"Either-Or" and "Both-Neither" : discursive tensions in transgender politics

K. Roen

Transgenderism is a political movement seeking to challenge the belief that every person can be categorized simply as one of two sexes. One political strategy instituted by transgenderists has been to promote transsexual visibility and, in particular, to encourage transsexuals to be out as both andneither. This both/neither stance has come to be privileged over passing as women and men. Those who seek to pass as women or men are described as being "closeted" or having "false consciousness."Being out is necessarily difficult for all and impossible for many, yet it is often taken as the measure of transgendered political awareness. May transgenderism, then, be subject to Bornstein's critique of "cults" ( and particularly gender as a cult)? Perhaps there is a variety of transgenderism that, in seeking to fight the "gender system," institutes its own group norms whose maintenance requires constant vigilance on the part of its members. The current research demonstrates how individual transpeople situate themselves in relation to the positions of either/or and both/neither. Some research participants very flexibly deploy apparently competing discourses, about passing and about crossing, in order to situate themselves. This serves as a reminder that transgender activists who exhort transpeople to take up a position of both/neither (1) fail to take into account the diversity of context and experience of transpeople and (2) do not accurately conceptualize how agentic subjects maneuver among apparently competing discourses. While some transgender activists set up an opposition between passing and crossing for the sake of developing a political argument, many transpeople strategically and agilely live with aspects of passing and aspects of crossing in their lives and may regard abandoning either component as idealistic or impossible. Crossing openly may be necessary and useful in some circumstances (whether or not for reasons of political activism), while passing may be essential in many circumstances. An important resolution that may be reached through acknowledging the need of transgendered subjects to take up different discourses for different purposes would be to minimize the excluding practices and politics that leave some transpeople without adequate support within trans communities.