At the Margins of Time and Place: Transsexuals and Transvestites in Trans Studies.

Abstract

This special issue began with a simple provocation: “Where do we find the transvestite and the transsexual?” The ascendance and mainstreaming of transgender and its offshoots in its Anglo-American idiom represent more than a shift in nomenclature. While transsexual and transvestite were central categories that organized trans experience across a wide array of geographies, genders, and racial and class coordinates during the twentieth century, these categories have receded into the background of anglophone activism and academia. Trans stud- ies, which has been dominated by US and English-based scholarship, has largely moved on from transsexuals in favor of ostensibly more open-ended and pro- liferating models of gender variance. Transvestites, for their part, have never occupied the center of the field of trans studies. Rendered anachronistic, both groups are more vulnerable than ever to long-standing stigmas with a new temporal twist. They are viewed as either tragic figures who could never be their “true” selves, in the case of transvestites, or hyper gender-conforming figures limited by the time in which they lived, in the case of transsexuals; the forward march of transgender has buried the fact that there are many living people who still identify with and live under those signs.