Congress Paper Abstract

Get your hands out of my genes: trans people and the perils of scientific research

Claire McNab, Press For Change, 

Email: claire@siberia.demon.co.uk,

A polemical and political analysis of the risks posed to trans people by research into the origins and causes of transgenderism, examining in particular the discourses of researchers into brain structure and genetics, and the potential uses and abuses of research findings. Drawing on the historical experience of research into the body, with particular reference to 20th century experiences of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and the politics of fertility.

Research into the origins of transsexualism has provided an important counter to the prevailing psychological explanations of the basis of transgender expression, and may have been critical to some key legal cases. However, it does not liberate trans people from the presumption that as deviant people, their abnormality can be tolerated only if its origins are proven and unavoidable. Research into causes of transgenderism is not merely an extension of colonial discourses which objectify and disempower trans people; it carries with it severe threats, including the screening of prospective parents and testing of foetuses to prevent the birth of trans children (already proposed by researchers in the field), and it threatens to create new hierarchies of "proven" and "unproven" trans people. Such research should be resisted, and transgender rights championed as a fundamental freedom and a reflection of human diversity.

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