scholarly journals The Afterlife of Gender: Sovereignty, Intimacy and Muslim Funerals of Transgender People in Turkey

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-102
Author(s):  
Aslı Zengin
Keyword(s):  
Gender Difference ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Transgender Persons ◽  
Funeral Practices ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
And Gender

Family and sexual/gender difference play significant roles in the organization of Sunni Muslim rituals of death, practices of mourning, and discourses of grief in Turkey. In these ritual practices, family members hold obligations and rights to the deceased, including washing, shrouding, burying, and praying for the body. These funeral practices represent the dead body in strictly gendered ways. However, when the deceased is a transgender person, his/her/their body can open a social field for negotiation and contestation of sexual and gender difference among religious, medico-legal, familial, and LGBTQ actors. Addressing the multiplicity of such struggles and claims over the deceased body of transgender persons, this article presents a mortuary ethnography that is formed through entanglements between Islamic notions of embodiment, familial order, gender and sexuality regimes, and legal regulations around death in Turkey. Rather than taking sex, gender, and sexual difference as given categories, I address them as a social field of constant and emergent contestation, which in turn marks the gendered and sexual limits of belonging in regimes of belief, family, kinship, and citizenship, and in practices of mourning and grief. I argue that death at the thresholds of sexual and gender regimes presents a space to discover novel connections between sovereignty and intimacy and to examine their coconstitution through the registers of violence endured by the gendered/sexed body. Özet Aile ve (toplumsal) cinsiyet farklılığı Türkiye’deki Sünni Müslüman cenaze gelenek ve adetlerinde, yas tutma pratiklerinde ve acı söylemlerinde önemli rol oynar. Cenazeyi yıkamak, kefenlemek, toprağa vermek ve cenaze için dua etmek gibi pratikler ailenin ölen mensubuna karşı sahip olduğu sorumluluk ve haklardan bazılarıdır. Bu pratikler ölen kişiyi katı bir cinsiyet ikiliği içerisinde temsil eder. Fakat ölen kişi bir trans birey ise, ölü bedenin cinsiyeti din, tıp, hukuk, aile ve LGBTQ çevreleri arasında çatışma ve müzakere alanına dönüşebilmektedir. Bu makale ölü trans bedenlerin açtığı bu çoklu hak ve mücadele alanına değinerek, Türkiye’deki İslami beden tasavvuru, aile düzeni, cinsellik ve toplumsal cinsiyet nizamı ve ölümle ilgili hukuki düzenlenmeler sarmalında oluşan bir ölüm etnografisi sunmaktadır. Toplumsal cinsiyet ve cinsellik kategorilerini sorgusuz sualsiz kabul etmek yerine, onların sürekli müzakereye tabi olan ve yeni müzakerelere yol açan toplumsal bir alan olduğunu ve böylece kişilerin din, aile, akrabalık ve vatandaşlık ilişkileri, yas ve acı pratikleri içerisindeki aidiyetliklerinin sınırlarını devamlı çizdiklerini tartışıyorum. Cinsellik ve (toplumsal) cinsiyet düzeninin çeperlerinde gerçekleşen ölümün egemenlik ve mahremiyet/yakınlık arasında kurulan ilişkiyi bizlere yeni şekillerde görme imkanı açtığını ve şiddetin cinsiyetlendirilmiş beden üzerindeki kaydına bakarak ikisinin birbirini karşılıklı olarak nasıl kurduğunu anlayacağımızı iddia ediyorum.

scholarly journals Turkey’s queer times: an introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Cenk Özbay ◽  
Kerem Öktem
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Queer Culture ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
And Gender

Today Turkey is one of the few Muslim-majority countries in which same-sex sexual acts, counternormative sexual identities, and expressions of gender nonconformism are not illegal, yet are heavily constrained and controlled by state institutions, police forces, and public prosecutors. For more than a decade Turkey has been experiencing a “queer turn”—an unprecedented push in the visibility and empowerment of queerness, the proliferation of sexual rights organizations and forms of sociabilities, and the dissemination of elements of queer culture—that has engendered both scholarly and public attention for sexual dissidents and gender non-conforming individuals and their lifeworlds, while it has also created new spaces and venues for their self-organization and mobilization. At the point of knowledge production and writing, this visibility and the possible avenues of empowerment that it might provide have been in jeopardy: not only do they appear far from challenging the dominant norms of the body, gender, and sexuality, but queerness, in all its dimensions, has become a preferred target for Islamist politics, conservative revanchism, and populist politicians.

scholarly journals ADOLESCÊNCIA, SUBJETIVIDADE E QUESTÕES DE GÊNERO NO TEATRO DE MARK RAVENHILL

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-39
Author(s):  
Fabiano Fleury Souza Campos
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
And Gender

A partir da análise estrutural, focada, sobretudo, nos personagens da peça Shopping and Fucking (1996), escrita pelo dramaturgo britânico Mark Ravenhill, evidenciamos uma relação incomum entre os elementos formadores desse trabalho teatral e as discussões sobre subjetividade, gênero e sexualidade voltadas para os adolescentes, nos dias atuais. Os contornos dos personagens dessa peça desestabilizam certas noções pré-concebidas sobre a individualidade e a corporeidade, por exemplo. Para a nossa análise, apoiamo-nos sobre os apontamentos de teóricos dedicados tanto ao teatro, como Pierre Sarrazac e Elinor Fuchs, quanto à sociologia e política, como Judith Butler. A peça por meio do discurso agressivo e a violência direcionadas ao corpo dos personagens é capaz de abalar as certezas e a moralidade previamente determinadas de seus espectadores.YOUTH, SUBJECTIVITY AND GENDER IN MARK RAVENHILL’S THEATER Abstract: from the structural analysis, focused mainly on the characters of the play Shopping and Fucking (1996), written by British playwright Mark Ravenhill, our study shows an unusual relationship between the elements of theatre and the contemporary discussions about subjectivity, gender, and sexuality among adolescents presented in this play. The contours of the characters destabilize certain preconceived notions to individuality and embodiment, for example. Our analysis are supported, for instance, by theater theories developed by Pierre Sarrazac and Elinor Fuchs, and sociology concepts implemented by Judith Butler.  Through aggressive discourse and violence directed to the body of the characters, the play is able to shake the certainties and moralities previously found in Ravenhill’s viewers.Keywords: Ravenhill. Contemporary British Theater. Adolescence. Subjectivity. Gender. 

scholarly journals Men of Parts: Masculine Embodiment and the Male Leg in Eighteenth-Century England

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis essay explores changes in eighteenth-century male clothing in the context of the history of sexual difference, gender roles, and masculinity. The essay contributes to a history of dress by reconstructing a range of meanings and social practices through which men's clothing was understood by its consumers. Furthermore, critically engaging with work on the “great male renunciation,” the essay argues that the public authority that accrued to men through their clothing was based not on a new image of a rational disembodied man but instead on an emphasis on the male anatomy and masculinity as intrinsically embodied. Drawing on findings from the material objects of eighteenth-century clothing, visual representations, and evidence from the archival records of male consumers, the essay adopts an interdisciplinary approach that allows historians to study sex and gender as embodied, rather than simply performed. In so doing, the essay not only treats “embodiment” as an historical category but also responds to recent shifts in the historical discipline and the wider academy towards a more corporealist approach to the body.

Gender Dysphoria, Eating Disorders and Body Image: An Overview

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Milano ◽  
Paola Ambrosio ◽  
Francesa Carizzone ◽  
Valeria De Biasio ◽  
Giuseppina Foggia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Dysphoria ◽  
Eating Behaviors ◽  
The Body ◽  
Prevention Measures ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Effective Prevention ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
And Gender

Background:: Gender dysphoria is a clinical condition in which a state of inner suffering, stress and anxiety is detected when biological sex and a person's gender identity do not coincide. People who identify themselves as transgender people are more vulnerable and may have higher rates of dissatisfaction with their bodies which are often associated with a disorderly diet in an attempt to change the bodily characteristics of the genus of birth and, conversely, to accentuate the characteristics of the desired sexual identity. Aim:: The purpose of this work is to examine the association between dissatisfaction with one's own body and eating and weight disorders in people with gender dysphoria. Results:: Gender dysphoria and eating disorders are characterized by a serious discomfort to the body and the body suffers in both conditions. The results of our study suggest that rates of pathological eating behaviors and symptoms related to a disordered diet are high in patients with gender dysphoria and that standard screening for these symptoms must be considered in both populations at the time of evaluation and during the course of the treatment. Conclusions:: In light of this evidence, clinicians should always investigate issues related to sexuality and gender identity in patients with eating disorders, to develop more effective prevention measures and better strategies for therapeutic intervention..

Trans-Affirmative Parenting

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rahilly
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Child Centered ◽  
Cultural Visibility ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Life Course

In a world that is responding to ever-changing ideas and expressions of gender, this book adds new insights on transgender children and the parents who support them. Drawing on in-depth interview data with more than fifty parents, the book examines parents’ shifting understandings of their children’s gender and how they come to help their children make sense of their identities and their bodies. Throughout these processes, the book shows that parents’ meaning-making and decision-making often challenge LGBT rights discourses, as well as queer political tenets, in unexpected ways. These dynamics surface in three key areas: (1) gender and sexuality, (2) the gender binary, and (3) the body. Throughout parents’ understandings, gender identity and sexual orientation do not always present as radically separate aspects of the self, but are more fluid and open to reconsideration, given new cultural contexts, opportunities, and phases of the life course. And despite increasing cultural visibility around nonbinary identities, “gender-expansive” child-rearing often looks, fundamentally, very binary and gender-stereotypical, per the children’s own assertions and expressions. Lastly, parents often utilize highly medicalized understandings of transgender embodiment, which nevertheless resonate with some children’s sensibilities. Altogether, these families depart from conventional understandings of gender, sexuality, and the binary, but in ways that prioritize child-centered shifts, meanings, and parenting models, not necessarily LGBTQ politics or paradigms. This marks new ground for understanding the mechanisms and parameters of the (trans)gender change afoot.

scholarly journals The Meaning of Sex: Dynamic Words, Novel Applications, and Original Public Meaning

2021 ◽  
pp. 1503
Author(s):  
William Eskridge Jr. ◽  
Brian Slocum ◽  
Stefan Gries
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Title Vii ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
Transgender Persons ◽  
Gays And Lesbians ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Linguistic Evolution ◽  
Over Time

The meaning of sex matters. The interpretive methodology by which the meaning of sex is determined matters Both of these were at issue in the Supreme Court’s recent landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, where the Court held that Title VII protects lesbians, gay men, transgender persons, and other sexual and gender minorities against workplace discrimination. Despite unanimously agreeing that Title VII should be interpreted in accordance with its original public meaning in 1964, the opinions in Bostock failed to properly define sex or offer a coherent theory of how long-standing statutes like Title VII should be interpreted over time. We argue that longstanding statutes are inherently dynamic because they inevitably evolve beyond the original legislative expectations, and we offer a new theory and framework for how courts can manage societal and linguistic evolution The framework depends in part on courts defining ‘meaning’ properly so that statutory coverage is allowed to evolve naturally over time due to changes in society, even if the meaning of the statutory language is held constant (via originalism). Originalism in statutory and constitutional interpretation typically focuses on the language of the text itself and whether it has evolved over time (what we term linguistic dynamism), but courts should also recognize that the features of the objects of interpretation may also evolve over time (what we term societal dynamism). As society changes, so do social norms; what we call normative dynamism is the influence of evolving values on the interpretive enterprise, however conceptualized. Linguistic and normative dynamism create difficulties for originalism, but societal dynamism should not, as originalists have assumed in other contexts (such as Second Amendment jurisprudence). We explore the relationship among societal, linguistic, and normative dynamism and their implications for original public meaning. Putting our framework into action, we demonstrate, through the application of corpus analysis and linguistic theory, that sex in 1964 was not limited to “biological distinctions between male and female,” as all the opinions in Bostock assumed, and that gender and sexual orientation were essentially nonwords in 1964. Sex thus had a broader meaning than it does today, where terms like gender and sexual orientation (and other terms like sexuality) denote concepts that once could be referred to as sex (on its own and in compounds). In turn, today’s gays and lesbians and transgender people are social groups that did not exist (or that existed in a very different form) in 1964. By limiting the meaning of sex to “biological distinctions” and failing to recognize that societal dynamism can change statutory coverage, the Court missed the opportunity to explicitly affirm that the societal evolution of gays and lesbians and transgender people has legal significance. Finally, the Court missed an opportunity to acknowledge the importance law can assume in societal and linguistic dynamism: one reason gays and lesbians are a novel social group is that they live in a world where same-sex intimacy is not a crime and the state does not treat homosexuality as psychopathic.

Trans

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quinn Eades
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
The Body ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
Trans People ◽  
Sex And Sexuality ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Gender

Emerging from feminist and queer theory, trans theory asks us to challenge essentialist and heteronormative understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality. Trans theory teaches us to critique essentialist and binary models of embodiment by attending to and centering the body in theory and in the world. In the early 21st century, trans people are more visible than we have ever been. There is an increasing appetite from “mainstream” readers for trans memoir, larger numbers of trans characters on screen and in the media, and out trans people now hold high-ranking political positions, teach in schools and universities, and act on stage and screen. Rather than the demand for trans stories being driven by scopophilia, curiosity, or voyeurism, it appears that there is a desire to genuinely understand trans lives, bodies, and lived experiences. Visibility comes with a price though, and we must be wary of tracing a simplistic progress narrative in relation to trans and gender diverse people and communities. When we appear in public, we gather our own communities, as well as allies and sympathizers, but these appearances also make us vulnerable to those who still fiercely deny our right to exist—the Vatican City’s thirty-one page statement discussing gender theory in education (2019), where we are told that trans people are “annihilating nature,” is a perfect example of this. While the term “trans” (more often than not) refers to transgender people, it is also a prefix that means “across”; trans denotes movement, going from one to the other, and change. Because we can find trans people across all times, places, and populations, we can also trace a complex, rich, and ever-expanding archive of trans writing, histories, and stories. It is through troubling the idea that trans people are a “modern” invention, that we are the living embodiment of political correctness gone mad, that we can begin to find each other in text, gather together, and work toward making significant social, political, and cultural change.

Sex versus Gender

Sociology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Conte
Keyword(s):  
Female Gender ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Component ◽  
Gender Paradigm

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a conceptual distinction between “sex” and “gender” arose in the clinical literature on human psychosexual development. Sex came to signify the biological or bodily component of difference, that is, male and female. Gender, on the other hand, came to signify the social or cultural component of difference, that is, masculine and feminine. This sex/gender distinction, as it is often called, was heartily embraced by many feminists of the day who sought to account for differences between the sexes as well as explain and remediate women’s second-class status in society. The establishment of gender as a distinctly “social” concept appealed to feminists because it opened up an intellectual and political space—a space beyond biological determinism—for inquiry into the causes of “male domination” and “female subordination” that were not essential, universal, or fixed. In this space, social change was possible; gender relations could be reconfigured. To that end, the sex/gender distinction became, by and large, paradigmatic in feminist thought and social science, and from it grew a burgeoning body of gender theory loosely characterized as the social construction of gender. Intersectional, post-structural, postmodern, and queer schools of thought produced new insights and advanced theory in ways that posed challenges to the viability and utility of gender as a concept as well as to the sex/gender paradigm. The ensuing debates were highly productive, ushering in a new era of social theory on the body that centered corporeality and embodiment and that sought to deconstruct binary thinking. As thinking on sex/gender evolved, the conceptual split was no longer understood as a simple separation between the biological and the social. Feminist and queer scholars problematized the distinction, reformulating it as an interlocking set of relationships: the sex/gender/sexuality system. Interdisciplinary gender scholars, including prominent feminist scientists, began theorizing the complex interrelationship between sex and gender with greater sophistication in an attempt to more firmly discredit biological determinist approaches to the study of difference based on sex, gender, or sexuality. Advancing theory, research, and praxis has not only deepened understanding about a wider variety of identities, experiences, and practices around sex, gender, and sexuality but has also won greater recognition in the early 21st century for them. This multiplicity of sexes, genders, and sexualities has brought with it unique methodological concerns in the social sciences, which represent a new frontier of research and activism in gender and sexuality studies.

scholarly journals The “double punishment” of transgender prisoners: a human rights-based commentary on placement and conditions of detention

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Van Hout ◽  
Des Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Standards Of Care ◽  
Gender Recognition ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Transgender Persons ◽  
International Human ◽  
And Gender

Purpose The incarceration of transgender people is described as a “double punishment” based on lack of gender recognition and ability to gender affirm, and with their experiences and conditions in prison tantamount to torture. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the continued “double punishment” of incarcerated transgender people (in particular trans-women) and identify and describe breaches in human and gender rights and minimum standards of care. Design/methodology/approach There is limited global data on the numbers of incarcerated transgender people, an identified vulnerable prison group. There are inherent difficulties for prison authorities regarding placement, security aspects and management of transgender persons. While the concerns apply to all transgender prisoners, the current literature focusses mainly on transgender women and this commentary reflects this present bias. A socio-legal approach describes and evaluates international human rights’ conventions and human rights’ law, soft law instruments mandating non-discriminatory provisions in the prison setting and relevant European and domestic case law. Findings Transgender prisoners experience an amplification of trauma underpinned by lack of legal gender recognition, inability to gender-affirm, discrimination, transphobia, gender maltreatment and violence by other prisoners and prison staff. Despite obligations and recommendations in international human rights’ instruments and standard operating procedures at the prison level, very few countries are able to fully uphold the human rights of and meet the needs of transgender people in prison. Originality/value This study is important as it highlights the dearth of knowledge exploring human rights discourses and concerns related to the phenomenon of incarcerated transgender persons. It uniquely focusses on European and domestic law and illustrates the inherent tensions between human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity rights and security considerations regarding transgender issues in prisons. Rights assurances centre on the principles of equality, dignity, freedom of expression, dignified detention and the prohibition of inhumane treatment or punishment.

Gender and the Global Political Economy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
And Gender

Feminist and gendered interventions in the discipline of international political economy (IPE) traces the constitutive and causal role that gender plays in the diverse forms, functions, and impacts of the global political economy (GPE). There are subtle distinctions between “feminist” and “gendered” political economy. The term “feminist IPE” is assigned only to those scholars who identify directly with feminism and label themselves feminist. “Gendered IPE” includes feminist IPE, but also incorporates those analyses not necessarily centered on women’s work, their practices, and their experiences. Whether understood empirically or analytically, increased references to “gender” in IPE invariably resulted from the extensive, varied, and challenging feminist theorizing that had made visible the neglect of sex and gender in IPE. Indeed, gendered IPE scholarship is dedicated to transforming knowledge through committed gender analysis of the global political economy, deploying “gender” as a central organizing principle in social, cultural, political, and economic life. A relatively recent theoretical turn in gendered political economy thoroughly highlights the problems involved when gender is entirely associated with the body as a mark of human identity. Contemporary gendered IPE covers the variety of ways in which analysis of a person’s sex is simply not enough to describe their experiences. Indeed, ongoing feminist and gendered IPE concerns generally focus on the marginalization of gender analysis in IPE. Meanwhile, promising avenues in gendered IPE include gender and sexuality in IPE, as well as gender and the “Illicit International Political Economy” (IIPE).

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