Congress Paper Abstract

The Place of Transgenderism in U.S. Same-Sex Marriage Debates

PATRICK GARLINGER, NORTHWESTER UNIVERSITY, USA

The debates around marriage and same-sex marriage in the United States suffer from a rather startling omission: transgenderism has been entirely absent from the discussion. While politicians, queer theorists, and legal scholars discuss the potential effects of granting gays and lesbians legal access to marriage, little consideration is given to the effects on transgender men and women. On the one hand, scholars in gay and lesbian studies, often drawing on queer theory, have argued that legalizing marriage for same-sex couples would constitute a form of assimilation to heterosexual norms. Those academics in favor of same-sex marriage reassert the civil rights of gays and lesbians. On the other hand, legal scholars in support of same-sex marriage have construed the debate in terms of sex discrimination and those against it have reiterated the notion that marriage is between a man and a woman. In this paper I argue that the affirmative same-sex marriage positions in both queer studies and legal studies neither accommodate the interests of transgender men and women and may even entail negative effects on the same. Queer studies continues its historical blindness to the realities of transgender individuals by failing to see how many transgender individuals do not see themselves as “queer” in the same way as gays and lesbians. The arguments for same-sex marriage in a legal context, while potentially allowing transgender people to marry, do so at the expense of a deeper understanding of transgenderism and a potential sacrifice of other legal benefits because it assimilates transgenderism to homosexuality

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