The Cultivation of Queer and Trans Childhood: Eugenic Logics of Genetics and Endocrine Science

Abstract

The meteoric rise in visibility of gay and transgender children in recent years has heightened longstanding debates over the biological basis and etiology of gender and sexuality. What role ought queer theory and transgender studies play in critically engaging the scientific and political fields of this renewed obsession with etiology? This chapter cautions against reading queer and trans theory’s emphasis on the immanent and plastic qualities of the gendered and sexual body as oppositional to the incessant biological determinism of the sciences. Instead, it takes a detour through the history of the concept of gender plasticity, arguing that what is taking place in the present might be read as a profoundly disconcerting pair of ideological bedfellows. Today’s theoretically plastic, genderfluid, or capaciously queer child, it turns out, was yesterday’s eugenic child in the life sciences.