending upon any number of variables, and Men will have sex with lots of things, not just women (just check out the emergency wards sometimes); and Plenty of female-male transsexuals still have their vaginas -- they're not women, but transgendered men.

But passing is the most obvious of these because it's the most visible. And it's not just transgendered people who have problems with passing. The act of "passing" can be quite real for many people. For example, Anne Bolin, in In Search of Eve, recounts the following anecdote that happened during her research for the book:

Another incident was also revealing. A friend was visiting who had suffered a pituitary disease that resulted in the development of extremely large hands, feet, and head. She was a genetic female and had no gender conflict. In the midst of our discussion another friend dropped by. She came in and proceeded to the kitchen with me, and in a whispered voice, apologized for interrupting me because she thought I was interviewing a transsexual informant. This friend had met several transsexuals who, recognizing a sympathetic other, had revealed their transsexualism to her. As a consequence, she questioned this woman's gender on the basis of her large hands and had ascribed her transsexual status. (p.138)

And Naomi Wolfe writes, in Promiscuities:

The shaming of girls and women from acknowledging a sexuality on their own terms, or a sexual past, pressures them into a contemporary version of 'passing.' The need to 'pass' for someone other creates a vulnerability to external anxieties about womanhood in one's private life -- as well as a vulnerability about the fact of one's womanhood in the workplace. (p.240)

Another good example of passing is a recent film called Gattaca. This is arguably a science fiction film set in the near future. In it, people are genetically engineered, registered and their future performance predicted from birth. Identification is made by advanced DNA testing, so in most cases everyone knows exactly who the other person is.

The result is a totally stratified society in which a marriage proposal is accompanied with an exchange of genetic data. The main character in this film is a person who is classified as a lower class of person. With collusion he manages to pass as a genetically "better" person in order to work at a better job. While this might sound far-fetched, it seems all too likely an extension of current practice.

So you see, it isn't just transgendered folks that are involved in the passing act, everybody does (or fails to) one way or another. And on the whole, people don't question this. People mistake the map for the territory, mistake one word for another, and that's where the trouble starts. Our appearance, clothing and bodies are part of passing and in doing so become symbols of who we are or aspire to be.

These symbols are constantly being manipulated by the media for their own ends, as it is from there that we look for images of who and what is considered normal. The entire fashion and cosmetics industry is built upon people's dissatisfaction with their appearance. Thousands of women have breast enhancements and reductions in responce to this. Is it any wonder that transsexuals have "genital make-overs" (the term Cosmopolitan used recently) to convert our genitals from one set to another. We're just doing what other women do, but in a more obvious manner.

I was fortunate to read Kaz Cooke's Real Gorgeous before starting transition. It helped temper my fashion sense to more comfortable, sensible clothing. When I wrote to Ms Cooke to thank her for the book, she replied saying that I was the first respondent to say that she'd wanted wider hips! Another book I read before transition was Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire, published in 1978. This is a critique of then current medical and social theories of transsexuality.

Raymond does this from a separatist-feminist perspective. She rejects "male-to-constructed-females" (her words) as women on the grounds that we have XY chromosomes and a different history from other women. To Raymond we are patriarchal controlled eunuchs whose function is to keep women in place, who sponge off the spirit of womanhood. And she considers "female-to-constructed-males" as being misguided women.

All of which raises the question of exactly what is a woman? Raymond asserts that it is someone born with XX chromosomes who has a history of being raised as a girl or woman. Common sense notions would seem to support this. But common sense notions are gained from the culture that one inhabits, and that culture is influenced by the media and other sources. So once again we come back to the idea of labels and how they are applied.

Alexander Murray, in a recent issue of Venereology (1) suggests that there are three types of attitudes within societies and individuals as regards transgender issues:

Pre-Transsexual
This is a model of gender as categorical, discrete, and dualistic. Within this model masculine and feminine are separate and unambiguous. In such an attitude, it is considered impossible to move from one category to another.

Pro-Transsexual
This allows for regulated movement between gender poles. Gender crossers are generally expected to possess innate physical and behavioural characteristics similar to the target gender and make efforts to change characteristics that are dissimilar.

Post-Transsexual
These express a model of gender as dimensional and fluid and allow individuals relative freedom to find their own place along the spectrum of gender and to experiment with different places at different times.

From this perspective, Raymond upholds a pre-transsexual schema, against a pro-transsexual one. Now I hasten to I'm not here to demolish Raymond, anyone who's interested in a counter argument would do well to read Sandy Stone's The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-transsexual manifesto, which, as you might gather from the title, proposes a post-transsexual schema.

I will mention one thing about her definition however. Just prior to this conference I made a trip to visit a friend at Nimbin. On the way I gave a lift to her boyfriend. To my surprise he told me that he had a sister who used to be a brother. My first reaction was "aha -- they're transsexual" but I was mistaken. His sibling was born with XX chromosomes but due to a medical problem female hormones were not produced until late teens.

This person appeared to be male and was raised as a boy, and was endlessly teased about having small genitalia. Then, about 18, their testes retreated into the body to become ovaries, the penis changed to a clitoris and they grew breasts. This would have been a tragedy except for the fact that secretly they'd always thought of themselves as a woman or a girl, so in the end they were proven right. Now the only difference between that person and myself is that I was born with XY chromosomes.

When you think about, you might realize that the words "woman" and "man" are both just labels. They don't actually describe females and males as such, but the gender roles expected of them. These can be complex or simple, and vary from one culture to another. It's easier to assume such roles than be original. From the moment we are born we exist in a sea of culture, one that inundates us with ideas about what who we are based on sex, skin colour, birthplace of origin, sexuality -- as many divisions and distinctions that you need or want. Carol Tavris says in her book, The Mismeasure of Woman:

My concern is with a growing tendency to turn the tables from us-them thinking (with women as the problem) to them-us thinking (with men as the problem). Framing the question in terms of polarities, regardless of which pole is the valued one, immediately sets up false choices for women and men. It continues to divide the world into "men" and "women" as if these categories were unified opposites. It obscures the fact that the opposing qualities associated with masculinity and femininity are caricatures to begin with. (p.60)

But here's the catch. If I can see labels and passing for what they are -- social constructions and the implementation of such -- then how can I claim the label of woman, as I do? There are two answers to this. The first is found in a quote from Naomi Wolfe's Promiscuities, which deals with rites of passage:

When over the course of those years did we `become women'? Was it when we first put on makeup? With our first kiss? When we discovered our sexual identity? When we first had intercourse? When we had earned our own money for the first time? When we graduated from high school? When we first became pregnant, those of us who did? No. None of those events turned us into women. I think we became women, in our culture, when we made a decision that, even if we didn't know what womanhood meant or whether we had arrived there for sure, all the markers imposed on us were flawed, and that we were somehow going to find a way, through whatever struggle it might take, to determine the meaning of `becoming a woman' for ourselves.

And all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, did indeed find our various ways through -- not all the way to where we wanted to be; but closer. (p.243)

I read that, and realised that it was exactly what I, and others like me do. There are no "women born women", or "men born men" either. We are all born babies, and it is our own sense of self-identity and what we do about it that makes us who we are. On that trip to Nimbin I mentioned my other travelling companion told me that in the development of the human fertilised egg, the first item to be developed is the blastopore, which later develops into the anus. In other words we are all born arseholes, and it's up to us what we do about it.

The second way I know about being a woman is through my religions. I have two -- Pagan and SubGenius. I'll mention Pagan first.

In my version of paganism, loosely based on Wicca, there is the Goddess and the God. The Goddess is the supreme feminine force in the universe, and the God her junior masculine counterpart. Junior, because the Goddess comes first and epitomises all the aspects of femininity associated with being a woman. The God on the other hand is a shape shifter, a changeling and a gatekeeper of change who delimits boundaries, who is prepared to die and be reborn again in change and growth. This is a far cry from Jehovah, though Jesus fits this pattern well. What distinguishes my brand of paganism from others is that I'm neo-hellenic. I have a pantheon of greeko-roman Goddess, each with aspects of the Goddess that are relevant to me. Three of these are Hecate, Cybele and Athene.

Athene is a transgendered Goddess, and this t-shirt I wear today has her symbol printed on it. Athena was born from the head of Zeus after he swallowed the Titan Metis. She's butch, but a woman all the same, and I consider her a spiritual sister. Hecate is queen of the underworld and Witches and I consider her my spiritual grandmother. Cybele is a nature Goddess, who gives boons and retribution with even serves. And Cybele had a son Attis, who became her adopted daughter. In ancient times both Hecate and Cybele had transgendered priestesses in their services. They were castrated males who lived as women thereafter. Cybele's were known as the Gallae, and I am a Galla in her service. Our symbol is the labrys, which in ancient times were used in religious dances to draw blood.

And what is a SubGenius? It's a follower of an authentically bogus religion at the head of which is a mythical character of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs. The whole thing is both a joke and deadly serious. To be SubGenius to be outrageous, heretical, religious, laid-back, cynical and sincere all in one. It's a way of using humour in dealing with the world. It doesn't matter if you can't get the joke, it's there all the same. Anyway, there are four SubGenii gender sets: Male-Male (Overman); Female-Female (Overwoman); Male-Female (FeMale-2) and Female-Male (Male-2).

My pagan name is "Pollychrome, daughter of two rainbows"; and my SubGenius church name is "Octobriana Oberwoman", a FeMale-2 yetinsyn. Now the whole point of having these religions is that they fill up a spiritual vacuum within me. Paganism does this in a sincere fashion. SubGenius does it as a joke, and is valuable in my retaining my sense of humour. Either way, they provide me with alternative labels for myself. In Paganism I'm a maiden or crone (never a mother I'm afraid), in SubGenius I'm a yetinsyn. And the sources for those labels are not dependent upon other people's opinions, but my own.

The thing about dealing with such labels is not that they exist, but in how they are considered. Labels have power over people when it is assumed that they are natural and uncontested states of being. But the truth is that labels, including that of women and men, are social constructs. By realising this, and being conscious that each is only a marker, I believe that it's possible to raise above the definitions proscribed by them. In such a way it's still possible to embrace them, but in a healthy fashion.

What often happens with Girls like myself is that we have reassignment surgery on the quiet, and then discretely return as if nothing has happened and that we were like this all along. In the process of gender transition, in which reassignment surgery is seen as the conclusion, our real histories disappear. This happens because we seek to pass as female women, instead of ourselves -- male women. I'm not going to do this.

In my visual arts studies I've considered pursuing performance art as a career option. In my research I came across Orlan. Now Orlan creates performance art by having plastic surgery on her face and body and presenting that in video format. She reads prose and poetry, philosophy, and indulges in theatrics other than the surgical ones in this process. She has made statements such as "I am a man and a woman" and "I am a female-female transsexual".

I realised I could do the same on at least one occasion. A few weeks ago a birth was broadcast on the internet. I think I can do better than that. I have envisioned making my own reassignment surgery a performance piece, broadcast on the internet with readings from Bornstein, Money, Stone, Raymond, Tavris and Wolfe. And there is a point to this.

By doing so, I get what I desire in several ways. I get a set of genitals that will finally match my internal body image. But I also avoid the trap of erasing myself in the process. And I have an opportunity to highlight and explore the nature of the self and the body in the manner that Orlan does.

I have no idea if I'll realise this ambition. Annie Fox in the same edition of Venereology as Murray (2) makes an observation that there are two types of transsexuals -- those who choose a private path and those that make a public statement. As an artist who cannot divorce her own issues and self from her creative work, I cannot possibly see how I can be anything but the later.

It'll be fun finding out. Thank you.

Footnotes

(1)Venereology, Vol 10, No 3, p.159.

(2) Ibid, p.194.

Bibliography

Bolin, Anne, In Search of Eve, Bergin & Garvey, 1988.

Bornstein, Kate, Gender Outlaw, Routledge, 1994.

Butler, Judith, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, 1990.

Fielder, Leslie, FREAKS: Myths and Images of the secret Self, Anchor Books.

Millot, Catherine, HORSEXE, Essay on Transsexuality, Automedia, 1990.

Hays, Terence (ed), Venereology, The Interdisciplinary International Journal of Sexual Health, Venereology Publishing Inc.

Money, John, Gay, Straight, and In-between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Nanda, Serena, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India, Wadsworth, 1990.

Raymond, Janice, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, Beacon Press, 1979.

Sargent, C. & Brettell, C (eds), Gender, Prentice Hall, 1993.

Seligman, Martin, What you can change & what you can't, Knopf, 1994.

Tavris, Carol, The Mismeasure of Woman, Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Wolfe, Naomi, Promiscuities: A Secret History of Female Desire, Chatto & Windus, 1997.

Copyright 1998, Laura Anne Seabrook,   e-mail:   c9704057@alinga.newcastle.edu.au