Gender transitioning

What is it about?

In this paper, I want to move to an understanding of different situations of transitions that are grounded in gender but that suggest a wider world of experience with the claim that understanding the self is a complicated matter; and while this in itself is obvious to everyone, its complexity still comes as a surprise because of the unconscious. I turn to four memoirs: P. Carl’s Becoming a Man; Susan Faludi’s In the Darkroom; Masha Gessen’s “To Be or Not To Be”; and Jane Gallop’s Sexuality, Disability and Aging: Queer Temporalities of the Phallus. Each text depicts different notions of transition that suggest a wider world of experience: physicality (age, illness, disability), generation, sexuality, and relationality. In unpacking each narrative as unique figurations of transitioning, I show how each gives us a foothold into a new way of imagining gender. I argue that by reading memoirs the analyst enters a world that is theirs and not theirs. It is a way into an imaginative realm that allows us entrance into conflicts, questions, and representations of being in the world.

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Why is it important?

Ruptures sedimented notions of gender and transitioning

Perspectives