CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Wilson-Morris, Brell |
|---|---|
| Title | Where does the sex go? Excavating sexuality in trans studies early years |
| Summary | This thesis deals with the question of sexuality in trans studies’ formative years (1990s to mid-2000s). This question – the relationship between trans and sexuality – is one that has been carried out in many discourses throughout the 20th century. However, there has been little consideration given to the knowledge production around transness within humanities scholarship (as opposed to medical or psychotherapeutic), and how the relationship between trans and sexuality is conceptualised in that space. This thesis addresses this space, considering how trans studies in different modes addresses sexuality, what possibilities it sees for sexuality and how it understands sexuality in relation to transness and gender. It addresses this through two sites, one of which (The Transgender Studies Reader) represents the dominant narrative of the field and the second (TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism) which represents a narrative that has since been lost from trans academic discourses. Through these sites, this thesis argues that over this period we see trans studies’ scope for sexuality narrowing, and some earlier modes of talking about sexuality foreclosed, particularly in terms of the potential for a trans politics that includes sexuality. The figurations of transmasculinity and transfemininity in the field, it argues, are crucial in this process of defining the scope of sexuality, delimiting both what can be said and the centrality that sexuality can take in the field. Further, this thesis argues that at both sites we can read resonances in the approach to sexuality with the site’s feminist contexts. This usefully allows us to move the question of the relationship of “trans” and “feminism” into more productive ground than the in/exclusion model that dominates the literature. Trans studies and feminisms, it argues, can often be found to share discursive limits, and this can be seen in conceptions of transness, sexuality and race. |
| Supervisor | Yoon, Hyaesin |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/wilson-morris_brell.pdf |
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