"Imagining the She/Male: Transsexual Seduction and the Heterosexual Male"

A seminar presented as part of "Pornography & Anxiety: Psychoanalysis, Morality & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Seminar Series"

sponsored by:

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center;

NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; and

Studies in Gender and Sexuality: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Jeffrey Escoffier, Presenter

Steven Reisner, Ph.D., Discussant

Friday, October 23, 2009 •  8:00 - 10:00 pm

Commercial “tranny porn” features transsexual performers called she-males (i.e. male-to-female transsexuals who have developed breasts and other female characteristics, but still retain their penises) and male performers who routinely identify heterosexual. Since the porn industry is broadly organized into straight and gay sectors reflecting the patterns of heterosexual and same-sex gender roles, “tranny” films cross gender and sexual lines and so would seem to present a category crisis.  But “tranny” films are considered a straight genre. This is because the sexual activity takes place between a male and she-male/female – this is despite the fact that the ‘female’ has a penis. This presentation will explore how both performers and consumers self-identify, what concepts of gender both performers and consumers hold, and how the adult entertainment industry organizes and reflects sex and gender conventions and practices.

Jeffrey Escoffier writes on sexuality, gay history, music and dance.  He is the author of Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore (Running Press/Perseus Book Group, 2009) and American Homo: Community and Perversity (University of California Press, 1998) and edited Sexual Revolution (Thunder’s Mouth, 2003), a compilation of the most important writing on sex published in the 1960s and 70s. He has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The Utne Reader, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, the Journal of Hoimosexuality, and Qualitative Sociology. He has taught economics, lgbt studies and sexuality at San Francisco State University, the University of California in Berkeley and at Davis, at Rutgers University, and at the New School University.  For the last decade, he has worked in health media, communications and marketing in New York City. 

Steven Reisner, Ph.D. is Advisor on Psychological Ethics for Physicians for Human Rights. He is a founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, a group dedicated to upholding international standards of human rights in psychological practice and research and supporting psychologists' who work to combat the effects of political violence and oppression internationally.  His publications have appeared in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. Dr. Reisner is in private practice in New York City.