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performance, and the cultural mechanisms that work to sustain or thwart specific
configurations of gendered personhood' (Stryker, 2006: 3). While this is an excellent
summary of what a focus on transgender offers over and above a focus on sex
narrowly
defined, it ignores the complex ways in which 'sex' and 'gender' play formative roles
in the lives of many or most 'trans' people. This said, Stryker's definition reminds us
that not a few transsexuals do place emphasis on what they take to be 'natural' drives
that underlie their desired identities, genders and sexual practices. Many transsexuals
would thus challenge the philosophical precepts and analytical framings favoured in
this topic.
17
An early critique of the wedge Raymond sought to drive between transsexuals and
feminists is provided by Carol Riddell in her essay/pamphlet 'Divided sisterhood'
(Riddell, 1980). Shortly after, Dwight Billings and Thomas Urban criticised the
medical view that transsexualism was a technically 'fixable' condition (Billings and
Urban, 1982). They argued that transsexuals should explore other ways and means of
'being themselves' beyond assuming they needed medical intervention to 'pass' across
the sexual divide.
18
The term 'passing' has conventionally meant two things within the transsexual com-
munity. It's referred to as both a desire to 'pass' as a member of the opposite
sex-gender (not have one's 'real' sex-gender recognised by non-transsexuals), and
the process of crossing the sex-gender threshold to 'the other side' (usually through
surgical and pharmacological interventions into the transsexual body).
19
An outstanding collection of original works that, together, foreshadowed and consti-
tuted the now vibrant field of 'trans' studies is that compiled and edited by Susan
Stryker and Stephen Whittle (Stryker and Whittle, 2006). In the political sphere,
activist groups like Transsexual Menace (in North America) and Press for Change
(in the United Kingdom) have done much to press the case for trans people in the
public domain and in the law.
20
I'm well aware that some very sophisticated interpretations of the
The Silence of the
Lambs
have been put forward. My own simple depiction of Jame Gumb is the one
that, I suspect, would have made ready sense to viewers of the film at the time of
its release. The sort of complex analysis presented by the likes of Judith Halberstam
(1992) is precisely
not
the sort of understanding regular filmgoers achieve. This gap no
doubt proves the maxim that radical new ideas or values must first be aired among a
tolerant minority before they get 'tested out' in more popular representational media
and genres.
21
For a short but incisive introduction to the sub-genre see Linda Anderson's book
(1991).
22
In one of his major statements on the characteristics of Western 'modernity', the
sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argued that 'ambivalence' was the enemy of the sort of
'order' so prized in the Western imagination (Bauman, 1991). This places Haraway's
(1992) hopeful essay 'The promises of monsters' in its less-than-hopeful context: most
often, the 'monstrosity' she commends metaphorically (and more literally) is seen as
a threat to not an enrichment of life.
