David Valentine Imagines 'Transgender'

Valentine, David. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the coloured girls go
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo...


I haven't read David's book yet, but I did go to two talks about it, which is probably close to just as good. Here's a tip to remember: if you get a chance to see an academic make a presentation more than once on the same topic, take the chance. I followed the argument much more clearly on the second go-round than on the first. Basically, "transgender" is a term that can and should be contested. Holly, Candy, Little Joe and Sugar Plum Fairy all continue to go to New York poor, young and queer, but they do not use the term "transgender." Meanwhile, all institutions within the community have reified the term "transgender" as the main word for what Sugar Plum Fairy is. A rather classic problem of ontology begins to involve poor Sugar Plum's life when the ontological difference between "trans" and "glb" identities helps Rep. Barney Frank and others to drop them from the Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA). The "T" never quite makes it to the table, especially in certain political contexts. This may just say something quite dark about multiple communities' way of thinking about difference.