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Tudor, Alyosxa (2019) 'Im/Possibilities of Refusing and Choosing Gender.' Feminist Theory, 20 (4). pp. 361-380.

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Abstract

Looking from a critical race perspective at Wittig’s lesbian, in this article, I draw two conclusions. First, I suggest that it is actually trans exclusionary lesbians' own transphobia that makes them cis-gendered. And second, it becomes clear that the politicisation of choosing and refusing gender needs to acknowledge racism’s shaping role in the construction of gender. My approach does not only intervene in transphobic feminisms that are obsessed with simplistic understandings of sexual violence, but also questions rigid cis/trans binaries and rejects accounts of trans/gender that ignore the role of racialisation for the emergence of gender. The main question that I address is how to conceptualise the complex im/possibilities of refusing and choosing in relation to gender? It is my aim to connect seemingly disparate knowledge productions on genderqueer, trans and other ‘impossible’ genders and sexualities. I am particularly interested in a phenomenon that can be described as ‘lesbian haunting’: the ambivalences one will find in tracing lesbian theory in relation to transing gender. With this, it is my attempt to rethink lesbian, queer and trans feminist approaches on violence, and investigate the role of sexual violence within broader concepts of violence. More specifically, in order to understand both ‘gender’ and ‘transing gender’ as always already racialised, my approach builds on theories that identify ‘ungendering’ as an effect of normative racial violence (e.g. Spillers 1987, Lewis 2017, Snorton 2017).

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: critical race theory; ungendering; sexual violence feminism; lesbian theory; transgender studies; feminist transphobia; transfeminism; gender non-binary; queer theory; Monique Wittig;
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > Interdisciplinary Studies > Centre for Gender Studies
ISSN: 14647001
Copyright Statement: © 2019 The Author(s). This is the version of the article accepted for publication in Feminist Theory published by SAGE: https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700119870640
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700119870640
Date Deposited: 08 Feb 2019 14:29
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/30122
Related URLs: https://uk.sage ... feminist-theory (Publisher URL)

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