Most of the participants responded ‘no’ to the question: ‘when you were growing up did your family, your mother or your father or your siblings, have any influence on your gender identity?’ However some MtF participants then went on to discuss female role models within the immediate or extended family of origin who may have contributed to the formation of their gender identity. For Helen, Lady G, Sally, Sara Wolf, and Sindy this was their mothers; for others, this was an aunt or female relative, someone who only occasionally engaged with the family yet left a lasting influence.
Dolores, Lily, Sabrina, Rita, and Renee, all described female relatives whom they admired and emulated. Common narratives for most of the transwomen participants included secretly investigating the closets of female relatives to try on clothes and cosmetics, and the thrill and guilt associated with the experience.
Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland
147 Close emotional attachments to dominant and doting mothers were described by Helen, Sally, Sindy, and Jessica R, Boxer-Rider and Carrick. The recent death of their mothers, all after long illnesses during which they were the main carers, had deeply affected Boxer-Rider, Jessica R and Sindy. Strong matriarchal figures in the form of an adoring grandmother and mother were instrumental in raising Boxer-Rider (FtM) in a country outside of the UK. He describes his mother as: ‘very loving, and the only reason I am still here and there is any good in me at all, is because of my mum’.
Although he experienced the intermittent and marginalised presence of two dysfunctional step-fathers, he said his mother: ‘did not attach herself to one man as a means of access to power’; and the resultant legacy of growing up without a model father figure resulted in his acknowledgement of: ‘a residual fear of men, but also a sense of their superfluousness … and mystery.’
Five MtF participants, Dolores, Jessica R, Sally, Sindy, and Sara Wolf described a secret collusion with their mothers around their preference for dressing in ‘girls
‘clothes’. Sally recalled her mother telling her to keep it as a secret between them saying, ‘I’m gonna take you to Saltcoats to buy nice wee girls’ clothes,’ and later, ‘if you go up to the bedroom you can wear my clothes.’ If Sally’s description of her mother’s behaviour is accurate it could have been an encouraging influence on her female gender identity formation; but it could also be a wishful re-memory.
Mothers who trained for a profession or worked hard were identified as role models by some. Helen’s mother, unusually for a woman at the time, had qualified as a medical doctor in the 1930s: ‘She was different. She wanted to work.’ As an intelligent woman, Helen’s mother may have been her role model. However she didn’t utilise her degree as the era and her upper middle class position dictated that after she married she never worked, and it is only possible to speculate how this affected her. Clues may be found in Helen’s description of her father a politician from an old Glasgow merchant shipping family, whose actions were those of a domineering ruling class patriarch. He sent Helen to boarding school at age eight because he thought she was being spoiled into ‘sissy ways’ by her mother. Helen describes the worst part of this as ‘being deprived of raiding my mother’s wardrobe’.
Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland
148 Another ambitious working mother is described by Lady G, whose mother a dance teacher seemed determined to make her way in the world, and whose example as a glamorous role model Lady G always desired to emulate:
My mother got a job at the ballroom at Eglington Toll in Glasgow, as a waitress and then worked her way up to manager. She would dress every single day nicely… and her makeup was really nice. My mother was always called a lady.
And a lot of people say that to me ‘you’re a lady and you dress like a lady’
Lady G dresses immaculately with carefully applied cosmetics. Like Sindy she spoke of her mother being glamorous and more visually interesting and more worthy of emulation than her father.
A number of the MtF participants appear to have retained primary identification with the mother. The cultural institution of women mothering is, according to Chodorow (1978), the main factor in the development of gendered subjects in societies where women are responsible for mothering. She argues that maternal identification is the initial orientation for children of both sexes in the first two years of life because the mother is the first carer under current gender arrangements. Differential experiences orientate girls and boys on different developmental paths. Whereas the girl sustains the primary identification with the mother, the boy repudiates maternal identification in favour of identification with the father’s social power, representing the possibility of separation from dependency, and progress towards individuation. In a gender asymmetrical society, the repudiation of the mother becomes a refutation of the qualities of femininity linked with her - for example connecting and nurturance; thus men become less capable of intimate personal relationships, while women have more fluid psychic boundaries but are less able to negotiate public life. This serves to perpetuate the division of labour in society, a condition which shared parenting could cure. But Chodorow argues that when the mother stays at home as primary carer while the father is away working, she is perceived as all powerful by the child, and not
‘lacking’ as in Freudian theory (Chodorow, 1978).
A child’s perception of the mother as more powerful and worthy of emulation is corroborated by Sindy’s description of her upbringing. Her father was away working two jobs most of the time, and because her mother was mostly at home, she got to spend more time with her, and saw her as powerful and attractive and ultimately
Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland
149 identified with her. ‘My father would work 16 hours a day … So it was inevitable that the parent who was available would be the parent who would have the greatest influence. My mother …with the long hair and pretty clothes, so I guess my dad was outgunned’. Sindy’s relationship with her mother was very close, although she had great respect for her father, Sindy recollects a conflicted approach from her parents in relation to her appearance. ‘Certainly I have a lot closer attachment emotionally with my mother than my father... But whether I dress in her clothes specifically because of an Oedipal element?’ In a world of gendered parenting where women are the primary nurturers, and fathers are largely absent, it could be that Sindy’s story of her mother’s influence is not uncommon, as she says her mother had the advantage in that she was there while her father wasn’t most of the time. Sindy made an interesting speculation as to whether the dominant influence of mothers could possibly be the reason for the larger numbers of MtFs than FtMs in the population.
Mothers who were aggressive and violent were also described. Lady G’s mother appears to have been ferocious as well as glamorous. She recalls how frightened she was of her mother’s explosive violence: ‘My mother used to beat us - she was a very quick-tempered person…I watched her kick my brother’s face off the wall.’ The legacy of this parenting on a sensitive child was traumatic: ‘I was always terrified – my mother and father would fight every single day.’ Similar violent childrearing practices that intruded into her childish imaginative world are described by Grace:
Och my mother used to give me a slap about the head. I used to write wee notes to Grace and say ‘I’d love to meet you tonight and can we go to the dancing’, and my mother found my wee diary and read it and stuffed me up the back of the head for it: ‘you’re not a girl you’re a boy like your twin brother’. She was determined I was a boy.
Vida was adopted into a Glasgow working class family by parents she describes as both being habitually violent: ‘My mum could be quite violent…she didn’t seem like other women…. there was always violence when I was growing up.’ Emotionally abusive mothers are described by Carina and Justine. Justine from a well off middle class family, described how she subverted parental attempts to control her financially. After her parents cut off her source of income in an attempt to prevent her transition, she found other employment, and set up her own home. Justine’s mother practices social
Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland
150 shaming as an attempt to control her, rituals of public humiliation that occur regularly in the small Highland community in which they reside:
Transition is a tough process. Mum says that every time my name is mentioned people laugh at me… If Mum thinks my hair’s too long she will cut it. … Even if I’ve got something on like earrings, Mum’ll ask me to take them out. If she sees me in a skirt or a dress she’ll tell me not to wear that. Even if I’ve got ladies trousers on she’ll tell me not to wear that.
Justine continues to be caught up in ambivalent family dynamics, retaining an attachment and regular connection with her parents, even though they vehemently reject her gender transition. Justine hasn’t told her parents about her imminent gender reassignment surgery for fear they will prevent it. Carina suffered a similar negative reaction when she ‘came out’ to her mother just prior to her gender transition:
My mum basically turned it [gender transition] into a personal vendetta. she was always a controlling dominating person, and because I took control of my life it became a battle and she was actually quite nasty about it: “oh look at the state of your hair and the state of your eyebrows” … I had that to deal with on top of the transition.
Carina was evicted from the family home after gender reassignment and has had no contact with her mother since. It is possible to conjecture gender transition as an act of agency reclamation, and the ultimate act of rebellion against coercive parental control.