Transgender Identities

1
Transgender Identities

• Lecture 9
• Beyond the Binaries
• COM/AES 490 WOMEN 486
• Professor Ralina Joseph

2
Who is transgender?

• Umbrella term everyone who does not fit neatly
  into male or female
• Anyone who identifies (temporarily or
  permanently) as other than the gender they were
  assigned at birth
• People who identify as their assigned gender but
  are mistaken for members of the opposite sex
• NOTE Much of this background info taken from
  Barbara Findlays work on trans issue

3
How is gender assigned?

• A childs gender is assigned on the basis of a
  cursory genital inspection at birth.
• Until very recently, doctors have understood
  their responsibility to be to remedy any
  ambiguity in the appearance of the genitalia by
  surgically altering the infant to be a
• real male or, more usually, a real female.
• Throughout the world and across cultures and
  histories are people who have occupied third
  gender positions

4
What are some of the ways transgender people
identify?

• Transsexuals understand themselves to have been
  born in the wrong body. Transsexualism has been
  medically marked as a disorder with the only
  recognized cure as sex reassignment surgery
  (construction of genitals which match internal
  sense of self
• Intersexed people (formerly known as
  hermaphrodites) born with incongruent physical
  indicators of gender for example, the sex
  organs of both genders
• Cross dressers or transgenderists live as the
  gender opposite assigned gender, some or all of
  the time
• Drag kings and queenscross dress occasionally,
  often as performance piece, but otherwise live in
  assigned gender

5
The challenges of trans

• More and more young queer activists are
  identifying as trans (both male and female, or
  neither male nor female)
• What does the assertion of trans challenge?
• How does a trans identity going beyond the
  binaries?

6
Judith Jack Halberstam

• Halberstams Website
• In Halberstams article for today, what does she
  mean by the Transgender Look?
• Close reading exercise

7
Boys Dont Cry Clips