Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People in the Cultural and Institutional World
Invisible Lives is the first scholarly study of transgendered people—cross-dressers, drag queens and transsexuals—and their everyday lives. Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the...
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Invisible Lives is the first scholarly study of transgendered people—cross-dressers, drag queens and transsexuals—and their everyday lives. Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex change: everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law. Library Journal The author, a transsexual/transgendered (TS/TG) health services coordinator based in Montreal, has broken new ground with one of the first sociological studies of the TS/TG community. Disdaining the often value-riddled perspective of psychological inquiry, Namaste instead focuses on the daily concerns of TS/TG persons. Examining such issues as health and housing services, gender identity clinics, and the law, the author concludes, not at all surprisingly, that TS/TG persons have been effectively "erased" from the mainstream of public policy-making. Instead of presenting an in-depth case study with statistics and interviews, Namaste paints with a broader brush to create a new direction for future investigations and a new paradigm for TS/TG studies. Although most of the work focuses on Canada, its scope should make it applicable elsewhere. Recommended for academic and special collections.--Jeff Ingram, Newport P.L., OR Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
AcknowledgmentsIntroductionI. Theory1. "Tragic Misreadings": Queer Theory's Erasure of Transgender Subjectivity2. Theory Trouble: Social Scientific Research and Transgendered People3. Beyond Texualist and Objectivist Theory: Toward a Reflective Poststructuralist SociologyII. Culture4. "A Gang of Trannies": Gendered Discourse and Punk Culture5. Gendered Nationalisms and Nationalized Genders: The Use of Metaphor in Mass Culture and U.S. Transsexual ActivismIII. Research6. Genderbashing: Sexuality, Gender, and the Regulation of Public Space7. Access Denied: The Experiences of Transsexuals and Transgendered People with Health Care and Social Services in Toronto, Ontario8. Clinical Research or Community Health?Transsexual Perceptions of Gender Identity Clinics9. The Administration of ErasureThe Bureaucracy of Legal Sex, a Vicious Circle of Administration, and HIV/AIDS in QuebecConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
\ Library JournalThe author, a transsexual/transgendered (TS/TG) health services coordinator based in Montreal, has broken new ground with one of the first sociological studies of the TS/TG community. Disdaining the often value-riddled perspective of psychological inquiry, Namaste instead focuses on the daily concerns of TS/TG persons. Examining such issues as health and housing services, gender identity clinics, and the law, the author concludes, not at all surprisingly, that TS/TG persons have been effectively "erased" from the mainstream of public policy-making. Instead of presenting an in-depth case study with statistics and interviews, Namaste paints with a broader brush to create a new direction for future investigations and a new paradigm for TS/TG studies. Although most of the work focuses on Canada, its scope should make it applicable elsewhere. Recommended for academic and special collections.--Jeff Ingram, Newport P.L., OR Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Lambda Book ReportA fascinating exploration into the world of the transgendered and what they face in our society. \ —Lambda Book Report\ \
