Packing materialities: marketising trans prosthetics

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the practice of packing undertaken by trans men and transmasculine people, and with the commercialisation of products designed for use in this practice. To pack is to wear an object in your underwear to emulate in some way or shape a penis, and to provide the feeling or impression of genitals that the wearer does not possess. This thesis charts the development of a market for products to be used in this practice: from simple foam padding to hand-crafted silicone packers, to multifunction prosthetics that can be used for sex and 'standing to pee'. I describe these products collectively as 'packsthetics', a portmanteau of packer and prosthetic, because, as I demonstrate, it is difficult to make clear distinctions between these two terms as either product descriptions or in their use in practice. Employing Michel Callon's (2021) framework of 'market agencement' to understand the development of a packsthetics market, as well as concepts from Actor-Network Theory and queer theory, I demonstrate how packsthetics are enacted through their marketisation. This is crucial to the ability of packsthetic products to become someone's genitals.

Attending to how packsthetic products are commercialised, I trace a heterogeneous web of relationships, with both human and non-human elements, that cohere to enact the packsthetic. These include packsthetic histories, websites, silicone and pigments, YouTube videos and associated reviews, an imaginary of the trans 'community', and the normative penis. Understanding packing not as a discreet and individualised practice, but as enacted through such an assemblage, provides an opening for deeper consideration of packsthetics' materiality, particularly how the packsthetics market tries to 'realistically' represent an idealised version of the penis. I illustrate how this 'realism' and its mimetic origin in the penis are materially constructed and culturally constituted. Understanding both the packsthetic and the penis as enacted provides an opening to challenge the 'naturalness' of genitals and highlights how embodied sex and gender for all of us-trans and non-trans both-is always already interwoven with the material world.