Some more in depth information about this project...
This space is for writing in some depth about the reasons I am purusing this research, how it fits into my PhD thesis, and maybe also some progress reports along the way. As this work proceeds, some parts of it may become more important than others, or my reasons for doing the research might change. Keep coming back here if you're interested: the text may change along the way!
Travel as a solution?
Depending on location, gender variant people are often denied access or afford adequate healthcare, support, legal recourse to discrimination or injustice. Travel seems to be a widespread solution to some of these problems.
I am particularly interested in travel as a solution to inadequate, or overly restrictive, healthcare and medicine. I am also particularly interested in the global reach of gender variant communities, and how particular healthcare providers (surgeons, some doctors, some clinics) have global reputations. At the same time, traveling costs money. How do gender variant people afford to travel? What about those who cannot afford it?
The purpose of the research
The outcomes of my research will form part of part of my PhD thesis, entitled “'A traveller across the boundaries of sex': global epistemologies of transsexuality, transnationality and travel."
Currently, the plan for my thesis goes something like this. In the first part of my thesis, I'll focus on writing on the history of gender identity and geography. I look at how sexologists first began representing 'non-Western' gender variant identities and practices, and how anthropologists and documentary film-makers have carried on that tradition. In the middle section of the thesis, I look at transsexual autobiographies between 1960-1995, looking at how transpeople themselves have written about travel, geography and identity.
In the second section of my thesis, I'll look present day in terms of geography, space and gender identity. One of the more important case studies in this section is the phenomenon of Australian (and British, American, Canadian and Japanese) transsexuals obtaining gender reassignment surgery (GRS) in Thailand. In order to contextualise these thoughts in relation to real, material patterns of travel, I decided to collect information from actual people about how they travel, and why. I'm also conducting a field trip to Thailand in June-July 2006, visiting a number of cosmetic surgery clinics that specialise in GRS. I might also write a little something about a relatively recent film genre, the 'trans road movie'...
Part of my thesis abstract:
(This bit is full of academic jargon, as thesis abstracts are wont to be. If you'd like a lay explanation, email me and I'll endeavour to give you one.)
In this thesis, I ask how the idea of travel works as a complex metaphor for constituting and reproducing knowledges about transsexuality and other Euro-American gender variant practices.
Tentatively, I argue that transsexuality, constituting a category that regulates which bodies can legitimately ‘transform’ gender, comes into effect through demarcating topological, juridico-legal and geo-cultural boundaries that distinguish it as modern and ‘Western’ in relation to spaces that are assigned the position of ‘elsewhere’ (geographically or culturally other, and/or premodern) to the West. At the same time, such ‘elsewhere’ spaces work symbolically and materially to enable gendered transformation.
My aim is to interrogate the power dynamics of those 'elsewhere' spaces: to ask whether passing through such spaces re-institutes boundaries between the ‘West’ and its ‘others’ in a culturally imperialist fashion, or whether individuals redefine the ways that space, time, power and gender work by virtue of passing differently through them.
Why is it important?
In my life and work, I am committed to people being free to express the gender identity that they experience themselves to be. I also want to interrogate how the categories we use, and the ways we understand them, travel: ‘transsexual’, ‘transgender’, ‘gender’ and ‘sex’, among others. This website’s purpose is to find out more about that process.
Site Credits
This site was inspired by Jamie Heckert's awesome research website on sexual orientation.Technically, it was adapted during a long fortnight of learning CSS nearly from scratch. Angela Mitropoulos offered invaluable technical help and advice. The graphic was inspired by Jason Kottke of kottke.org. No, it's not the same graphic.
