Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910071
Lou Rich
Abstract: Nonbinary presentations, behaviors, and spaces have been observed transculturally throughout history. Whilst historical manifestations differ from our modern notions of nonbinary, this article examines instances of nonbinary transgressions that may have been previously consigned to homoerotic histories. This article deploys such a nonbinary lens to discuss instances that relate to the body, gender presentations, social roles, and language, for the purpose of problematizing both notions of trans-gender history and binary assumptions of gender as untransmutable and immutable.
{"title":"Gender Transgressions: Nonbinary Spaces in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Ancient China","authors":"Lou Rich","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910071","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Nonbinary presentations, behaviors, and spaces have been observed transculturally throughout history. Whilst historical manifestations differ from our modern notions of nonbinary, this article examines instances of nonbinary transgressions that may have been previously consigned to homoerotic histories. This article deploys such a nonbinary lens to discuss instances that relate to the body, gender presentations, social roles, and language, for the purpose of problematizing both notions of trans-gender history and binary assumptions of gender as untransmutable and immutable.","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910085
Claudia Sofía Garriga-López
Sex and State Are Action Verbs Claudia Sofía Garriga-López (bio) Paisley Currah’s Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, New York: New York University Press, 2022 In the face of the present moment’s relentless culture-war legislation against transgender people, Sex Is as Sex Does is a gift to educators who want to teach transgender studies from a political science perspective. This book is accessible and clearly written in a way that makes it especially suitable for undergraduate students as well as people outside of academia who want to deepen their understanding of transgender politics. Paisley Currah’s experiences as both an advocate for transgender rights and a social theorist guide readers to look at big-picture questions about the social construction of sex in and through governance practices, without losing sight of the immediate material needs of trans people for political reforms. Currah moves through a series of legal cases, administrative rules, and legislation to demonstrate what sex categorizations do across a wide range of government agencies and institutions. In doing so, he demonstrates the plasticity of sex as a tool of governance, as one of many categories used to distribute resources and exert control over populations. Sex classifications and the requirements for sex reclassification are a function of government, even or especially within agencies that purportedly have nothing to do with sex. Currah points out that institutions that surveil, confer benefits, or incarcerate have different sets of interest when it comes to sex designation. He helps us make sense of the contradictory and uneven distribution of sex reclassification policies by pointing out the different work that sex classification does in a driver’s licence, on a marriage certificate, in prison, and so on. Through this narrow yet versatile focus on the regulations surrounding sex reclassification, Currah theorizes state formations. Sex is as sex does, but also, government is as government does. States are not inherently coherent, unified, or rational; they are an amalgamation of practices that often contradict one another. [End Page 255] This book can be thought of as a transfeminist theory of state. Transfeminism offers us a path through which to move beyond the gender essentialism and biological determinism that has plagued feminisms since the sex/gender divide was made a central principle through which to refute women’s subordination. Currah’s state-based political analysis compliments transgender scholarship’s deconstruction of sex as a stable biological category in the fields of medicine and gender studies. Currah sustains that despite their limitations, it is many times necessary to employ talking points about the correct medical and scientific understanding of sex or the need for sex reclassification, even as he proposes that a more just approach would be to do away with sex classification altogether. Currah traces how sex categorization was fo
{"title":"Sex and State Are Action Verbs","authors":"Claudia Sofía Garriga-López","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910085","url":null,"abstract":"Sex and State Are Action Verbs Claudia Sofía Garriga-López (bio) Paisley Currah’s Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, New York: New York University Press, 2022 In the face of the present moment’s relentless culture-war legislation against transgender people, Sex Is as Sex Does is a gift to educators who want to teach transgender studies from a political science perspective. This book is accessible and clearly written in a way that makes it especially suitable for undergraduate students as well as people outside of academia who want to deepen their understanding of transgender politics. Paisley Currah’s experiences as both an advocate for transgender rights and a social theorist guide readers to look at big-picture questions about the social construction of sex in and through governance practices, without losing sight of the immediate material needs of trans people for political reforms. Currah moves through a series of legal cases, administrative rules, and legislation to demonstrate what sex categorizations do across a wide range of government agencies and institutions. In doing so, he demonstrates the plasticity of sex as a tool of governance, as one of many categories used to distribute resources and exert control over populations. Sex classifications and the requirements for sex reclassification are a function of government, even or especially within agencies that purportedly have nothing to do with sex. Currah points out that institutions that surveil, confer benefits, or incarcerate have different sets of interest when it comes to sex designation. He helps us make sense of the contradictory and uneven distribution of sex reclassification policies by pointing out the different work that sex classification does in a driver’s licence, on a marriage certificate, in prison, and so on. Through this narrow yet versatile focus on the regulations surrounding sex reclassification, Currah theorizes state formations. Sex is as sex does, but also, government is as government does. States are not inherently coherent, unified, or rational; they are an amalgamation of practices that often contradict one another. [End Page 255] This book can be thought of as a transfeminist theory of state. Transfeminism offers us a path through which to move beyond the gender essentialism and biological determinism that has plagued feminisms since the sex/gender divide was made a central principle through which to refute women’s subordination. Currah’s state-based political analysis compliments transgender scholarship’s deconstruction of sex as a stable biological category in the fields of medicine and gender studies. Currah sustains that despite their limitations, it is many times necessary to employ talking points about the correct medical and scientific understanding of sex or the need for sex reclassification, even as he proposes that a more just approach would be to do away with sex classification altogether. Currah traces how sex categorization was fo","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910083
Joy Ellison
Abstract: This paper expands historical and theoretical engagements with Leslie Feinberg’s life by analyzing the nonbinary and disability politics of hir screened-in photography series. Through a consent-based method called “making” photographs, Feinberg challenged the conventions of photographic representation of disabled and transgender people. The screened-in series provides a nonbinary political/relational model of gender, sexuality, race, and disability.
{"title":"Making Pictures: Disabled Nonbinary Praxis in Leslie Feinberg’s screened-in Photography Series","authors":"Joy Ellison","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910083","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This paper expands historical and theoretical engagements with Leslie Feinberg’s life by analyzing the nonbinary and disability politics of hir screened-in photography series. Through a consent-based method called “making” photographs, Feinberg challenged the conventions of photographic representation of disabled and transgender people. The screened-in series provides a nonbinary political/relational model of gender, sexuality, race, and disability.","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910093
Dána-Ain Davis
Palmetto, from Black Girl in Triptych, Part 1 Dána-Ain Davis (bio) The short man muttered to himself as he limped toward his seat in the fifth car of the Palmetto leaving Charleston, South Carolina . . . the car where Negroes sat. His body was slight, wisp-like, but his mouth sounded like he was swishing seven marbles. He spoke kind of funny because apparently, he never left his Haitian accent back in Acul-du-Nord, even though he arrived in Edgefield County, South Carolina, ten years earlier. The pout of his lips, from which the accent fell, was why they called him Frenchy—a name a lot of South Carolinians called Haitians who first came to Charleston in the 1700s from Saint Dominique. Frenchy boarded the train in his gray pants and light-blue short-sleeve polo shirt. He had the collar up, and the top two buttons were undone so his gold necklace was visible. His hair was slightly conked and combed back. Such a dapper man might have had a larger suitcase, but his was just a medium-size, tan tweed and cognac-colored leather. His valise was the size of man who had left someplace in a hurry. Yet, his manicured nails—perfectly square with rounded edges—told a tale of living a well-appointed life. Those hands, almost dainty, pulled out a ticket from his pant pocket. It read “15A,” which came as a relief because it was the window seat. When Frenchy found the location, a young woman was already getting settled in 15B and was reaching over the aisle to hand the two little girls across from her, orange sections in a napkin. Frenchy sighed because now he was going to have to navigate another person taking up space in his own small world. The young lady looked up as Frenchy lingered by the arm of the seat before hoisting his suitcase to the overhead bin. The suitcase, the size of which suggested its owner did not [End Page 285] have much or did not plan to stay where he was going for very long, nestled in its place much more easily when Frenchy turned it sideways. Now came the small talk that would get him to his window seat. Ma’am that’s my seat. Ok, give me a second, she said. Frenchy waited all of five seconds for the woman to swivel her hips and legs to the right so he could inch his way past her. Frenchy made his wispy body even smaller by holding in his nonexistent stomach and side-shuffled to his seat. When his body arrived, he sat down and was so glad to be doing so. Now he could rest his head on the window instead of taking a chance that when sleep came to get him, his head would drop and lean into the aisle. That could be the job of the lady, he thought. She could create the disturbance in the aisle, not him. As soon as Frenchy sat down, one of the two little girls said, Mama, when we gonna get there? The little girl’s mother looked around, checking people’s faces against the volume of her daughter’s voice. She put a red-painted finger up to her lips and told her daughter, Gilda-girl, hush, don’t nobody wanna hear you. Gilda-girl whined, But Mama, I
{"title":"Palmetto, from Black Girl in Triptych , Part 1","authors":"Dána-Ain Davis","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910093","url":null,"abstract":"Palmetto, from Black Girl in Triptych, Part 1 Dána-Ain Davis (bio) The short man muttered to himself as he limped toward his seat in the fifth car of the Palmetto leaving Charleston, South Carolina . . . the car where Negroes sat. His body was slight, wisp-like, but his mouth sounded like he was swishing seven marbles. He spoke kind of funny because apparently, he never left his Haitian accent back in Acul-du-Nord, even though he arrived in Edgefield County, South Carolina, ten years earlier. The pout of his lips, from which the accent fell, was why they called him Frenchy—a name a lot of South Carolinians called Haitians who first came to Charleston in the 1700s from Saint Dominique. Frenchy boarded the train in his gray pants and light-blue short-sleeve polo shirt. He had the collar up, and the top two buttons were undone so his gold necklace was visible. His hair was slightly conked and combed back. Such a dapper man might have had a larger suitcase, but his was just a medium-size, tan tweed and cognac-colored leather. His valise was the size of man who had left someplace in a hurry. Yet, his manicured nails—perfectly square with rounded edges—told a tale of living a well-appointed life. Those hands, almost dainty, pulled out a ticket from his pant pocket. It read “15A,” which came as a relief because it was the window seat. When Frenchy found the location, a young woman was already getting settled in 15B and was reaching over the aisle to hand the two little girls across from her, orange sections in a napkin. Frenchy sighed because now he was going to have to navigate another person taking up space in his own small world. The young lady looked up as Frenchy lingered by the arm of the seat before hoisting his suitcase to the overhead bin. The suitcase, the size of which suggested its owner did not [End Page 285] have much or did not plan to stay where he was going for very long, nestled in its place much more easily when Frenchy turned it sideways. Now came the small talk that would get him to his window seat. Ma’am that’s my seat. Ok, give me a second, she said. Frenchy waited all of five seconds for the woman to swivel her hips and legs to the right so he could inch his way past her. Frenchy made his wispy body even smaller by holding in his nonexistent stomach and side-shuffled to his seat. When his body arrived, he sat down and was so glad to be doing so. Now he could rest his head on the window instead of taking a chance that when sleep came to get him, his head would drop and lean into the aisle. That could be the job of the lady, he thought. She could create the disturbance in the aisle, not him. As soon as Frenchy sat down, one of the two little girls said, Mama, when we gonna get there? The little girl’s mother looked around, checking people’s faces against the volume of her daughter’s voice. She put a red-painted finger up to her lips and told her daughter, Gilda-girl, hush, don’t nobody wanna hear you. Gilda-girl whined, But Mama, I","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：