Robert W. Anderson

Professor Childers

English 200: Introduction to Graduate Study

2 November 1998

Beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, sexologists such as Havelock Ellis and Richard von Krafft-Ebing began inquiries into the topic of sexuality, and many of their ideas have had an impact on twentieth century notions of sex, gender, and sexuality. One of the important taxonomic classifications made by the Victorian sexologists was that of the "invert," which conflated what we now call "homosexual" and "transsexual" into one category. The argument was that homosexuals and transsexuals were alike in that both were psychically the opposite gender of the one presented by their physical bodies. In other words, homosexual males had the minds of women and thus desired masculine men; homosexual females had the minds of men and thus desired feminine women. Together, they constituted what was termed a "third sex" (although it seems to me that, taxonomically, they should have constituted a "third" and a "fourth" sex). Members of this "third sex" (whether man-in-female or woman-in-male), of course, could not acquire the object of their desire because the truly masculine man would not desire another man, and the truly feminine woman would not desire another woman. Or so the logic went, in any event.

Rather than undermining the European gender binary of man/woman with the classification (or construction) of a "third" category, the invert, the gender binary was reinscribed anew: male inverts were really women, female inverts were really men. Simple binary once again, perhaps only slightly more complicated than before. In fact, the construction of the "third sex" is a critical piece in the construction of another prominent Euro-American binary, that of heterosexual/homosexual. Inversion’s broad definition as both one who sexually desires members of the same sex and one who is one gender trapped in the body of another haunt us to this day, particularly in popular culture. It is not uncommon for people to ask gay men if they want to be women, to comment on a lesbian woman’s "mannishness," or to assume that transsexuals cannot also be lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

Several things have begun to change our awareness of these issues. One of these was lesbian-feminism’s assertion that the lesbian, as woman-centered-woman, is the pinnacle of femininity rather than masculinity clothed as female. Further, in the 1970s and early 1980s, gay men established what has been called the "clone" culture, adopting masculine looks as their own, as can be seen in the hypermasculine gender presentation of the Village People. Also at this time, gay leathermen began to make their presence more visible within the gay community and within the larger community. While not at all coordinated (lesbian-feminists intensely disliked gay men for their erotic adherence to masculinity), both movements had the effect of reinscribing homosexuality as being central to both femininity and masculinity: the lesbian became the woman-centered-woman, the gay man became the man’s man.

And the transsexual was left in the cold. While out in the forefront of such watershed events as the Stonewall Riots, transgender persons have been largely excluded from the movement. Gay men didn’t want the taint of appearing to be feminine, and lesbian-feminism repudiated the earlier 1950s butch/femme lesbians. While in the 1950s, Christine Jorgensen made world headlines by surgically transitioning from man to woman, there have not been nearly as many out transgender people as there have been out gay men and lesbians.

In the 1990s, particularly through the works of Leslie Feinberg, hir¹ partner Minnie Bruce Pratt, Kate Bornstein, and Judith Butler issues of what constitutes gender have been coming to the forefront, both academically and politically. The transgender and queer movements have complicated our thinking about sexuality, sex, and gender. It is no longer simple to categorize people as either homosexual or heterosexual. In fact, it is not simple to categorize people as either man or woman, male or female. Transgender people can, and do, identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and a number of other sexualities, which significantly complicates both a binary (or tri-partite) gender structure and a binary (or, again, tri-partite, with the addition of bisexual) structure of sexuality. There are pre-operation, post-operation, and non-operation transgender people, there are those born with the genitalia of both sexes. It begins to appear that the "invert," constructed in the Victorian period, became a classification for anything that complicated either binary gender or binary sexuality. "Either/or" became the order of the day, and "both/neither" was not an appropriate answer.

And yet, as the transgender movement progresses, there still are what Kate Bornstein calls "gender defenders" in the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities (74). One can see this, for example, with the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, which allows only "women-born-women" to enter the campgrounds.

So what does this have to do with The Well of Loneliness?

At two points in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, the works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs are referred to. At first, Sir Philip, Stephen Gordon’s father, is found reading the works of this German Victorian sexologist who specified the "Uranier," or "the man who loved men" and the "Urnide," or "woman with male feelings—that is, the woman who loved women" (Katz 51). Then, later in the novel, one would find Stephen’s discovery of her² father’s copy of Ulrichs’ works. Ulrichs also specified the "Dionäer," which was the opposite of the "Uranier," forming what Jonathon Ned Katz has called "the foreparents of the heterosexual and homosexual" (51). Sir Philip read these works soon after the birth of Stephen, his only child and heir to his estate, Morton. He does not inform his sensitive wife, Anna, of what he has read, but he begins to be "even more tender to Stephen" after beginning to understand her not as a female, but as an Urnide (Hall 27). Soon after having read Ulrichs’ works, he tells Stephen that he’s "going to treat [her] like a boy" (Hall 29).

Hall doesn’t give us any easy answers to the "nature/nurture" debate here, unlike Ulrich, who argued that "[t]he Urning’s erotic desire for a true man…was as natural as the ‘Dioning-love’ of true man and true woman" (Katz 51). Sir Philip begins to treat Stephen early on in her life as if she were an Urnide, based on clues that he believes indicates that Stephen is naturally an Urnide. Is there a basis for Sir Philip’s assumption about Stephen, or is this the result of the desires of an aristocrat whose only child is a daughter when, to carry on the family name, he needed a son? Of course, the ideas of the masculine girl and the effeminate boy still pervade our notions of homosexuality to this day, particularly in the DSM-IV’s definitions of Gender Identity Disorder in young boys and girls. Furthermore, parents are often "warned" of the early signs of homosexuality in their children: playing with the "wrong" toys, associating more with members of the opposite sex, etc. For Hall, the "nature/nurture" debate is complicated and she ultimately collapses them together, forcing it into the position of an unanswerable question.

Stephen Gordon, as the name indicates, is not clearly a woman or clearly a man, and in fact is refered to as being in a "no-man’s-land of sex" (Hall 79). Of course, this could mean that she is the second sex, defined as what it is not, not a man, but a woman. However, she’s later said to have "the intuition of those who stand midway between the sexes," (Hall 83) figuring out that her parents are in disagreement, although over what, she cannot divine. Being "midway between the sexes" suggests that Stephen Gordon is not, in fact, either male or female, but in a zone that stands between—a "no [wo/]man’s land" of gender, similar to the one described by Kate Bornstein, male-to-woman lesbian transsexual activist and writer. Bornstein writes "we never did fit into the cultural binary of male/female, man/woman, boy/girl. No, we are the clowns, the sex objects, or the mysteriously unattainable in any number of novels" (60). Further, Bornstein notes that

Granted, Stephen Gordon doesn’t have the opportunities for transitioning from one sex to another as are available today, surgically. However, even today there are pre-operation transsexuals and non-operation transsexuals who regard themselves as being the gender they live rather than the gender they were born with. Radclyffe Hall has given us a novel that, while on the surface might appear to be a lesbian novel, is far more complex than our current taxonomy of sexuality allows for. Not only does she complicate the "nature vs. nurture" debate in ways current queer theory has been working towards, muddying the issue over whether Stephen’s sexuality and gender identity were formed essentially or if her upbringing had a hand in it, but she also complicates our notions of what it means to be lesbian or straight by complicating Stephen’s gender identity. Even still, our sexual taxonomies don’t have room for people who transition from man to woman or from woman to man and who desire the gender they transition to. "Homosexual," "bisexual," and "heterosexual" don’t quite fit Stephen Gordon, leaving her in a space in between sexualities, as well as in between genders. And if these categories don’t quite fit for Stephen Gordon, a person that, ostensibly, they were designed to describe originally, is it possible for them to fit for anybody?
 
 

I use "hir" here because "his," "hers," and "his/hers" are inappropriate when referring to Leslie Feinberg, who was born female, has had partial surgery to become a man, and has decided to be neither. "Hir" is also the word of choice in the transgender community.

² I use "her" here because that is the pronoun Radclyffe Hall uses throughout The Well of Loneliness for Stephen Gordon.