THE EFFECT OF POWER
6.1 Introduction
Foucault (1977) argues that analysis should move away from understanding power as exercised by or enforced against, and rather urges that continuous and uninterrupted practices of power should be explored. Foucault sees power as ‘something’ that is subjected to ongoing subjugation and as a result gradually and progressively governs our bodies and behaviours.
This chapter looks at the way in which power is formed and distributed through the presumptions and prohibitions expressed by means of language power. This chapter will focus on various surrounding factors that influence primary school teachers’ understanding of transgender identities.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. First, the chapter will look at the compromising Chatsworth community whilst underlining the core cultural beliefs in relation to non-conforming identities. Next, the chapter will discuss tradition and how this translates into the treatment of transgender identities. The chapter will then look at the three religious groups identified – Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism – and their influence on transgender identities. Finally, the chapter will assess how teachers’ knowledge plays a part in transcending the he/she gender binary by establishing gender neutrality, accepting transgender pronoun choices, and identifying homophobic and transphobic indicators in school.
6.2 A Compromising Chatsworth Community
“There have been many hate crimes against transgender people. You know in school’s people will get hit just because they are different like gay or transgender or dressing up like that … then you get things like murder and rape;
people get killed because they find out [the] person is transgender. One case was of a prostitute; it was a male but looked like a female, and when the people found out who the person was, they murdered them” (Helen).
A participant’s response to the question: “And this happened in Chatsworth?”
“Uhm, yeah! There was a story a few years back – this young man who was mutilated. It was in the local newspaper, he was attacked, mutilated, and his penis was put in his mouth. I also heard there was a time where they were decapitating people in Silverglen. So there was this man in Chatsworth who was decapitated; they found his body in a park somewhere I think, and he was known for being feminine and stuff” (Helen).
In the above excerpt, Helen described the prevalence of hate crimes in the Chatsworth area.
Pickles (2021) defines ‘hate crimes’ as any criminal act, activity, or hostility involving violence in private or public spaces that are motivated by prejudice due to gender identity and sexual orientation. Most of the teacher participants (80%) in this study indicated that nonconforming identities experience verbal and physical bullying in and outside the school environment. However, Helen’s response revealed that members in this community become increasingly vulnerable to rape and murder when gender expression does not match heterocis- gender norms in the school environment or when non-conforming gender identity or sexual diversity is discovered by community members. When asked to confirm the area predominantly known for hate crimes, Helen described horrific acts such as decapitation and mutilation allegedly perpetrated in the Chatsworth Silverglen area. Upon further investigation, no information was found regarding the existence of prostitution pertaining to transgender sex workers, or murder and mutilation of non-conforming gender identities in the Chatsworth area.
Helen’s recollection of events was supported by Linda.
“You know, now that I think about it, a couple years back there was a boy from the area, and he was transgender. He used to carry his bag and he used to wear beautiful blouses with his jeans and high heels and bangles and everything. He used to move around Chatsworth and then I heard around a year or two ago he was murdered because he was transgender” (Linda).
During the interview process Linda mentioned that a boy from the Chatsworth area whom she personally observed wearing feminine clothing was murdered on the basis of non-conforming gender expression. Since it was not evidently clear whether the young man self-identified as transgender or was labelled as such by the community, further inquiry was conducted. Despite finding confirmation of murders perpetrated in the Chatsworth area, there was no indication
or written report to suggest that a young transgender identity was harmed or murdered in Chatsworth. Wood et al., (2019) claimed that despite the murder of transgender identities being on the rise, public awareness through mass media, such as news channels and newspapers, remain scant. The authors ascribe the paucity of written work on national news sites or in local newspapers to consumers’ lack of interest in the topic. Simply stated, members of global communities consider transgender social issues such as being mis-gendered, misidentified, or murdered as invaluable stories.
A participant’s response to the question: “This was in the Chatsworth community”?
“It was in Welbedacht but he was always in the area, and uhm, it sent shivers down my spine because those people have their lives – nobody should tell who they can be and what they can be. They have their idea of themselves, and nobody can take that away. It was like a bad bad, I actually felt very sick about that. That was a very sick thing; you know murders are bad, but this was even worse because he was just killed because he was just different, you know”
(Linda).
Chapter 1 of this study drew attention to the experiences of a 26-year-old transgender woman by the name of Kriben Kribashnee. Kribashnee grappled with ongoing acts of bodily harm, verbal and sexual harassment, and attempted rape (Makhaye, 2021), which highlighted the dismal reality of non-conforming gender identities living in the Chatsworth area. All of the teacher participants strongly contested any act of violence directed toward persons irrespective of gender and sexuality. Linda expressed her sense of distress when confronted with violent realities solely on the basis of gender expression. Foucault (1977) argued that by exploiting the nature of the physical body through acts of violence and oppression, ruling powers are able to sustain their privileged power positions. The study acknowledges Foucault’s (1980) ideology on where there is oppression, there is resistance, and resistance is embedded in power. Kribashnee’s power can be observed through her undaunted attitude to transphobic community members with responses such as “I have learnt to fight back and tell people where to get off” (Makhaye, 2021). However, rigid measures of control designed to train transgender identity to be productive and cooperative in hetero-cis-gender society sustains gender power imbalances, which continues to restrict transgender identification and expression. Figure 4
Diane was one of the six participants who claimed that non-conforming and transgender identities have the freedom to express themselves in a manner deemed appropriate. Sevelius et al., (2021) reinforced that gender identity is an innate sense of self whilst gender expression refers to how individuals convey their gendered self to society. However, Bartholomaeus and Riggs (2017b; 2021) have mentioned that transgender expression is compounded by transphobia through acts of systemic discrimination, which is perpetrated by a repetition of attitudes, behaviours, and practices that disadvantage transgender persons.
Diane’s response illuminated the existence of systemic discrimination when she referred to transgender identity as being deceitful and a means to confuse children. Even though Diane proclaimed that transgender identities have the freedom to be, her response supports hetero-cis-gender underpinnings that place superior status on individuals whose gender identity and expression aligns with their assigned sex, whereas non-conforming gender expression is seen as very wrong.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that a large number of participants (58%) acknowledged systemic discriminations that hindered transgender freedom of expression.
“They are free to do this because we live in a democratic country, and you have rights obviously; but I’m pretty sure because of this community that we live in and the narrow-minded people that are around us, uhm, individuals wouldn’t be free to do this” (Barbara).
“I would say not in our society, no. You must remember that this is out of the norm. The norm is that the girl must dress up like a girl and a boy must dress like a boy. Like initially, the earring thing was taboo in Chatsworth; so if a boy wore earrings, he was looked at and he was judged, but now that has become something so normal. So you see, maybe in time Chatsworth will change in that sense but at the moment, if you are doing something that is abnormal, like you wearing a female kind of thing, it is not accepted. But I do think females get away with it more, with the fact that they can wear male clothes and call it
‘unisex’ [laughs]. So you can wear a man’s tracksuit pants and call it fashion”
(Linda).