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Outline

(Re)making sex: A praxiography of the gender clinic

2017, Feminist Theory

https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700117700051

Abstract

This article traces the multiple enactments of sex in clinical practices of transgender medicine to argue against the presumed singularity of 'transexuality'. Using autoethnography to analyse my own experience as a trans patient, I describe my clinical encounters with doctors, psychiatrists and surgeons in order to theorise sex as multiple. Following recent developments in science and technology studies (STS) that advance the work of Judith Butler on sex as performatively reproduced, I use a praxiographic approach to argue that treatment practices produce particular iterations of what sex (and transexuality) 'is' and how these processes limit and foreclose other trans possibilities. I consider the ethical, political and material-discursive implications of treatment practices and offer a series of reflections about the effects and effectiveness of current clinical practices and the possibilities for intervening in such processes in order that, following Annemarie Mol, we might (re)make sex (and transexuality) differently. [see jrlatham.com/publications]

Key takeaways
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  1. The article critiques the singularity of 'transexuality' within transgender medical practices.
  2. Latham employs autoethnography to reflect on personal clinical experiences as a trans patient.
  3. Drawing from science and technology studies (STS), it theorizes sex as multiple and performatively reproduced.
  4. Treatment practices shape limited understandings of sex and transexuality, foreclosing alternative trans possibilities.
  5. The work suggests ethical and political interventions to (re)make sex and transexuality differently.