Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues
First published Sat Sep 26, 2009
Talia Bettcher

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/

The relationship between feminism and transgender theory and politics is surprisingly fraught. The goal in this entry is to outline some of the key philosophical issues at the intersections, and this can be accomplished only by attending to the history of feminist and trans politics as it has unfolded in the U.S. "Transgender" as a politics and "trans studies" as a twin of "queer studies" (Stryker 2004) emerged in the early 1990s and this emergence is intertwined with feminist as well as queer theory and politics. (These terms will be explained below.) Consequently, this entry will follow a roughly chronological order.

One major set of philosophical themes concerns competing conceptions of the self and its relation to the sexed body and to gender. (Biological sex is often distinguished from gender, taken as the cultural roles assigned on the basis of sex). Is the self prior to the institution of gender identity? Is sex the "hardware" on which the program of gender is run, or is sex itself thoroughly cultural? If the self is irrevocably immersed in cultural gender, how is resistance to gender oppression possible at all? Moreover, how should answers to these questions inform feminist politics and theory? How should they inform trans politics and theory?