Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini: Gender Without Identity

We recently sat down with Avgi Saketopoulou (she/her or any pronouns) and Ann Pellegrini (any pronouns; currently rocking they/them) about their recent book, Gender Without Identity. This book is a major step in the right direction for public discourse, self-understanding, and clinical approaches to understanding gender. It acknowledges the plurality of ways in which the development of gender can occur.

Complexities are invited within the psychoanalytic discourse introduced in Gender Without Identity. It gives us permission to acknowledge and legitimize diversity within trans and gender expansive experiences. With complexity, comes humanity, which removes the potential for othering. Their theory is relevant to people of all genders. It is a particularly poignant and timely framework to support the thriving of transgender and expansive people in particular.

It’s wonderful to be here with you today! Can you take a moment to introduce yourselves to our readers?

Avgi Saketopoulou (AS): I’m a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst working in New York City.

Ann Pellegrini (AP): I’m a Professor of Performance Studies & Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. I’m also a psychoanalyst practicing in New York City.

Can you briefly describe your recent book, Gender Without Identity?

AP: In the book, we’re trying to intervene in the way in which gender is thought about both in clinical spaces and cultural conversations. In both places, it has seemed as if the only way to defend trans, genderqueer, and nonbinary identities is to say that “we were born that way.” Because to say anything else might open people with non-normative genders to the fate of attempted conversion or lines of thinking that something is wrong with us.

We are saying, there’s no there’s no wrong way to be LGBTQ. There’s no wrong way to become LGBTQ. We’re really trying to open more space for more complex conversations around gender. We are very invested in the flourishing of trans and genderqueer people–This is an ethical mission of our book, both as clinicians and as members of the queer community ourselves.

How do you address the “born this way” argument in Gender Without Identity? 

AP: We argue against a “born this way” model in our book. We argue against it because we think it’s not factually correct. It makes no sense psychoanalytically because it doesn’t take into account any of the complexity of how we acquire gender, how we live it.

We also think it’s politically and ethically shortsighted. It actually has not worked to immunize and protect trans people and genderqueer people from attack. I mean, the legislative assault that’s ongoing against trans people is evidence of that.

When in all actuality, the reason not to discriminate against LGBTQ people is because it’s wrong to discriminate against LGBTQ people. There’s nothing wrong with being LGBTQ, and if we focus on the “born this way” argument, we’re being defensive. We’re implying there’s something wrong with being LGBTQ yet again.

AS: Part of the appeal of the “born this way” model is the notion that it gives people some very concrete ways to “assess who is truly trans and who is not really trans.” Under this model, “valid” trans girls always knew they were girls from early on.

That narrative leaves a lot of people out. A lot of people whose story of transness, of genderqueerness, does not align with that. It also forces trans-identified individuals to produce stories and narratives for others, but also sometimes for themselves. I’ll say this as a clinician; individuals can contort the stories they tell themselves. They do this because there is an implicit that you’re only validly queer or trans if you have a particular story.

Can you expand on how the content of this book relates to the field of psychoanalysis? How does this book address trauma?

AP: In the book, we’re making both a clinical intervention, like an intervention into the ways in which psychoanalysis can talk about gender and more broadly a social intervention where people can think more broadly about gender and what has come to be called gender identity. In fact, the term gender identity was coined by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller in 1968. Now the term circulates in conversations outside of psychoanalysis, but it has this very particular clinical history.

One very interesting argument we’re making in the book is that gender may have something to do with trauma. Ordinarily, we hear that argument used by those who are anti-trans and anti-queer. But we’re trying to say something different about the relationship between gender and trauma. We think that all gender has some relationship to trauma, not just non-normative queer and trans genders. When we talk about gender here, we are talking about all genders. That also includes normative positions of gender.

In what ways are you reclaiming the narrative that trauma can be a factor in shaping gender and why?

AS: What we’re trying to do with our intervention around trauma is to say that we need not be afraid of the notion that gender has is also response to the outside. Gender is not just a property of the subject, such that you know it as something–some inner, true or authentic.  It doesn’t mean that there’s something that needs to be understood, explained away, or somehow corrected if your gender shifts or develops in a different direction, or you thought your gender was this, but your gender was that.

We’re really interested in thinking about how gender is responsive to a variety of different things that come to us from the outside–including trauma, including culture, including the ways in which our relationships change our understanding of our genders. 

We encourage our colleagues, clinicians, and the public to start larger cultural conversations about the idea that gender is not kind of like a stable internal “truth.” That’s the case for some people and not for others. For some people, gender might be something that is an ongoing process, where it continues to develop. For other people, they arrive at a gender or have a sense of their gender from very early on and that stays with them for the rest of their lives. Neither of the two are “a normal or abnormal condition.” Actually, either of the two are just variable ways in which people come into their gender.

Can you give an example of how trauma might work to shape gender?

AP: It seems impossible for us to think about normative femininity without talking about the role that trauma may play in the shaping of that. All the ways in which those subjects who are assigned female of birth, who are raised to be girls, who will be women, encounter a training of femininity. Well, part of the training into femininity, is the training of fear, the training to be worried about the possibility of sexual violence and the all-too-often fact of sexual violence that so many women experience. That is trauma as well. Misogyny deeply shapes the identity of cisgender femininity.

We would not say that by virtue of the association between the everyday trauma of misogyny and femininity people who understand themselves to be women, and who are assigned female at birth are only mistakenly seeing themselves as women. We don’t try to convert those subjects. So, why is it that if there might be some relationship between trauma and non-normative genders, we want to fix those non-normative genders?

When I consider the nuanced aspect of this research, I feel both deeply excited and mildly afraid. I’m grateful because this framework feels accurate to my lived experience as a trans person and parent of gender expansive children. This research has great potential to provide all people the ability to feel seen in their lived experiences. It can improve conversations around gender in therapeutic, social, and personal contexts.

Where my mild fear comes into play is–as a trans parent of a nonbinary child, I have directly experienced that discussions around gender can be exploited in ways that are harmful to transgender people, especially youth. In our current political environment, people making anti-trans arguments are ready to use any ambiguity or nuance in discussion maliciously. How did you approach this research when considering the current political environment?

AP: Everything you just said, we gave a lot of thought to. There were numerous moments in the writing of this book where Avgi and I wondered if we should keep going. We worried so much that others might twist and contort our arguments to use against a community we are part of and truly care about. We actually shared the text before we submitted it to our publisher with two colleagues of ours, both of whom are trans because we wanted their feedback and any thoughts. Ultimately, the current arguments we’re using, the ones others tell us we have to use, aren’t working. We decided that others will use anything we say against us.

We’re trying to offer another way in. A complication of wrinkles. And we know that there’ll be people who, for all sorts of reasons, some of them strategic, they might not themselves believe it, but strategically are making an argument, more in line with immutability, right.

This theory is a breath of fresh air to me because it offers a humanistic lens–a lens with complexity–in which to view trans people. From media to medicine, there is a widespread lack of diverse representations of transgender people. How do you view complexity in gender?

AP: We’re trying to crack open space to have much more complicated conversations. Conversations based not simply on our deep engagement with feminist and queer theories, in particular queer and trans of Colour critique, but with our work as clinicians and what we’re hearing people talk about their own complex journeys. The one size model just doesn’t fit. We think it will ultimately benefit trans people to have more complex arguments for the ways gender can be acquired.

This really shows up around trans kids. I’m not talking about people who think of themselves as trans. I am talking about people who think they’re trying to act in the best interest of children. Who might be following the line of thinking, “Let’s just wait and see how this will play out.” Theories of immutability can create environments where people are attempting to figure out who is the “true trans.” It doesn’t provide space for actually just addressing a young person, for example, where they say they are at and what they say their gender is at that moment.

AS: First of all, we have been so preoccupied with having defensive conversations where we are primarily defending ourselves as queer people–as people whose genders are complex–from those who are attacking us, that we have actually forgotten how to speak to each other in public. Everything we’re saying in this book is part of conversations that people have in queer communities with each other.

What we wanted to do with this book is not just say this out loud, but also give it the theoretical density to show how it’s possible to think this way without collapsing into transphobia. To say this is a valid position because it’s experientially true for many people. It’s actually a way to think theoretically through this without capsizing it into conversion therapy. What does it mean to open up conversations that make it possible for our colleagues and our communities to see a variety of pathways through which one can land or travel through to a non-normative experience of gender? We committed to opening up conversations that make it possible to understand gender outside of defensiveness and pathology.

Why are you passionate about trans thriving?

AP: These are our communities too. We know deeply how transphobia can affect queer and trans people. It’s not just something we’ve read about in the book. We care about our patients, many of whom are queer and trans.

AS: It’s not just about caring for our communities. It’s also about showing that there are other ways to think about transness and genderqueerness. Ways that are not just encompassing diversity, but they actually help us think better about gender overall.

How do you feel this body of research will impact gender theory, specifically within psychoanalysis?

AS: We are invested in better theory around gender. Theory that is not falling flat, either on biology or on some imaginary interiorized kind of phylogenetic. We also think it’s better theory. To better understand how psychic life works overall is a very psychoanalytic method from the beginning of psychoanalysis.

AP: I suppose maybe to say that we also love psychoanalysis, which has a lot of blood on its hands–it has a lot to explain in its history of misogyny, transphobia, and racism. Psychoanalysis as a theory can be incredibly rich way of thinking about the complexity of any lived experience. We know because we work in the clinic, we can see that as a method, it can change people’s lives.

When psychoanalysis related to gender is more subtle, it can allow us to think about gender in more accurate ways. We want psychoanalysis that has room for the queer and trans patients that sit in the room with us. We’re also trying to open up a field that has a pretty messy history. And one that, unfortunately, some conservative members of this field are using to play a huge role in anti-trans legislation.

AS: It’s not just in the past, it’s in the present. Psychoanalysts are at the leading edge of some of the movements that are contributing to anti-trans thinking and anti-trans legislation.

Thank you both so much for the work that you are doing to create more accurate, complex, and compassionate psychoanalytic frameworks for exploring gender. Also, thank you for taking the time to speak to OFM! I have enjoyed this conversation deeply.

If you enjoyed this article, make sure to head over to check out our book review of Gender Without Identity.

Photo courtesy of the authors