Jane Ward

Department of Women's Studies

University of California, Riverside

Estados Unidos

Within transgender activist discourse, the transgendered subject is often represented as a “gender outlaw” or “gender warrior” who creates a gendered selfhood in defiance and isolation. In contrast, this talk draws on documentaries, websites, and interviews focused on femme/FTM relationships to explore cases in which trans masculinity takes form in relation to an idealized femme subject for whom femininity is presumed to be natural, comfortable, and resolved. Yet “femme labor”—exemplified by the affective and embodied work femmes do to enhance the appearance of trouble-free femininity—hardly comes naturally. As with other forms of affective labor, the work of being “the girl” in the femme/FTM erotic script is becoming increasingly routinized—learned through advice columns, support groups, and other authoritative sources that teach femmes how to be supportive girlfriends and wives of FTMs. This paper examines several examples of the work that women do in their relationships with transmen, specifically the work they do to naturalize and authenticate their partners’ masculinity. Femme/FTM relationships are offered as a lens through which to consider gender itself as a form of labor, or to illustrate how gender subjectivities are constituted by various labors required of intimate others. “Gender labor” extends beyond the work people do to achieve our own gender coherence; it also describes the affective and cultural efforts invested in helping others achieve the varied forms of gender recognition they long for. Though gender labor is both given and received by all people, I argue that it weighs down most heavily on feminine subjects, the people for whom caring and other “labors of love” are naturalized, expected or forced. Gender labor is further intensified within queer relations by the simultaneity of the demand for rebellious—but nonetheless legible and desirable—genders. I conclude by suggesting the need for a queer reconfiguration of gender labor that makes transparent its supply and demand, or that makes it subject—like other forms of intimate work—to negotiation and renegotiation, or contract.

About Jane Ward