All things trans*: rethinking bodies and categories

Question 1

Verloo & Van der Vleuten: Why are trans* issues at the heart of politics of sex and gender?

Answer 1

Because trans* issues challenge the binary sex categories as two stable and natural categories, thereby moving sex and gender into unknown territory, challenging how society could be reorganized to challenge gender inequalities

Question 2

Verloo & Van der Vleuten: How does transgender concerns upset medical thinking?

Answer 2

1. Defying medical standards by asking for sometimes irreversible interventions in bodies considered healthy
2. Resulting in bodies why defy simple categorization as male or female

Question 3

Verloo & Van der Vleuten: What are 3 issues with legal recognition?

Answer 3

1. Undermines trans agency, transfers power to medical experts and judges
2. States and courts perpetuate binary thinking, excluding non-binary and fluid people
3. Legal recognition alone is insufficient without material redistribution and structural change -> need for abolishment of all binary institutionalization

Question 4

Verloo & Van der Vleuten: What do feminist and trans* politics need to do in order to build an alliance?

Answer 4

Abandon identity politics and the focus on specific categories of people in favor of a joint, intersectional struggle against sexism

Question 5

Verloo & Van der Vleuten: Why are trans* politics still marginal in political science? (3)

Answer 5

Because of essentialist view of bodies as “natural”

Focus on the powerful rather than the marginalized

Hesitancy to engage with current political contestations

Question 6

Cannoot & Decoster: What are their 2 main arguments?

Answer 6

State-sponsored sex/gender registration must halt

Mandatory binary sex/gender registration disproportionately infringes on the emerging right to gender identity autonomy and the right to the legal recognition thereof

Question 7

Cannoot & Decoster: What is the cisnormative logic behind the birth certificate?

Answer 7

Sex/gender registration based on superficial check of external genitalia, presupposing congruence between sex and later-developed gender identity

Question 8

Cannoot & Decoster: What is gender autonomy?

Answer 8

The right to choose and legally register one’s self-defined gender identity, without state-imposed binary or medical requirements

Question 9

Cannoot & Decoster: Does a right to the legal recognition of gender identity exist?

Answer 9

Yes, in human rights soft law, for example Yoguakarta principles, Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly and Inter-American Court of Human Rights: registration must reflect person’s self-defined gender identity

Yes, in some states which have legal gender recognition based on self-determination and have introduced a “third” sex/gender category

Question 10

Cannoot & Decoster: What is sex?

Answer 10

Sex is what culture makes when it genders my body -> a social construct and regulatory ideal used to maintain heterosexual norms

Sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual, naturalized but not natural

Question 11

Cannoot & Decoster: Why does mandatory sex/gender registration fail the proportionality test and therefore infringes on the right to gender autonomy?

Answer 11

Because the harms (stigmatization, violence, gender hierarchy, gendered violence) outweigh the weak state benefits (health policy, security, record-keeping), making registration disproportionate

Furthermore, they don’t serve any legitimate aims

Question 12

Cannoot & Decoster: What is the heterosexual cultural system of gender?

Answer 12

A dominant system that constructs sex and gender as binary, naturalizes heterosexuality, and imposes regulatory violence to uphold these norms

Question 13

Cannoot & Decoster: Why does the heterosexual cultural system of gender require gendered violence?

Answer 13

To maintain its authority, it punishes “deviant” gender performances which exposes masculinity/femininity as normative fictions

Question 14

Cannoot & Decoster: How are cis people also harmed by sex/gender registration?

Answer 14

They face gender role strain, rigid expectations, and loss of bodily autonomy

Question 15

Cannoot & Decoster: What alternatives do Cannoot and Decoster suggest for public health?

Answer 15

Health screenings and risk assessment could be based on physical characteristics (e.g., cervical cancer screenings based on presence of cervix) instead of registered sex

Question 16

Cannoot & Decoster: How does current law create legal violence?

Answer 16

By assigning sex at birth and enforcing binary legal identities, the law legitimizes the heterosexual cultural system of gender and its inequalities

Question 17

Cannoot & Decoster: What is the ultimate recommendation of the authors?

Answer 17

Complete abolition of mandatory sex/gender registration, as any form of legal gender assignment perpetuates structural violence

Question 18

Cannoot & Decoster: Why is adding an X marker not enough?

Answer 18

Because state still enforces boxes (now 3 instead of 2), assumes still that sex/gender is real and fixed, continues to pathologize trans people, does not prevent violence, and the core problem is registration itself

Question 19

How does self-determination/medicalization dynamics affect trans and cis people?

Answer 19

For trans people: Access to resources requires diagnosis -> need to be “trans enough” to access. You can be whatever you want in your mind (self-determination), but once the body comes into play, there are rules and norms (medicalization)

For cis people: highlights binaries that cis people must also fit into and also affects opportunities - as a women, you can self-determine that you want children, but not that you want to be sterilized

Question 20

Enriquez: How does the portrayal of homosexuality as an inborn condition serve strategic ends?

Answer 20

It brings gays one step closer to suspect class status under the Equal Protection Clause

Question 21

Enriquez: Which immutability interpretation have courts traditionally relied on?

Answer 21

Biological immutability = determined solely by the accident of birth

Question 22

Enriquez: Which new definition of immutability has emerged in asylum law?

Answer 22

Fundamental immutability = so fundamental to one’s identity that a person should not be required to abandon them

Question 23

Enriquez: 3 reasons as two why fundamental immutability should also be used in equal rights jurisprudence?

Answer 23

1. It resolves inconsistencies in traditional equal protection jurisprudence caused by biological immutability which would persecute some individuals based on the same trait it deems worthy of protection in others -> some people choose their race (mixed race people presenting ambiguous physical traits and choosing race) and sex after birth (intersex and trans people choosing sex)
2. It harmonizes recent lower court opinions in the era of increased multiracial, intersex, and transgender visibility
3. It is capable of evolving with society’s changing views of deeply held personal values

Question 24

Enriquez: If fundamental immutability is used in equal rights protection, then…

Answer 24

Even individuals who choose certain fundamental aspects of their identity are entitled to heightened scrutiny

Question 25

Enriquez: What did the US Board of Immigration Appeals decide that all 5 protected classifications have in common?

Answer 25

Race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and particular social group all refer to individuals who are either unable to by their own actions or as a matter of conscience should not be required to avoid persectution

Question 26

Enriquez: Why should fundamental immutability standard in equal protection jurisprudence apply to sexual orientation?

Answer 26

It would free courts from the need to inquire into the biological origins of sexual orientation -> because we would conclude that a person should not be required to change sexual orientation/identity, we don't need to address whether they could

Question 27

Enriquez: What do we gain in general from emphasizing a voluntary origin of gayness?

Answer 27

Prioritizes values of liberty that may suffer from the reduction of gayness to compulsory, genetic characteristic

Question 28

What are 3 drawbacks to using fundamental immutability?

Answer 28

1. Questioning existing rights gained because of biological immutability 2. What is so fundamental to your identity that you should not be compelled to change it? Judges may not have the same understanding of things as others and have prejudices against non-Western norms and values 3. Is there a personal devaluing of experiences with dismissal of biological immutability?