CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Juskaite, Jurate |
|---|---|
| Title | Transgender in Lithuania or An Ethnography of Illegal Community |
| Summary | This thesis explores the historicity of the transgender subject in post-socialist Lithuania through the ethnographic material based on the interviews with transgender people and LGBT activists. First, it argues that under the workings of orientalism towards post-socialist Lithuania a liberal amnesia was imposed on transgender subject that presented it as a new neoliberal phenomenon. Second, the thesis demonstrates that with the politicization of gay identity in Lithuania through the accession to the EU in 2004 and the formation of the LGBT identitarian movement onwards, transgender people in Lithuania were perceived as the “Other” within the LGBT community. Due to the intensified nationalist discourse that emphasized traditional gender roles and the perception that transgender people were on the very outskirts of this system, the LGBT community members and NGOs included the letter “T” in the acronym only discursively due to the perceived threat to constructed respectability as neoliberal gay subjects. Third, the thesis sets the first gay pride parade in 2010 was a temporal marker in changing the perception of “normality” within society, suggesting that the understanding of what is normal should be based on human rights and individual freedoms, expression, equality and tolerance. The shift to the neoliberal Western discourse of civil rights opened the space for extension of representation of LGBT people and inclusion of transgender subject into the LGBT movement. As this shift did not question “traditional” gender roles, the transgender subject that was included in LGBT activism was a transsexual binary subject, which excluded more fluid gender identifications. Finally, it shows that due to the dominance of the Western understanding of what a transgender community should be, based on the visibility and commodified practices of gay consumption, transgender people in Lithuania do not recognize the existence of their community. This thesis demonstrates that community exists and has a unique way of forming community through sharing information on illegal transition practices. |
| Supervisor | Hadley Zaun Renkin |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/juskaite_jurate.pdf |
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