Trans abject bodies that organize themselves in acts of theatricality to exist

There is a whole scenity field established after the unreasonable discourse that trans abject
bodies need to venture their existence about what is not possible to say or write. Thus, it is
to state that all the effort of performing arts to refute common sense, or try sophisticate it in
a theater vision as distortion, disregards a truth in this knowledge: whatever one wants to
demonstrate in action do not match the intent to demonstrate or do not match what is
realize to whom is shown. The scenic truth as advocated by a realistic theatrical pedagogy,
nothing takes into account a hint of distortion necessary to considerate for misalignments
language-existence of trans abject bodies. In the field of relationship with the other, to
which extends the act of theatricality, exchanges occur between signifiers that in circular
mechanisms do not operate under the reciprocity when dealing with trans-marginal
subjectivities. So, to exist, trans abject bodies meet in performativity, with all its scenic
power, the waywardness need to be incurred. In this sense, transgendering forms,
unsubmissive to the economy of reproduction, are eminently psycho-phenomenological
manifestations of existence of experimentation in body and in language, or so in body
languages.

Key words: Theatricality; transgendering ; performativity ; body language.

Introduction

According to Butler (2015), besides the problematics of recognition of the subject lies the effort of

questioning the normativity of the concept of subject itself. The foundation of the subject is based in

a election of which are the lives worth of living. So, abject lives are those that doesn't matter to the

contemporary society, concerned in neoliberal achievements.

Social interdictions to transgender people challenge their existence in its subjective and

aesthetic aspects. Considering that all forms and ideas that can't be manifested in discourse meets in

body language a place of expression, it's due to investigate transgender performance as a

phenomena of knowledge. Theater as an art language helps us to draw the subjective phenomena of

transgenders identity in its relation to a complex expression that cannot be understood from a

classic Cartesian paradigm.

From this a perspective unfolds in which the formation of the individual must no longer be

held as a parameterised union of the triad, sex/gender/desire, but the existential expect of multiple

aspects of oneness that, with the individual, compose a set of references. The processes of

differentiation in which all human beings are involved end up forming not gender identities behind

expressions of gender, but identities that are constituted performatively1 . Performing gender, in the

end, means not the construction of subjectivities, but the discursive and cultural deconstruction of

the social idea sets that accompany the operations of sexuation of the body.

Pursuing this logic further, transgender women, who eventually want to be operated to

change sex, may be prevented, given that their apparent well-being possessing masculine genitalia

and presenting expressions of feminine gender does not provide the certainty that medicine requires

to guarantee that there would be no regret after this irreversible process. Thus, the purpose of the

surgery, and eventually that of pharmacopsychiatry, of the sex change, ends up creating different

meanings for transgendering identity. It is completely unimportant for this thinking to understand

the singularity of the experience of the individuals. Before the preoccupation was to prevent trans

people from undergoing surgery when they did not demonstrate a full conviction of belonging to the

feminine sex or had an intention to continue to pursue prostitution activities.

In order not to run the risk of attaching the reflections of the research to ideas that are

conservative and based on a mythical protection of the uses of the body, here transgender bodies

have been named in accordance with the different possibilities of experience of sexuality and

1Acording to Butler (2002, p.18), "performativity must be understood not as a singular, deliberate 'act', but rather as the
reiterative practice and referential through which the discourse produces the effects it names."
gender of persons self-designated as trans/transgender man or woman. It is assumed here that it

matters to the research to take into account not only the singular experience of each person, but the

inexorable possibility that each may elaborate the forms as they prefer to be recognized.

Vulnerability of transgender bodies: mapping research around the world

Yadegardfard et al. (2013) conducted an investigation in Thailand with 190 transgender women in

the age range 15 - 25. With the aim of assessing the impact of age, schooling level and number of

sexual partners of this segment, a questionnaire was made to cover the variants: loneliness,

depression, risky sexual behaviour and suicidal tendencies. The youths aged 15 – 19 presented a

greater incidence of risky sexual behaviour and suicide, whereas those 20 – 25 presented a greater

incidence of loneliness and depression.

Gooren et al. (2015) studied the impact of the use of transgendering hormones by

masculine and feminine transgenders from Vietnam, seeking to assess their functional health and

well-being. On a scale from disposition to optimistic disposition in a questionnaire about functional

and social health, 60 masculine transgender and 60 feminine transgender participants were divided

into users and non-users of transgendering hormones. The result of the research was that the levels

of family acceptance of users were significantly lower than those for non-users.

Boyce et al. (2012) carried out a study to verify barriers to access to sexual health services

for gays, bisexuals, men who identified themselves as heterosexuals and had sex with other men

and transgender women in Guatemala City. The majority of the 29 interviewees, distributed among

the aforementioned designations, frequented the public health services more often due to the low

price and greater accessibility, and informed that they experienced discrimination, confidentiality
violation, and found the services untrustworthy. Specifically the transgender women, gays and

bisexuals preferred to frequent private clinics due to the sensation of belonging. The most indicated

barriers to use of sexual health services were discrimination, fear of HIV infection, cost and lack of

social support.

Doussa et al. (2015) investigated the perception of transgenders in Australia with regard to

their roles as fathers and mothers, whether shared or not. The themes of interest were family,

relationships and fatherhood/motherhood. The research indicated that normative precepts of gender

moulded the manner by which transgenders and their partners imagined fatherhood/motherhood. It

was observed, however, that forms of resistance occurred based on the creation of new family

structure formats.

Geoffrion (2013) analysed the “Festival of Transvestism” that covers the growing cross-

dressing activity by youths in southern Ghana in recent years. The authoress points out that the

event has contributed to the reinforcement and reproduction of gender binarism, besides the cis-

normativity of Ghanaian society. At the same time, the festivals in question are pointed out as being

places of creative experimentation of performativity of the transgenering, which would allow

deconstruction processes of gender and sexuality stereotypes. The contribution of the study lies in

its revelation of the questioning of strict linking of more feminine men and cross-dressers with

homosexuality that entered public debate a short time ago in the country.

Mavhandu-Mudzusi and Sandy (2015) investigated the relation of religiosity with the

discrimination and stigma faced by LGBTs at a rural university in South Africa. Through an

interpretive phenomenological approach with 20 LGBTs from this university, it is pointed out how

this segment is subject to various discriminatory acts, not only from their peers, but also from the

academic structure: requests for financial and health support declined, including cases of rape, are

associated to these persons. In the university there are initiatives for conversion of sexuality that,
associated to the discriminatory and depreciative acts, have led LGBT students to hide their sexual

orientation, not study some course disciplines, abandon courses, and commit suicide.

Lenning and Buist (2013) conducted a research with over 300 transgenders in the United

States, seeking to cover the social, psychological and economic challenges faced by them and their

partners. Using the methodology of narrative analysis, it was confirmed that previous research had

pointed out social stigma, psychological pain and the barriers to professional activity, to which

partners and the intersectional aspect of these problems are to be added.

Acts of theatricality: between performance and psychoanalysis

The instance in question here is raised with tenacity by Lacan in discussing the representation of

sexuality in the subject as the only existing structure of what can be manifested of sexuality as such:

"sexuality is represented in the psyche by a relation of the subject which is deduced from something

other than sexuality itself."2 To act / speak (to constitute an identity) would then always be an

elaboration of representatives in the subject. Now, if subjectivity is unequal to sexuality, where does

it sets to form itself?

Before demonstrating Lacan's thesis, which will guide the construction of performativity

that could be operated from there3, I want to highlight the tensions created between the field of

sexual realization and the formation of the subject. Retaking the dialectical nexus of the sense of

'sub-jects' as a form of identity construction that considers the misunderstandings ab-senses, in the

gap between the exercise of sexuality and the psyche, we gain the opportunity of full creativity for

the conduction of representations. It is, however, in the multiple senses attributed to sex-gender-

2 ‘O sujeito e o outro (I): a alienação’ (p.194).

3The concept of discursiveness held the meeting between gender performativity in Judith Butler and sophism return by
Barbara Cassin. It means the disconnection between subjectivity and sexuality/gender.
desire in subjectivity, as well as in the non-proportionality of desire between two people, the place

of invention or suffering of the subject not with his/her sexuality, but with his/herself gender.

The indication of this problem lies in the discussion that Lacan makes regarding the

psychic formation of what it would mean to be male or female. According to the author, these

designations would be possibilities only destined to the exercise of sexuality, but that, in the subject,

they would only be equivalent: activity and passivity. Whereas for Lacan the field of psychism

would have only form these representatives, the subjectivity relative to sexuality and gender matters

is based on another source to form: "the ways of what one should do as a man or as a woman are

entirely abandoned to the drama, to the script, which is placed in the field of the Other."4

Now, if we return to what fits us as a demonstration of the devices of performativity of

language, it is not the light exercise of irresolute denial of the problem of sex as a mismatch. The

interest is not to deny the encounter, but it would be superficial to defend it. The frustration of

mismatch takes the problem to another order. The order of performativity. What is possible in the

face of the problem? To deny would perhaps be non-speaking and non-acting. However, in the face

of mismatching we only have to perform. Cassin5 thus sums up this moment of my articulation: "the

ab-sense lies at the very place of the relationship between performance and signifier, or else: the

relationship between performance and signifier defines Lacanian sophism."

We can proceed here in a distinction that I want to elaborate in terms of language in view

of what can be done in the area of the performing arts from the new questions interposed in work

4 ‘O sujeito e o outro (I): a alienação’ (p.194).

5 ‘Não há relação sexual’ (p.56).
field and in the artistic thinking6 . Performativity can be sustained by mechanisms of discursiveness

or theatricality.

If, on the one hand, the performativity studies of sexuality and gender seek to deal with the

problem presented here from elaborations and analyzes of constructions that would correspond to

the performativity of discursive acts, I come here for some ideas and suggestions of what we could

bring to these acts. I will call acts of theatricality what would be found in the area of bodily

creations and action that are set up not only as ways of facing the non-proportionality between the

desire of two people, but specially, as ways of facing the marginal perspectives that may appear in

gendering forms of trans abject bodies.

There is still a lack of studies in the fields of linguistics and psychoanalysis at this stage. In

performance studies of the performing arts field, however, there is an excess of interesting

problematizations. The mismatch lies in the fact that despite indicating the possibilities of

theatricalities in interrogating the subject's desire and gender, it is necessary to develop, however,

the equation of these experiences with the articulation of the problem as we have come so far. Lacan

himself indicates, without naming, this moment and what presents itself as a research gap: "the

orgasm of the body, if there is no sexual relation, we would have to see what it can serve."7

Faced with the incidence of acts of theatricality to operate sex mismatching or gender

equivocations, one wonders: under what circumstances, under what purposes and in the service of

which or from whom do performativities of body and action constitute themselves? What is it to see

and what is meant to give to see of what constitutes a mismatch between the subject with his/her

6 Flávio Desgranges in the book ‘A Inversão da Olhadela’ does an extended crucial analyses about the irreversible
modifications that operates in the relation of the spectator with art object. Having the theater language as a suporte of
thinking, the author shows the mainly questions that should be made to contemporary art about spectator participation
in the aesthetics phenomena and in the creation process, the interventions in non-conventional spaces and the
discontinued narrativity.
7 ‘O Seminário, book 20, 'Mais, ainda’ (p.77).
own gender? In what way do the subject's faults lie in circumventing the sexual and gender scenes

in which he/she performs?

There is a whole set of scenity on the grounds that it is necessary to risk enunciating what

can not be written. Thus it must be said that any effort by the performing arts to refute common

sense, or to attempt to refine it in its view of theater as falsification, disregards a truth in this

knowledge: whatever it is that one wishes to demonstrate in the act will not correspond to what it is

tried to demonstrate nor to what will be perceived to whom it is demonstrated. The scenic truth so

defended by a realistic theatrical pedagogy8 , takes no account of a necessary distortion to account

for these mismatches all.

So, to dramatize sexual intercourse is in the order of all the equivocation of the senses.

This is how the acts of theatricality take place in the ab-sex sense: taking into account all the

ambiguities of the signifiers in relation to each other, one has only to perform. And the place of the

theatricality of the false, as a non-attainment of the true of a uniqueness of meaning: "ab-sex sense,

in the vicinity of what opens between sense and meaningless as new virtuality."9 Performance

virtualities: discourse and theater.

In the field of the relation with the other, where the act of theatricality extends, the

exchanges are among signifiers that, in circular mechanisms, do not operate in the scope of

reciprocities. Lacan10 called this process of relations inversely reciprocal: "the relation of the

subject to the Other is wholly engendered in a process of hiatus". The dissymmetry of these

relations, however, entails all theatrical construction in the body and in the action of which one can

not write about the mismatching of signifiers: "every ambiguity of the sign is attached to the fact

8 The main author from this tradition was Stanislaviski, in Russia in the beginning of 20th century.
9 Badiou in ‘Não há relação sexual’ (p.80).
10 ‘O sujeito e o outro (I): a alienação’ (p.196).
that it represents something to someone" and "a signifier is what represents one subject to another

signifier."11

Now, if the signifier can only be performed in the face of the non-proportionality between

the desire of two people or the lack of social coherence between the subject with his/her own

gender, and if I here indicate some questions about how this can be done by the act of theatricality,

there is something that is imposing in this whole scenario: anguish. Hence, Lacan's formula that

anguish does not deceive, but we can only make ourselves with the other, put the other in contact

with our anguish, in a deceptively theatrical way. The anguish of the meaning of the self gender and

disagreement of two people is theatrical in some temporal dimension.

It is necessary to make a parallel of this theatrical operation with what Badiou 12 articulated

as an analysis operation:

So in treatment there are two intertwined temporalities. In the first place, the temporality of

formalization, always tempted to be precipitated, always tempted by haste, by the seduction of

active formalization. Then, secondly, one has the time of anguish dosing. This, on the contrary,

is always tempted by the endless. It is one of the meanings of Freud's famous title, Terminable

and Endless Analysis.

Something has to be done with the anguish of mismatch between subject and its gender,

this is fact. These two levels of temporality require that the act of theatricality has to be exercised in

two distinct dimensions. Whether in the precipitate or in the dosage, or in the composition of the

two, the body and the action must appear as the signifying reasons of a subject. So if, on the one

hand, there is the equivocation of meaning of gender and sexual mismatch, the anguish urges the

subject and causes him/her to engage in social, discursive and theatrical action. It is necessary to

choose the moment of emergency of the act as a means to resolve the anguish in the face of sexual/

11 ‘O sujeito e o outro (I): a alienação’ (p.197).

12 ‘Não há relação sexual’ (p.81).
gender misconceptions.

The temporality that consists in measuring anguish is a temporality that can permanently

postpone the date of the meeting of the real and always remain within the limits of sense and

meaninglessness, which, in the end, are the same, for having to avoid ab-sexual sense.13

Finally, I want to indicate what I consider the reasons for the social productions of

theatricality about sexual misconduct. The rationale for what happens here is in what Foucault14

pointed out about what happens in the discursive proliferation of sexuality: the placement of sex in

discourse "would be ordered to exclude insubstantial forms of sexuality from the strict economy of

reproduction."

Transgender bodies: theater existence

Butler (2015) says that to ask to be a citizen it's not a easy task. More than a simple occurrence of

recognition does not represents recognition itself. To dialogue the terms of recognition can be the

best way to achieve citizenship. Anyways, to dialogue about recognition rules can be more difficult

than just be inserted in a society with no matter of the way it is made.

Transgender process, determined by pathological issues of conceiving gender, almost only

for this reason, increase social and politics vulnerability for trans people. Out of equality rights in

all must all societies until nowadays, must of us, transgenders, are also out of creating official

perspectives to the recognition for our group. However, we are not out of performativity issues,

even as read as abject subjects. Its exactly from a abject place that we produce gender

performativity.

13 ‘Não há relação sexual’ (p.81).

14 ‘História da sexualidade v.1 – a vontade de saber’ (p.43).
 Besides the transgender process, otherwise, knowledges are constructed. Intersectional

regard for trans people will show that belonging feeling can be formed in relation with race, class,

age or other markers. So, a poor transgender man may perform transition not only seeking to be

recognized by man, but also, achieving the rights of living in welfare economics conditions as being

a transgender man. An strategy may be in this case the demanding for work for transgender people.

In all cases of intersectionality fight for recognition, performativity is a means of execution of the

subject expressions.

Trans abject bodies helps us to criticize cis-normative methods of conceiving identity of

gender. As not matching the subject with the gender imposed socially to him/her, transgender bodies

shows that all bodies are permanently acting theatricality. Knowledge produced by trans bodies,

even under unfortunate abjection, should be recognized as a revolution for the forms the human

beings understand themselves.

A by-product of this essay may be a hypothesis that instigates further research: it would be

in all non-normative manifestations of gender clues to what one puts in terms of theatrical

performance of what does not meet the pattern of reproduction. In other words, we, transgenders out

of cis-normativity, are interesting as indications of what are the possibilities in terms of body and

action in the face of the gap between a subject with its own gender.

On the one hand, it is important to characterize how theatrical performances manifest

themselves in the face of the non-proportionality of the desire between two persons. In the other

hand, the gap in the sexuality of the subject with the sexuality of other person may be compared

with the gap between the subject and its own gender. In both gaps, acts of theatricality occurs to

form the subject existence.

Even when it is expected of transgender bodies, read as abject bodies, a cis-normative

expression of the new gender, performativity may not guarantee that such proportionality between

the trans subject with his/her own gender would be mythical. Actually, transgender people teach

contemporary society that for each act of theatricality or act of discursiveness that someone

performs, gender identity gains a force of expression.

Well, transgendering process may provide for someone a great opportunity to criticize cis-

normativity and the privileges of cisgender people. Otherwise, as received as abject bodies,

transgender bodies can not only subvert its vulnerability to means of resistance, but, mainly, shows

to society that performing gender has more to do with theater than to genital organs.

References
Badiou, A. Cassin, B. Não há relação sexual - Duas lições sobre "O Aturdito" de Lacan. Rio de
Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor.
Boyce, S. Barrington, C. Bolaños, H. Arandi, C. G. Paz-Bailey, G. (2012) Facilitating access to
sexual health services for men who have sex with men and male-to-female transgender persons
in Guatemala City, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 14:3, 313-327.
Butler, J. 2002. Cuerpos que importan. Sobre los límites materiales y discursivos del “sexo”.
Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Butler, J. 2015. Quadros de Guerra: quando a vida é passível de luto? Rio de Janeiro: Editora
Civilização Brasileira.
Desgranges, F. A Inversão da Olhadela. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2012.
Doussa, H. Power, J. Riggs, D. (2015) Imagining parenthood: the possibilities and experiences of
parenthood among transgender people, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 17:9, 1119-1131.
Foucault, M. (2014) História da sexualidade v.1 – a vontade de saber. São Paulo: Paz e Terra
Editora.
Geoffrion, K. (2013) Ghanaian youth and festive transvestism, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 15,
Supplement 1, 48-61.
Gooren, L. J. Sungkaew, T. Giltay, E. J. Guadamuz, T. E. (2015) Cross-sex hormone use, functional
health and mental well-being among Transgender Men (Toms) and Transgender Women
(Kathoeys) in Thailand, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 17:1, 92-103.
Lacan, J. (1998) O sujeito e o outro (I): a alienação. In: Seminário 11 – Os quatro conceitos
fundamentais da psicanálise (1964). Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor.
Lacan, J. (1985) O Seminário, book 20. 'Mais, ainda'. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor.
Lenning, E. Buist, C. L. (2013) Social, psychological and economic challenges faced by
transgender individuals and their significant others: gaining insight through personal narratives,
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 15:1, 44-57.
Mavhandu-Mudzusi, A. H. Sandy, P. T. (2015) Religion-related stigma and discrimination
experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students at a South African rural-based
university, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 17:8, 1049-1056.
Yadegarfard, M. Ho, R. Bahramabadian, F. (2013) Influences on loneliness, depression, sexual-risk
behaviour and suicidal ideation among Thai transgender youth, Culture, Health & Sexuality,
15:6, 726-737.