Struggling for Ordinary CRITICAL CULTURAL COMMUNICATION General Editors: Jonathan Gray, Aswin Punathambekar, Nina Huntemann Founding Editors: Sarah Banet- Weiser and Kent A. Ono Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in Love and Money: Queers, Class, and the Media Cultural Production Isabel Molina- Guzmán Lisa Henderson The Net Effect: Romanticism, Cached: Decoding the Internet in Capitalism, and the Internet Global Popular Culture Thomas Streeter Stephanie Ricker Schulte Our Biometric Future: Facial Black Television Travels: African Recognition Technology and the American Media around the Globe Culture of Surveillance Timothy Havens Kelly A. Gates Citizenship Excess: Latino/as, Media, Critical Rhetorics of Race and the Nation Edited by Michael G. Lacy and Kent Hector Amaya A. Ono Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Technology and Emotion in America Transnational Media Cultures Brenton J. Malin Edited by Radha S. Hegde Making Media Work: Cultures of Commodity Activism: Cultural Management in the Entertainment Resistance in Neoliberal Times Industries Edited by Roopali Mukherjee and Edited by Derek Johnson, Derek Sarah Banet- Weiser Kompare, and Avi Santo Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race The Post- Racial Mystique: Media and and Representation after 9/11 Race in the Twenty- First Century Evelyn Alsultany Catherine R. Squires Visualizing Atrocity: Arendt, Evil, and Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish- the Optics of Thoughtlessness language Radio and Public Advocacy Valerie Hartouni Dolores Inés Casillas The Makeover: Reality Television and Orienting Hollywood: A Century of Reflexive Audiences Film Culture between Los Angeles and Katherine Sender Bombay Nitin Govil Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture Asian American Media Activism: Sarah Banet- Weiser Fighting for Cultural Citizenship Lori Kido Lopez Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones Struggling for Ordinary: Media and Cara Wallis Transgender Belonging in Everyday Life Andre Cavalcante Struggling for Ordinary Media and Transgender Belonging in Everyday Life Andre Cavalcante NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York www.nyupress.org © 2018 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cavalcante, Andre, author. Title: Struggling for ordinary : media and transgender belonging in everyday life / Andre Cavalcante. Description: New York : New York University Press, [2018] | Series: Critical cultural communication | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017034137 | ISBN 9781479881307 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781479841318 (pb : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Transgender people—Social aspects. | Social media. Classification: LCC HQ77.9 .C398 2018 | DDC 306.76/8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034137 New York University Press books are printed on acid- free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook Contents Introduction: I Felt Like I Was Going to Explode 1 1. We Can No Longer Hide in Plain Sight: From the Cultural Margins to the Tipping Point 26 2. I Sort of Refused to Take Myself Seriously: Transgender Impossibilities and the Desire for Everydayness 67 3. I Want to Be Like a Really Badass Lady: Media and Transgender Possibilities 96 4. You Have to Be Really Strong: Practicing Resilient Reception 122 5. We’re Just Living Life: Media and the Struggle for the Ordinary 146 A Queerly Ordinary Conclusion: We All Put Our Skirts On One Leg at a Time 170 Acknowledgments 183 Notes 187 Bibliography 197 Index 211 About the Author 221 v Introduction I Felt Like I Was Going to Explode “I don’t know what drew me to the cover of the book, but I looked at it and went, ‘Oh my god!’ I’m like this! Everything changed after that,” explained Margie. Etched into her memory, Margie recalled that pivotal moment she first encountered a transgender representation in popular media. As a teenager strolling through the aisles of her local drugstore, the book that caught her eye chronicled the life of Christine Jorgensen. Jorgensen was a former American soldier who had undergone a sex change in the 1950s, and whose story garnered international attention. When Margie came across Jorgensen’s story in paperback, she experi- enced a jolt of self-r ecognition. “I was a teenager, and I was at a local drugstore that had magazines and paperbacks. I saw the Christine Jor- gensen story . . . I took it home and I read it. I was just flabbergasted. I was like, this is me. I knew, ‘hey there’s one other person in the world like me.’ Reading those pages gave me comfort.” For Margie, that book served as a kind of mirror. She saw herself in Jorgensen’s life story, and the act of reading helped her realize that gender transformation was possible, and even more, that changing sex did not mean foregoing a successful and fulfilling life. Feelings of solace and encouragement washed over her. She no longer felt so alone. Margie is a 59- year- old white transgender woman and a small- business owner who lives in the Detroit suburbs. She is a grandmother, a Detroit Tigers fan, and an avid viewer of Fox News. Raised as a boy in a close, conservative Michigan community, Margie grew up in a media and information environment that had little to offer in terms of trans- gender visibility and discourse. “I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and there just wasn’t anything,” she explained, “I think probably in the 1970s magazines were important because we didn’t have the Internet. I’d search through magazines sometimes. But the things I found in magazines 1 2 | Introduction were always from a pornographic point of view because there wasn’t anything else. I did search, but there just weren’t any options.” Margie remembers feeling alienated in the suburbs and facing unrelenting pres- sure from family, friends, and teachers to fit in and to convincingly por- tray masculinity. Despite this she recalled, “I knew I was different . . . I felt that I should be a girl.” As a young person, even though she lacked the self- awareness, vocabulary, and social support to fully come to terms with what she called “her situation,” Margie cross-d ressed in private. In her bedroom, she cautiously experimented with her identity, because, as she admitted, “My parents had very specific ideas about what you were going to be and about what roles you were allowed to be in. My parents were strict. Very loving, but I tried very hard to please them.” So, as a teenager Margie kept that drugstore paperback about Chris- tine Jorgensen, her precious resource, hidden from sight in her room, reading it every chance she could get beyond her parents’ watchful eyes. Armed with the new and liberating perspective she gleaned from the book, Margie imagined becoming a girl, daydreaming with delight. But she was at a point in her life where the possibility of gender transition “just seemed like a farfetched dream.” As Margie became a young adult, she continued on the predeter- mined course paved for men growing up in the postwar era: get a job, get married, move to the suburbs, and have kids. After marrying in 1971 and following the birth of her first child in 1972, Margie told her wife she “liked to dress up,” and for years continued to secretly cross-d ress at home. Yet, the burdens of a restricted self became unbearable. She had to stop hiding. “I struggled with it like everybody else for all those years until I got to the point where I felt like I was going to explode, and either do something about it, or kill myself.” This turning point occurred in 2005, the result of changes in Margie’s life circumstances and her media environment. “I started getting truly involved on the Internet . . . Being able to access other people through chat or web- sites opened up everything. Being able to create an identity that I wanted but that I couldn’t quite have and live helped. Knowing there was a possibil- ity that transgender existed. It also was that my children were grown and didn’t have to answer to their peers.” With her children out of the house, her business stable and profitable, and the Internet at her fingertips, Margie began to consider gender transition. Exploding was no longer necessary. Introduction | 3 In 2010, Margie initiated her gender transition. She was ecstatic and immediately changed her name and the gender marker on her driver’s license. Nevertheless, transitioning generated new challenges. Margie struggled to maintain the relationships she had long established with family, friends, and business colleagues. Although many were support- ive, some did not understand her decision to transition and distanced themselves from her. Moreover, her marriage was at stake. Margie and her wife were best friends and wanted to remain together. But what would this new relationship look like? In answering this question, they turned to media for guidance. Together, Margie and her wife watched as many transgender-themed films and documentaries as they could find. “The movies,” Margie explained, “make it easier to talk about this stuff, which is very hard sometimes.” Their media journey took them from movies to transgender novels, works of nonfiction, and advocacy web- sites. All the while, they talked openly about what they read. They took notes and shared insights. Sometimes they fought. Laboring to live as the couple they were before while managing new challenges was dif- ficult, but they ultimately stayed married. *** I first met Margie at “Trans Chat”—a transgender discussion and sup- port group in the Midwest— while I was conducting fieldwork for this book between 2008 and 2012. She was one of the group’s more senior and vocal participants, and playfully referred to herself as its “yenta.” When I told her I was writing a book and asked her for an interview, she accepted without hesitation. During our first sit-d own together, we discussed Margie’s thoughts on media and transgender representation. She emphatically reiterated the following conviction. “The general public needs to see we’re just ordinary people.” Knowing I was going to be writing about the transgender com- munity for a larger audience, Margie wanted to ensure that I compre- hended the everyday ordinariness of transgender life—a perspective she felt was largely absent from media and popular discourse. Transgender ordinariness was paramount for her because since transitioning, Margie has strived to create her own version of an ordinary life, and even more, a seemingly conservative and traditional one. She has been married since she was in her twenties, has raised two children, and spends much of her