WHY WE NEED A TRANSGENDER MUSEUM STUDIES

Not Your Average Cistory | Amelia Smith

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Transgender voices have grown louder and more prominent in recent years, but in the museum field, they still frequently lag behind. While there have been some fantastic efforts made in the past year, such as the series of guides that the American Alliance of Museums' Task Force for Transgender Inclusion has produced on transitioning in the museum field, but these have usually focused upon hiring practices and employees within the museum. The systems that propagate oppression continue to go unchecked. It is for this reason that I believe it is imperative that we develop a transgender museum studies; to bring attention to the unseen heteronormative practices that run rampant in museums.

Photograph courtesy of Joanna Wreakes.

Central to a transgender museum studies is the theory that transfeminist author Julia Serano calls “ungendering.” In her book Whipping Girl, Serano describes ungendering as a “phenomenon […] where gender-variant people are used as a device to bring conventional notions about maleness and femaleness into question.” Through ungendering, transgender voices are erased, because the focus is no longer upon their experiences, but on what can be understood about cisgender society through trans people.

We do not need to go very far to see the effects of ungendering in the museum field. At the end of last year on the fifth floor of Bissell Building, there was a small exhibition on transgender pornography. I previously wrote about a review of it while it was on, but using Serano’s framework provides an excellent opportunity for deeper analysis.

Transgender pornography and sex work are very prominent for trans people, so it would make sense to have an exhibition on the topic. The exhibition used materials such as photocopied zines, crossdressing BDSM pulp fiction, and DVD and VHS cases of trans porn. There was very little didactic panels that offered any kind of interpretation of the materials on display. These sections felt very disconnected from one another.

The vitrine from the exhibition, containing transgender porn VHS's. The lack of didactics prevents conversations to develop about the lasting impact that comes with fetishizing transgender women. Photo courtesy of Amelia Smith.

What was missing most was trans voices. Transgender fetishism is an incredibly common phenomenon in trans circles, but nowhere was there any kind of discussion about the lingering effects of trans porn in the community. There are so many discussions that could be brought up by an exhibition on trans porn that were missed in this exhibit. Why do trans people so frequently go into sex work? Why are trans people so often associated with sex work? How does trans pornography help trans people explore their identity? What kind of effects does the representation of trans people as sex workers have on those looking to see themselves in media? All of these questions came to me when thinking about the exhibition, but the exhibition was not concerned with the trans experience  in regards to trans pornography. The voices of the trans sex workers or those that have to deal with the fetishization are erase.

If we want museums and exhibitions to appeal to wider audiences, we must not rely on assumptions about minority groups. For members of those minority groups, it is painfully obvious when their voices are not present. Julia Serano’s framework is just one way that we can learn to do better.  We can be better, and if we want to tell more vibrant stories through exhibitions, we have to be.