Trans as Brain Intersex

Abstract

There is an abundance of neuroscientific research seeking to pin down the origins of transgender people's gender identity in the brain. The established premise is that transgender people have a brain structure more in line with the sex group with which they identify than the one they are assigned to at birth. Transgender is imagined as a form of intersexuality—but of the brain, rather than the genitalia. This article aims to critically interrogate the neuroscientific notion of transgender as brain intersex by situating the neuroscientific understanding of trans people within the genealogy of the medical management of transgender and intersex people. The study also examines how medical authority consolidates itself through the “trans-intersex nexus”—a mechanism in which trans and intersex people are placed in a relationship of simultaneous separation and reinforcement under the control of medical knowledge and technologies.