Recent Transgender Theory

Fixing Gwen

“…In order to gain access to sex reassignment surgery and medical treatment, for example, individuals may have to use a discourse of wrong body (or gender dysphoria) whether or not that is exactly how they would interpret their experience because that is how medicine and, crucially, insurance companies, have articulated the problem (Roen 2002;Stone 2006). Some writers have even suggested that WBD is an artifact of medical intervention in transgender lives (Hausman 1995(Hausman , 2001. Wilchins (1997) concludes that "trans-identity is not a natural fact" at all.…”

Gender and Sexual Identity

“…The core problem with gender is that it is based on a binary, mandatory system that attributes social characteristics to sexed anatomy (Hausman 2001). Many people assume that the binary basis of gender is, in fact, encoded in basic biological processes.…”

“…Harding (1986, p. 18) states, "gender difference is a pivotal way in which humans identify themselves as persons, organize social relations, and symbolize meaningful natural and social events and processes." Hausman (2001) goes on to say that gender is really an "epistemology" for knowing and understanding the operation of culture in defining identities, where one's perceptions and experiences of the world are attributed to a socially constructed narrative based on one's belonging to one gender category or the other. As Stryker (1994) notes "bodies are rendered meaningful only through some culturally and historically specific mode of grasping their physicality that transforms the flesh into a useful artifact…Gendering is the initial step in this transformation, inseparable from the process of forming an identity by means of which we are fitted to a system of exchange in a heterosexual economy" (p. 249-250).…”

“…Gender was traditionally assumed to be based on a binary, mandatory system that attributes social characteristics to sexed anatomy (Hausman 2001). From birth, humans are categorized as male versus female based on their external genitalia.…”

MISCELLANEA: Hidden subjectivity: trans-subjectivity. Constructing transgender minority in Poland

“…In her opinion, sex reassignment in their case is nothing more than anxiety to admit they are lesbians (Rudacille 2005: 168-172). Bernice L. Hausman brings up a similar train of thought while describing the relation between feminist theory and transgender theory or a theory critical of transgender matters, referring to transsexuality as sex denaturalization (Hausman 2001). 15 Subjectivity concepts (essentialism and constructionism) are further discussed by Ewa Hyży.…”