Immunising Birthsex: Ontology's Place in the Pandemic

Abstract

As the lockdowns of 2020 came into place, subjecting many of us to forms of confinement, we may have been reminded of Derrida's thoughts on house arrest. Discussing the topology of sexual difference, he suggests that to be assigned female is to be destined for assignation residence—the French term for house arrest— under the patriarchal economy of home which determines the 'proper place' of woman (Derrida 1995, 93—94). Derrida's formulation took on unexpected resonance when, at the height of the pandemic, the Hungarian government repealed its legal recognition of transgenderism: assignations of biological sex would now be strictly binary and permanent. The decision to place sexual difference under house arrest during a time of lockdown was not, I would argue, a coincidence. Rather, it was another kind of assignation, an act of discursive placing designed to eradicate transgenderism under the name of immunisation.