A Feminist Post-transsexual Autoethnography

Julie Peters is a freelance researcher, consultant and sessional teaching academic, based in Melbourne, Australia. Her research is a culmination of her decades of activist and academic work promoting understanding of and social justice and equity for trans and gender diverse individuals.

List of Tables

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Foreword

1 The Gendered Subject in the Social World

1.1 Research Themes and Structure of the Work

1.2 Methodological Overview

1.3 Ethical Considerations

1.4 The Exegesis — Analysis and Interpretation

2 Critical Framing: Literature Review

2.1 Sociological Framing of Gendered Subject Formation

2.2 The Subject in the Social World

2.3 Competing/Intersecting Complexes of Power Constructing Gender

2.4 Trans and Gender-Diverse Health and Wellbeing

2.5 In Summary — A Complex Intersectional Multidisciplinary Framing

3 Autoethnography I — Peter

3.1 Ignorance is Bliss (1951-1958)

3.2 Realisations (1958-1962)

3.3 Secret Agency (1963-1965)

3.4 Puberty Rupture (1965)

3.5 My Dark Ages (1966-1971)

4 Autoethnography II — Ghost

4.2 Grasping for Stability (1971-1973)

4.2 Transgression and Identity Quest (mid-1973-1990)

5 Autoethnography III — Julie

5.1 Rebirth — Transition Work (1990-1992)

5.2 The Art of Becoming Myself in a Gendered World

6 My Accommodation to the Social World

6.1 The Interplay between Desire and Normative Gender Coercion

6.2 Agency Grounded in a Transformation of Subjectivity

6.3 Agency Grounded in Restructuring Power Relations with Institutions

6.4 Political Recognition and Agency

6.5 Gendered Identity

6.6 Psychological Health

6.7 Gendered Embodiment, Habitus and Physical Health

6.8 Relationships, Intimacy, Sexuality and Livable Life

6.9 Aesthetic Appreciation and Achievement

6.10 Becoming Myself

7 The Subject’s Explication of the Social World

7.1 Society Needs Coercion for Gender to be Performed ‘Naturally’

7.2 Individual, Ascribed Identity and Identity Politics

7.3 Disease Models of Gender Nonconformity

7.4 A Critique of Complexes of Power on Gender Nonconformity

7.5 The Radical Feminist Moral Critique of Transsexuality

8 Remaking the Social World

8.1 Strategies for Achieving the Necessities in Life

8.2 Strategies for a Healthy Life

8.2 Strategies for Achieving a Life with Agency

8.4 Strategies for Making One’s Life a Work of Art

8.5 The Realistic Possibility of Social Change

9 Synthesis and Conclusions

9.1 A Non-Pathological Schema on the Operation of Gender

9.2 Ensuing and Post-Doctoral Research Questions

9.3 The Major Themes Considered

Index