Unzipping gender: sex, cross-dressing and culture

234 Pages·2004·13.594 MB·English

by  Charlotte Suthrell

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Unzipping Gender
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Dress, Body, Culture
Series Editor: Joanne B. Eicher, Regents’ Professor, University of Minnesota
Advisory Board:
Ruth Barnes, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Helen Callaway, CCCRW, University of Oxford
James Hall, University of Illinois at Chicago
Beatrice Medicine, California State University, Northridge
Ted Polhemus, Curator, “Street Style” Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum
Griselda Pollock, University of Leeds
Valerie Steele, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology
Lou Taylor, University of Brighton
John Wright, University of Minnesota
Books in this provocative series seek to articulate the connections between culture and dress
which is defined here in its broadest possible sense as any modification or supplement to the
body. Interdisciplinary in approach, the series highlights the dialogue between identity and
dress, cosmetics, coiffure and body alternations as manifested in practices as varied as
plastic surgery, tattooing, and ritual scarification. The series aims, in particular, to analyze
the meaning of dress in relation to popular culture and gender issues and will included
works grounded in anthropology, sociology, history, art history, literature, and folklore.
ISSN: 1360–466X
Previously published in the Series
Helen Bradley Foster,“New Raiments of Self”: African American Clothing in the
Antebellum South
Claudine Griggs,S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes
Michaele Thurgood Haynes,Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas
Anne Brydon and Sandra Niessen,Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Body
Dani Cavallaro and Alexandra Warwick,Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the
Body
Judith Perani and Norma H. Wolff,Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa
Linda B. Arthur,Religion, Dress and the Body
Paul Jobling,Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography
Fadwa El Guindi,Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance
Thomas S. Abler,Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European Empires and Exotic
Uniforms
Linda Welters,Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia: Beliefs about Protection and Fertility
Kim K.P. Johnson and Sharron J. Lennon,Appearance and Power
Barbara Burman,The Culture of Sewing
Annette Lynch,Dress,Gender and Cultural Change
Antonia Young,Women Who Become Men
David Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style
Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian
Fashion Industry
Brian J. McVeigh, Wearing Ideology: The Uniformity of Self-Presentation in Japan
Shaun Cole, Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century
Kate Ince,Orlan: Millennial Female
Nicola White and Ian Griffiths,The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image
Ali Guy,Eileen Green and Maura Banim,Through the Wardrobe: Women’s Relationships
with their Clothes
Linda B. Arthur,Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-Cultural
Perspective
William J.F. Keenan,Dressed to Impress: Looking the Part
Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson, Body Dressing
Leigh Summers,Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset
Paul Hodkinson, Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture
Michael Carter, Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes
Sandra Niessen,Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla Jones, Re-Orienting Fashion: The
Globalization of Asian Dress
Kim K. P. Johnson,Susan J.Torntore and Joanne B. Eicher,Fashion Foundations: Early
Writings on Fashion and Dress
Helen Bradley Foster and Donald Clay Johnson,Wedding Dress Across Cultures
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DRESS, BODY CULTURE
Unzipping Gender
Sex, Cross-Dressing and Culture
Charlotte Suthrell
Oxford • New York
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First published in 2004 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
© Charlotte Suthrell 2004
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN1 85973 720 X (Cloth)
1 85973 725 0 (Paper)
Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn
www.bergpublishers.com
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
11
Introduction 1
Fieldwork 3
The Doctrines of Gender 5
The Prevalence of Transvestism 6
Clothing as Gender Landscape 8
22
Clothing Sex, Sexing Clothes: Transvestism,
Material Culture and the Sex and Gender Debate 13
The Importance of Sex and Gender 13
Dress and Identity: Transvestism and Material
Culture 14
‘Is Gender to Culture as Sex is to Nature?’:
Transvestism and the Discourses of Sex and Gender 19
Corporeality and the Politics of Sex 21
Clothing the Brain 23
33
Transvestites in the UK: the Dream of Fair Women 31
Are those Women’s Clothes? 31
Fieldwork in the UK 34
Becoming Extraordinary: The Experience of the
Transvestite in Western Societies 37
Becoming ‘The Other’ 41
UK Transvestites: Interviews with Anthony/Suzanne,
John/Joy, Dan/Shelly, Gavin/Gina and
Simon/Sandra 42
The Range of Possibilities 55
Clothing Choices 64
Some Conclusions about UK Transvestites 68
v
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Contents
44
Disorder Within the Pattern: the Hijras of India 75
Fieldwork in India 75
Hijras in Context: Who are Hijras? 78
Why the Hijras? 80
The Need to Categorise: Studies of the Hijras 82
Becoming a Hijra 83
Hijras and the Principle of Male and Female Union 84
Hijras and Religion 86
Part II – Fieldwork with Hijras – Shabana, Tara,
Jaitun, Chand, Leila’s Information, Ramdhan 90
The Position of Hijras within the Indian Cultural
Framework 106
The Changing Position of Hijras in Indian Public
Life and Media 107
55
Crossing Gender Boundaries in Cultural Context:
Fieldwork Comparisons and Cultural Influences 115
Cross-dressing and Clothing Choices 117
Differences in Lifestyle 119
Transvestism Within Contrasting Cosmological
Contexts 124
66
Dressing Up/Dressing Down: Reconsidering Sex
and Gender Culture 131
Woman = Soft, Man = Hard: Concepts of Language
Made Material 134
Gendered Emotions and the Ceremony of Naven 137
Masculine Representation of the Feminine 139
Jung and the Inner World of Opposites 140
Sex, Gender or Sexuality? 143
Crossing Gender as an ‘Institutionalised’ Role 145
The Brazilian Travestis 147
Binary Categorisation as ‘Common Sense’ 150
Masculinity, Femininity; Genetics and Mosaics 151
The Correlates of Gender Culture – Transvestism
as Material Objectification 154
Cross-cultural Evidence and the Conceptualisation
of Gender Crossing 156
Marking Gender 160
vi
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Contents
77
Thinking of Themselves: Transvestism and Concepts
of the Person 163
Transvestism as a Social Phenomenon 163
Concepts of the Person, Individual and Society in
India and England: Cultural Contexts of
Transvestites and Hijras 165
Contrasting Concepts of Self within the Hindu
and Western Traditions 169
Individuality and Identity 172
Personhood and Transvestism in Cross-Cultural
Perspective 173
Blurring the Boundaries: Deconstructing Theories
of the Self 175
Transvestites, Constructed Selves, and Issues of
Sex and Gender 177
A Broader Conceptualisation of Transvestism 179
‘This is an Absurd Ordination for People to
Live in, in 2002’ 181
Appendix A Questionnaire 185
Appendix B Occupations 191
Appendix C Questions 4, 5 & 6 195
Appendix D Adjectives 197
Bibliography 199
Index 209
vii
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List of Illustrations
1. Sunday Times ‘Style’ section cover, December 2, 2001 32
2. Janett Scott 35
3. Shelly 47
4. Gina 50
5. Sandra 53
6. Siva Arddhanesvara 87
7. Shabana & Tara 94
8. Chand 100
9. Ramdhan from Samred Kalaen 104
ix
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