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Major Issues In Transfeminism Transfeminism in relation to trans identities

Explanatory models of trans identity are important because like any subject, politics and study of trans depend on certain assumptions even if they are not explicitly stated. The models that are used to explain trans identities and experiences are often related to the authors ontological assumptions about body, gender, sex and politics. In other words, different ontological grounds yield to different and competing claims about trans people. There are two major explanations of trans identity that transfeminists appeal to in mainstream trans activism and in academia. These explanations can be covered under two main frameworks that roughly correspond to social and medical models of trans identity. Talia Bettcher (2014) distinguishes these models as beyond-the-binary framework and wrong body narrative in her article Trapped In The Wrong Theory.

Social model (beyond the binary framework) takes both sex and gender as social constructions and emphasize trans peoples subjectivity concerning the right to express their gender in any way they choose. Sandy Stone, Leslie Feinberg, Judith Butler are some of prominent academics who contributed to this model.

medical model supposes a difference between biological sex and gender identity that is often called gender dysphoria, and treats this issue through medical intervention. Although medical model have been criticised for pathologizing transexuality, others have argued that transexuality might be a biological condition of being born in the wrong body. Although medical model emerged within medical institutions, trans activists and academics have appealed to this model and reframed it in politically useful ways.

Academic articulations of what is called transfeminism started with The Transfeminist Manifesto written by Emi Koyoma (2001) in which trans identities are largely formulated according to social beyond the binary model. However, while arguing that sex and gender are both socially constructed and social institutions such as medicine, religion or law are oppressive due to their social power in defining one’s social identity, Koyomo also suggests that a politics of purity that excludes and punished trans (and non-trans) women’s expression of their gender identities is also oppressive to women. In this vein, Koyoma articulates transfeminism as the grounds for political coalition among feminists that take class, race, sexuality and other differences seriously while at the same time working toward goal of women’s liberation.

On the other hand, Julia Serano articulates a transfeminism that is more closely aligned with the wrong body model (Serano, 2007) in her book The Whipping Girl. In this account, Serano argues for the notion of subconscious sex which may or may not be in alignment with one’s biological sex, and that society bestows privileges upon those who are in alignment. Echoing Jay Prosser's critique of Butler(1995), she articulates the troubling implications of seeing trans people as pure social constructs, and considers how, from a materialist view point, biology may also play a role in gendered behaviour. Serano argues that critiquing feminine behaviour as being anti-feminist itself is anti-feminist because femininity is always degraded in the society. Thus her perspective illuminates the oppression trans people and women experience due to expression of femininity. However, she leaves little room for critiquing gendered behaviour that could indeed be problematic for women.

In the light of these debates, it is clear that Transfeminism is hardly a unified project. More appropriately transfeminism is the site within which activists and academics try to imagine the relations among gender, sex, sexuality and embodiment in ways that promote trans peoples and women’s liberation together, in ways that take their differences seriously. These differences, as experienced by real people, are not solely about gender or sex; they are at the time nationality, class, race and ability differences as they affect women’s lives. Given that these differences play out in different social settings in different ways, and constitute different subjectivities and life chances (according to laws of a specific country, religion, or access to healthcare, community, and safety) recent articulations of transfeminism use the / sign to signify the complicated nature of such explorations. Therefore, rather than agreeing on one theory or framework for understanding what gender or sexuality is, trans/feminisms work within the productive tensions that already exists within such relations, to explore how those relations can be reimagined in politically useful ways.