Bio/logics

K E Y W O R D S

Abstract This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, ‘‘Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a TwentyFirst-Century Transgender Studies,’’ revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender studies; some offer overviews of well-known methodologies and demonstrate their applicability within transgender studies; some suggest how transgender issues play out in various fields; and some map the productive tensions between trans studies and other interdisciplines.

Abjection ROBERT PHILLIPS

Abjection refers to the vague sense of horror that permeates the boundary between the self and the other. In a broader sense, the term refers to the process by which identificatory regimes exclude subjects that they render unintelligible or beyond classification. As such, the abjection of others serves to maintain or reinforce boundaries that are threatened. This term can be used to think of the instability of gendered and/or sexed bodies —especially those occupied by transgender individuals —which are at the center of academic debates surrounding queer, feminist, and trans subjectivity. Drawing on a psychoanalytic reading of subjective identity as a defensive construction and on the French literary obsession with monsters, psychoanalyst and linguist Julia Kristeva develops the term abjection in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982).

TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly * Volume 1, Numbers 1–2 * May 2014 ª 2014 Duke University Press

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Bio/logics SARI M. VAN ANDERS

Biologism is the belief that biological factors are both deterministic to and the essence of specific human phenomena, including identity categories like race/ ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender/sex (a useful term for simultaneously denoting physiological and social processes). However, there are multiple forms of biologism (van Anders, Caverly, and Johns, forthcoming), especially related to understandings of gender/sex and trans in legal spheres (Allen 2007–8; Cruz 2010; Stirnitzke 2011). I call these ‘‘bio/logics’’ (B/L): implicit and/or explicit reasoning guides informed by features thought to be natural, corporeal, evolved, and material (e.g., sex over gender). B/L en masse locate gender/sex in one true natural form that can only be authenticated by others. Identifying different types of B/L highlights the cultural situatedness of even biologic sex (Cruz 2010; Kessler 1998; Fausto-Sterling 2000). Moreover, delineating B/L’s heterogeneous technologies highlights how they can differentially inform ideas, rules, and laws in ways that have major implications for inclusionary and exclusionary practices around gender/sex and trans. Interior bio/logics (iB/L) refer to a hierarchy in which the most essential features of gender/sex are seen to be the most biologic, and the most biologic are the most interior: the most deeply embedded in the body and the least changeable or malleable. For example, though hair, genes, hormones, nails, gonads, and genitals are all corporeal, natural, and material, iB/L privilege genes as the most interior, followed by gonads over genitals, and hormones over hair or nails. iB/L remain a major foundation for legal definitions of gender/sex within case law (van Anders, Caverly, and Johns, forthcoming). Because of the intransigence of genes (an iB/L trump), iB/L make little room for legal recognition of gender/sex transitions. Surgical alteration of genitals only serves to reinforce iB/L, in that genitals are not a definitive marker of gender/sex precisely because they can be altered. Newborn bio/logics (nB/L) exteriorize gender/sex in a corporeal, displayable body with medical authority naturalizing sex and therefore surgicomedical authority renaturalizing sex. Specifically, a medical professional’s cursory genital observation instantiates gender/sex at birth, and nB/L reinstantiate gender/sex at transition by recapitulating the newborn process, necessitating surgical modification of genitals for the updated genital observation. With nB/L,

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only genital features observable in newborns are allowed to be sex markers, thus invalidating the use of nonbiologic but material sex demarcations that might be used in adulthood. nB/L undergird the reliance on surgico-medical authority for legal requirements to change gender/sex designations on US birth certificates over features like self-identification, lived experiences, counseling, or even hormone therapy (Currah and Moore 2009; Greenberg 2000; Markowitz 2008; Spade 2008; van Anders, Caverly, and Johns, forthcoming) because these latter features cannot be made visible in newborns via cursory visual examinations (Kessler and McKenna, 1978). The use of contemporary sex-related technologies reinforce nB/ L: they are employed in newborns only to resolve nondefinitive genital observations or to infer ‘‘true’’ gender/sex for surgical ‘‘correction’’ (Dreger 1998; Fausto-Sterling 2000; Kessler 1998). Trace bio/logics (tB/L) reflect a biologic trajectory whereby corporeal features that influence later sex development are privileged as determinants of gender/sex. In contrast to iB/L, where the most interior features are the most deterministic of gender/sex, tB/L denote gender/sex starting points as the most definitive. Gonads and genitals are thought to be immutably present regardless of removal or absence, and the ‘‘trace’’ might operate in several ways. It might be material, as with hormones: once-gonads (ovaries; testes) release hormones in utero and postnatally in ways that affect sex/ual development. Or the trace might be heteronormatively conceptual, as with genitals: born-penises are meant to penetrate, born-vaginas to be penetrated (and born-vulvas to be ignored). tB/L underlie some current case law regarding legal definitions of gender/sex, as the once-presence of biologic sex markers like gonads, genitals, or uteruses at an early point is privileged over the current presence or absence of these same markers (van Anders, Caverly, and Johns, forthcoming).

Sari M. van Anders is an assistant professor of psychology and women’s studies and affiliate faculty in neuroscience, reproductive sciences, and science, technology, and society at the University of Michigan. Recent works include ‘‘Beyond Masculinity: Testosterone, Gender/Sex, and Human Social Behavior in a Comparative Context’’ (Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, August 2013) and ‘‘Nomenclature and Knowledge-Culture; or, We Don’t Call Semen ‘Penile Mucus’’’ (Psychology and Sexuality, forthcoming).

References Allen, J. 2007–8. ‘‘Quest for Acceptance: The Real ID Act and the Need for Comprehensive Gender Recognition Legislation in the United States.’’ Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 14, no. 2: 169–99.

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Cruz, David B. 2010. ‘‘Getting Sex ‘Right’: Heteronormativity and Biologism in Trans and Intersex Marriage Litigation and Scholarship.’’ Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy 18, no. 1: 203–22. Currah, Paisley, and Lisa J. Moore. 2009. ‘‘ ‘We Won’t Know Who You Are’: Contesting Sex Designations in New York City Birth Certificates.’’ Hypatia 24, no. 3: 113–35. Dreger, Alice D. 1998 Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books. Greenberg, Julie, A. 2000. ‘‘When Is a Man a Man, and When Is a Woman a Woman?’’ Florida Law Review 52, no. 4: 745–68. Kessler, Suzanne J. 1998. Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kessler, Suzanne J., and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. New York: Wiley. Markowitz, Stephanie. 2008. ‘‘Note: Change of Sex Designation on Transsexuals’ Birth Certificates: Public Policy and Equal Protection.’’ Cardozo Journal of Law and Gender 14: 705–30. Spade, Dean. 2008. ‘‘Documenting Gender.’’ Hastings Law Journal 59, no. 1: 731–842. Stirnitzke, Audrey C. 2011. ‘‘Transsexuality, Marriage, and the Myth of True Sex.’’ Arizona Law Review 53, no. 1: 285–320. van Anders, Sari M., Nicholas L. Caverly, and Michelle M. Johns. Forthcoming. ‘‘Newborn Bio/ Logics and Legal Definitions of Gender/Sex for US State Documents.’’ Feminism and Psychology. DOI 10.1215/23289252-2399524

Biometrics NICHOLAS L. CLARKSON

The events of September 11, 2001, offered a rationale for expanding and legitimizing surveillance practices already in use or under development in the United States. Biometrics —technologies that measure the body, often with the intent of identifying individuals1 —featured significantly in that expansion. While fullbody scanners at airport security checkpoints have been the most prominent face of this expansion for many US residents, other biometric technologies, such as fingerprint scans, iris and retinal scans, facial and hand geometry analyzers, and gait signature analysis, among others, also feature in security discussions and practices. Proponents of these technologies often argue that objective computer