Congress Paper Abstract

Policing the trans-identified body - an historical perspective

LOUISE CHAMBERS, DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS, GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE, NEW CROSS, LONDON

In the first volume of A History of Sexuality, the philosopher, Michel Foucault (1990), problematised the medicalisation and (ab)normalisation of homosexuality, by examining the historical conditions that led to the emergence of the homosexual as a separate ’species’. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of similarly problematising and situating the emergence of the transsexual and the transgendered person as separate ’species’.

This paper addresses to what extent trans-identities emerged as a function of historically specific, bio-medical models of sex/uality, rather than as a ’natural’ species, and to what extent trans-identities served to reinforce the duality of the sex/gender economy, rather than challenge it. It will be argued that the acceptance of medical models of trans-identities as the truth about our minds and bodies has violent and dangerous consequences for those of us in transition. For example, if we confess the truth of our trans-identities through the psychopathological models of Anglo-American psychiatry, then many trans-identified people spend huge amounts of time, energy and money on (cosmetic) surgery and other bodily invasions, in an attempt to make our bodies ’fit’ with our ’minds’ and pass as a member of the ’opposite’ sex. A critical history of bio-medical models of trans-identities and the naturalisation of the sex/gender economy that underpins these models, allows for the possibility of living in/through differently gendered bodies.

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