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Female Impersonation

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Carole-Anne Tyler takes on the world of feminist criticism in Female Impersonation. The back cover states that she "explores what it would mean to take seriously the notion that gender is an artifice, that one's very identity is in fact a socially mandated impersonation." And it's this that is meant by the title. Female Impersonation is not primarily about drag queens; it's certainly not a "how-to" book, nor a sociological study of the phenomena. While transgendered issues do appear, they are not the main focus of Tyler's attention and primarily serve to attempt to illustrate her basic premise, that gender is imposed and not innate.

Here, though, is where the whole thing goes astray. Tyler's interest is in culture, not biology, and she looks solely at cultural artefacts to make her points. It's clear she's well read and thoughtful, but just because Simone de Beauvior, in The Second Sex, wrote, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman...this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine", that doesn't mean it is true. It's certainly a provocative claim, and one that has had great influence in gender studies, but there's a growing body of biological evidence that directly contradicts it. This is a fundamental failure of Tyler's to confront the truth, or at least what appears now to be the truth: that while gender and sex are not identical, they are both biological in origin. Certainly any particular outward manifestation of gender is cultural (one merely needs to compare courtly male attire of Louis XIV to a Can-can dancer at the Moulin Rouge); but that is a far cry from claiming that gender itself is artificial.

Further weaknesses result from Tyler's single-minded cultural approach. When she does discuss drag queens, transsexuals, and other transgendered people, it seems apparent that she's only seen them on TV and in the movies, and maybe not too often, at that. In one chapter, Transsexual Impersonation: the Ultimate Sacrifice, she repeated speaks of TV movies about transsexuals and makes broad generalizations about them and how they reflect the societal view of gender. Never mind that every transsexual would be livid about the chapter title; it's impossible to argue the point that transsexuals are not impersonating women, they are becoming women--or even, they have always been women but are making their physique match their gender, with someone who believes that natal females are female impersonators! No, what's particularly odd here, especially given the breadth of her source material elsewhere, is that after practically being given the impression there's a transsexual movie-of-the-week, Tyler apparently knows only one TV movie about transsexuals: Second Serve, the Renee Richards Story. It's a problematic example at best to learn anything about transsexualism--Richards now professes unhappiness with her gender change, and Dr. Richard Stoller's theories, summed up as "too much mother and too little father makes a feminine boy" are widely recognized today as simply inaccurate. Stoller is the only medical professional cited in the work, and that from work published in 1985. Tyler is either unaware of or ignores more recent studies, such as one indicating differences in brain physiology between transsexuals and non-transsexuals; this surely gives the lie to her fundamental premise. Nor did she employ basic sociological research. Should Tyler have gone and interviewed transgendered people, she might have gotten a real impression of their experience and what gender really means. If one wants to write about gender and culture, and use the incongruities of gender and sex as examples on which to base one's point, to not speak directly to those people is unconscionable. Failing to step out of the ivory tower and truly consider the accuracy of comments by "authorities" is common to far too much academic writing; I speak as an academic myself.

Instead, Tyler would prefer to discuss what various cultural critics have said, and even here I'm not always sure whether she agrees with them or not. Catherine Mallot is cited as claiming that "the transsexual, like the transvestite, wishes to be a 'she-male," the phallic woman who lacks nothing...the transsexual can only lose lack by giving up the penis. Paradoxically, a real castration is demanded as the (imaginary) solution to castration anxiety." I'm amazed--a feminist Freudian. Again, speaking with actual post-operative transsexuals would not bear this over-thought nonsense out. A quick flip through a random chapter sub-section reveals the following writers cited: Pecheux, Brownmiller, Irigaray, Butler, Beauvoir, Foucault, Fanon, Freud, Lacan, Woolf--well, I'm stopping here, after only two pages! Literally hundreds of writers are cited throughout the book, and if you haven't read them in depth, you'll wonder at the relevance of much of this. It frankly reads like a doctoral dissertation, in which the author seeks to impress by displaying her prodigious bibliographic skills in lieu of her impressive critical thinking skills.