Dressing the transgender body : a study on clothing and cisnormativity in Singapore

Abstract

This paper explores how transgender people dress themselves and how that is affected by cisnormativity prior to and after commencement of social transition. Concepts of doing gender and passing were applied to the different stages of trans life in order to populate a cultural understanding of the everyday practices involved in negotiating cisnormative society. Via in-depth, semi-structured interviews with three male-to-female and three female-to-male transgender individuals, experiences with dressing were sought. Interviews were broken up into pre-transition and post-transition experiences with sub-sections addressing casual wear, formal wear, school uniforms and experiences in shopping for clothes in public spaces. Findings revealed significant differences in experiences of dressing in terms of gender-related distress and satisfaction. Pre-transition was marked by assigned gender clothing which was found to be oppressive through forced performativity leading to identity misclassification. Post-transition was marked by identified gender clothing and the satisfaction of aligning identified gender and outward presentation. However, passing was found to be a double-edged sword in freeing identified gender and restricting the body so as to fit cisnormative notions of acceptable gendered bodies. Passing thus becomes part of the mechanics that perpetuate trans-invisibility in abiding cisnormative conceptions of acceptable maleness and femaleness. Overall, a cisnormative agenda was found in the contradiction between the state’s allowance of transgender people to medically and legally confirm their identified genders and assumptions of cisnormativity in the institutions of education and family.