I recently sat down for a conversation with Emmett Harsin Drager, a PhD candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity at USC Dornsife. Emmett’s research focuses on the period of time in the United States during the 1960’s and 1970’s when research universities began performing gender reassignment surgeries. Thousands of people wrote to universities requesting sex change operations. Some were accepted while others were denied. How did doctors decide who qualified for surgery and who didn’t? The answer is, in part, the subject of Emmett’s dissertation. Specifically, they focus on the history of gender identity disorder and the development of official diagnosis and treatment protocols for transsexual patients.

  Emmett Harsin Drager, PhD candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity

Here are the top 6 things I learned about Emmett’s research and the developing field of transgender studies from our conversation.

1. Transgender and transsexuality are not the same.

The term transgender is used to characterize gender identity or gender expression that
doesn’t conform to social expectations based on assigned sex at birth. Transsexuality
refers to the desire or practice of making physical changes to the body, often through
gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy. Those who identify as transgender
may not identify as transsexual.

2. Christine Jorgensen may be the biggest celebrity you’ve never heard of.

Christine was one of the first well-documented persons in the United States to undergo a sex change operation. In the early 1950’s, Christine travelled to Europe for the new procedure and returned to an abundance of American media attention. Even though this was during the Korean and Cold War, sensationalized news coverage about Christine dominated the news. Emmett explained that Christine’s story, along with many other sensationalized tabloid stories about transexuals, exposed the possibility of gender reassignment and unleashed a new demand for the procedure in the United States.

Christine Jorgensen, 1954

3. Doctors used to be the gatekeepers of sex change operations. Today, insurance
companies play a similar role.

Emmett uses archived correspondences from individuals who were denied gender
reassignment surgeries to determine the criteria that doctors used to make their
decisions. Today, doctors generally no longer make that distinction. Rather, insurance
companies require someone who requests a sex change operation to have an official
diagnosis from a psychologist.

4. Assumptions about trans individuals were rooted in perceptions about race.
Emmet explained that the original diagnosis of transsexuality was believed to be the
result of an unhealthy relationship with a parent. At the same time, racial attitudes about
the black family also led to pervasive pathologization. Emmett used the example of Mrs. G, described as a very masculine black woman. Doctors pinpointed Mrs. G’s close
relationship with her single mom as the reason behind her transsexuality, echoing the
conclusions of the infamous Moynihan report that blamed black mothers for social and
economic stagnation.

USC Professor C. Riley Snorton, one of Emmett’s mentors and an expert in trans
studies, recently published a book that puts racial formation at the forefront of
transgender studies titled Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans.

University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

5. A lot has changed in the medical community surrounding the diagnosis of transsexuality. But a lot hasn’t.
Transsexuality was originally termed Gender Identity Disorder by the medical
community and classified as a mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Although today the term has been changed from
gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria, which serves to destigmatize transsexuality, gender dysphoria is still included in the DSM.

6. There’s more to come at USC!
In the fall of 2018, Emmett will host a plenary on gender and sexuality as part of USC
Annenberg’s Critical Mediations Conference. The conference is scheduled for October
4-5, so be sure to mark your calendars!

“Tender and cruel, the pathos in here animates me and the writing hunts me. And so I gratefully surrender.”  — Lily Hoang

The words above inform the writing of Diana Arterian, a doctoral candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at USC Dornsife and author of the poetry collection Playing Monster :: Seiche. Arterian’s dissertation analyzes the ways in which four contemporary poets grapple with “relayed trauma,” a term that she explains here: Watch Diana explain by downloading the clip.

In recognition of World Poetry Day (March 21), we delve deeper into Arterian’s work.

What is relayed trauma? For Arterian, it is the phenomenon in which somebody receives traumatic information from a secondary source. The recipients of relayed trauma are disturbed, yet at a distance. They experience its effects through an intermediary with whom they are deeply connected (for example, through romantic entanglement, heritage, family, or otherwise). Trauma may be relayed through direct communication, the discovery of documents, or ghosts.

Ghosts, you say?

Actually, yes. One of the works Arterian studies in her dissertation is Zong!, a book of poetry by M. NourbeSe Philip—co-written with a ghost (Setaey Adamu Boateng). According to Arterian, Philip draws upon a particular court document to give readers access to a remarkable and disturbing event. In 1781, the captain of a ship named Zong decided to throw 143 enslaved Atlantic Africans overboard so that the ship’s owners could claim insurance for the loss of ‘goods.’ Drawing on court records of the incident, Philip creates a “collage-like poetic text composed from bits of the original document and the words of ghosts, be it slaver or enslaved.”

“If a member of the Black diaspora learns of this event, what recourse does she have to exorcize her horror?” is just one of the questions Diana poses. Because all of the parties involved are dead, because all of the enslaved people on the Zong never had any record of their experiences written down in the archive, Philip engages with the ghosts in order to interrogate the event itself and understand what took place. Arterian argues that understanding the effect of relayed trauma can close the distance between personal and political trauma.