Richard McLachlan: Recent death highlights gender identity issues

In this 2012 photo, actress Holly Woodlawn sits on Fisherman's Pier in Malibu, California. Photo / David Chick, via AP

Holly Woodlawn has died of cancer aged 69 in a Los Angeles hospice.

She was the last of the three transgender Warhol superstars given enduring fame by Lou Reed's hit song Walk on the Wild Side. They were Holly, Candy Darling, who died from lymphoma at 29, and Jackie Curtis, who died from a heroin overdose at 38. Given that every media report on Woodlawn's passing has already done it, I'll spare you the song's lyrics.

The three 'superstars' also featured in Paul Morrissey's (Warhol-produced) movies, and appeared together in Women in Revolt. But as Woodlawn, who co-starred with Joe Dalessandro in Trash, pointed out, "Paul Morrissey made me a star, but Lou Reed made me immortal."

Their immortality has helped lay the groundwork for the current discourse on gender, and hinges as much on who they had the courage to be as on their performances in plays and movies. Their regular stage was Andy Warhol's table in the back room at Max's Kansas City. Says Woodlawn, "it was fabulous. You live in a hovel, walk up five flights, scraping the rent. And then at night you go to Max's Kansas City where Mick Jagger and Fellini and everyone's there in the back room. And when you walked in that room, you were a STAR."

Not everyone with fluid or less-than-conventional gender identity wants to be locked into 'he' or 'she'. Jackie Curtis, for example, was a performer and playwright who chose to become James Dean after years of inhabiting laddered nylons and 1930s cocktail dresses. The pronoun 'they' is available, but it doesn't acknowledge the courage it takes to step outside of the assumption that identity is determined by biology. As traditional and fixed notions of gender slip their moorings, perhaps it's better to question the use of categories in the first place rather than search for more.

The forty years since Max's Kansas City closed in 1974 have seen an extraordinary period of creativity based in Lower East Side New York, one in which sex and gender played a significant role, and which has had far-reaching impact - dramatically interrupted by the AIDS epidemic. More recently, the arrival of Chelsea Manning and Caitlyn Jenner in the public domain has provided support for the New Yorker's suggestion that 'Transgenderism' has "replaced homosexuality as the newest civil-rights frontier".

Gender Identity Disorder (GID), also called gender dysphoria, is listed in the DSM5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for diagnosing and classifying mental disorders). It refers to the discontent experienced due to gender identity issues. It is a contested category. Criticised for pathologising gender variance and reinforcing a binary model of gender, a 'diagnosis' of this sort is seen by transgender groups and researchers as leading to stigmatisation of transgender people.

However, without the support of a DSM5 diagnosis, it's hard to imagine the US Army requiring itself, via its Court of Criminal Appeals, to refer to Chelsea Manning with either a gender-neutral pronoun, or 'she'. Earlier decisions had allowed for assistance (including hormone treatment) with Manning's transition.

The prevalence of GID varies among countries in a range spanning 0.05 per cent of the population in Belgium and the Netherlands to 1.2 per cent in New Zealand . Rather than speculate why NZ might lead the world in its level of discontent with 'gender identity issues', I will focus on an example of a positive response. In Pakistan, a group of transgender candidates were able to campaign as themselves (as hijras), and vote in the 2013 national and provincial elections. A supreme court ruling the previous year had allowed them to obtain national identity cards representing them as neither male nor female, but as a 'third gender'.

The stories of the famous are available to us - Holly Woodlawn growing up in a family of women with no father and a gay uncle, or Candy Darling travelling in from the suburbs on the Long Island Railroad at night into New York City's gay bars.

Then there are those who are neither famous nor have any desire to be - the person with the prominent adam's apple and big hands, conservative make-up, skirt and pearls, looking a little nervous on the train at rush-hour. Or the dancer in tights, hot pants and a halter-top, practicing their moves on the subway platform while waiting for the next train carriage to provide a performance space. What did they have to go through to get to where they felt safe appearing in public? What small town did they run from - or stay in? Which alarmed and judgmental family environment? Which derisive schoolmates?

The doors have been kicked open. Gender is in the media continually. Schools are developing policies to recognise difference. The movie and TV industries are on the case. As Conchita Wurst, bearded but very feminine winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Quest, said when asked for a message to Vladimir Putin on his laws prohibiting gay 'propaganda', "we're unstoppable".

It's hard to imagine a statement that better expresses where we need to be right now than this brief assertion of identity by Curtis, "I am not a boy, not a girl, I am not gay, not straight, I am not a drag queen, not a transsexual - I am just me, Jackie."

Richard McLachlan is a New Zealander currently living in New York.