Transgender and Intersex: Unavoidable Essentialism and the Normative Struggle for Recognition

Abstract

Transgender and intersex studies are stuck in an ‘anti rhetoric’ against heteronormativity and binary oppositions. Not only is this practice questionable from a theoretical point of view, but, much more problematically, it serves to alienate parts of the community—most notably many intersex people. In order to find new ways of formulating activism, this chapter grapples with the theoretical underpinnings of transgender and intersex studies, respectively. What emerges are two persistently recurring forms of essentialism: mind essentialism and body essentialism. But instead of denouncing them, the article shows how essentialisms can be employed for emancipatory positions. Such a strategy has further implications for transgender and intersex studies, and their contributions to gender studies in general. The chapter concludes by proposing a shift away from primarily fighting against a binary gender system in gender studies towards primarily working for intersex and trans people’s recognition and self-determination—tacitly accepting, of course, that this may change the gender framework as we know it.