Update Monday 17 April 2006:
The Gender Travel Questionnaire is open -- please click here if you'd like to do it.
About gender identity and travel
Why do so many gender variant* people travel so often?
Why do so many people travel to obtain sex reassignment surgery?
How far do they/we travel? Where?
Do people migrate to different places because they/we are gender-variant?
In her autobiography, writer Jan Morris describes herself as a “traveller across the boundaries of sex”. In English, sex and gender are often thought as territories that can be crossed or traversed. Some people even call gender variant people 'gender migrants'.
At the same time, in ‘real life’, many people have commented on the amount of traveling that gender-variant people do. This travel might be from one city to another, to start a new life and a new history; it might be to find the right medical or psychological care; it might be to obtain gender reassignment surgery. It might be to attend conventions or conferences; to buy hormones; to ‘escape’ the closetedness of one’s daily life for a holiday. It might be something else entirely.
What is gender travel?
‘Gender travel’ is an invented name that brings together the metaphor of gender variant people as travelers; and the actual travels that lots of gender variant people do.
This website forms part of a doctoral research project in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The project studies how transsexual, transgender and gender-variant identities relate to geography and travelling. In particular, I am focusing on gender clinics in Thailand and their clientele in Australia, as an example of 'transgender travel'.
By doing this research, I hope to understand better how gender travel happens and how particular kinds of gender travel work. I also want to better understand the relationship between the metaphor of transsexuals or transgendered people as ‘travelers’ and the material, real-life journeys that so many of us do.
How can you participate?
During 2006, I’ll be looking for volunteers to take part in two different projects.
One is a short questionnaire about travel you might have done in relation to expressing your gender identity. The questionnaire is open to anyone in any part of the world who identifies as gender variant: trans, transsexual, transgendered, genderqueer, Two Spirit, kathoey, waria, sistergirl, brotherboy, transbutch, cross-dresser, trannyboy, trannygirl, transvestite, etc. Find out more here.
The second project involves a case study about gender reassignment clinics in Thailand and Australian patients who obtain surgery there. During April, May, June and July, I will be conducting face-to-face interviews with anyone living in Australia who has, or intends to, travel to Thailand to obtain gender reassignment surgery (GRS). If you live in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, I’d be particularly interested in setting up an interview with you. Find out more here.
* I use ‘gender variant’ as a shorthand term to include many diverse and different categories: transsexual/transexual; transgendered; genderqueer; of transsexual background; Two Spirit, kathoey, waria, sistergirl, brotherboy, transbutch, cross-dresser, trannyboy, trannygirl, transvestite, and any terms that I’ve missed out. In using 'gender variant', I don't intend to collapse the specific experiences of such a diverse group. The research I am doing involves tracing any differences in the meaning of particular kinds of travel within specific identity categories as well as across those categories.
