Social/Cultural Change and Transgender Citizenship

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Cultural Studies, 2015

Critical Social Policy, 2018

This article reports findings from research about trans* citizenship in 14 post-socialist countries. It evidences substantial deficits concerning trans policy making, and a lack of policy debate in this area. Most examined countries have a lack of protocols for official gender change in birth certificates, IDs, passports and other documents. Usually there are no guidelines, measures and procedures defining the standards of healthcare for trans persons. Practice concerning healthcare varies widely, and trans people and advocates exercise agency in negotiating access to care. The article suggests that trans citizenship studies need to foreground legal and social aspects of citizenship, as these are highlighted in the post-socialist context. Policy implications are discussed in relation to key citizenship debates including those concerning challenges to normative models of citizenship.

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2006

This essay maps the connections between transgender/transsexual rights and nationalism in Australia. Comparing Jay Prosser's idea of a transsexual 'politics of home' with the recent legalisation of transsexual marriage in Australia, it argues that marriage rights are granted by the state on the ability of particular bodies to maintain and reproduce a series of demarcated zones: between male and female, but also between 'Australian ' and 'un-Australian', 'white' and 'nonwhite.' This has been most evident in a successful Australian transsexual marriage case, Re Kevin, where the success of the respondents relied on arguing that transsexuality is a biological condition. Establishing the gender of the transsexual respondent involved 'proving' biology through reference to his social performance of normative masculinity. But the norms of masculinity used to 'prove' such a thing are socially constructed and, as such, racialised: home maintenance, proficiency with powertools, enjoying the white Australian tradition of barbeques and sport. Exploring the Australian political context of the court case, where 'Australian-ness' has a particular meaning and a particular value, I critique the liberal-democratic capitalist structure of rights claims in which gender variant subjects must present 'whiteness' as a form of cultural capital in exchange for rights. The cost of this exchange falls overwhelmingly on gender variant subjects who don't present a racially/culturally normative performance of masculinity.

2016

Transgender communities are always considered not part of the citizenship project. The recent Supreme Court verdict making them very much part of the citizenshop discourse has considerably changed the situation. Even though these communities have found their presence since ancient times, yet it took such a long time to recognise their legal rights. Yet, if one closely look at the judgement, there are shortcomings and it needs further improvement. The most important drawback is that it does not address the question of their social recognition and also it does not address the unconventional transgender community in its analysis. It only recognises their legal rights

The Transgender Debate: the crisis surrounding gender identity, 1999

This work addresses the historical, social, legal and medical issues surrounding the transgender community and throws a light onto the complex issues. This short book is intended to be a resource primarily for non-trans people who wish to get a simple grasp on current transgender issues. Perfect for older high school students, university undergraduates from many fields who need a simple explanation to the back ground of their project work, and for family and friends of trans people who simply want to understand. It addresses the historical, social, legal and medical issues surrounding the new community. The book throws light onto what are complex issues, clarifying them in a way that all those who think they know what gender roles mean, will be called to question the certainties they are no longer about. Transgender has become a cultural obsession. From the high camp of Ru Paul to the working class transsexual icon, Hayley of the UK's longest running soap "Coronation Street", it pervades our lives. Yet for many it remains a freakish interest on the sidelines. For transsexual and transgender people, though, it is a reality bound up in complexities, legal contradictions, family discord, and a desperate need to explain what it means to be a man or a woman, or neither, or both.

In this paper, the author demonstrates the differences in ‘quality of life’ for transgender and transsexual (trans) people in Hong Kong with that of trans people in the United Kingdom, before 2013. Consideration is given to the demonstrable differences in legal protections from prejudice and discrimination, and the requirement, in Hong Kong, that trans people undergo full genital reconstruction surgery in order to get changes made to identity documentation, in comparison to the United Kingdom where there is no such requirement in the United Kingdom’s Gender Recognition Act 2004. The chapter recaps research undertaken in the United Kingdom and Europe during the 1990s which highlighted the inadequacy of legal protection in both employment, and when accessing goods, services, housing and facilities. By looking at the early challenges to UK law for trans people in particular the cases of Rees v the UK Government 1986) and Cossey v the UK Government (1990) at the European Court of Human Rights, one can see the failure of the Courts to comprehend what were the real issues for trans people. The chapter then reviews the 1992 founding of the United Kingdom’s trans activist group, Press For Change, and the group’s campaigns; social education through the popular press, the lobbying of Parliament and Government, and also challenging the failure of the United Kingdom government to make appropriate legal changes through taking key cases to the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Initially, Press For Change’s campaigns did not win everything it fought for, but the paper outlines the significance of Court victories which included protection from discrimination whilst in employment, the rights to relationship recognition, and notably, the impact the campaigns had on the public’s awareness of the concerns and difficulties faced by trans people in the United Kingdom. The paper concludes by comparing the changes introduced into United Kingdom law by the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and compares these with the decision of Hong Kong’s Supreme Court in W v the Registrar of Marriages (2013), and how the failure to respond to this decision continues to leave Hong Kong’s trans community facing inappropriate and unnecessary hardships.

Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, 2005

This article will provide a critique of two recent English marriage law decisions, the first concerning a female to male transgender person and the second an intersexed person. It will do so through consideration of the dialogue between each and the landmark transgender case of Corbett v Corbett. It will highlight how both decisions, in seeking to minimise the fact of 'departure' from Corbett, serve to reproduce key elements of that decision which serve to undermine the future prospects for transgender law reform in the English context. In particular, both decisions, in different ways, or with different emphases, ensure that 'legal sex' continues to be determined by (bio)logical and temporal factors. Crucially, however, as in Corbett, it is legal anxiety over the boundaries of the 'natural', and the homophobia of law that underscores this anxiety, that account for these particular constructions of 'legal sex'. This article will provide a critique of judicial (re)constructions of sex in the context of two recent English marriage law decisions, S-T (formerly J) v J 1 and W v W. 2 The first case, involved J, a female to male pre-operative transgender person, and the second W, a male to female intersexed person. It should be emphasised from the outset however that distinguishing between transgender and intersex cannot be reduced to a purely descriptive act. While it proved critical in the case of W, the distinction, as we shall see, proves to be an effect of medico-legal constructions of (bio)logical sex and judicial concerns over demarcating the realm of the 'natural'. The distinction is also misleading in that it belies the capacity of the term transgender, and a developing transgender politics, to include 1

2016

The experiences of countries all around the world show that there is no single, the same and universally applicable scenario of legal changes in terms of regulating the status of transgender people. The process most commonly begins by providing gender reassignment hormonal surgery procedures, which are followed by the legal recognition of a new gender identity. The next step necessarily implies the need to enact legislation to regulate the so-called social gender or gender identity, according to the right to self-determination of transgender persons, which is unrelated to previously undertaken medical treatment and gender reassignment surgery. Some countries have gone far in the implementation of this third step, while others have not taken even the first steps. Notably, different initiatives and events may be observed worldwide, many of which constitute the necessary "first steps" aimed at increasing the social acceptance of gender diversity. These steps may seem small an...