ABSTRACT
Although the term transgender has been in use less than 40 years (Ekins & King, 2006), many scholars and researchers have documented the numerous definitions regarding trans* identities (e.g., Currah, 2006; Hill, 2003; Stryker, 2008) along with the various tensions (e.g., Valentine, 2007), debates (e.g., Halberstam, 1998; Hale, 1998; Rubin, 2006), and conflations (e.g., Renn, 2010) that arise because of these definitions. Even my use of the asterisk, which symbolizes the multitude of identities and identity categories used to refer to those of us who are trans* (Tompkins, 2014), represents a relatively new—and contested—turn in how the community is understood and represented textually. This rocky terminological terrain mirrors Sedgwick’s (2008) provocative statement, “The relations implicit in identifying with are, as psychoanalysis suggests, in themselves quite sufficiently fraught with intensities of incorporation, diminishment, inflation, threat, loss, reparation, and disavowal” (p. 61; emphasis in original). Language and categories are insufficient to capture the fluid nature of the various permutations of gender identities, expressions, and embodiments that show up in various spatial and temporal locations. However, despite their seeming inadequacy, such categories are in many ways necessary in their ability to make individuals and populations culturally intelligible (Butler, 2006) as well as to help individuals find communities of support. According to E.C. Davis (2008),
Controversy over academic representations of transgender lives centers on and reiterates false dichotomies of stable/fluid, hegemonic/subversive, and oppression/empowerment. . . . Neither the emphasis on stability nor the postmodern framing of fluidity can completely account for the ongoing, everyday practices and experiences of (trans) gender identity construction. Attempts to create and present a coherent self may coexist with diverse ways of exhibiting and explaining this self. (p. 99)
