Bockting, thrice

I’ve started working with Walter Bockting. He’s going to help me with this last exam, and he’s going to help me with my research afterwards. As a part of that, I need to get a few reviews here on the site. I want to make sure I have all the quotes I need right at hand.

To that end, I’m going to talk about three articles that involve Walter in some way: “Homosexual and Bisexual identity in Sex-Reassigned Female-To-Male Transexuals.” by Eli Coleman, Walter Bockting, and Louis Gooren; “A Further Assessment of Blanchard’s Typology of Homosexual Versus Non-Homosexual or Autogynephilic Gender Dysphoria.” by Larry Nuttbrok, Walter Bockting, Mona Mason, Sel Hwahng, Andrew Rosenblum, Monica Macri, and Jeffrey Becker; and “Gay and Bisexual Identity Development Among Female-To-Male Transexuals in North America: Emergence of a Transgender Sexuality.” by Walter Bockting, Autumn Benner, Eli Coleman. I’ll start from the top, and move to the article where Walter was the primary author.

Gender, Queerness, and Nonverbal Communication

I’ve discovered recently that the used book store is one of my primary places to find sources for my dissertation. I keep finding incredibly good books there. I’m guessing students who take classes on feminist theory or queer theory sell their books there, and then I can scoop them up. Works well for me. I’d like to talk today about parts of one of those sources. The book is called Genderqueer: voices from beyond the sexual binary, and it’s edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins. They open the book by each giving their own introduction, and Wilchins’ is where I’d like to start.

There will probably be more on this book at a later date, but for now, I’m just looking at Riki Wilchins’ contributions.

A History of Sexuality

Today’s post is about the first two parts of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality: An Introduction Volume one. I found this work to be very interesting, saying things about sexuality that at first seemed completely backwards, but were eventually explained in such a way that they made perfect sense. It seems like if you replace the word “sexuality” with whatever content he is writing about, that sentence makes a really good explanation of everything Foucault wrote.

One of the things Foucault suggested was that sex has become more repressed, not less, over the past few hundred years. He tells us that the Victorian age confined sexuality to the home, absorbed it into the function of reproduction, and silenced it (3). That is, it became the norm not to talk about that sort of thing. Talking about sex was no longer acceptable, and sex became something that happens behind closed doors; specifically, behind the closed doors of a married couple intending to reproduce. In doing so, sex was no longer something that could be talked about.

Judith Butler, Phenomenologically

As promised, I have more research to share. Today I will be discussing Judith Butler’s article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” For those who don’t know, Butler is one of the most important voices in feminist theory, and one of the most cited authors in the humanities (almost more than Marx and Nietzsche put together).

One of the things I like best about this article is how it talks about gender as a performance, as something in flux. Butler tells us early on that “gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceede [sic]; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time – an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts. Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self” (519, emphasis in original). She is saying that the way we act informs our gender identity. That is, we have to act a certain way in order to have a gender. Theoretically, if we acted a different way, if we did not repeat the acts , the gestures, movements, and other enactments, we would lose or change that gender identity.

New directions and the logic of sex

I’m trying to make myself more focused again. I’ve been slacking off too much for too long, and it has to stop. Thankfully, I’m incredibly interested in my project, so it’s not hard to think about. The more I make myself work, the easier it is to do.

I find I’m constantly noticing little things that remind me of my project, which in turn is helping me really define it. I met with Walter Bockting last week (more on him later), and I think he was pretty interested in helping me out, but while we were talking, I saw that I really need to refine my work a bit. I need to know exactly where I’m going, and I need to give it borders and limits.

Gender Identity Disorder: Concerns and Controversies

The article I’d like to discuss today is Chapter 6 of the Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology, “Gender Identity Disorder: Concerns and Controversies” by Kate Richmond, Kate Carrol, and Kristoffer Denboske.

Divided Minds and Distributed Work

I realized that usually when I write these entries, I have a pattern for length. If it’s a book, it gets its own entry. Articles have to share. But I try to make sure the articles have something in common.

I have not done this today. The articles for today are from very different fields and very different thinkers. They don’t relate to one another, but they DO relate to my larger research. Which creates an interesting pairing, all things considered. See, while the first article, Clay Spinuzzi’s “Guest Editor’s Introduction: Technical Communication in the Age of Distributed Work” is talking about the internet and networks, the second article, Derek Parfit’s “Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons” is talking about personhood and identity. The tie in comes from my earlier research on personal identity. The Only X and Y principle, which basically says that the identity (in the sense of sameness) of any two things (X and Y) is determined only by those two things, and not by anything else.

Why does that matter? Well, each of them (X) are continuous with my research (Y), though not with each other. Well, I thought it was interesting. But you’re right; on to Spinuzzi.

A new look, Binaries, and embodied cyberbodies

I changed the theme of the site, though if you’re new here, that means nothing to you. What does matter, though, is what we’re here today to discuss. Namely, Susanna Paasonen’s “Binary Code, Binary Gender… and Things Beyond” and Lieve Gies’s “How material are cyberbodies? Broadband Internet and embodied subjectivity.” Let’s start with Paasonen.

Gender, Sexual Identity, and Emoticons

The two articles that draw attention today are “Gender and Sexual Identity Authentication in Language Use: the case of chat rooms” by Marisol Del-Teso-Craviotto and  “Emotional Expression Online: Gender Differences in Emoticon use” by Alecia Wolf. The first of these deals with the problem that seems to keep rearing its head in my research lately: the problem of legitimization and authentication. The second touches on it, but not as directly. So I’ll get to that later.

First, Marisol Del-Teso-Craviotto’s article.

Status report, and the difference of a decade

So my exams are rapidly approaching. I have about 20 days left. I have only 14 sources unread (out of 70), and I have 13 others that I have read but still need to review. Looks like I’m actually going to make it. So very much excitement there.

And in that vein, I’d like to talk about a book I just finished. It’s called Virtual Gender: Technology, Consumption and Identity Edited by Eileen Green and Alison Adam. It was published in 2001, and is a collection of essays. My major thought when reading through this was my amazement at what has changed in the past ten years.