Transgender Jurisprudence

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This book moves beyond liberal law reform and is the first to interrogate the transgender/law relation in a sustained and critical manner. Its concern is to map contemporary legal regulation of transgender bodies within a common law tradition. The specific focus is upon ideas of transgender that define the terms of this regime. The book deals with the structure, history and institutions of production of this lexicon. In doing so, the book makes the reader more aware of the legal enterprise and its relationship with medical science. This book, through an analysis and critique of the transgender/law relation, also considers the excessive work law requires the transgender body to do in furtherance of much wider regulatory strategies around sexual practice and gender performance. That is to say, it demonstrates the ways in which transgender jurisprudence is an important site for wider sexual and gender politics. In this regard, the book compliments/challenges feminist and gay and lesbian legal theory and practice. Finally, the book informs those who engage with the law, within the academy or beyond, of the parameters of the terms of that intervention and of its limitations and possibilities.

E-Book Content

TRANSGENDER JURISPRUDENCE Dysphoric Bodies of Law CP Cavendish Publishing Limited London • Sydney TRANSGENDER JURISPRUDENCE Dysphoric Bodies of Law Andrew N Sharpe Senior Lecturer in Law, Department of Law Macquarie University CP Cavendish Publishing Limited London • Sydney First published in Great Britain 2002 by Cavendish Publishing Limited, The Glass House, Wharton Street, London WC1X 9PX, United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0)20 7278 8000 Facsimile: Email: [email protected] Website: www.cavendishpublishing.com +44 (0)20 7278 8080 © Sharpe, Andrew N 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE, UK, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Transgender Jurisprudence: dysphoric bodies of law 1 Sociological jurisprudence 2 Transsexuals – Legal status, laws, etc I Title 346'013 ISBN 1 85941 666 7 Printed and bound in Great Britain [MC Escher’s ‘Metamorphosis III’ © 2001 Cordon BV – Baarn – Holland. All rights reserved.] I would like to dedicate this book to my mother, Susan Winifred O’Hagan and my father, Neville Tomlinson Sharpe. With love and gratitude. FOREWORD It is de rigueur for law to draw clear lines between people so that some are ‘in’ while others are ‘not in’. In/out, norm/other: dualistic thought has been naturalised through language and myriad discourses. Male and female is one such dualism, superficially simple, but in fact highly complex. Law both reflects and reifies the ostensible simplicity through countless legislative and adjudicative sites. Heterosexuality is the normative sexual transparency which overlays the sexed pairing, while homosexuality complicates it. Andrew Sharpe’s trailblazing study of transgender jurisprudence goes further, putting paid, once and for all, to a two dimensional, anatomical characterisation of sex. The word ‘trailblazing’ is not hyperbolic in this case because Transgender Jurisprudence is the first full length, scholarly study on the topic. Transgenderism itself is not