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Apparati of Power:
Concerning the Social Manufacture, Application, and Effects
of Structural and Cultural Violence against Transgender People

Logan A. Kirkland

Anthropology of Violence
Emanuela Guano, PhD

December 2, 2010
Georgia State University
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The term "structural violence" was originally coined by Johan Galtung. It is violence

committed not by an individual, but by structuralized social systems. For example, a social system

can manufacture harm against certain groups of people by making it difficult or impossible to meet

their needs (1969: 170) . Descriminatory social constructs like class-ism, racism, sexism,

heterosexism, ageism and ableism can all be examples of this type of structural violence. Cultural

violence, on the other hand, is the method in which parts of a culture can be used to justify,

legitimize, or otherwise make structural violence seem not wrong. Art, religion, political ideology,

science and language are examples of commonly used cultural systems from which cultural

violence is manufactured (Galtung 1990: 291-292). These engrained forms of discrimination and

violence hurt people by making their very survival and inclusion in day-to-day life and the

'accepted' culture a difficult struggle-- they may not have access to basic services, may not be able

to get jobs, and may be routinely abused in any other number of ways. One man can't get a job

because of the colour of his skin; another because he is gay. Another person might be fired for being

too old, or may lack mobility because they are dependent on a wheelchair in a universe of stairs.

This paper in particular, however, shall focus on cultural and structural violence against

transgendered people in the modern urban setting.

To begin with, let first us define 'transgender' as someone who in one way or another doesn't

identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. This can thus include a wide variety of gender-

nonconforming people, and is used because of this inclusive nature-- it includes not only

transsexual people (a more contested term, referring alternatively to people who have completed

gender reassignment surgery of some kind, or at least live full time as their identified gender), but

also can include drag queens and kings, genderqueer people, and other forms of transmasculine and
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transfeminine people. (Doan 2009: 22). In addition, it must be stated that all of these lables focus on

gender and not sexuality; a transgendered man (transman) might be gay, straight, bisexual, asexual,

pansexual or have any number of other sexual labels and characteristics, as can a transgendered

women (transwomen)-- and anybody else, for that matter.

Transgender people are common targets of the social phenomena of 'othering'. Othering, for

the sake of this paper, shall be defined as the social process through which a group constructs an 'us'

and a 'them' for the purpose of seperation, stigmatization and opression of the 'them' and/or the

advancement of the 'us' over the 'them'. The experiences of many transgender people is ripe with

othering-- in many places they don't even have the right to work or marry. Using a public

(gendered) restroom—either of them-- can be a frightening experience, plagued with harassment.

They often must live in constant fear of violence and discrimination, even in places and situations in

which the majority of people would feel perfectly safe. One informant, a young transwomen whom

I've known for some time, told me her rather poignant story: she was denied employeement purely

based on her gender-status. It follows:

...Okay, okay, so I had been applying to a bunch of places nearby after I moved in with
partner and of course they make you use your legal name and so I had to apply with my
birth name. And a couple days later I get a call-back from smoothie establishment and they
want to interview me. So I'm excited, you know, and go in a couple days later for the
interview, and the guy takes one look at me when I tell him who I am and I can, you know,
see how he changes immediately. But we go ahead through the short interview, and he
warmed up some so I thought it was going to be cool. We get to the end and he looks over
everything and tells me I can start monday-- but only on the condition that I act in a male
gendered way. I couldn't handle that, it would be too difficult, I was depressed enough as it
is...

Another collaborator, a 23-year-old transman, had a similer tale: he was forced to continue using his

birth-name at the pizza delivery place at which he worked, despite operating in an obvious male-

gendered identity. Realities such as these are both constant and common among transgender people

working in all but the most liberal of fields in the American workforce.
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This sort of reality can be very difficult for an individual to live with. Daily experiences of

many transgender people include being treated as a non-person or a 'thing'. They may be harassed,

belittled, treated like a gender to which they don't identify, or called all sorts of profane names.

These things are all common at the social level, but all sorts of traps and trickery also lie at the

supposedly holy level of civil rights as well, as these narratives point out.

These sorts of themes and narratives are common among transgendered people. Basic

services and needs can be very difficult to meet because of the systems of heteronormative thought

and action which discriminates against them. Rights that are taken for granted by many people

simply don't exist for transgender people-- the State often doesn't even recognize them as the gender

they self-identify without all sorts of mad hoop-jumping. In Georgia, for example, in order for a

transgender person to change their gender marker on their drivers license and thus be able to, at

least from a legal standpoint, be treated as a member of their gender, they must first have the gender

marker on their original birth certificate changed—which requires them to have sexual-

reassignment surgery (SRS). SRS is prohibitively expensive and difficult (and even undesired) by

many transgendered people. Factors like these contribute to making the lives of transgendered

people difficult even in the at the most basic civil and legal levels.

Without this basic right to the legal protection of their gender expression and identity, trans

people face any number of battles in the public sphere. They don't have any protection against

discrimination in the workplace, at school, or in any number of other areas of public life. They, as

was mentioned before, often can't even use public restrooms without fear of harassment, and on top

of these things, they are often treated as nonhuman by the legal authorities—the great gunwielding

defenders of social order and American mainstream ideology. Indeed, people will often snicker or
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harass them after looking at their ID, making every purchase or offical encounter a potential

mindfield of mistreatment. Each and every one of these things stemming, at least partly, from the

unfair difficulty involved in getting their gender legally recognized on a tiny piece of paper that is

supposed to reflect the fact that they exist and who they are. Yet, structural and cultural violence

constantly robs them of the right to even act as who they are in this variety of sociocultural spheres.

These difficulties in being allowed to function fairly and on common ground in the

predominately heteronormative society-system manufactures a reality in which transgender people

are unfairly disadvantaged-- not being able to receive equal employment, many find themselves in

poverty and lacking healthcare. Many become depressed, often dropping out of school at an early

age. Homelessness, prositution, irresponsible drug-use, illness and even suicide are common among

those who become most marginalized. These power-systems of cultural and structural violence

construct a reality that regularly engages in attempts to drain transgender people of their very

personhood and basic rights; working to erode each free agent's ability to excersize their own

humanity from the bottom up and the inside out.

According to the Washington Transgender Needs Assessment Study, conducted from

September 1998 to May 2000, one third of transgender people in America earn less than 10,000

dollars a year, and 29 percent are unemployed. Only one forth of those assessed were comfortable

with their current living situations, and only 58 percent had paid employment. In addition to this, a

study by the Transgender Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights showed more

reflective examples of structural violence: 64 percent of those assessed made less than 25,000

dollars a year; over 40 did not have health insurance; finally, one in five did not have a stable living

arrangement (National Center for Transgender Equality: 2010).

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Even homeless, they face disproportionate discrimination—many shelters don't accept

transgender people, and the ones that do often require proof of genital SRS or they will house the

person with the wrong gender, where they will almost-always be harassed and treated as a non-

person, even becoming the target of physical or sexual violence (National Center for Transgender

Equality: 2010). Barriers to stability, much less advancement, exist everywhere. One young

transgendered man, Matt, whom I worked with in 2009 on an ethnographic paper involving 'Train-

Hoppers' or 'Travelers' had experienced this phenomena several times from, one again, the

guardians of the judiciary-- being forced into solitary confinement and treated as a nonhuman by

police, stripped naked, gentiles examined, and basically sexually brutalized, because of some

perception of 'gender dysphoria' by the authorities-- because of his claim that he was, indeed, a boy.

Structural violence legitimizes the mistreatment and othering of transgendered people ever

day-- here, in America, in Georgia, in Atlanta; and beyond. Without easy access to the basic right of

even being able to be legally treated as their expressed gender-identity, they face an enormous web

of social and cultural mistreatment. This is how structural violence works; it creates a system where

the victim has their legitimacy challenged constantly at every avenue. They can't function because,

often enough, they have had their very most basic rights and identities as a human being and a

citizen stripped away by the very institutions that are supposedly the guardians, legitimizers, and

enforcers of these rights and identities—and from their on out, they face constant discrimination

and violence. Structural violence is an enormous mechanism of othering, abuse, and power—

through the manipulation of it, people can be robbed of rights so basic that they don't realize they

are even factors until they are gone. As we have identified and explored, structural violence presents

a cornicopia of avenues for annihilating a transgender person's very right and ability to function as a

human being and an independent legal-civil agent.

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Of course, to many people who aren't emotionally invested in someone who is transgender

or transgendered themselves, this is a simple topic to ignore-- othering of this particular variety is

easy and almost natural. Yet one has to remember from the beginning that this has only been an

example, a case-study into a particular variety of structural violence, if you will. But structural

violence is a power-apparatus that can be applied to a variety of different individuals and groups

within a number of different social and cultural systems. Indeed, it is used with every rotation of

the celestiral sphere to rob countless victims of power; to regulate and opress them. One might even

argue that in one form or another, most all of us are the victims to a certain variable amount of

structural violence. But on the other side of the coin, one might also argue that each day, the great

majority of individuals are also actors on the strings manipulated by the all-to-often visible hand of

structural violence. But once one has acknowledged this fact, one can then begin to actively work at

freeing oneself from this social economy of power and oppression and thus not being a producer

and agent of structural violence. The more members of humanity that work to turn this tide, then the

fewer shall be on the consuming-and-oppressed end of the power apparatus that is structural

violence-- and thus this world might be made a place of less oppression, abuse, and exploitation;

and become one filled with people working to manufacture a reality of peace, respect and tolerance

for every individual.

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Works Cited:

Doan, Petra
2009 Safety and Urban Environments: Transgendered Experiences in the City.
WE Research: 22—25.

Transequality.org
2009 Homelessness and the Trans Community. http://transequality.org/Issues/homelessness.html
(accessed November 10, 2010).

Galtung, Johan
1990 Cultural Violence. Journal of Peace Research 27(3): 291—305.

Galtung, Johan
1969 Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research 6(3):167—191.