Sex vs. Gender

SUMMARY

This article was first published in D. R. Laub and P. Gandy, (eds), Proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, California, 1973, pp. 20–24. Prince argues that previous contributors to the symposium in using such terms as “gender conversion surgery” and “anatomic and genetic gender” were failing to grasp the distinction between sex and gender. Genital anatomy is about sex; gender role is about a lifestyle. Out of 100 people applying for a surgery perhaps only 10 percent should have it. The majority confuse sex and gender and fail to appreciate that what they are seeking is a gender change and not a sexual change. Prince likes the word “dysphoria” but argues for distinguishing sexual dysphoria from gender dysphoria. They are different and people should be treated according to which one they happen to be suffering from.     

BODIES AT THE MARGINS: The Case of Transsexuality in Catholic and Shia Ethics

This essay explores the ways in which emerging religious understandings of sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) have potential for new work in comparative ethics. I focus on the startling diversity of teachings on transsexuality among the Vatican and leading Shia clerics in Iran. While the Vatican rejects SRS as a cure for transsexuality, Iranian clerics not only support decisions to transition to a new sex, they see it as necessary in some cases given the gendered nature of the moral life. In this essay, after describing the practical justification for sexual reassignment surgeries in Iranian fatwas and the emerging official Vatican position on transsexuality, I explain how these divergent positions are based on different semiotics of sex and gender that reflect specific ontological views of the human body.     

The body one has and the body one is: Understanding the transsexual’s need to be seen

The transsexual individual confronts the analyst with a disturbing otherness. How this otherness is understood, that is, how the analyst ‘looks’ at the patient through her distinctive theoretical lens impacts, in turn, on the patient’s experience and what transpires between them. In this paper the author outlines a developmental model rooted in attachment and object relations theory to provide one alternative way of ‘looking’ at some of these patients’ experiences in the clinical setting. It is suggested that in some cases of transsexuality the primary object(s) did not mirror and contain an early experience of incongruity between the given body and the subjective experience of gender: it remains unmentalized and disrupts self‐coherence leading to the pursuit of surgery that is anticipated to ‘guarantee’ relief from the incongruity. Through an account of work with a male to female (MtF) transsexual who underwent surgery during her five years of psychotherapy, the author explores how a focus on the transsexual’s experience of ‘being seen’, that is, of being taken in (or not) visually and mentally by the object in their state of incongruity, affords another window through which to approach the transsexual’s experience in the transference–countertransference dynamics.     

Homosexuality,Transvestism and Transsexuality: Reflections on Their Etiology and Differentiation

SUMMARY

This article was first published in The American Journal of Psychotherapy, vol. 11, 1957, pp. 80–85. Prince distinguishes three types of male who may share “the desire to wear feminine attire.” She argues that although Havelock Ellis and Magnus Hirschfeld had distinguished transvestism from homosexuality almost 50 years earlier there was still a tendency to confuse the two. Arguing that the “discovery” of transsexualism and the possibility of sex reassignment surgery had further complicated the picture, she distinguishes the homosexual and the transsexual from what she calls the “true transvestite.” True transvestites are exclusively heterosexual. They value their male organs, enjoy using them and do not want them removed.     

Research off the couch: Re-visiting the transsexual conundrum

This paper outlines the findings of a qualitative study involving interviews with eight transsexual individuals who had volunteered to take part in a television (TV) documentary about transsexuality. The participants were interviewed before taking part in the documentary and after its screening on national TV. The author proposes that for either biological and/or psychological reasons, some transsexual individuals experience early on a profound and disturbing incongruence at the level of the bodily self. In turn, this experience of incongruity is not contingently mirrored by primary attachment figures and remains unmentalized, thus disrupting self-coherence. In an attempt to restore self-coherence, the individual searches for the ‘right’ body that is anticipated to relieve the felt incongruity. The way this modified body relieves the incongruity is through the certainty it imparts that the image in the ‘mirror’ will match the subjective experience of the body. In this study, the experience of being mirrored through the group process during filming and the audience's response to the TV series, which was very positive, appeared to be associated with an attenuation in the urgency with which planned body modifications were being discussed post-TV screenings.