Genderqueer(ing): ‘On this side of the world against which it protests’

Abstract

Deconstructionism as a method in transgender studies has been useful to collapse concepts and ideas about (trans) gender and sexuality. In spite of the usefulness of undoing the gender and sexuality canon, by way of concentrating on transgender practices, the resulting deconstructions often leave us with no place to go. This article develops an analysis of transsexual and genderqueer people’s bodily aesthetic assemblages, challenging theorizations that exclusively pit transsexual people as subjugated and genderqueer people as subversive. Drawing on interview data from 23 transsexual and genderqueer people, this article argues that transsexual and genderqueer people, regardless of their desire for particular bodily aesthetic interventions and gender recognition, productively flee, elude, flow, leak and disappear from categorizing legal statutes and healthcare protocols. The article concludes by arguing that deconstructive work becomes divisive and unproductive for theorizing and understanding the bodily aesthetics and diverse connectivities and affectivities of transsexual and genderqueer people, all of whom become territorialized, deterritorialized and reterritorialized through polyvocal bodily aesthetic assemblages.

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