Book Review: Gender Without Identity

By Al Preston

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            The majority of the books I read are biographies, histories, or memoirs. The field of queer studies, even from only the historical lens, is very intersectional. Gender and sexuality affect and appear in every field of study. People of different genders, sexualities, and races view the world and academics very differently from each other than the typical straight white men that commandeered academia for so long.

            Which is why, even as a historian, I have read philosophy, science, economics, and just about every other field while researching. This comes with some difficulties as those writing about queerness in those fields are often ‘in the thick of it’ so to speak. Every field has its own process and language.

            That is why I picked up Gender Without Identity by Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini. This is a work within the field of psychoanalysis which, while a bit distant from history, has a real and almost tangible impact on the present. Now, I’m not a psychoanalyst nor have I read this particular field before. I have read other social sciences, but not this one. So, I will be a bit ignorant of the nuances of the field and may make some assumptions based on this one work.

            I will also approach its contents and ideas as both a historian and as a person. None of that, I think, is a bad thing as long as I am always open to being wrong. Critique done in good faith is always a good thing.

            So, let’s get into it!

            Gender Without Identity is a small and thin book. Originally, it was an award-winning paper set to appear in the oldest journal within the psychoanalysis field. The authors ran into issues in that process suddenly when their acknowledgements were too ‘political’ for the journal.

            Personally, I found the parts that the journal wanted them to remove as rather harmless not to mention in-line with the authors’ goals in creating the paper. Regardless, they chose to publish their paper elsewhere when the journal would not yield.

            To the authors, this resistance was supporting their point. The field of psychoanalysis has been too harsh and quick to judge people of the queer community and avoidant of taking any stance let alone a political one. These authors believe that it is time for psychoanalysis to dig into queer theory and actually help their patients who are queer and listen to psychoanalysis’s who are queer themselves. It has been a field resistant to change for far too long.

            As for their actual paper, their work started with one of the authors, Saketopoulou, talking about their work with the child of a Jewish family who was displaying signs of being queer. Saketopoulou worked with the child for a short time before making a misstep in treatment that led the child to no longer wish to talk to her. The mother, however, continued to.

            Through those conversations, Saketopoulou began to wonder about gender and sexuality within the child and the mother. In the end, they, alongside Pellegrini, began to come up with a theory. Not without bases, however. They called on the work of an analysist from the 80s as well as personal experience with other patients.

            Their theory, the argument they make in this paper, is that: gender is a trauma placed on everyone from the moment they are born. Gender is something assigned to us and is ‘read’ or ‘translated’ by those around us every time we are perceived. Gender expectations are forced upon us at every turn and ‘non-normative’ gender expressions (transgender or non-binary) are as much coping mechanisms with that trauma as ‘normative’ (cisgender) expressions are.

            This can be a hard pill to swallow and the authors know that these is danger in this argument. I also, personally and without much knowledge of the field, take issue with some of the wording.

            To clarify, the authors make this argument with the goal to encourage other psychoanalysts and even parents to accept any and every gender expression as valuable, genuine, and something to not interfere with. They explain that coping with trauma is flexible and ever changing so to is gender and its expressions. To really care for their patient as a psychoanalyst, they should follow along with a patients gender expression affirming their ways of exploring but not making assumptions or enforcing any particular direction, narrative, or stereotype on them.

            I am in full agreement with all of this. I completely support this idea and as a firm believer of gender as a construction, it all makes sense to me. My only gripe is with their critical view of ‘born this way’ ideas. Which may just be my lack of knowledge of the field. First, by  ‘born this way’ I, and the authors, are referring to the common phrasing of many queer people when defending the way they identify. They are born gay, lesbian, asexual, transgender, etc. They were not made queer by any disease or trauma.

To their argument, if gender is meaningless, then it is very possible that we are not even born male, female, or other. However, as gender does hold meaning, they argue the exact meaning that we place on gender is what traumatizes everyone. It is the way we cope with that meaning that defines us as ‘queer’ or ‘normal’.  

            Personally, I feel this way of defining ‘born this way’ rhetoric limiting and treats people as blank slates shaped only by the world around us. I think, to the benefit of their argument, we are born a way that may or may not align with these gender definitions forced upon us which is why there are so many different ways to cope with gender (as a trauma). What we like, dislike, and believe is informed not only by the people around us, but also our bodies and minds (to be clear, the authors do acknowledge that everyone will have their own view of their argument and the different pieces of it, this is just my view).

            The way Pellegrini and Saketopoulou describe ‘born that way’ rhetoric treats humans as shaped only by the world around them. The way they think and feel, the things they like and dislike, all come from those around us. That is how I read that part of the paper and there may be context I am missing. Additionally, it does feel regressive to call gender, even in reference to all people, a trauma.

            That kind of rhetoric was used, for a long time, to justify putting queer people in asylums or searching for a ‘cure’ for queerness. Thankfully, Pellegrini and Saketopoulou do acknowledge that they are inadvertently challenging many years of gay rights by suggesting that gender is a source of trauma. One of the authors, Pellegrini, is also non-binary and this comes from their struggles as much as their work.

            To me, who very much believes that at its core, gender is meaningless and only is given meaning to ‘benefit’ (or provide a perceived benefit) to only a few, our very being as people decides how we will approach and be influenced by the world. In a reality that does give meaning to gender, we struggle to make who we are on the inside be what is perceived and understood on the outside by everyone around us.

            We are born in some way with this very unique identity that can be molded by what is around us but is also uniquely our own. That is what allows us to change and love. The identity we chose is decided by how we will cope with the traumatic structure of gender.

            When reading the biographies and oral histories of queer people of the past and of today, I know that gender and gender expression is not so simple as the will of outside forces on our minds. There are queer folks who have experienced a lot of pain and suffering from gender and family members. There are others who are much luckier. Who have families who support them and there were few negative influences on their gender expression.

            Just looking at my sister and myself, I can tell that while the gender trauma we faced growing up was very similar, however, the way we coped with that trauma is entirely different. My sister is cisgendered, I am transgendered. Our parents, most certainly not on purpose, raised us rather gender neutral. They wanted us to know that we could do anything. We were both defined as female, but there was nothing blocking us form being anything we wanted to be.

            My mother taught us to cook and clean and do laundry. My father taught us to tie knots and piece together PVC piping and build a fire. My sister was encouraged to become an engineer. I was encouraged to be a historian. We were taught to treat everyone with kindness, respect, and equality.

            When we were young, there were little things that my parents did that never defined us as male, but not necessarily as female either. Yet, my sister is comfortable in her female identity, and I was not. I had great discomfort in my body and my gender, but that discomfort was never written off or dismissed or punished. It wasn’t until I found the words to describe my dysphoria that I knew what it was.

            Which is why I may be making a mountain out of a mole hill. To me, how my sister and I identified and how we were raised proves to me that there was something unique to me that made me more comfortable in a transgender identity and something unique to my sister for her to be cisgender.

None of that is a bad thing, however. The goal of this book was to spark conversation and introspection. Nor does this complaint of mine disprove their whole point; treat everyone as valued and valid. If anything, pushing conversations about this, getting other perspectives, was their main message.

            I would recommend this book to anyone with the caveat that some of the language might be difficult for anyone not in academia or who have not read many social sciences papers before. Difficult, but not inaccessible, the foot notes do a lot of work!