Identities claimed , identi - ties assigned : Transgender subjectivities in Raymond ’ s The Transsexual Empire and Stone ’ s The Empire Strikes Back SOCIAL SCIENCES

Charles Syms In attempts to understand gender, whether by feminist scholars, sociologists, or biologists, the very identities through which transgender individuals situate their lives become continual sites of dispute. Through investigating the way in which various spaces in the academy and professional world employ power hierarchies to strip transgender people of agency in identity, it is possible to not only highlight the injustice but also to encourage change. With examples from sociology, biology and medicine, law, feminist theory, popular culture and the media, this essay addresses the ways in which transgender subjectivities are regulated by supposed authorities without consideration of transgender perspectives. Particularly concerned with the tensions between feminist and queer theory, this essay analyzes how arguments that essentialize gender are at once employed and denied in an attempt to establish a monolithic, exclusive category of “women.” By exploring the various spaces that occupy the realm of transgender identity, from pre-surgical transsexuals to genderqueer individuals, this essay outlines the ways in which external power structures have been used to subjugate and categorize transgender bodies and provides suggestions for how transgender subjectivity can be reclaimed by transpositive activists.