Texual Analysis of Garfinkel's Story of AgnesElectronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volume 4,April 29, 2001www.ejhs.orgTruth, Falsity, and Schemas of Presentation:A Textual Analysis of Harold Garfinkel'sStory of AgnesLeia Kaitlyn ArmitageFace-to-face communication has been the archetypical sociological phenomenonand with its fascinating equivocalities has upstaged the mundane and oftentiresomely impenetrable universe of textual communication and textuallymediated action. (Smith, 1990a: 122)Although textual explorations have the potential to be 'tiresomely impenetrable',even 'mundane', as Smith suggests, it would be an error to dismiss allsuch explorations in these terms. Some explorations, I believe, can beextremely fascinating and revealing in their own right. In fact, as I willargue in the following pages, the text has a great deal to say about theargument the author is making and why the argument becomes convincing.One need only take the time to delve beyond the content of the text tolook at the structure and the organising schemas or discourses in whichthe argument is framed.The present paper is an exploration of one such textual communicationthat underscores the deeper level at which an argument can operate. Onthe one hand, an argument operates at the level of the ideas themselveswhere the merit of the argument apparently rests on the strength and validityof the points presented, the supporting data and logic of their presentation.Perhaps more interesting, though less obvious, is the level at which theargument operates in terms of the discourse it appeals to, the organisingschemas that it is presented within, and how each of these impact on thesuccess of the author's undertaking. This is perhaps no more evident thanin texts in the field of "interpretive sociologies" where the methodologiesthat result in the production of text can be turned back on the text itself.A particularly apt test for such an exploration is Harold Garfinkel's(1967: 116-185, 285-88) account of Agnes which has, on occasion, been accordedthe status of a double sociological 'classic' (Denzin, 1990: 198, 1991).On the one hand, Garfinkel has given a pure methodological account of thecontinuous nature of the social production of gender (Kessler and McKenna,1978: 112-115; Bologh, 1992) and, on the other, he has provided an exemplarof the ethnomethodological method that reveals how people produce stable,accountable, practical activities in everyday life.In terms of the social production of gender, Garfinkel 'aimed at capturingthe socially situated work whereby [his subject] Agnes, accomplished thetask of passing as a "normal" woman' (Rogers, 1992a: 174). In terms ofmethodological contribution, Garfinkel transformed the phenomenologist'sconcern for the everyday world, as constituted by mental acts of consciousness,into a new sociological concern for the methods used by people in the managementof the public, scenic, and interpersonal activities of their lives (Mehanand Wood, 1976).Garfinkel's accounting of Agnes' production of gender is a classic exampleof the textual product of face-to-face communication. However, a body ofacademic debate has begun to grow out of an interest in reading Garfinkel'stext as a social phenomenon in itself (Bologh, 1992; Denzin, 1990, 1991;Hilbert, 1991; Lynch and Bogen, 1991; Maynard 1991; Rogers, 1992a 1992b;Zimmerman, 1992;). For example, Norman Denzin (1990: 198), in his paper,'Harold and Agnes: A Feminist Narrative Undoing', undertook a deconstructive,feminist, narrative analysis of 'The Story of Agnes' arguing that Garfinkel'sassessment of Agnes 'has much in common with conventional interpretivesociology, in which there is a masculine preoccupation with theorizingthe genesis, origins, causes, and effects of various social situations,including social problems and the types of persons and groups who haveor who are those problems'. His conclusions aside, Denzin's approach takeshim beyond the mundane, beyond what the 'inert text' (Smith, 1990a) canoffer in the way of an inoperative, uncontexted body of data, to deconstructGarfinkel's project 'so as to open up textual possibilities of representationand interpretation that previously have been hidden or glossed' (Denzin,1990: 198). In effect, Denzin turns Garfinkel's method back upon itself.Rather than begin with the assumption that there is a world 'out there'that can be studied and that this world is contained within the subject'sexperiences and is available to the observer through the subject's socialaccomplishments, Denzin attempts to show how the objective reality of atext about the world out there becomes a social accomplishment in itselfthat can, in turn, be deconstructed and undone (Denzin, 1990: 199n5).The interest that Garfinkel's account has generated, and continues togenerate, suggests that a number of contentious issues lie buried withinGarfinkel's text. Notable among these is an issue that Denzin raises regardingGarfinkel's 'ironic use (and dismissal) of Agnes's lie as supportof his [Garfinkel's] method' (Denzin, 1990: 204 emphasis added). It isin terms of this particular question that the present paper is concerned.The Lie and its Ramifications: Defining theProblemThe study of Agnes appears in chapter five of Garfinkel's (1967) groundbreaking text,Studies in Ethnomethodology. Garfinkel, and the otherresearchers involved in her case, were drawn to Agnes' plight given thesingular nature of her situation. Garfinkel's account of his subject beginsin October of 1958, when a young woman was referred to Dr. Robert Stollerat the Department of Psychiatry of the University of California, Los Angeles(UCLA). The young woman was seeking plastic surgery to remedy an apparentendocrine abnormality. Agnes was, by all accounts, a very 'feminine' womanpossessing the visible characteristics of a young woman her age: well developedbreasts, wide hips, narrow waist and a smooth complexion. However, whatmade her situation of particular interest to this team of researchers wasthat she also possessed 'a fully developed penis and scrotum' (Garfinkel,1967: 117).At the time, a group at the medical center was involved in a study ofintersexed patients. The UCLA researchers, including psychoanalyst RobertStoller, sociologist Harold Garfinkel, and psychologist Alexander Rosen,became interested in Agnes' case and worked with her to determine the causeof her abnormality and to investigate the effects of it upon her genderrole and personal management skills (Hausman, 1995: 1). As a result ofthe 'approximately thirty-five hours of conversation' that he had withAgnes, Garfinkel formulated his theory of gender as a 'situated accomplishment'(Garfinkel, 1967: 121), an accomplishment in which: "membership in a sex category is sustained across a variety of practicalcircumstances and contingencies, at the same time preserving the sensethat such membership is a natural, normal, moral fact of life." (Zimmerman,1992: 194-195) However, unbeknownst to Garfinkel, Agnes was not altogether forthrightduring the interviews; her story had yet to be told in its entirety. Agneswas, in actuality, a nineteen year old genetic male who had been raisedas a boy (although she maintained steadfastly that she had always feltherself to be female) who, at the age of seventeen, began living as a womanand at the age of nineteen, was seeking remedy for "nature's" mistake.In the 'Appendix to Chapter Five', that is included in Studies inEthnomethodology, Garfinkel informs his readers of how, eight yearsafter the completion of the study, and presumably too late for him to alterthe publication other than to add the appendix, Agnes revealed to RobertStoller that she had lied to them. The feminization of her body, that wasso remarkable in a male her age, was not due to the 'rare disorder: testicularfeminization syndrome' (Stoller in Garfinkel, 1967: 285), that the medicalauthorities had diagnosed. Rather, her condition was due to the continuedand prolonged ingestion of female hormones. She had been stealing hormonesthat had been prescribed for her mother. The physical feminization thatwas so outwardly apparent in Agnes' body was willfully self-induced.In the appendix, Stoller sets out a number of reasons why the researchteam felt certain that Agnes had not been taking hormones on her own. Mostnotable among these was that Agnes had consistently 'denied taking suchestrogens at the time that she revealed many other parts of her historywhich would seem to be equally embarrassing to reveal' (Stoller in Garfinkel,1967: 286). In addition, Agnes continued to deny having taken hormoneseven after receiving the operation that accounted for her willingness toparticipate in the study.Stoller's chagrin at learning that the team had been fooled by Agnes'was matched by [his] amusement that she could have pulled off this coupwith such skill' (Stoller in Garfinkel, 1967: 288). However, the ramificationsfor Garfinkel were potentially more disastrous. As a man intent on inventinghis science and establishing his credibility as an innovative social scientist,the fact that he had been hoodwinked by his subject, must have indeed beenworrisome. Garfinkel's report on Agnes is the longest chapter in the textconstituting nearly a quarter of the overall text (pages 116-185) and is,in addition, supplemented by the now well known 'Appendix to Chapter 5'(1967: 285-88). The success of Studies in Ethnomethodology as awhole, it could be argued, is in no small part due to the study of Agnes.Agnes' disclosure must be viewed as having had the potential to discredithis whole theory. Garfinkel had mistaken appearances for reality and developeda sociological perspective on these mistaken assumptions.Agnes was not an intersexed person with a "legitimate", biological claimto womanhood (however complicated that claim might be) that the researchershad believed her to be (and she had presented herself to be). She was nothingmore than the 'highly accomplished liar' that Garfinkel, at one point inhis account, passingly reflects on the possibility of her being (Garfinkel,1967: 174). Garfinkel, however, dismisses the issue in its entirety arguingthat it does not matter that Agnes lied. The news of Agnes' lie merelyshows how the 'recognizedly rational accountability of practical actionsis a member's practical accomplishment, and... that the success of thatpractical accomplishment consists in the work ...which includes ...accounts"as determinant and independent objects"' (1967: 286).In response to Garfinkel's disclosure of Agnes' confession, Denzin (1990:204) asks the inevitable question: How could Garfinkel produce 'a textthat allowed him (and the reader) to see Agnes as an intersexed person'?Denzin further pursues this line of questioning by asking: How Garfinkelorganized his text 'so that it gives the appearance of having accountedfor Agnes's passing?' Denzin (1990: 204) argues that Garfinkel was 'duped',a fact that Stoller's ensuing comments on the case seems to confirm (seealso Hilbert, 1991: 266). Garfinkel maintains that this, and the fact thatAgnes lied, do not, in themselves, diminish Agnes' 'practical accomplishment'of gender. As Hilbert (1991:2), in defence of Garfinkel suggests, Garfinkel'sinterest is not in the 'real' Agnes but in the methods of her femininity.Garfinkel's response however, fails to address two very important issuesboth of which come back to the concerns raised by Denzin (1990). First,given that Garfinkel chose to portray Agnes as intersexed, was this importantto the success of his project? Did the success of Garfinkel's project dependon Agnes being seen as an intersexed person rather than as a transsexualor other type of compromised male? Second, if it was necessary to see Agnesas an intersexed individual, how does the organization of his text compelthe reader to see Agnes' accomplishment of gender in this light, as theaccomplishment of a 'real' woman. That is: How does the organization ofthe text compel the reader to see Agnes as a woman with a problem of anatomyrather than as a man with psychosocial problems of identity? (Denzin, 1990:204)Following in the spirit of Denzin, but along a somewhat different trajectory,I will take up these issues to illustrate how the textual organizationof Garfinkel's project allows him to convincingly portray Agnes as intersexedand how this is crucial to his enterprise of illustrating gender as a situatedaccomplishment. Finally, I will argue that it was crucial to Garfinkel'ssuccess that he not alter his text in light of Agnes' later revelations.The HypothesisIt is my contention that regardless of whether or not Garfinkel knewor suspected Agnes' deceit or was 'duped' as Denzin alleges, the successof Garfinkel's project, to illustrate Agnes' methods of femininity, astypical of 'Anywoman's' methods of femininity, depended on Agnes firstbeing seen as a 'real' woman. Contrary to what Garfinkel implies in theappendix to Studies in Ethnomethodology (that Agnes' 'true' status,and therefore her perceived status, are irrelevant to the study), I willargue that the success of his enterprise, given prevailing attitudes towardsex and gender, depends on Agnes being perceived as having a credible claimto her 'elected sex status' (Garfinkel, 1967) and that this premise couldonly be entertained if Agnes could be seen, in essence, as a 'real' woman.At a structural level, perceiving Agnes as a real woman requires thatGarfinkel first frame his argument within an overarching discourse thatthe reader can comfortably draw upon in order to accommodate such a proposition.Garfinkel's argument conforms to an ideological framework that illustratesthe circularity of the interpretive process (Smith, 1990b), a process thatbegins with the author framing his or her intentions within an existingdiscourse, a discourse that the reader must draw upon in order to followthe argument.However, before such an undertaking can begin, I believe it pertinentto review the relationship that existed between Garfinkel and Agnes inorder to understand what was at stake for each and how each was dependenton the other for the accomplishment of his or her respective goal.Garfinkel's GoalsThe relationship that Garfinkel and Agnes entered into was for the solepurpose of each accomplishing his or her own specific agenda. Each neededthe other. For Garfinkel, there was a desire to instill in the sociologicalcommunity an appreciation for the new methodological approach he was developing- ethnomethodology. For him to be successful, and his approach to be accepted,it had to render visible the "ethnomethods" of an individual in copingwith everyday life. As Hilbert (1991: 264) points out, ethnomethods 'arenot ethnomethodology's research methods but rather its topic of investigation'.Ethnomethodology seeks to make visible ethnomethods that tend to remainhidden and invisible by nature of their comfortable, taken-for-grantedfamiliarity and everyday occurrence. In order to study the ethnomethodsof femininity, Garfinkel needed to contrast the ethnomethods deemed appropriateto an individual with the ethnomethods employed by that individual. Agnesoffered Garfinkel just such a case.Here was a individual, raised as a boy who had been living undetected(though not without difficulty) as a woman in society for a period of onlytwo years (Stoller in Garfinkel, 1967: 286). Here was an individual whohad made a conscious choice to live as a different social being; to becomea woman, rather than a man. Of necessity, Agnes had to learn a set of ethnomethodsthat had not been acquired through the normal process of growing up andshe had to employ those ethnomethods in order to be recognised as the womanshe always felt herself to be.However, to be more than a human interest story, or a mere example ofa "management of impressions" ala Erving Goffman, Garfinkel's textof the case required that he mediate Agnes' case and present it in a broadercontext, within the larger, social context of what we now understand asgender. As Garfinkel (1967: 184) argues: "To enumerate Agnes' management devices and to treat her 'rationalizations'as though they were directed to the management of impressions and to letit go at that, which one does in using Goffman's clinical ideal, euphemizesthe phenomenon that her case brings to attention." Whereas Goffman is interested in the ways members of society play theirpart, or manage their self presentation in response to an imposed socialorder, Garfinkel believes that social performers create and sustain thatsocial order. In this case, Garfinkel is interested in how a woman doesher part to create and sustain a gendered social order. Therefore, beforeAgnes' methods of femininity could be seen as 'anywoman's' methods, madehighly visible in this case due to Agnes's overwhelmingly difficult practicalcircumstances, they first had to be seen as 'one' woman's methods and notsimply as an act in response to an imposed reality. To study the methodsof femininity, Garfinkel, needed a sincere subject whose qualities couldbe convincingly read as naturally feminine rather than as contrived performances,impersonation, effeminacy, or, in Goffman's terms, impression management.Garfinkel needed Agnes to be seen as having a legitimate claim to womanhoodand to the associated ethnomethods of a woman.Agnes' GoalsAs much as Garfinkel needed Agnes for the success of his enterprise,Agnes needed to participate in the study that Garfinkel and his colleagues,Robert Stoller and Alexander Rosen, were conducting if she was to succeedin her own enterprise. Any hopes that she might have for marriage and futurehappiness as a woman depended on her being accepted for the sex-changesurgery that would transform her penis and scrotum into a vagina and makeher anatomically normal as a woman. Ideally, as Garfinkel points out, Agnes'goal was 'to obtain a competent, guaranteed, and low-cost operation without"submitting to research"' (1967: 162). However, there was little chanceof that happening.Agnes' social situation suggests that she did not have the money necessaryto finance such an operation on her own. Garfinkel (1967: 119) informshis reader that Agnes' father, who had been a machinist, died when shewas eight years old leaving her mother to support a family of four childrenthrough occasional and semi-skilled work in an aircraft plant. Agnes' ownfinancial prospects were no more promising than those of her mother. Shewas a high school dropout who was skilled only for office work, havingworked briefly as a legal secretary and later as a typist. Her future,as Rogers (1992a: 171) notes, no doubt 'lay in the pink-collar ghetto'.To achieve her goal, Agnes would have to barter her participation inthe study for the surgery she desired. Although Agnes' access to surgerydepended on her participation in the research, that participation dependedon the uniqueness of her case and the interest it generated in the researchcommunity. Undoubtably, Agnes was an extreme study in contrasts. Garfinkeltells us she presented as an attractive 19-year-old, white, single woman(1967: 119). Closer examination suggested that she was special inasmuchas she was one of a group of individuals with 'severe anatomical anomalies'(Garfinkel, 1967: 117). Agnes was believed to be unique in terms of whatwas already a most rare disorder. This was Agnes' "ticket" to surgery.Properly exploiting the uniqueness of her circumstances would depend oncreating in the minds of the researchers the belief of her entitlementto such a procedure, a belief that she really was or should have been awoman. Considering the way in which she doggedly held to her initial story,Agnes no doubt believed that she needed to be seen as "genuinely" feminineto be deemed worthy of a surgery that would confer upon her the final,outward characteristics that she lacked. While Agnes' duplicity in thematter suggests that she was not part of a conspiracy to present her asa woman, she was certainly a willing collaborator. Participation in thisstudy was Agnes' most efficacious route to the desired surgery.The Need to See Agnes as a "Real" WomanThe success of Garfinkel's project, in illustrating gender as 'one woman's'situated accomplishment, rather than as an articulated management of impressions,depends heavily on how readers of the text situate Agnes. Although individualssuch as Christine Jorgensen and Roberta Cowell had achieved surgeries similarto that desired by Agnes, in the early 1950s, and physicians such as Dr.Harry Benjamin, who would later be known by many as "the father of transsexualism"(Schaefer and Wheeler 1995), were beginning to advocate such surgeries,their influence on the medical establishment was still in its nascence.The idea of transsexualism, that one's sex identity could somehow be mismatched,was an idea that had not yet taken hold.Before '1966 and the opening of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic,transsexualism was not a legitimate diagnostic category and there was littleor no treatment in the United States for such persons' (Kessler and McKenna(1978: 116). Dave King (1993: 56) notes that on those few occasions whensurgery was being used to treat transvestite/transsexual patients, it wasbeing used surreptitiously and only in 'a small number of cases'. When'the use of surgery was legitimised theoretically, this was in terms ofan intersex theory' (King 1993: 56).The emergence of gender as a concept separate from sex that was takingplace in the mid 1950's was in response to 'the treatment of a specific(and small) set of patients ... those born with sexually indeterminablegenitalia and/or reproductive organs' (Hausman, 1995: 8; see also Kessler,1990). According to the many specialists that Suzanne Kessler (1990) interviewed,the management of intersexed cases is based upon the theory of gender firstproposed by John Money, J.G. Hampson and J.L Hampson in 1955 and laterrefined by Money and Ehrhardt in 1972. The idea of "gender", as the psychosocialcounterpart to "natural sex", which has become the cornerstone of transsexualawareness, was a concept that was still largely untenable at the time Garfinkeland his associates were conducting their study. The concept would not achievewide acceptance until years later, particularly after the publication ofBenjamin's book The Transsexual Phenomenon in 1967.Although intersexuality has been managed in many and various ways throughouthistory, with the advent of the 20th century, the existence of a biologicalsex dichotomization was considered a natural, ultimately logical truthand the medical establishment had at its disposal the necessary means toresolve issues of sexual ambiguity. As Pagliassotti notes: "Today the hermaphrodite is considered to have been born physicallyabnormal. Steps are usually taken early surgically to assign the hermaphroditeto whatever sex seems dominant and to reconcile this with birth certificatesand other legal documents." (1993: 481-482) Although Garfinkel seems to have an intrinsic awareness of the differencebetween sex and gender, that is between the physical reality of belongingto a sex and the individual's "sense" of belonging to a sex, he never fullyarticulates the concept. His colleague, Robert Stoller, on the other hand,discusses this concept in great detail but only in later publications (seeStoller, 1968, 1985). Instead, Garfinkel speaks of 'sex statuses' and 'electedsex statuses' but without ever adequately unravelling the concepts of sexand gender from one another. Garfinkel argues that 'the normative, i.e.,legitimate sexual composition of the population as seen from the pointof view of members who count themselves as part of the perceivedly normallysexed population, can be described with the following table of transitionpossibilities:' At Time 2MaleFemaleAt Time 1Male10Female01(Garfinkel, 1967: 117) Garfinkel recognises that the dichotomy of the sexes only 'providesfor persons who are "naturally", "originally", "in the first place", "inthe beginning", "all along", and "forever" one or the other' (Garfinkel,1967: 116). As Garfinkel's words suggest and the table illustrates, atthe time the study was conducted, one's social sex status was still inextricablylinked to one's biological sex status and movement between one sex statusand another was not within the realm of possibility.While one's sex status was omnirelevant to one's everyday life, one'ssocial sex status, by virtue of its in inseparability from one's biologicalsex status existed merely 'as an invariant but unnoticed background inthe texture of relevances that comprise the changing actual scenes of everydaylife' (Garfinkel, 1967: 118). What we now understand as gender, the socialpresentation of one's sex status, existed only as a background aspect inthe life of an individual. Garfinkel's interest in individuals who havetaken on an elected sex status was, of necessity, limited to individualswith 'severe anatomical irregularities', individuals whose claim to thatsex status is legitimated, though confounded, by an ambiguous sexual identity.The experiences of these intersexed persons permits an appreciation ofthose background relevances that are otherwise easily overlooked or difficultto grasp because of their routinized character and because they are soembedded in a background of relevances that we now understand as gender.Garfinkel's project depends on transforming gender into something visibleand noticeable, something that cannot be taken for granted but that atthe same time, is a natural aspect of the individual.While the accomplishment of gender can be rendered visible in the intersexed,it can also be argued that their claim to an elected sex status has a moralfoundation rooted in biological entitlement. Women are expected to be femaleand men are expected to be male. If Agnes cannot be recognised as entitledto her elected sex status, then Garfinkel's undertaking of presenting gender,as a managed achievement, as a natural "cultural event", fails. It failsbecause Agnes will be seen as a man imitating a woman. What would otherwisebe seen as the accomplishment of gender becomes rather, an affectation,a managed contrivance, no more than prolonged female impersonation. Itdegenerates into a Goffmanesque "management of impressions". Without alegitimate biological claim to her elected sex status, Agnes' behaviouris, arguably, nothing more than extreme example of effeminacy and mimicry.The Transformation of Agnes: Establishing Agnes'Credibility as a WomanAgnes, as the subject of Garfinkel's text, is a woman faced with a seriousproblem. As feminist philosopher Alison Jagger (1975: 464) argues, thecriteria for membership in the class known as "women" is fairly straightforward:to 'be a woman is no more and no less than to be a female human being.All and only female human beings are women. To be female and to be humanare the necessary and sufficient conditions to be a woman'. Such ideologicalstances are, as Hausman (1995: 9) argues, informed by theories of culturalfeminism that, take "woman" as a self-evident category, a category basedon biological capacity or identity validated through various ethereal conceptssuch as authenticity and integrity and from which female experience issues.This is the discourse that Garfinkel must situate Agnes within if his conceptof gender as a situated accomplishment is to have currency.Although Agnes' demeanour, outward secondary sexual characteristics,and social presence are all convincingly female, as Garfinkel makes abundantlyclear, her inclusion in the social sexual category of woman must ultimatelybe won on the basis of cultural understandings of both biological capacityand value concepts such as integrity and authenticity. From this perspective,it is clear that the body plays a crucial role in the construction of anindividual's social identity. If a body is read as female, or as havinga 'legitimate' claim to femaleness, then the subject will be positionedwithin a discourse of femininity.Although seemingly significant, situating Agnes as a woman is probablythe least difficult task Garfinkel has to overcome. Garfinkel accommodatesfeminist arguments, or rather anticipates such arguments (since, as Rogers(1992a: 169) points out, Garfinkel's report antedates women's studies)by petitioning for Agnes' inclusion in the category of women on the groundsthat Agnes' (and others like her) lack the proper signifiers of their sexdue to physical trauma, pathology, or natural defect. They lack the appropriatephysical signifiers of sex due to conditions beyond their immediate control.Garfinkel is able to situate the woman of his study as one among many whoseintersexed condition can and should be resolved. Agnes' claim to her electedsex status is ultimately based on a claim of intersexual entitlement asthe title of the chapter, 'Passing and the Maintenance of Sexual Identificationin an Intersexed Patient' indicates. Agnes' perceived sex at birth andsex of rearing are convincingly presented as mistakes, accidents beyondAgnes' control. Although they are mistakes, they are mistakes that areresolvable. When: "we compare Agnes' beliefs not only with those of normals but with whatnormals believe about persons whose genitals for one reason or anotherchange in appearance, or suffer damage or loss, through aging, disease,injuries, or surgery we observe that it is not that normals and Agnes insistupon the possession of a vagina by females (we consider now only the caseof the normal female; the identical argument holds for males). They insistupon the possession of either a vagina that nature made or a vaginathat should have been there all along, i.e., the legitimate possession.The legitimately possessed vagina is the object of interest. It is thevagina the person is entitled to." (Garfinkel, 1967: 127 emphasis added) Although lacking the most significant signifier of her sex, Garfinkelestablishes Agnes' entitlement to that signifier in the mind of the readerby appealing to a discourse of intersexuality. Agnes is seen as subjectto a problematic and intolerable condition, a condition that the medicalestablishment can and must be called upon to rectify.Rendering Gender Visible as a Situated Accomplishment:The Transformation of AgnesOnce Agnes' situation is established as a biological and cultural possibility,that is understandable within the cultural and moral obligations of societyto reconcile her dilemma, the task of presenting Agnes as a valid sociologicalobject of interest begins. This is the more difficult problem confrontingGarfinkel. The presentation of Agnes as a 'real' woman is, as has beennoted, particularly aided by her physical anatomy. Early in the report,Garfinkel begins to paint a vivid picture of her in his reader's mind asa woman with a problem: "...the case to be reported here is that of a nineteen-year-old girlraised as a boy whose female measurements of 38-25-38 were accompaniedby a fully developed penis and scrotum [that] were contradictory of theappearances that were otherwise appropriate... "(Garfinkel, 1967: 117) Garfinkel's task of establishing Agnes as a woman but as a woman worthyof note for his methodological enterprise, is a delicate problem that mustbe artfully handled. Garfinkel introduces his subject as a 'girl', a girlwith a stereotypical female presence 'accompanied' by a fully developedpenis and scrotum. Garfinkel appeals, through his text, to his reader tosee Agnes as a woman whose accompanying male traits are foreign and outof place. The penis and scrotum are here problematised as a kind of excess,as something superfluous to her condition thereby rationalising the removalof the offending parts. Garfinkel frames Agnes' real problem in terms ofwhat she is lacking and what she is lacking of course is the vaginathat Garfinkel convinces us she is entitled to. Garfinkel relies on Agnes'appearance to act as a kind of rhetoric as is seen in his reiteration ofAgnes' measurements along with his continuing assurance that Agnes was: "convincingly female. She was tall, slim, with a very female shape....Shehad long, fine dark brown hair, a young face with pretty features, a peachesand cream complexion, no facial hair, subtly plucked eyebrows, and no makeupexcept for lipstick. At the time of her first appearance she was dressedin a tight sweater which marked off her thin shoulders, ample breasts,and narrow waist." (Garfinkel, 1967: 119) At this point of the text, the presentation of Agnes is not only convincinglyfemale, it is notably untainted with male overtones. There was no needto manage her presentation with props as a transvestite might with heavymakeup, elaborate hairstyles, or ultra feminine clothes. Agnes' 'natural'attributes speak for her in a way that will be read positively in termsof the discourse of femininity as opposed to being read negatively in termsof a discourse of masculinity. The discourse of femininity (Smith, 1990a:159-208), that Garfinkel organizes his theory of the managed achievementof sex status within, acts as the necessary repository of the stereotypicaland expected qualities of women against which the qualities of Agnes canbe gauged. As Rogers (1992a: 182), taking exception to Garfinkel's sexiststance, points out:"Although Agnes's feminine shape is obviously relevant... [as are] her"fine dark-brown hair," her "pretty features" and her "peaches and creamcomplexion" [they] are less relevant to her situation than her lack offacial hair which gets no particular emphasis. That Agnes apparently metcultural standards of female attractiveness is far less relevant than thatshe exhibited no physical characteristics visibly jeopardizing her appearanceas a "normal" female." Garfinkel's voice, Rogers argues, could just as easily have been thatof 'the man on the street': "Given the widespread objectification of women as sexual objects (Safilios-Rothschild,1977: 26-40), one could assume that most readers would readily absorb thepoint about Agnes's shapeliness and that parsimony should therefore prevail."(Rogers, 1992a: 182) However, Garfinkel's aim is not to merely describe Agnes' situation.His goal is to convincingly situate Agnes as a woman in terms of the attributescommon to a discourse of femininity. Parsimony, would be risky in thiscontext. Beyond explicating the features of her situation Garfinkel aimsto bring about Agnes' transformation in the mind of his reader so thatshe will be seen in a way that totally obliterates the relevance of herbirth and sex of rearing. Denzin (1990: 205) suggests, that 'Garfinkelis leading Agnes into femininity'. In actuality, he is taking her beyondfemininity; he is leading her into femaleness. Garfinkel situates Agnessecurely as a woman in terms of a common understanding of what a womanis before proceeding to unsettle her place as a woman in order to focuson her "problem" and thereby illustrate his theory of gender as a situatedachievement. Although Garfinkel establishes Agnes' place as a woman healso problematises it to a degree in order to permit an appreciation ofthose background relevances that we now understand as gender.To accomplish this, Garfinkel establishes a three-way relationship betweenAgnes, himself and the reader. The reader is placed in the position ofhaving to rely on Garfinkel's interpretations, as access to Agnes is restricted.Agnes remains, as Denzin (1990: 206). puts it, 'an elusive subject whois talked about more than she talks herself'. She is little more than arepresentation for the reader. With Agnes duly isolated from the reader,Garfinkel emerges as the only one authorised to tell her story.Once Garfinkel has Agnes established as a woman, and himself as theone authorised to present her story, he is free to unsettle her placementas a woman. Garfinkel provides his reader with tidbits of information onhow to detect Agnes' secrets at a social, public level. The reader is ofcourse privy to the knowledge that this woman possesses a fully developedpenis and scrotum. This is what makes her case interesting but this isprivate knowledge that would not be known outside the research environment.Given the 'naturalness' of Agnes appearance and demeanour, additional informationis needed so that the reader can be assured that her problem is both publicand social as well as private, and physical.At the same time that Garfinkel proffers the information that will diminishAgnes' placement as a woman, he simultaneously reassures his reader ofAgnes' place as a female being. For instance, he informs his reader that: "Agnes was typical of a girl of her class and age... There was nothinggarish or exhibitionistic in her attire, nor was there any hint of poortaste or that she was ill at ease in her clothing, as is seen so frequentlyin transvestites and in women with disturbances in sexual identification.Her voice, pitched at an alto level, was soft and her delivery had theoccasional lisp similar to that effected by feminine appearing male homosexuals."(Garfinkel, 1967: 119) Garfinkel reinforces Agnes' femininity by presenting her feminine characteristicsfirst followed by the unsettling male characteristics. For instance, weare left to presume that Agnes' lisp was natural while effeminate homosexualseffecta lisp. Garfinkel reinforces Agnes' natural femininity by contrasting herwith negative masculine readings. However, her femininity is nonethelesscompromised by the very fact that it needs to be compared with that ofmales who would be regarded as socially inadequate or "failed". Equallyequivocal is his suggestion that at the age of 19 her 'manner was appropriatelyfeminine with a slight awkwardness that is typical of middle adolescence'(Garfinkel, 1967: 205). She is appropriately feminine but lacking a degreeof maturity and experience.Garfinkel's picture of Agnes is one that will pass ordinary scrutinybut one which on close observance (of the ethnographer for instance) lacksthe seamless perfection of a 'normal' woman. To the discerning eye, Agnesis flawed but only to the degree that the reader is made aware that inher, one can observe how she accomplishes what all 'normals' take for granted.Garfinkel's method of presenting Agnes serves to establish Agnes' placeas a woman but it also illustrates Agnes' need to 'do' gender. The characteristicsGarfinkel observes test Agnes' place as a woman but they do not disruptit. Agnes possesses all of the necessary characteristics except one tobe received as a bonafide woman; she lacks only a vagina. But the vaginashe lacks is the one that she is deemed to be entitled to and the one thatcan be created for her.ConclusionIn light of Agnes' confession, Denzin (1990: 204) raised the obviousquestion: How could Garfinkel produce 'a text that allowed him (and thereader) to see Agnes as an intersexed person'? He also pondered the questionof how Garfinkel's text organized 'itself so that it [gave] the appearanceof having accounted for Agnes's passing'? His conclusion was that Garfinkelhad simply been duped. A closer analysis suggests that Garfinkel, regardlessof whether or not he knew or suspected Agnes' duplicity, masterfully crafteda textual communication in which he was able to align his interpretationof Agnes within a discourse that was complementary to the completion ofhis project and from which he could proceed to develop his argument forthe managed achievement of sex status as a cultural event rather than assimply a management of impressions. By organizing his presentation of Agnesin accordance with the medical discourse of intersexuality, Garfinkel wasable to structure his text in a way that intended the reader to situateAgnes as a woman with a physical problem beyond her control rather thanas a man who had elected to pursue and manage a particular course of action.However, within the discourse of intersexuality, Agnes emerges as nothingmore than a being with the potential to be a 'real' woman. TransformingAgnes from a being deserving of medical intervention into a being of sociologicalrelevance, a being whose methods of femininity can be viewed as anywoman'smethods required further textual organization and management. This secondorganization of the text situated Agnes, the being with female possibility,within a social discourse that completed the picture of Agnes as a woman.By organizing the physiological possibility of Agnes as a female in termsof a social discourse of femininity, the picture of Agnes as a woman whosecircumstances necessitate the 'doing' of gender completed the picture ofAgnes as woman.Agnes can be seen as having the potential to be a female being becausewe, as cultural beings and consumers of medical knowledge, know that hersituation, as it is told by Garfinkel, is a situation deserving of intervention.We know as well that Agnes, as a social being, is convincingly femininebased on what Garfinkel has told us, how he has told us, and in comparisonto what we know (or think we know) about femininity. Presenting Agnes inthis way allows the reader to complete what Smith describes as the "IdeologicalCircle".The ideological circle occurs when: "an interpretive schema is used to assemble and provide coherence foran array of particulars as an account of what actually happened; the particularsthus assembled, will intend, and be interpretable by, the schema used toassemble them. The effect is peculiarly circular, for although questionsof truth and falsity, accuracy and inaccuracy about the particulars maybe raised, the schema in itself is not called into question as a methodof providing for coherence of the collection of particulars as a whole."(Smith, 1990a: 139, see also 1990b: 93-100) The work of transforming Agnes into a woman is work begun by Agnes,who took the hormones, aided by Garfinkel, who organized the text, andcompleted by the reader who augments the story by drawing on what he orshe "knows" or accepts in terms of the relevant discourses he or she hashad to draw upon in order to follow Garfinkel's argument and see Agnesas she sees herself.Garfinkel suggests that Agnes' disclosures have no effect on the 'managedachievement of [her] sex status'. Agnes' disclosures can be regarded ashaving no effect only so long as the organising discourses that are appealedto are left intact. A rereading of the text, as Garfinkel invites on thelast page of the text, will result in an appeal for Agnes to again be perceivedas a woman because the schema of presentation remains unchanged. Regardlessof our ensuing knowledge that Agnes lied and is not the intersexed individualshe claimed to be, the organising schema within which Garfinkel has articulatedher story remains intact. The reader will, while reading the text, stilltend to draw upon those particular discourses in order to piece his orher understanding of Garfinkel's project together. Given this relationshipbetween the organising schema and the facts of the study in shaping theinterpretation of the data, Garfinkel's decision not to rewrite or alterthe text was perhaps his wisest choice of action. To do otherwise, wouldsurely have led to folly.Textual communication, far from being the 'mundane and often tiresomelyimpenetrable universe' that the opening quote may have suggested, is asrevealing and vocal as that of the face-to-face communications that havehitherto upstaged it (Smith, 1990a). This becomes apparent when the samemethodologies that are employed on the social phenomena that surround usare turned back on the textual products that are the outcomes of our face-to-faceinteractions. The success of an author's enterprise does not rest solelyon the content of the communication and the necessary and sufficient conditionsto establish the logic of an argument but rest also on the context of theargument's presentation. It pays therefore, to understand how the intricaciesof the text's organization and how the presentation of the data can bemade to appeal to the idiosyncrasies of the reader and the current ideologicalperspectives of the time that, together, combine to convey the author'sintent.ReferencesReturn to Front Page |
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