The transgendered Kiwi: Homosocial desire and ‘New Zealand identity’

Abstract

This article argues that a performance of transgender is integral to the reproduction of New Zealand’s ‘national identity’. It suggests that because mediated ‘New Zealandness’ relies simultaneously on its exclusive self-conception as masculinity, and a requisite female adjunct to cast the resultant homosociality in heterosexual terms, New Zealand ‘femaleness’ is primarily recognizable as a misperformed masculinity. The gender binary that functions in the service of national identity is not male/female but masculinity as the gendered, and the transgendered, body. In order to demonstrate this, this article uses Judith Butler’s account of melancholic heterosexuality to examine the ‘Southern Man’ campaign devised to market Speight’s beer.

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