Co-opting the Body of the Identified Other: The Hysterization of Otherness in Relation to Self.

Abstract

As transsexual and transgender identity and experience have emerged from the outer boundaries of sexual identity and have become part of mainstream awareness of the full potential for sexual self-definition, cultural response has ranged widely. Responses include acceptance and approval; moderate levels of anxiety concerning perceptions of gender, sexual identity, and sex; obsessive fascination with the otherness, the not-me-ness of those identifying as transsexual or transgender; the desire of non-trans-people to co-opt the experience of trans-people without personal risk; alarm at the reification of gender roles in what some people hoped would be a non-gender-defined, gender-neutral future. And more.