“Doing” gender in South Africa : footprints of tension for transgender persons

Abstract

The ‘doing’ of gender in our society is constructed along the lines of power, knowledge and being. Power structures angle knowledge and understanding of transgender people and transgender lives in a way that relegates them almost to the museum to be observed as a spectacle or exotic objects. The emphatic frames of man and woman, even in South Africa where the Constitution is considered and understood to be liberal and generous, the life of a transgender body is an Other life. One is either male or female; any other form of doing and being gender suffers peripherisation and classification as special, different, strange or any other exteriorising definitions. This dissertation attempts to question the power or the tyranny of categorisations and classifications of man and woman, drawing from various discourses such as the medico-legal discourse classification. It further looks at how gender is being performed by transgender people. Further it aimed at gaining an in-depth understanding of the experiences and challenges of transgender people with regards to doing gender within a gendered society. The findings within the dissertation tells us, that the performativity of gender is not a neutral space, but enacted by various power structures and those who live outside the norms such as the transgender people, they are subjected to precariousness. It this dissertation seeks to contribute to an unmasking of some easy but harmful assumptions about gender and sexuality. Gender and sexuality may not be taken for granted and assumed according to fixed templates but they are fluid, mobile and flexible beyond the limits of convention.