Gender Self-determination Research Articles

Gender self-determination as a medical right.

Gender self-determination as a medical right.

Passports, Prisons, and Every Space Between

In 2016 long-standing activism culminated in the implementation of Bill C-16, which added “gender and gender expression” to the protected classes of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Despite a commitment to consistency across federal policy, wide discrepancies occurred between the changes to the passport and those to the prison. On the one hand, Citizenship Canada announced that “people who do not identify as female (‘F’) or male (‘M’)” could change their passport sex to be an X. On the other hand, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) begrudgingly introduced Interim Policy Bulletin 584, which provides accommodation based “on gender identity or expression” within the binary system. Through a comparative analysis, this article queries the enactment of nonbinary recognition between two foundational sites of Canadian federal control: a site of mobility (the passport) and a site of immobility through mass incarceration (the prison). Arguing against expanding prisons or the creation of nonbinary correctional institutions, this article traces the racial geographies that X is both embedded within and enacts, exposing the violence that ushers forth new forms of trans citizenship reliant on anti-Blackness, captivity, and fungibility. Building from these case studies, this article mobilizes the state deployment of gendered expression and determination to nuance theories of gender self-determination. Specifically, this article considers how the theoretical application of the term may dissimulate distinctions in (in)violability, vulnerability, and capacity between and within Blackness and transness.

The Perils of Gender Self-Determination: Global Shifts in Sex Reclassification Law and Policy

Abstract The Article maps the global rise of the emerging gold standard for recognition and protection of trans populations: laws and policies allowing for self-identification of gender identity, commonly referred to as “gender self-determination.” The Article suggests that, while gender self-determination allows for greater access to resources and opportunities for transgender people because it removes grave breach to bodily autonomy, it also formulates “gender identity” as a private entity of the self, separated from publicly assigned sex. Thus, gender self-determination inevitably redraws the public–private divide along the contours of the transgender body, suggesting a need to examine the apparatus of assigning sex at birth and its pivotal role in both the systemic exclusions of trans people and gender inequality more broadly. To make this case, the Article provides a comparative review and analysis of laws and policies allowing for sex reclassification on identity documents from over a hundred jurisdictions worldwide, from a complete ban on classification, through medical and corroborations requirements, to gender self-identification. The Article demonstrates a shift within sex reclassification policies from the body to the self, from external to internal truth, revealing a growing emphasis on the separation of gender identity from sex in legal analysis, pointing to its possible detrimental effects on questions of sex-based equality. To secure the autonomy of the trans legal subject, self-determination laws and policies formulate gender identity as an inherent and internal feature of the self. Yet, the sovereignty of a right to gender identity is circumscribed by the system of sex classification and its individuating logics, in which one must be stamped with a sex classification to be an autonomous legal subject. Finally, the Article argues that addressing the distribution of life prospects along gender lines requires going back to the category of sex and critically rethinking its fundamental differentiating structures.

Unsettling the Conversation on Trans Rights

This article argues that trans rights are trapped within settler frameworks of gender and rights, therefore making them incompatible with and in opposition to Indigenous lifeways. Starting with the premise that engagement with the settler state is not benign, the authors argue that trans rights-based organizing diverts and thwarts the potential for solidarity work with Indigenous struggles for freedom and is inherently limited in its potential to secure Indigenous futurity. The authors hope that trans studies and collective struggles organized around gender embrace anti-colonial and anti-racist praxis to result in tangible and discursive outcomes to bolster Indigenous cultural continuity and land-based connections. The authors use this article to call for a collective movement toward gender self-determination that is sensitive and reflexive of settler colonialism and produces tangible decolonial actions that will benefit the lives of Indigenous Two-Spirit, trans, and nonbinary people and align with movements for Indigenous self-determination. Queer and trans settlers are urged to begin a process of accountability and to engage a decolonial praxis to support Indigenous decolonization in all its forms—fighting for land claims, defending water and land rights, and supporting the resurgence of Indigenous erotics and gender formations. To be truly decolonial we suggest that trans political organizing moves beyond the settler framework of rights and toward Indigenous solidarity in politics, practices, and shared struggles, foregrounding anti-colonial, anti-racist, and pro-Indigenous values.

Abolitionist Techniques of Weathering

Abolitionist Techniques of Weathering

The Abolition of Sex/Gender Registration in the Age of Gender SelfDetermination: An Interdisciplinary, Queer, Feminist and Human Rights Analysis

It is commonly accepted that gender matters (whether cisgender, transgender/trans*, gender non-binary, genderfluid, gender queer, agender, or other) and many are raising awareness about the fact that gender always seems to matter. That gender matters, and always matters, does not necessarily mean, however, that gender needs to be authenticated or endorsed by the state.
 In fact, based on a feminist and queer reading of human rights, this interdisciplinary article asserts that state-sponsored sex/gender assignment through the practice of sex/gender registration must halt. It argues that mandatory (binary) sex/gender registration disproportionately infringes the emerging right to gender identity autonomy and the right to the legal recognition thereof. Most often, our Western heterosexual cultural system of gender, which posits the existence of two oppositional and complementary gender identities, anchored in so-called natural and binary sex, goes hand in hand with material and discursive forms of violence and entails various forms of unequal power dynamics. Hegemonic in nature, the heterosexual cultural system of gender pervasively regulates many (if not every) aspects of all bodies’ lives and being, including by legal means. The law upholds and certifies that specific gender regime, inter alia, by assigning a sex to individuals at birth (through the registration of a claimed evident, objective, natural element to be found on or in the body by inspection). Policies of mandatory (binary) sex/genderregistration therefore constitute the cornerstone of the legalisation of the heterosexual cultural system of gender, which produces not only the conventional feminine and masculine gender identity (i.e. women and men) but also sex (i.e. females and males).
 This article suggests that, as long as the law refuses to go beyond the compulsory male/female (or even male/female/other) framework, it will be complicit in upholding the undesired consequences of the heterosexual cultural system of gender, which affect all persons of whatever gender or physical features. Therefore, undoing remaining forms of global gender injustice, as well as respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights relating to gender identity, requires the abolishment of sex/gender registration instead of expanding the available gender markers. Indeed, this article finds that current state practices do not pursue a legitimate aim, and even if they do, mandatory sex/gender registration does not pass the proportionality test that is required in the assessment of restrictions of fundamental rights. A human rights analysis of official sex/gender in the age of gender self-determination finds mandatory sex/gender registration to be a disproportionate measure and recommends that states change their current practices. Doing so would be beneficial to cisgender and trans* individuals alike.

Zmiana płci „na słowo”. Praktyczne implikacje hiszpańskiej Ley Trans

On 1 March 2023, the so-called Trans Law (Ley 4/2023, de 28 de febrero, para la igualdad real y efectiva de las personas trans y para la garantía de los derechos de las personas LGTBI) came into force in Spain. This paper is a discussion on the political background and main ideas of the bill, and an analysis of its practical social implications and major controversies. The most important point of the bill is the introduction of the principle of self-declaration or legal gender self-determination, which de facto changes the criterion of sex in law from a physical one to a purely subjective and immaterial one, with far-reaching implications not only for women’s rights, but for the entire legal system.

«Дочь писателя»: женская идентичность в автобиографической прозе В. Л. Андреевой

The paper explores the female identity in the autobiographical prose by Vera Leonidovna Andreeva (1910–1986), daughter of the famous writer Leonid Andreev. The materials for the study are the story “The House on the Black River” and the novel “Echo of the Past”. Firstly, we examine the process of gender identification in the writer’s childhood, which was determined by her growing up and communicating with peers and relatives. Further, we research the formation of female subjectivity during the emigration, under conditions of intercultural interaction, adaptation to foreign cultures, collision with local stereotypes. Important factors for the gender self-determination of the writer are the image of her mother and communication with representatives of the Russian diaspora, including Sasha Chorny, Marina Tsvetaeva, Alexander Vertinsky etc. The reflections of the modern era are the writer's attempts to master women's professions, the circle of which was still quite narrow. Finally, by the example of Vera Leonidovna Andreeva, the paper focuses on the phenomenon of the “writer's daughter”, which often affected the attitude of other people towards the narrator and, of course, influenced the formation of her writing talent.

When Comparative Law Walks the Path of Anthropology: The Third Gender in Europe

AbstractGender recognition is a crucial achievement for non-binary people. To better understand this right, this article combines comparative law with theoretical insights from anthropology to offer a discussion of non-binary recognition in European fundamental rights law. It identifies three approaches to such a right and critically assesses each of them. The first approach is denial, with the non-binary option being explicitly or implicitly rejected, as has occurred in French and Italian courts. The next approach is limited recognition, whereby a non-binary option is granted under specific limitations, such as when certain physical characteristics are present or when a claimant permanently identifies with the non-binary gender. This is the course of action that has been taken in German law. The third approach is gender self-determination, whereby individuals can obtain recognition on the basis of their declaration alone. This solution has been offered by the Belgian Constitutional Court. On the strength of findings from anthropology, the article argues that the first two models are incapable of genuinely engaging with gender diversity, while the third one offers more robust legal protection. The analysis presented here serves as an example of how anthropological insights can be effectively used to advance comparative law research.

САРА УОТЕРС И ВИКТОРИАНСКИЙ КАНОН

The article examines the specifics of the work of the modern British writer Sarah Waters with Victorian canon. The author’s forms of interaction with the Victorian text are investigated with references to the author’s revisionist stand of a professional historian, to her creative reflection on Victorian canon in the spirit of the historiographical novel, and interest in popular genres of Victorian era (Dickens’ socio-psychological novel, sensational novel, publications in the popular magazine “All the Year Round”). Waters’ novels use the Dickensian code and popular sensational plots in order to rethink class and gender issues, to show the social topography of Victorian era from today’s perspective, with its close interest in social marginalities and outsiders (travesty actors, representatives of non-traditional communities, criminals, spiritualists, the secret life of respectable classes). The writer shows that the dynamism of urban social topography, the complexity of cultural and gender self-determination of a person of Victorian era not only existed, but also had paramount importance for him/her. The role of Dickens’ text in understanding the theme of social and urban landscape in Sarah Waters’ novels is not limited to creating a postmodern pastiche. The connection between Waters and Dickens is genetic: the social basis becomes a necessary coordinate system for the development of the plot (sketches of the life of representatives of different strata, the creation of documentary sketches of urban life; attention to specific circumstances and environment, which form a particular character). Waters’ use of the plots and motives of the sensational novel is also associated with a broad picture of the social troubles, that provoke criminal plots of this genre.

Medium Specific Sexuality

New names for sexual selves drop daily online. How do we make sense of this apparently novel proliferation of terms? Most of our models for thinking about sexual self-nomination derive from the history of homosexuality and its imbrication with print cultural networks of circulation and conversation. But unlike earlier terms—butch or femme, fairy or molly, sissy or stud, uranist or invert, or any number of other vocabularies of sexual selfhood that sexuality studies has seized upon as historiographic waystations in the tale of emergent sexual modernity—our lexicon today appears to issue from a different substrate of culture. It circulates on different media and implicates us in different systems of self-disclosure, social exchange, and scientific capture. It is not just novelty nomenclature—the narratives, discourses, and names that organize the social sense of sexual selves—with which we must contend but also the media environments from which they issue and in which they circulate. How do we make sense of the convergence of liberatory vocabularies of gender self-determination and the mechanics of mass personalized data capture? How does this moment fit into the history of sexuality at large, punctuated as it is by many moments of taxonomic irruption?

A Report from LGBTI Philanthropy

A Report from LGBTI Philanthropy

What Is at Stake in the Recognition of Non-Normative Identities?

The deconstruction of the binary sex-gender system that sustains modern western states demands the deconstruction of its dichotomies and their excluding effects on non-normative identities. This demands in turn that gender self-determination be recognised as a right. In Spain this right has been given constitutional status (STC 99/2019), yet it is currently not articulated in legislation. Proposals of a new legal framework have met with resistance and an ensuing need for compromise. Unless it grasps and upholds the full constitutional extent of the right to gender self-determination, however, legislation risks being born both unconstitutional and obsolete, out of pace with social demands.

The right to gender self-determination in Spain. Lessons from Autonomous Communities

Law 3/2007, regulating the rectification of a person's official sex, is still in force in Spain. Although it does not demand reassignment surgery, it pathologizes the reassignment process, among other shortcomings. Since its enactment, 14 of Spain’s 17 Autonomous Communities (Regions) have legislated on the subject, mostly on the basis of self-determination, in an attempt to compensate for the perceived deficiencies in national legislation. This paper analyses and compares the legislative approach to gender identity and the rights of Trans people at a national and regional level.

Supporting Gender Self-Determination for People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), including those with significant support needs, continue to advocate for access to self-determination so that they can have choice and control in their lives. Under the purview of self-determination, people with I/DD should be able to determine how they express their gender. However, supporters sometimes enforce their own beliefs about gender, thus restricting people with I/DD to traditional gendered expectations of men and women. Through self-advocate stories and a review of research that has examined the experiences of gender-diverse people with I/DD, this article highlights the importance of supporting access to gender self-determination. I provide examples of how family members and professionals can support gender self-determination for people with I/DD, including those with significant support needs.

Reproduction and Gender Self-Determination: Fertile Grounds for Trans Legal Advocacy

Current medical constructions of trans identities reflect heterosexist understandings of gender expression—understandings that deny access to gender-affirming healthcare to those who fail to perform normative binary genders. As medical providers establish norms for how to “properly” be trans, the state codifies these norms, basing trans existence on rigidly defined and harshly enforced understandings of binary gender. When this construction of transness is codified on an institutional level, such as with gender reclassification rules for government identification, it forces trans people to conform their bodies to cisgender norms, and dangerously disrupts trans people’s bodily autonomy and diminishes their control over their reproductive choices. This Article contends that the gender conformity that the state requires of trans people parallels the violence that the state has inflicted on low-income non-trans women of color. As welfare policies have sought to constrain indigent Black women’s reproductive and sexual autonomy, courts use legal gender determination to force trans people to conform to heterosexist sexual and family structures—a project that works to constrain their reproductive freedoms. This Article connects the decades-long struggle of non-trans women of color for reproductive justice with that of trans people’s right to self-identify without medical intervention. In doing so, this Article calls for legal trans advocates to coalition build with existing reproductive justice movements to nurture a trans jurisprudence that rejects heterosexist notions of trans identity and instead embraces the multiplicity of trans embodiment and queer family structures that we, as trans people, can create.

Are prisons compatible with diversity? The case of transgender persons in detention

The prison world is gradually required to take greater account of the specific needs of inmates, to adopt a tailor-made approach to sanctioning and to respect the principle of non-discrimination. This can be a complex task, in particular with regards to sexual and gender minorities. This article looks back at the framework document issued by the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Prison and Probation (SCEPP) dedicated to LGBTIQ+ inmates. With a focus on transgender inmates, the article reports on the findings of the research and subsequently provides an analysis of the situation of a transgender inmate in Champ-Dollon prison. Particular emphasis is put on the principle of gender self-determination. According to the authors, this principle is essential to ensure that transgender persons are treated in a way that respects their dignity.

The Perils of Gender Self-Determination- Global Shifts in Sex Reclassification Law and Policy

The Perils of Gender Self-Determination- Global Shifts in Sex Reclassification Law and Policy

Italian trans geographies: retracing trans/cultural narratives of people and places

ABSTRACT This article maps an overlooked cultural history of Italy by exploring the literary notion of ‘trans geographies’ – a subgenre at the crossroads of autobiography, memoir, and travel narrative – through the memorialist work of sociologist and trans activist Porpora Marcasciano. Her narratives of people and place have repositioned trans identities within public spaces, while illustrating a larger phenomenon that remains underexplored within Italian Studies, namely, how places have shaped trans identities and how trans identities have, in turn, (re)shaped places. This article situates Marcasciano’s stories of gender self-determination in relation to: (1) interdisciplinary approaches to trans geographies; and (2) the writings of two very different Italian LGBT+ icons, Romina Cecconi and Mario Mieli. As a bard of the trans movement, Marcasciano has narrated concealed trans/cultural landscapes across the Italian peninsula, including Naples and the centuries-old culture of the femminielli; Rome’s dolce vita during the 1970s and 1980s; and the achievements of the trans movement in Bologna during the 1980s and the 1990s. This remapping ultimately unveils subaltern spaces that have remained at the margins of Italian collective memory as well as spaces where trans people have successfully explored new modes of inhabiting and sharing places, beyond taken-for-granted notions of normativity and transgression. The goal of this article is to outline how Marcasciano’s trans geographies have generated creative and critical sites while fostering more inclusive ways of narrating and sharing cultural history.

(Trans)gender recognition in Portugal: From a ‘void’ to the right to gender self-determination

This article reviews Portugal’s path in addressing non-normative gender identities, focusing particularly on legal gender recognition. While recognition is not limited to enshrining rights in the law – especially the right to the acknowledgement of (self)identity by the state – the legal step is one that is clearly fundamental to making overall recognition a reality. Portugal is an interesting case study, having shifted in less than a decade – the second of the twenty-first century – from a complete absence of trans issues in legislation to the passage of a law on gender identity based on self-determination. Using analysis of legislation and interviews of trans people and representatives of the LGBTQI+ movement conducted during two research projects spanning the last fifteen years, we analyse the macro-level transformations and how they are reflected, at the micro-level, in the trans people’s inclusion in or exclusion from legal recognition, and in the extension of this basic condition of citizenship.