Retheorising Gender and Sexuality: The Emergence of 'Trans'
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Sociology
Abstract
Most literature takes an identity based social framework (for example, the Kinsey model provides a linear model to designate sexual identity as ranging on a polarity from heterosexual to homosexual)as its starting point to measure sexual or gender identity. However, such models fail to explain gender variance and alternative forms of understanding 'the body' that fall outside of an identity based model. For example, the plurality of gender and sexual practices and identifications that move beyond conventional categories go unrecognised within clinical contexts (see Moon 2011). More recently the emergence of 'trans' as a free floating signifier has witnessed what happens when the complex interplay of gender, sexuality and bodies is freed from the materiality of the body.
Trans is emerging as a theoretical conceptualisation that moves beyond the idea of identity as a structure that provides meaning for 'the body' alone, to becoming an identifier that is, in fact, post-identity politics. Within the medical field the rise of 'trans' has been exponential with progress made around 'transitional' bodies, while a 'trans' identity (as 'trans', transgender, genderqueer for example) has shifted the clinical model of polarised identity which is under ever increasing pressure to provide more expansive ways of meeting the social and medical transformation of bodies. 'Trans' marks a paradigmatic shift, that shows extensive changes in social and subjective relations providing social research with an ideal resource to reconsider theory and practice across and within the entire field of gender and sexuality - interrogating the core paradigms of sexual and gender identity and cross cutting the disciplinary boundaries that form sexuality and gender studies.
Trans will act as a case study through which we will examine the following issues:
a) 'trans' as a terminology, as a mode of self/communal identification that is a recently emerging phenomenon. Trans is de-sutured from specific references to bodies, gender and sexuality yet is evocative of all three. It provides a distinct but interlinking development on the terrain of sexuality and gender along with the rise of 'queer'. Although both have a history of gender/ sexuality 'bending', they have distinctive trajectories.
b) 'Trans' is a point of convergence (much more explicitly than 'queer')for a distinctive, cross-disciplinary constellation of constituencies, cross-cutting clinical, therapeutic, representational, academic and everyday communities and contexts. The emergence of 'trans' has been distinctively facilitated by digital technology and the concomitant rise of web-based social movements.
c) 'trans' is thus a particularly salient case and point of nexus for a range of issues and themes cross-cutting sexuality and gender, including identities, affectivities, 'inter-sex' and 'inter-gender' and well as 'trans' gender and 'trans' sexualities; body governance and regulatory regimes, body ethics and affective imperatives; new social movements; new technologies of identity and community; and (un) commonsenses and (un) common emotions.
The questions raised by the seminar series will include:
- How and to what degree does the emergence of 'trans' reflect shifts in our larger paradigmatic understandings of gender and sexuality?
- How and to what degree does 'trans' reconfigure (even 'trans'figure) everyday body -reflexive practices, popular common-sense or herald new normativities on the terrains of gender and sexuality.
- To what degree and in what ways does 'trans' represent a 'post-closet' epistemology and a transformation of the Kinsey continuum? And what are the implications of 'trans' for clinical and therapeutic practice, for sexual theory and for everyday articulations of identity and intersubjective connection.
Trans is emerging as a theoretical conceptualisation that moves beyond the idea of identity as a structure that provides meaning for 'the body' alone, to becoming an identifier that is, in fact, post-identity politics. Within the medical field the rise of 'trans' has been exponential with progress made around 'transitional' bodies, while a 'trans' identity (as 'trans', transgender, genderqueer for example) has shifted the clinical model of polarised identity which is under ever increasing pressure to provide more expansive ways of meeting the social and medical transformation of bodies. 'Trans' marks a paradigmatic shift, that shows extensive changes in social and subjective relations providing social research with an ideal resource to reconsider theory and practice across and within the entire field of gender and sexuality - interrogating the core paradigms of sexual and gender identity and cross cutting the disciplinary boundaries that form sexuality and gender studies.
Trans will act as a case study through which we will examine the following issues:
a) 'trans' as a terminology, as a mode of self/communal identification that is a recently emerging phenomenon. Trans is de-sutured from specific references to bodies, gender and sexuality yet is evocative of all three. It provides a distinct but interlinking development on the terrain of sexuality and gender along with the rise of 'queer'. Although both have a history of gender/ sexuality 'bending', they have distinctive trajectories.
b) 'Trans' is a point of convergence (much more explicitly than 'queer')for a distinctive, cross-disciplinary constellation of constituencies, cross-cutting clinical, therapeutic, representational, academic and everyday communities and contexts. The emergence of 'trans' has been distinctively facilitated by digital technology and the concomitant rise of web-based social movements.
c) 'trans' is thus a particularly salient case and point of nexus for a range of issues and themes cross-cutting sexuality and gender, including identities, affectivities, 'inter-sex' and 'inter-gender' and well as 'trans' gender and 'trans' sexualities; body governance and regulatory regimes, body ethics and affective imperatives; new social movements; new technologies of identity and community; and (un) commonsenses and (un) common emotions.
The questions raised by the seminar series will include:
- How and to what degree does the emergence of 'trans' reflect shifts in our larger paradigmatic understandings of gender and sexuality?
- How and to what degree does 'trans' reconfigure (even 'trans'figure) everyday body -reflexive practices, popular common-sense or herald new normativities on the terrains of gender and sexuality.
- To what degree and in what ways does 'trans' represent a 'post-closet' epistemology and a transformation of the Kinsey continuum? And what are the implications of 'trans' for clinical and therapeutic practice, for sexual theory and for everyday articulations of identity and intersubjective connection.
Planned Impact
The proposed seminar series aims to serve a wide range of users in both the academic and therapeutic practitioner fields as well as those who use therapeutic services for issues related to sex, gender and/or sexuality. The purpose of the seminars is to move beyond a primarily academic audience. Recently the applicants have been involved in setting up an inaugural meeting point for those within the asexual communities. This conference, 'Asexuality: A spotlight on International Research' used innovative technology and social media and, if the funding is allocated, we have decided that this would be a useful way to combine an exploration of social media to bring together the asexual and trans communities, activists and researchers. The recent free conference brought together a crowd of 30 people in the Wolfson Research Exchange, where we used video-conferencing for the first time to unite theoreticians, academics and activists from Norway, Canada and America who research asexuality. This was an exciting and challenging way to use social media (we also used the smart board for power point and live tweeting) while presenters were assigned conference times so that they could speak with each other and the audience. It has been decided that this form of conferencing can be introduced into at least one of the seminar series if not more to provide a platform so that speakers who would otherwise be financially too expensive to bring over can be accessed much more easily.
Maximising the different kinds of outputs: slides, audio, video, photos, text (with reference to the latter i mean having collaboratively produced aims & questions which come out of the seminar and can go online). disseminating them widely and using a well-designed swish website as a central conduit for doing this, creating a network for all sorts of groups who might be concerned
- making the public engagement dialogical and engagement with wider communities
- allowing people to offer input into the events in advance, maximising the possibilities for participation (and not just watching) but creating conversations during the presentations and presenting resources which go on afterwards e.g. inviting responses (in video form or text) to the outputs we put online and encouraging participants in the seminars to respond to the respondents
- couching the above points in terms of how new technology changes the dynamics of communities
- the seminar series would actually be creatively thinking through what these can and should mean in the new media environment which particularly characterises communities studies but nonetheless applies more broadly.
It is therefore essential to the applicants that speakers and audience members feel integral to the dialogue and debates taking place. Therefore the funding would allow for access to social media as well as covering the costs for the day events. The applicants enjoy extensive contact with practitioners and academics in researching sex, sexuality and genders, while one of the applicants is presently in a central position for bringing therapists, users of services and academics together as she is involved in the setting up and running of Psychological services and the Psychological Doctorate, Chair of the Sexualities Section for the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of Pink Therapy. Further impact and dissemination strategies include:
1. blogs, tweets and a dedicated web forum with interactive discussion threads and transcripts of seminar proceedings.
2. Practitioner orientated workshops in the voluntary sector organisations for trainee and qualified therapists.
3. A post series network of practitoners who meet regularly to discuss emerging issues from the seminars.
4. journal and book publications.
5. A follow-up report that will share the substantive emergent themes from the series with clinical and therapeutic professional and user communities.
Maximising the different kinds of outputs: slides, audio, video, photos, text (with reference to the latter i mean having collaboratively produced aims & questions which come out of the seminar and can go online). disseminating them widely and using a well-designed swish website as a central conduit for doing this, creating a network for all sorts of groups who might be concerned
- making the public engagement dialogical and engagement with wider communities
- allowing people to offer input into the events in advance, maximising the possibilities for participation (and not just watching) but creating conversations during the presentations and presenting resources which go on afterwards e.g. inviting responses (in video form or text) to the outputs we put online and encouraging participants in the seminars to respond to the respondents
- couching the above points in terms of how new technology changes the dynamics of communities
- the seminar series would actually be creatively thinking through what these can and should mean in the new media environment which particularly characterises communities studies but nonetheless applies more broadly.
It is therefore essential to the applicants that speakers and audience members feel integral to the dialogue and debates taking place. Therefore the funding would allow for access to social media as well as covering the costs for the day events. The applicants enjoy extensive contact with practitioners and academics in researching sex, sexuality and genders, while one of the applicants is presently in a central position for bringing therapists, users of services and academics together as she is involved in the setting up and running of Psychological services and the Psychological Doctorate, Chair of the Sexualities Section for the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of Pink Therapy. Further impact and dissemination strategies include:
1. blogs, tweets and a dedicated web forum with interactive discussion threads and transcripts of seminar proceedings.
2. Practitioner orientated workshops in the voluntary sector organisations for trainee and qualified therapists.
3. A post series network of practitoners who meet regularly to discuss emerging issues from the seminars.
4. journal and book publications.
5. A follow-up report that will share the substantive emergent themes from the series with clinical and therapeutic professional and user communities.