This article argues that gender reassignment is best conceptualized for sociological purposes as gender migration, drawing parallels with the process of geographical migration. Both gender and geographical migrants often see themselves as beginning a new life; social membership and identity has to be reworked and negotiated; a new way of life has to be learnt; the old one has to be left behind. Migrants of both kinds are often regarded as undesirable and threatening; the legitimacy of settlement in the new country/gender may be denied; the granting of citizenship and other rights may be refused. The consequence may be that the migrant permanently occupies a position of marginality rather than full integration.

Key Words:
citizenship, migration, sex-change, transgenderism, transsexualism

This paper considers Ray Blanchard’s taxonomic, typological and diagnostic approach to his concept of ‘autogynephilia’ (‘love of oneself as a woman’) in male-to-female transsexuals, in the context of Anne Lawrence’s appropriation of the concept in the service of her personal transgendering identity formation and transgendering identity politics. A striking contemporary example of the umbilical cord that exists between the formulations of science and those of sections of the transgendered community is provided by the interrelations between Blanchard’s and Lawrence’s work on autogynephilia. The concept of autogynephilia is considered from the standpoint of the sociology of transgendering put forward in Ekins (1997) and Ekins and King (1999, 2001a, 2001b). In particular, the interrelations between transgendering, ‘migrating’ and the role of autogynephilia are examined with reference to selected material from life history work with three male-to-female transsexual informants. While it is not difficult to find autogynephilic components in transgendering trajectories, the interesting questions relate to the status of those components over diverse trajectories, including the constituting and consolidating (Ekins, 1993, 1997) of autogynephilic identities. The sociological approach presented in this paper provides the conceptual wherewithal to unpack a number of controversial issues surrounding the concept of autogynephilia and its reception.

Transsexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, cross dressers, and transgender and intersex persons share an invisibility in their performativities in, through, and across male or female stereotypes. This book explores the pathologizing effects of binary assumptions of sex and gender, of male and female. The first section of this book presents narratives from homosexuals, lesbians, cross dressers, transsexuals, and transgender and intersex persons from a range of cultures. The second addresses ways of recognizing these marginalized groups while the third suggests reconstructing gender theory beyond the binaries to allow celebration of multidimensional and contextual gender identities.

This paper discusses the limitations for social scientists of the medical categories of transvestism, transsexualism and gender dysphoria. These categories presume pathology, limit our gaze to a narrow range of cross-dressing/sex-changing phenomena and hide from view the behavior of all except those who are seen as problematic, for example transvestites and transsexuals themselves. The concept of a process of blending gender is considered useful in that it allows a concern with those who—in the sense of mixing or combining, and in the sense of harmonizing—attempt to, or succeed in, blending various aspects of the culturally established components of gender, either in respect of themselves (e. g. transvestites, transsexuals) or in respect of others (e. g. medicine, the mass media).

The paper is divided into five parts and focuses on key areas in the emerging field of transgender studies: the experiences of those who cross-dress and change sex; the way in which these phenomena have been socially patterned over the past few decades; the significance of the medicalization of gender blending; the enormous popularity of gender blending in the mass media and the various debates concerning the political role of those who blend various aspects of gender.

Each part provides a summary of key aspects of earlier research and reports on current developments in the field. In each part, a shift is traced from the idea of blending genders in the sense of mixing together elements of some preexisting gender categories to the idea of living ‘beyond gender’ altogether. This shift is hardest to discern in the more conservative areas of medicalization and the mass media, and most obvious in the radical political and cultural literature.

The status of the shift is, perhaps most problematic in the areas of ‘experiencing’ gender blending and its social organization. The paper concludes by summarizing the usefulness of the term ‘gender blending’. The particular advantage of the term is that it enables a polyvalent stance to be taken on the study of both those who themselves gender blend, and those who blend the gender of others. In particular, the concept of ‘blending genders’ allows for a sensitive treatment of individuals who are attempting to harmonize gender and it opens up for inquiry the medical profession’s attempt to do likewise. “The naming or identifying of things is, then, a continual problem, never really over and done with.” (Anselm Strauss, 1977: 25).

Gender blending—or transgenderism—is at the cutting edge of contemporary debate about sex, sexuality and gender. The term ‘transgender’ includes transvestites, transsexuals, drag queens, gender benders and all gender blenders, whether straight or gay, who in their cross-dressing and sex-changing transgress’ the binary divide between the sexes.

In Blending Genders international contributors come together in a lively discussion of all those who attempt to blend various aspects of gender, either in respect of themselves or others. In addition to historical, sociological and political analyses the book includes a number of personal and descriptive accounts.

Blending Genders is the first comprehensive treatment of the social aspects of cross-dressing and sex-changing and, as such, can rightly lay first claim to an emerging field of transgender studies. Contributors: Dwight B. Billings, Neil Buhrich, Peter Farrer, Phaedra Kelly, Roberta Perkins, Janice Raymond, Mark Rees, Carol Riddell, Thomas Urban, Terri Webb and Stephen Whittle.

Richard Ekins is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology and Psychoanalysis at the University of Ulster. Dave King is Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Studies at the University of Liverpool.