by Stacy Horn

    “Gender,” UVM Ph.D. candidate Rhonda Factor explains, “is not a dichotomous variable. There are people who don’t identify as either gender, an emerging population of individuals who don’t experience themselves as one or the other, aren’t interested in being one or the other... what does that mean about how they relate to their body?” Further, asks Factor, what does it mean for how psychology will relate to them?
       Factor is currently working on a dissertation titled “Exploring Gender Diversity: A Comparison of Transgendered Adults and Their Conventionally Gendered Siblings.” In her study, she uses the term transgender, or trans, as “an umbrella term referring to a heterogeneous group of individuals who do not fully identify with the sex and/or gender to which they were assigned at birth.” This group includes those who describe themselves with the terms “transman” or “transwoman” as well as “gender radicals... individuals who experience themselves as neither male nor female.”
      Factor explains that her interests in “gender expression, gender diversity, gender as a construct” led her to pursue research about transgender populations. She adds, “I don’t identify as trans, but I do feel connected to these issues in a personal way and that [all] people are harmed by gender reinforcement. Looking at gender constructions, we bring into question the facts of male and female that are so reified by culture.”
      As she gathered information for her research, Factor found that the limited available literature in the field of psychology provided “little knowledge and insight into the experiences of trans individuals,” so when clinicians encounter trans individuals in therapy, they do not have access to trans-affirming information to inform their therapeutic practices.
      Clinicians might “teach people how to sit and act” in order to pass, for one gender or another, or they might diagnose transgender individuals with Gender Identity Disorder or Transvestic Fetishism. Those two terms are the psychological labels used to describe individuals whose experience of gender causes “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” according to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
      “In terms of the way the DSM regulates sex and gender,” Factor says, “I don’t feel that’s useful or about real health or illness. It’s about cultural norms.” She identifies one role of psychology as “policing the borders” of gender divisions, leaving transgender individuals “totally marginalized” and frequently pathologized when they seek support from the psychological establishment.
      Out of her work, Factor hopes to see psychology’s view of gender move “away from defining” toward a “much more contextual understanding.” She hopes “to show the variation of experiences that people who identify as trans have; female to male, male to female, and those who identify as neither.” In addition, Factor would like to see “improvements in legal protection” for trans individuals who frequently experience discrimination, harassment, and violence, yet are accorded little or no legal recognition and raised public awareness about seemingly mundane experiences of gender such as the designation of male, or female, on drivers’ licenses and other official documents as well as separate bathrooms for Men and Women.
      Factor recognizes that new methods and new ways of understanding must fuel research with transgender populations. “Anything that’s hard to quantify,” Factor explains, “poses challenges to scientific understanding. Transgender bodies, as sites where cultural perceptions of male and female are challenged, refuse to be quantified, categorized, or defined by traditional psychological theories.” For a psychological researcher like Factor, this lack of quantifiable data presents a unique opportunity.
      Out of interviews she conducted with transgender individuals, Factor developed a survey, prefaced with a paragraph explaining, “I have tried to include choices that describe a wide range of experiences. However, some of the items will not describe you exactly. By choosing the response that comes closest to describing you, you are helping to broaden the ways in which our society understands gender.” From her surveys, Factor seeks to learn about respondents’ demographic characteristics (such as level of education, occupational status, and income) as well attitudes and experiences of the body, social support systems, and experiences of violence, harassment, and discrimination.
      Factor has designed two versions of her survey: one for individuals who identify as trans and one for their “conventionally gendered” siblings. Factor’s use of siblings as a control group mirrors a 2001 study titled “Lesbians and their Sisters as a Control Group” she worked on with Dr. Esther Rothblum, also of the UVM Psychology Department. Lesbian mental health was Factor’s original research interest when she came to UVM in 1997 and began studying with Rothblum. As her research interests shifted, Factor sought ways to evolve methods she was familiar with in her work with transgender populations. She plans to defend her dissertation in September of 2004. After earning her doctorate, Factor hopes to work as a clinician, to engage in “healing work with individuals and to speak more qualitatively to these issues.”