Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, "Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies," revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender studies; some offer overviews of well-known methodologies and demonstrate their applicability within transgender studies; some suggest how transgender issues play out in various fields; and some map the productive tensions between trans studies and other interdisciplines.

Abstract
This roundtable discussion took place between August 2013 and January 2014 through e-mail. Eventually, two questions were posed, and participants individually e-mailed their responses in. The questions were posed in the hope of making space for a number of scholars, activists, and culture makers to take the pulse of transgender studies' political possibilities and limits and to talk practically about methods for creating change.

Abstract
This essay is a set of reflections arising out of prolonged conversations in which we compared notes on our respective experiences as activist (Raina) and ethnographer (Aniruddha) working among, and to different extents belonging to, gender/sexually marginalized communities in eastern India. As we shall argue, the attempted universalization of transgender as a transnational "umbrella term" by the development (nongovernmental) sector, the state, and their funders tends to subsume South Asian discourses and practices of gender/sexual variance as merely "local" expressions of transgender identity, without interrogating the conceptual baggage (such as homo-trans and cis-trans binaries) associated with the transgender category. In the Indian context, this process bolsters the long-standing and continuing (post)colonial construction of hierarchies of scale between transnational, regional, and local levels of discourse and praxis, as evidenced in the relation between the hegemonic anglophone discourse of LGBTIQ identities recognized by the state and the development sector, on one hand, and forms of gender/sexual variance that are positioned as relatively regional or local on the other.

Abstract
This article explores the performance practices of Sean Dorsey, modern dance's first out transgender choreographer, in order to consider one embodied strategy for staging transgender histories. Utilizing extant LGBTQ archives, and then collecting oral histories himself, Dorsey develops a trans archival practice founded in collaboration, an ethic of care, and grassroots activism that he extends into live performance. Tracing the arc of Dorsey's practice in generating choreography from the archive, the authors ask how embodied artists move with history and consider his dance performance as a site of historical production.

Abstract
This article discusses the anglophone reception of the life and work of the East German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Particular attention is paid to the translation and marketing of von Mahlsdorf's memoir against the backdrop of Eastern Europe's purported transition to Western capitalist democracy. Using the concept of framing developed first by Erving Goffman and adapted to the study of translation by Albrecht Neubert and Gregory Shreve, and then Mona Baker, the author analyzes the ways in which the presentation of von Mahlsdorf's life in the translated memoir reflects a specific Western framing of queer lives, which is later altered in Doug Wright's award-winning play about von Mahlsdorf following the release of von Mahlsdorf's secret police file and the troubled progress of the so-called transition. The article demonstrates how the careful study of translations can challenge the universalizing of Western conceptual and temporal frames by highlighting the historical and contingent nature of our sexual selves.

Abstract
This article analyzes discourses and performance practices in India's hijra and transgender communities through a comparison of badhais (ritualistic acoustic music and dance performed by hijras) and dances from the professional transgender-led troupe known as the Dancing Queens. Differences between the two evince the transformation of regimes and representations of hijra identity from devalorized codes of social difference to respectable, middle-class ones within a transgender narrative of self-understanding and personal empowerment.

AbstractThe article examines the criteria for determining which individuals become legible as transgender in Poland and how expert medical and legal discourses normalize the gender identity, sexuality, and gender performativity of this group. Only those transgender people who fit the outdated model of the "true transsexual" are allowed to (in fact expected to) undergo a physical transition. Once transitioned, they are expected to blend into society and present heteronormative, socially conforming gender roles. In Poland, only those people who have been diagnosed as so-called true transsexuals are counted in the estimated number of transgender people. After describing the convoluted legal and medical processes that individuals are required to follow, the article presents qualitative research describing how transgender people in Poland have responded to these normalizing systems. The article concludes with proposals that would make trans populations more legible to policy makers and the mass media without imposing outdated medical norms on the trans community.

Abstract
In 2000, the US Census Bureau acknowledged multiracial Americans on the decennial census in an attempt to better capture racial heterogeneity and to more closely align what is publicly collected on forms with people's personal understandings of their racial identity. In this article, we start a discussion of how the census—a major source of political identity recognition and legitimation—could be more inclusive of gender variance. We ask: (1) Is there support for a transgender category on the US census? (2) Who might select a transgender option if it were provided? To answer these questions, we conducted questionnaire research at three transgender and genderqueer conferences and found strong support for the inclusion of a transgender category. Conversely, we found that many people did not currently check "transgender" on forms when given the opportunity. As we show, the decision to check "transgender" varies by what we term gender identity validation. In other words, people who identified as male or female and who felt others viewed them as unequivocally male or female, respectively, were less likely to check "transgender" than people who identified as transgender or who experienced a discrepancy between their self-perceived and other-perceived gender identity. These differences suggest that—similar to the push for adding a multiracial category to the census—the expansion of sex/gender categories is most likely to come from individuals who experience themselves as constrained by the existing possibilities and/or who are stigmatized by others' conceptions of the appropriate alignment of bodies and genders.