Transgender Studies

Where health and beauty meet: Femininity and racialisation in Thai cosmetic surgery clinics

by Aren Aizura

Asian Studies Review 33:3 (2009), 303—317.

Feminine Transformations: Gender Reassignment Surgical Tourism in Thailand

by Aren Aizura

Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 28: 4 (2010), 424-443.

The Romance of the Amazing Scalpel: 'Race', Labor and Affect in Thai gender reassignment clinics

by Aren Aizura

In Peter A. Jackson, (ed), Queer Bangkok. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. Page proofs only.

Of borders and homes: the imaginary community of (trans) sexual citizenship

by Aren Aizura

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 7:2 (2006), 289—309.

Emerging healthcare issues and needs of young MSM & TG in India: needs assessment from multi-stakeholders perspective

by Maheswar Satpathy

Cowen, T. Stella, F., Magahy, K., Strauss, K. and Morton, J. (2011) Sanctuary, Safety and Solidarity. LGBT Asylum Seekers in Scotland. A report by Equality Network, BEMIS (Black and Ethnic Minorities Infrastructure in Scotland) and GRAMnet, University of Glasgow.

by Francesca Stella

Mplus Thailand produces animations for HIV/AIDS outreach and prevention

by Christopher Walsh

News article from Fridae.com from 22 January 2010 with Nada Chaiyajit and Pad Thepsai

Responding to an alarming rise in HIV incidence among MSM in Thailand, Mplus, a community-based organisation formed to... more Responding to an alarming rise in HIV incidence among MSM in Thailand, Mplus, a community-based organisation formed to improve the sexual health of men that have sex with men (MSM), produced animations for their HIV/AIDS outreach and prevention programs. The animations are new educational resources produced to increase understandings of safe sex practices and address low perceptions of personal risk to HIV/AIDS among Chiang Mai’s diverse MSM population.

Sexperts! Disrupting injustice with digital community-led HIV prevention and legal rights education in Thailand

by Christopher Walsh

wi th Nada Chaiyajit

In addition to growing epidemics of HIV among men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders in Thailand, a low... more In addition to growing epidemics of HIV among men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders in Thailand, a low awareness of how to access justice increases their vulnerability. This paper presents unique case studies of how two community-based and led organisations used social networking and instant messaging to address this problem. It describes and analyses how online peer-based HIV education and prevention was integrated with access to justice through free university-based clinical legal education (CLE). It argues that re-designing HIV prevention and education through digital technologies with marginalised gay men, other men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders is a sustainable community-based and led approach. Furthermore digital media offer strategic opportunities to overcome on-going political violence alongside entrenched stigma and discrimination that disrupt denial of access to justice for populations disproportionately at risk of HIV.

Control in the Gaymer Experience: Biopower, Sexuality, and _Persona 4_

by Evan W. Lauteria

Presentation Abstract only; paper under revision.

In 2006, Alexander Galloway made the claim that, unlike their cinema and film counterparts, “video games don’t attempt... more In 2006, Alexander Galloway made the claim that, unlike their cinema and film counterparts, “video games don’t attempt to hide informatic control; they flaunt it” (90). Galloway opened up the potential for interpretive work addressing Deleuze’s (1992) societies of control and the rise of global informatic control that takes quite seriously the algorithms and simulation capacity of the video game medium. While some scholars (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009; Higgin, 2009; Rush, 2011) have picked up this interest in informatic control linked to global capitalism, such work has not yet examined the connection between Foucault’s (1990 [1978]) bio-power and Deleuze’s control, a connection Galloway describes in his earlier work on Protocol (2004). This paper is an attempt to grapple with this area of analysis, addressing the link between biopower and control through an analysis of the video game medium’s algorithms and capacity for simulation. Acknowledging that in the bio-political era, “power spoke of sexuality and to sexuality” (Foucault, 1990 [1978]:269), I turn to Persona 4 (Atlus, 2008) as a case study of biopower, control, and sexuality in games to highlight the bio-political workings of the game’s algorithms and simulations. In offering what Galloway (2006) might term an “allegorithmic” reading of the game, I parse out the heteronormative meanings deployed through the game’s algorithms and simulations to unveil the ways in which biopower is exerted through processes of interactive play with the game.

Straightjacket or Freedom: Transgender in the Life and Works of Rachilde

by Journal of Research on Women and Gender

Teresa Stankiewicz, Texas State University

Queer theory keeps changing as scholarly studies introduce new hypotheses on the relevance of gender in examination of... more Queer theory keeps changing as scholarly studies introduce new hypotheses on the relevance of gender in examination of culture and art. Using the definition of transgender as crossing the boundaries of society’s “normative” sexual roles, this paper explores how transgender in Rachilde’s life significantly impacted her plays. It touches upon transvestitism, staging gender and adds to the scholarly works on women’s studies and gender studies. Marguerite Eymery Vallette presented herself as Rachilde, a man of letters in 1877. She was an important member of the symbolism and decadent writing movements in the 1890s. Cross-dressing and presenting herself as a man profoundly impacted the themes, symbolism and characters of her plays. Did this transgender give her freedom or did it become a straight-jacket limiting her work?

Even though she claimed she was not a feminist, Rachilde embodied the freedom that women sought and wrote plays that vivified the struggles men and women had against conventions of society that defined civilized or gentile behavior. The critical methodology used for the examination of her plays is to review her themes, symbolism, characters and dialogue in terms of transgender reflections. Rachilde used transgender in complicated forms to express her frustrations with society’s view of her personally and her works. Scholarly works on Rachilde have primarily focused on the translation of her work, her biography and analysis of her novels with no consideration of how the influence of transgender is manifested in her dramatic works. This paper will discuss transgender and explore its influence on Madame La Mort, La Poupee Transparent and L’Araignée de cristal to fill a gap in the analysis of Rachilde’s work. Rachilde’s plays express the complexity of transgender that is not only valid during le fin de siècle but continues to be significant during the current era.

Neoconservativism and Health Care: Access and Equity for People who are Transgender, Two-Spirit, and Intersex

by Journal of Research on Women and Gender

Jennifer Ajandi, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

In this paper, I explore the issues brought about by the barriers to healthcare for transgender, intersex, and the... more In this paper, I explore the issues brought about by the barriers to healthcare for transgender, intersex, and the two-spirit peoples of Canada. I deconstruct specific policies that serve as major barriers in Canada; however, the ideological and theoretical underpinnings of heterosexism, sexism, and racism can be similarly explored across many geographical spaces. I draw upon critical theoretical literature, my own professional experience in social service settings, as well as activist work as a member of the queer community. The health care system is the main institution analyzed in this paper, yet broader social determinants of health policies and practices are also explored such as the right to affordable and quality housing, living free from violence, and the rights to employment equity and self-determination. This paper concludes with policy recommendations aiming to promote social justice for people who are transgender, two-spirit, and intersex.

SW: Kroppslinjer - Kön, transsexualism och kropp i berättelser om könskorrigering. ENG:Bodylines - Gender, transsexualism and embodiment in narratives on gender correction

by Signe Bremer

Doctoral thesis. ISBN: 978-91-7061-099-8

The aim with this dissertation is to analyse the construction and challenge of body and personhood in transsexual... more The aim with this dissertation is to analyse the construction and challenge of body and personhood in transsexual persons narratives on gender correction, as well as what these narratives tells of the terms through which human bodies become intelligible and recognised as possible persons. The analysis focus on the human body as a lived socially produced materiality, yet also a dynamic material actor of flesh and blood. Questions raised are: What consequences does the Swedish act for declaration of sex in certain cases have on transsexual person’s life situation? How do material bodies matter in the processes where psychiatrists decide a person as transsexual or not? What does narratives on lived gender corrective time courses tell on resistance to prevailing conditions of transsexual personhood? The study is based on in-depth interviews with transsexual persons, autobiographical blogs, texts written by informants, internet posts, e-mails, photographs and fieldwork notes.

The dissertation shows that original bodies play an important role in the psychiatric assessment that decides who will be granted the diagnose transsexualism. Current health care logic stresses that a Swedish citizen should be unequivocally materialized as one or the other sex. Therefore, transsexual women must reject their penis and no transsexual men get to keep their ovaries. By contrast, aversion towards penis does not count for all transsexual women. Also some transsexual men wish to give birth. Moreover, the gender corrective health care system does not only make transsexuals lives more liveable. It also functions as an oppressive gender conservative biopolitical system that often leads to experiences of life as less liveable. Those who qualify for gender correction are legally acknowledged as the gender they recognise themselves to be. Nonetheless legal recognition is conditioned by loss. Any Swedish citizen who aims for a new legally defined sex must submit to enforced bodily surgery, renunciation of reproduction, and if married divorce. Prevailing conditions of gender correction means that many transsexual’s turns to internet. Internet serves as an important political platform where persons and groups can resist the meanings that medical doctors and Swedish society assigns transsexual bodies and lives.

The Ruptured Consolidation of MSM and TG: The Vernacular Translocality of ‘AIDS Cosmopolitanism’ in West Bengal, India

by Aniruddha Dutta

Forthcoming (2011) in Govindan, P. (Ed). Sexuality and Activism in South and Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives on the Intersections Between Theory, Politics, and Action. Routledge: New York & London.

The uneven but widespread emergence of politicized gender and sexual identities in many parts of the world during the... more The uneven but widespread emergence of politicized gender and sexual identities in many parts of the world during the ongoing decades of ‘globalization’ has caused much debate among scholars and activists. One contentious question is the relation between these diverse movements and the apparent spread of western (or metropolitan) discourses of sexuality and gender identity. In this context, I critique the emergence of MSM (males-who-have-sex-with-males) and TG (transgender) as categories through which marginal lower class subjects become organized and intelligible as disempowered constituencies demanding civic inclusion, aid, human rights, etc., from the state and donors in Eastern India. This is not the simple story of the empowerment or visibilization of pre-existing identities or struggles, but the creation of a restrictive framework of community and identity-formation. As I argue, a politicized community is both constructed and regulated through categories like MSM and TG, with attempted exclusions of desires and practices that do not conform to the dominant rubric of identification. But this cannot be simply explained as the expansion or influence of elite activists, NGOs and modern/western discourses of sexuality/gender spreading out from Indian metropolitan centers. Rather, I explore how the current meaning and uses of these categories emerge at the juncture between institutionalization and extant forms of (sub)cultural difference and resistance, such as the Hijras (communities of male-born ‘third gender’ persons, with distinct internal organization and norms). I examine how their intra-community 'vernacular' codes have contributed to the lexical resources through which MSM and TG become a rubric for community and identity construction, enabling the translocal reach of HIV/AIDS interventions and hegemonic forms of identity politics through the consolidation of existing subcultural networks.

Cisgenderism in psychology: Pathologizing and misgendering children from 1999 to 2008

by Peter Hegarty

Published as Ansara Y.G., & Hegarty P. (2012) Cisgenderism in psychology: Pathologizing and misgendering children from 1999 to 2008'. Psychology and Sexuality, 3, 137-160.

We assessed whether recent psychological literature on children reflects or contrasts with the zeitgeist of American... more We assessed whether recent psychological literature on children reflects or contrasts with the zeitgeist of American Psychological Association’s recent non-discrimination statement on ‘transgender’ and ‘gender variant’ individuals. Article records (N = 94) on childhood ‘gender identity’ and ‘expression’ published between 1999 and 2008 inclusive were evaluated for two kinds of cisgenderism, the ideology that invali- dates or pathologises self-designated genders that contrast with external designations. Misgendering language contradicts children’s own gender assignations and was less frequent than pathologising language which constructs children’s own gender assigna- tions and expression as disordered. Articles on children’s gender identity/expressionare increasingly impactful within psychology. Cisgenderism is neither increasing nor decreasing overall. Mental health professionals are more cisgenderist than other authors. Articles by members of an ‘invisible college’ structured around the most pro- lific author in this area are more cisgenderist and impactful than other articles. We suggest how authors and editors can implement American Psychological Association policy and change scientific discourse about children’s genders.

The Psychotic SOC

by Aubrey Ellen Shomo

published in Transgender Tapestry (International Foundation for Gender Education, Inc. Fall 2006.)

Most everyone in the transgender community has heard of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association,... more Most everyone in the transgender community has heard of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, or at least of their Standards of Care. Post-ops have gone through them. Pre-ops are in the middle of them. Non-ops have encountered them. Genderqueers know them as a social expectation for their friends. Crossdressers have to listen to pre-ops complain about them.

Opinions vary. Some see them as a necessary evil. Some are glad they exist to protect those non-tranny fools who want an up-close-and-personal garden-shear experience. Some see them as fascist.

Building the HIVe: Disrupting Biomedical HIV and AIDS Research with Gay Men, other men who have sex with men (MSM) and Transgenders

by Christopher Walsh

with Gurmit Singh

Networked and digital technologies mediate the sexual behaviours and practices of many gay men, other men that have... more Networked and digital technologies mediate the sexual behaviours and practices of many gay men, other men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders (TG). These changes challenge the effectiveness of biomedical HIV and AIDS research, prevention and care. Driven by the normative
positivist philosophy of science, these approaches—while paramount to fighting the epidemic—have neglected to rethink their ontological and epistemological assumptions when confronting the cognitive, social, cultural, material and technological drivers of HIV. The HIVe is a dynamic model that stimulates ongoing systems-wide strategic collaboration among HIV research, policy and practice sectors to share effective digital community-based and led HIV prevention and care interventions across gay men, other MSM and TG communities. ‘Building the HIVe’ fore fronts community-based and led social sciences HIV and AIDS research, prevention and care. The model addresses digitally mediated and driven sexual behaviours to reduce vulnerabilities, construct and exchange social, cultural, economic and symbolic capitals, and challenge stigma and discrimination with the aim of stopping new HIV infections. The HIVe disrupts and queers biomedical approaches by building an accessible and dynamic open source, universal access research community engaged in reflexive performativity to improve the health and human rights of marginalised communities disproportionately at risk of HIV
and AIDS.

Building the HIVe: Disrupting Biomedical HIV and AIDS Research with Gay Men, other men who have sex with men (MSM) and Transgenders

by Gurmit Singh

Co-authored with Christoper S. Walsh

Inadvertent Praxis: What Can “Genderfork” Tell Us about Trans Feminism?

by Ruth Pearce

Published in MP: An Online Feminist Journal 3(4): 87-129

Trans feminism is an emerging form of feminist theory and practice, grounded in the experiences of trans people but... more Trans feminism is an emerging form of feminist theory and practice, grounded in the experiences of trans people but relevant to all. Trans feminists seek to apply feminist ideas to trans discourses while establishing a place for trans subjectivity
within the wider feminist movement, thereby expanding and fundamentally altering the remit of feminist liberation.

In this article I examine a number of issues pertinent to trans feminism in the context of a gender-diverse Internet community. I draw upon research undertaken on Genderfork, a popular, gender-diverse blog driven by user-contributed content, centring my discussion upon a pre-existing qualitative social analysis of the blog community. In doing so, I explore how relevant trans feminist principles are to those whom trans feminism seeks to champion, and investigate what Genderfork can tell us about this nascent movement.

I argue that the blog is the site of an inadvertent trans feminist praxis, in which community members adopt principles that will be familiar to trans feminists.

Herculine Barbin'e "Giriş"

by Tolga Yalur

Turkish translation of Michel Foucault's "'Introduction' to Herculine Barbin" (New York: Pantheon, 1980), Co-translated with Berfu Seker, Cogito 65-66, Spring 2011, pp. 132-139

Queering Queer Eye: The Stability of Gay Identity Confronts the Liminality of Trans Embodiment

by Ewan Tristan Booth