Abstract
Xavier L. Guadalupe-Diaz’s book Transgressed: Intimate Partner Violence in Transgender Lives offers a much-needed addition to research on intimate partner violence (IPV) by exploring trans people’s unique experiences of IPV. The book comes at a significant time when the United States is once again grappling with IPV legislation. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), first passed in 1994, creates and supports programs and resources that address IPV, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. With its reauthorization in 2013, the VAWA was extended to cover men and same-sex couples, and it now prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual identity, or gender identity (in addition to other vital changes). Thus, trans people in the United States now have the right to receive all of the same services as cisgender women and to have their gender identities respected when seeking support for IPV. However, VAWA was not reauthorized by President Trump in 2018 and has lost significant funding for shelters and prevention efforts. Although the funding has diminished, Acting Director of the Office on Violence Against Women Laura Rogers stated that the legal protections in VAWA have not expired (Department of Justice 2020).
Unfortunately, as Guadalupe-Diaz demonstrates in Transgressed, these rights have not necessarily translated into actual help. Guadalupe-Diaz uses the stories of eighteen trans survivors of IPV to highlight the distinctive dimensions of IPV for trans people and to point activists and practitioners toward more trans-inclusive policies and practices. The book’s focus on trans survivors makes it a timely addition to the growing field of trans studies within sociology, criminology, and victimology and demonstrates that these fields can no longer rely on cis- and heteronormative or binary work. Social science must be intersectional and consider how violence can affect all people, not just cisgender women. Taking a queer and feminist perspective, Guadalupe-Diaz seeks meaning from trans people as subjects, not objects of study. He allows the voices of trans people to be heard and to lead his analysis. Overall, this book is accessible and provides a great introduction to the unique features of IPV among trans people.
While research on IPV experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people began to expand in the mid-1990s, it has been a slow process and much of this work focused primarily on cisgender lesbian women and cisgender gay men. In 1996, Claire Renzetti and Charles Miley edited a book, Violence in Gay and Lesbian Domestic Partnerships, that Renzetti states marks “nothing less than a milestone . . . . [and] signifies the growing official recognition of domestic violence within lesbian and gay relationships as a social problem worthy of serious attention and intervention” (p. xiii). Similarly, Guadalupe-Diaz’s book, almost a quarter-century later, marks another milestone for IPV research.
Although some trans experiences with IPV are similar to those of cis heterosexual women, cis lesbian women, and cis gay men, there are further obstacles that trans people must navigate. In Chapter Three, Guadalupe-Diaz argues these additional obstacles are directly related to genderism and transphobia, just as homophobia and heteronormativity are at the center of the unique challenges for lesbian and gay people. He stresses distinctions between genderism and transphobia. He uses “genderist attacks” to describe how abusers reinforced the gender binary (male=man, female=woman, no other options) and “relied on hegemonic constructs of masculinity and femininity to regulate the boundaries of a victim’s gender expression” (p. 58). Through genderist attacks, abusers manipulated victims’ emotions and psychological well-being and established control in the relationship. On the other hand, transphobic violence refers to “abusers’ expressed disgust toward trans identities and people” and the use of “known trans discriminatory elements of society to marginalize the victim’s identity” (p. 58). Transphobic attacks take the form of disparaging the victims’ bodies, making victims feel like the abuser was doing them a favor by staying with them, misunderstanding and stereotyping transition processes, and threatening to “out” victims to friends, family, colleagues, and so forth. These tactics led to fear, preoccupation with self-image, and isolation. A finding in Chapter Three that I found fascinating, but that should not be surprising, was that many of the abusers in this book were described as trans identified themselves (7 of 21). As Guadalupe-Diaz explains, “Everyone, regardless of their own identities, is saturated in a culture that is hostile to trans people, and therefore anyone can utilize transphobic and genderist elements of our society to control and manipulate trans partners” (p. 59).
Chapter Four explores survivors’ understandings of their abusers’ motivations for abuse. While only the abuser could tell us their actual motivations, most survivors believed their abuse was motivated by their abuser’s desire to control their gender transitions and trans identities. Abusers tried to control the changes survivors made to their bodies and how/when survivors were “out” about their identities. Guadalupe-Diaz refers to these motivations as “controlling transition” and demonstrates how gender transition creates unique barriers for trans survivors of IPV. He labels much of this control over transition as abusers’ “discrediting identity work,” which is “an individual’s engagement in activities that direct another’s identity construction away from desired identity signification” (p. 88). He divides discrediting identity work into two categories: altercasting and targeting sign vehicles.
Not being familiar with the theory of altercasting myself, I had some trouble understanding it the way Guadalupe-Diaz explained the theory. Overall, altercasting is a form of persuasion where the abuser tries to “cast” the victim in another (“alter”) role that makes them easier to control. The victim goes along with this other role (e.g., presenting as cisgender) to please the abuser because they feel they need the abuser in some way (e.g., for support, help, or comfort). The abuser uses this to their advantage to control the victim’s behaviors and thoughts—for trans victims this is often in the form of controlling their transitions. By manipulating trans peoples’ insecurities, abusers are able to manipulate them, and over time this “can lead to the internalization of these casted identity traits” (p. 95). One way Guadalupe-Diaz specifically related this idea to trans survivors was through victims’ desire for long-term relationships as “a normalized path (‘success’)” (p. 96). He argues this need for stability and “success” may be exaggerated for trans people, especially because they are told by society that they will never find someone to love them the way they are, and this leads some trans people to a “willingness to sacrifice for stability” (p. 96).
The second category of discrediting identity work was targeting sign vehicles, which merely refers to abusers controlling victims’ access to biomedical interventions for gender transition, appropriately gendered clothing, make-up, and these types of resources used to alter their bodies or appearances. Trans people are particularly harmed by this form of control for two reasons: 1) trans people may require more types of interventions or objects to be read as the gender they are in public, and 2) trans people have less access to jobs, money, and medical care than cis people in the United States.
One part I appreciated and would have liked to see discussed further was Guadalupe-Diaz’s call in Chapter Four to expand “definitions of physical abuse beyond specific violent acts to include the ability of another person to control one’s physical makeup” (p. 106). This appeal would also be important and beneficial for cisgender women in terms of procedures like abortion, plastic surgeries, and forced sterilizations. As Guadalupe-Diaz states, “To undermine people’s ability to control their own body is an extreme form of controlling presentation of self” (p. 108). In my opinion, an extreme form of control based in structural inequality.
In the last findings chapter in this book, Chapter Five, Guadalupe-Diaz examines his respondents’ victim identities, help-seeking behaviors, and eventual escapes from their abusive relationships. He explains that identifying one’s own victimization or identifying as a victim carries a lot of cultural baggage, and in terms of IPV victimization implies a certain dynamic between the perpetrator (assumed to be a masculine cis man) and the victim (assumed to be a feminine cis woman). Many respondents in this study refused the victim identity altogether, because the survivors “constructed the notion of ‘victim’ as hyperfeminine and passive” (p. 116). Even feminine victims did not want to be labeled “that kind of victim”—that is, the kind of victim that denies them agency and power.
By constructing IPV as a crime against passive femininity, society (and some trans survivors themselves) has limited trans survivors’ (and cis men’s) access to resources for IPV. Many of the trans survivors were afraid people would not believe they were victims of IPV due to their gender presentations (too masculine or too strong) or their trans identities. Even if believed, most survivors felt that they would not be able to access needed resources, like law enforcement and shelters, that “are structured from a genderist perspective” (p. 116). This is why most survivors who sought support reached out to informal resources, such as family and friends, and did not seek formal resources from organizations, especially not from police or shelters. While most survivors escaped the abuse with the support of friends and family, the fact that many trans people lose relationships with family and friends when they come out further limits their options to seek help.
Help-seeking behaviors and dilemmas faced by trans people are similar to those of cis lesbian women and cis gay men who are victims of IPV. Because discussion of IPV is gendered so heavily, it is difficult for anyone who identifies outside the cis- and heteronormative expectations of the formal system to receive appropriate support and resources. Ending this chapter, Guadalupe-Diaz provides some suggestions for improving resources for trans people, including ensuring services and education are trans inclusive, acknowledging the unique experiences of trans survivors, and reframing how and why resources define and manage sex and gender.
Overall, Guadalupe-Diaz takes an interactionist perspective and challenges current understandings of IPV as wholly structural, or residing only in systems of power, which he argues preserves binary gender ideas about perpetrators and victims. He contends an interactionist lens allows for a more complete understanding of IPV than taking the perspective of “gendered power as rigidly structured by culture and maintained by institutions in which one person has all of the predetermined power while the other has none,” as he believes “traditional feminist models” do (p. 151, emphasis in original). Guadalupe-Diaz claims that through trans survivors’ stories of IPV, theorists can better recognize “how all social beings have differential access to power that can be situationally defined” (p. 151). So, while institutional arrangements can influence who has power in a relationship, “ultimately the power is constructed between two partners. . . . [and] power is made real through interaction” (p. 83).
For me, as a conflict theorist who focuses on structural inequality, specifically regarding gender and sexuality, Guadalupe-Diaz’s framework for this study left much to be desired. Much of what is labeled as “discrediting identity work” and “controlling transition” in this book is directly tied to larger structural barriers that trans people face in the United States. For instance, I was not convinced that altercasting is based primarily in interaction, nor that it is especially unique for trans people. Victims’ “sense they need the abuser’s help, comfort, or support” proved to be more than a feeling in interaction, as often they did need help due to societal oppression of trans people. Trans victims who do not have supportive family or friends, or who cannot access “formal” resources, such as jobs, housing, healthcare, shelters, and so forth, may stay in abusive relationships because they objectively need their abusers’ help and resources. This is clearly a structural issue that leaves trans people especially vulnerable, due to the lack of other places to turn, which Guadalupe-Diaz does discuss further in later chapters. Furthermore, the “norm” of long-term relationships, and their conflation with success, likely affects cis women in similar ways to trans people. However, there are more resources targeted to cis women, like shelters and legislation, that clearly provide them other paths out of the abuse that are not, or do not seem to be, available to trans people.
While Guadalupe-Diaz’s book is highly relevant and timely to the political battles that surround IPV and the VAWA taking place in the United States today, I was surprised he did not address the VAWA in this book other than a brief note on the next-to-last page. Guadalupe-Diaz mentioned other relevant legislation that influences trans peoples’ rights and access to resources (e.g., health care, education, and housing) in Chapter Two; however, he failed to discuss the implications, or lack thereof, of the VAWA reauthorization of 2013 or the current battles surrounding the legislation at the time this book was written. In late 2018, the VAWA expired and, after a temporary extension, expired again in February 2019. In April 2019, the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill to renew and improve the provisions of the VAWA. As with the last reauthorization of the bill in 2013, the Republican-controlled Senate has yet to pass the reauthorization of the bill. While Congress can continue to fund VAWA grants after authorization expires, which they committed to for fiscal year 2020, “the lapse of underlying law (VAWA) has meant uncertainty for providers around the country” (NNEDV 2020). Mainly due to partisan politics surrounding gun control (i.e., prohibiting perpetrators of IPV and stalking from accessing firearms), there remains no Senate version of the VAWA reauthorization bill.
In my opinion, ignoring these larger legislative battles is a flaw of the book related to Guadalupe-Diaz’s attempt to separate the interactional components of IPV from the institutional components. His attempts to show the weakness of “traditional feminist” arguments about IPV and to show “how gendered power is constructed interactionally rather than merely by structure,” do not seem to be supported by his findings. From my reading of this work, his findings indicate that “traditional feminist” arguments continue to hold and provide adequate explanations of IPV, including trans survivors’ experiences (p. 151). For example, Guadalupe-Diaz demonstrates that despite the gender identities of victims or abusers, abuse still largely relied on the elevation and superiority of masculinity against femininity. In fact, when victims were more feminine, “abusers attacked femininity and directed severe violence against these survivors” (p. 77). Also, many of the abusers had other intersecting vectors of privilege, such as having a better job and more money, all of which are related to structural inequality.
While I understand Guadalupe-Diaz’s desire to move theorizing on IPV forward, his work describing the variances for trans survivors was important enough on its own. In the end, his attempt to challenge feminist theory undermined his excellent data and findings on how structure led to even more obstacles for trans survivors. While theory on IPV may need to be tweaked to make sense of some of the unique circumstances for trans survivors, I think this is a matter of showing the importance of intersectionality, and of demonstrating the importance of masculinities and femininities not necessarily connected to male bodies and female bodies respectively. In my opinion, future research on IPV should not stress the interactional over the institutional elements present in violence. In fact, Guadalupe-Diaz ends the book with the sentence, “Expanding the focus of responsibility and blame from the sole offender to the community takes us all to task, the task to acknowledge that too often the community has ignored or perpetuated these forms of violence, marginalizing or silencing the voices of the most marginalized” (p. 161). This is exactly the point—society doesn’t need to focus on specific interpersonal relationships or specific abusers’ traits; rather, we have to take the “community” to task and change the structure.
Another point where I disagree with Guadalupe-Diaz is on what “community” he is referring to. His placement of primary responsibility for dealing with the issue of IPV perpetrated against trans people on the “queer community” in the conclusion left me confused and concerned. IPV is a structural problem that relates to the entire society. Sure, the queer community, like all communities, has work to do and has not been fully accepting of trans people. This should change! However, IPV, regardless of the identity of the victim, is a much larger issue, and placing responsibility for trans victims on the shoulders of other marginalized people seems like a step in the wrong direction. The blame must be placed where it belongs, on the cisnormative, heteronormative, and patriarchal culture in the United States. The blame must be placed on a political administration that did not reauthorize legislation to protect victims and on a police force and criminal justice system that scare minorities more than their own abusers. This is not a queer community problem—this is a U.S. problem; and shifting the focus of queer movements is not enough to change the larger culture that perpetuates IPV.
Generally, Guadalupe-Diaz is correct that theorists, activists, and service providers must take a more nuanced and intersectional approach to working with and providing resources to survivors of IPV. We must stop asking questions that place blame on people who are victimized and rather place the blame on abusers and, more importantly, on the structures that allow IPV to continue to be an epidemic in the United States. I also agree with Guadalupe-Diaz that it is far past time for everyone to acknowledge that victims are in the best position to understand their circumstances. Rather than asking what the survivor did or why they stayed, it is time to start asking how we can help and how we can change our genderist, transphobic, heteronormative, homophobic, racist (and the list goes on) society to meet the diverse needs of diverse survivors of IPV.
In sum, Transgressed is an important addition to research on IPV and trans lives. It is an accessible read for students at all levels, as well as activists and practitioners in the field (despite the many quotes that are too long, repetitiveness, and need for more thorough editing). I genuinely hope that it will not take 25 more years for scholars to consider how IPV uniquely influences other populations of queer people, including but not limited to bisexual people, nonbinary people, and polyamorous people. Understanding the unique experiences of IPV for trans people and other queer people is a vital step in the ultimate project of finding a way to meet the needs of all survivors and ending the IPV epidemic in the United States.