It's Just a Word: Transvestite, Transsexual, & Transgender

My first dissertation chair, Glenda Russell, loved words. She also loved challenging our use of words. It wasn't black ice--as our culture frequently equates black with bad and white with positive--it was invisible ice. We don't skirt around issues either, as making reference to a skirt calls upon society's perceptions of women.  These conversations we had in her office some ten odd years ago came to mind this morning while I was reading my Twitter feed.

This is exactly the nuanced and thoughtful awareness that Glenda taught me to pay attention to in her office. Words matter--our choices in words represent complicated concepts and in turn, create our mutual understandings of the world around us.

Well now that's interesting. Maybe not to the casual reader, but the use of the word transvestite is very interesting to me. I had a great Twitter conversation with Steve Silberman about the use of language.

Magnus Hirschfeld

Transvestite, first coined by Magnus Hirschfeld in the early 1900s, the term was used to describe people who consistently dressed in clothing consistent with what those of the opposite sex wore. Transvestites would be male or female, with same-sex attractions or different-sex attractions, or no interest in sex at all. The word has evolved and now most frequently is associated with a mental illness. The current incarnation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association lists Transvestic Fetishism as a mental illness. The official symptoms are:

over a period of at least six months, in a heterosexual male, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving cross-dressing. The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

So the official word is that straight men who get turned on by wearing women's clothes have a mental illness. Gay men who get turned on by women's clothes are perfectly normal, as are, apparently, women who wear pants. Sound a little ridiculous to you? It does to me.

So let's go back to the Discovery News article that Steve posted. What Chevalier D'Eon, pictured on the left, suffering from transvestic fetishism? Did he have a mental illness?

The answer depends on how you contextualize his experience (and, how Chevalier described his own experience). Chevalier died in 1810. The word transvestite had not yet been created and the DSM hadn't been dreamed up. Could he have been suffering from conditions that were not yet invented? Are mental illnesses--or conditions--timeless? Have they always existed? Do they exist only within the context of our culture and society?

We are prone to making terrible errors when thinking about history. We project our modern understandings of phenomena into the past. Yes, the phenomena of some men being turned on by wearing clothes associated with the opposite sex is likely a phenomena that has existed since we first started wearing clothes that identify differences in sex. This does not, however, mean that the meanings associated with the behavior are consistent through history. Context matters. Context changes--and so does our understandings of the same phenomena when we add the variable of time.

The article went on:

Here's how D'Eon's transvestitism came to pass: He joined King Louis XV's secret service in 1755, had his first major military posting in London in 1763... However, within months, he had a falling-out with the ambassador appointed to replace him in London, accusing the ambassador of trying to murder him. D'Eon also made public secret documents and ended up being sent to prison, which he escaped. Once escaped, D'Eon concealed his identity, reportedly, by dressing as a woman... And after that, apparently D'Eon was forced to adopt female dress, and others accepted him as a female. 

Whoops. Wait a minute. The current understanding of transvestism is that it is a mental illness that occurs in heterosexual men that are sexually turned on by wearing clothes that are considered female. The discovery article makes no mention of any of the relevant criteria for the so-called mental illness. D'Eon's transvestism, as described, is behavior used to avoid being detected by authorities and/or adversaries.

This is a totally different phenomena than is captured by the phrase transvestism.

What was D'Eon really thinking and experiencing? The Wikipedia page offers this tantalizing bit of information:

D'Eon claimed to be physically not a man, but a woman, and demanded recognition by the government as such. King Louis XVI and his court complied, but demanded that d'Eon dress appropriately and wear women's clothing.

This would make it more likely that in modern times, D'Eon would have identified as transgender. As with transvestism, I think it's important to look at how our description of this phenomena developed. Magnus Hirschfeld, who coined the term transvestite, also supervised the first known sex-confirmation surgery. The term transsexual didn't come into use until 1949 when David Oliver Cauldwell first used it. It wasn't until the 1970s and 80s that the terms gender identity disorder and later transgender came into use.

D'Eon would have never considered himself as a transvestite, as transsexual, as someone with gender identity disorder, or transgender. These terms did not exist to describe phenomena. Our shared history and way of viewing the world had not yet evolved and grown to a place where these terms had come into existence. We thought of ourselves very differently in the 1700s--our sense of self--and our ways of know ourselves--was embedded in the language of that time.

So how do with think of D'Eon? Maybe he (or she, as some references suggestion D'Eon referred to self as she) left behind journals or other writings. Maybe their are some historical documents that describe how D'Eon moved through the world, how D'Eon represented his/her self to others. Maybe these documents don't exist.

What I do know is that it makes no sense to transport ourselves back to the 1700s with 2012 ways of knowing and think we can understand how people experienced the world. If we take our current world-view and use it to understand the past, we really are just developing an understanding of the past as we would think of it if we time traveled. It is an ethnocentric way of understanding history, and is a tool that isn't particularly helpful. We cannot judge a culture (or individual experience) from another era by our own standards and ways of knowing.

To understand the past as it was, we need to know how people of the time thought of their experience.

Back to D'Eon and my conversation with Steve.

I had no idea who D'Eon was when I had this conversation with Steve. Now that I know, I think this still wouldn't be the right way to think about D'Eon. It's unclear what D'Eon thought about his/her sex or gender. We can only project into the past (he/she lived and dressed like a woman, so he/she must have thought we was a woman--or female). No matter how we think of D'Eon, our thoughts will be embedded in our modern culture and our modern way of thinking. Absent first person narrative, there isn't a way to represent D'Eon in a way that is grounded in D'Eon's own phenomenology.

That for me is the exciting part of history--learning about my own phenomenology and trying to decode how someone in any particular historical era might have understood something from their own phenomenological viewpoint. What do you think?

The Map is not the Territory: On Scientology, Intelligence, and Critical Thinking

Regular readers of my random ramblings no doubt note that I'm a lover of diversity. I also strive to be respectful of a variety of beliefs. There are limits. I've apparently found one of mine.

"Everything in moderation including moderation" --Oscar Wilde

My clinical psychology practice is in the heart of Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts. It's hard to spin around on Massachusetts Avenue without knocking over another psychologist. There are a lot of us concentrated along red brick sidewalks. This dense grouping of psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists apparently makes the square a good place for the occasional protest by anti-psychiatry and anti-psychology forces within Scientology.

I've been working in Cambridge for the better part of eight years now. From time to time the folks from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights New England canvass the streets and put leaflets on the windshields of the cars lining the streets. I recently got this flyer pictured on the left when I was parked in front of a senior citizen housing complex.

I'm all for having full throated and complex discussions about all sorts of different ideas. The neighborhood around my office is populated by communists, cults, political protesters (the Falun Gong folks have put on some amazing street performances/protests), and of course there is the endless supply of people wanting me to save the whales, children, environment, etc.

Most of what is presented in Harvard Square is one sided. The information from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights is no different. I actually enjoy encountering this sort of material--and enjoy when a young (or old) client brings it with them into an appointment. Almost every autumn, for example, a teen comes into my office with their latest discovery from the LaRouche youth movement.  Together we look at the information with a critical eye. We think of ways to get different viewpoints. We think of ways to fact check. I create a space where the teen can come to their own opinion, in their own way, in their own time. 

This sort of dialogue has had transformative and far reaching effects. A young person (or any person, really) starts looking at their own life with a critical eye: they explore, fact check, try out different viewpoints, and eventually find a more expansive understanding of their inner (and outer) lives.

Sometimes however, the one sided nature of the debate turns nasty. Sometimes it's even dangerous.

There are important issues to consider with the over use of psychiatric medications (look here to check out Robert Whitaker's blog Mad in America and here to check out Daniel Carlat's blog for two excellent places to start your own research). The "Whistleblowers of Elderly Psychiatric Abuse", however, really got me frosted the other morning.

What frosted me about the flyers left in front of the senior housing is that it preys on fear and peddles that fear on a vulnerable population. The claims made in the flyer, in some ways, are not outlandish. There are serious concerns that patients and doctors need to sort out together about the use of psychiatric medications.  Likewise, there are also serious concerns to consider when a patient is contemplating electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

To explore ECT more, click here to check out the Mayo Clinic's information page about the procedure,  here to read another overview, or here.

Leaving propaganda on cars surrounding a senior housing complex is just too much. Of course many senior citizens are perfectly capable of doing their own critical thinking. Some however, are not. Some just get scared, aren't equipped to have a good dialogue with their physician, and are left to suffer needlessly.

Rather than leave the propaganda behind anonymously, why not really engage people in a multi-sided dialogue about psychiatry, medication, mental health treatment, and health care decision making?

On a lightly related issue, the folks leaving the anti-psychiatry propaganda also left behind a coupon to visit the local Scientology church. To have your IQ, personality, and aptitude testing.

I have to admit, I'm curious about this one. Much ink has been spilled about what constitutes "intelligence." No one really has an answer for it. The best we have is our performance on specific tasks that are statistically compared to the performance of large populations of people who take the same test.

"The map is not the territory" -- Alfred Korzybski

I wonder how long this is going to take us all to figure out? In the end, I think that's what this somewhat rambling blog post brings me. Whether we are talking about psychiatry, anti-psychiatry, religion, or intelligence, we collectively seem intent on thinking one group or another has direct access to a final statement of what reality is. In the end the best any of us can ever do is have access to our own perceptions to a set of beliefs or ideas.

Madness. Religion. Intelligence. We've created many different abstractions to understand these phenomena. They are all just that: abstractions or reactions we derive from our perceptions. None of them, on their own, are representative of reality.

I think this makes our world so much more interesting and exciting. It also makes it possible for us to all look together at one thing and marvel and all the different ways we experience and understand the phenomena around us.

Should Philosophers Contribute to Social Life?

I've recently started listening to a series called "Philosophy Bites," which is a podcast of top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics. This morning I was listening to a brief conversation with Mary Warnock. She is a philosopher, a member of the House of Lords in the UK, and an advocate for euthanasia.

I was struck by several things she said in the brief interview. Of particular interest was this segment where she talked about  the role of religion in  moral decision making around issues of euthanasia. In this time of "culture wars" in the United States her voice was a refreshing new and challenging look at what is happening.

I certainly wouldn't want to deny that religion has it's place. The trouble is that some people don't like them and don't feel any need for them. And therefore it seems to me absolutely and totally wrong that legislation which has to bind everybody and the rule of law seems to me something that is far more important than any particular religious dogma. It is completely wrong that religion should be given an enormous part in producing legislation. But anyone who says that human life is a gift from God is just simply talking irreverently because not everybody believes that. And so how could their particular believe possibly be brought in to justify blocking any attempt at legalizing assisted suicide. I mean obviously people who are religious very often have very good an acceptable moral views, but they have no special access to what would be a good and sound basis of legislation in a matter like that which is a moral matter.

There are a number of hot-button issues facing our world today. Gay marriage, equality, war, abortion, education,  the environment, the budget... all topics that we have opinions about in part based on moral judgments. As played out in the epic struggle between the left and right, these struggles seem deeply rooted in our sense of morals--morals that are (nearly) inextricably intertwined with religious teachings.

Turn on the television recently? Check out Twitter, Facebook, or comments made about articles online? Dismayed at how we seem to be talking (or yelling) at each other rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue? I know I'm dismayed.

This is what got me so interested in Warnock's interview. I hadn't fully noticed that at the heart of our public discourse is the divide between the moral reasoning of (some) religious folk and the moral reasoning of (some) secular folk. That divide is brought to life in our public discourse through the constant chatter of one side trying to prove the other side is wrong. In her interview, Warnock showed me how easy it is to lose sight of how one particular set of beliefs does not have any "special access to what would be a good and sound" in any of these situations. Neither religion nor political believe, nor intellectual tradition provide any one group with access to a particular truth.

So what's a concerned person to do? For starters, know your own epistemology (what is knowledge, how is it obtained, and what constitutes acceptable criteria for knowledge) and ontology (what do people consider reality). Also be open to understanding how another person goes about making meaning in the world.

In an article in the New Statesman Warnock offers this:

I believe morality comes from our common human nature and that we live in a society that is precarious and difficult. To take morals seriously is to take the view that we've got to collaborate and taken one another seriously.

I like that. It is a challenge to really be open to listening and understanding someone with a radically different viewpoint than our own. I think it's worth it. In fact, our very survival might depend on it. Who are you going to take seriously today?