There is already a long history of conversation between feminism and deconstruction, feminist theorists and Derrida or Derrideans. That conversation has been by turns fraught and constructive. While some of these interactions have occurred in queer feminism, to date little has been done to stage an engagement between deconstruction and transfeminism. Naysayers might think that transfeminism is too recent and too identitarian a discourse to meaningfully interact with Derrida’s legacy. On the other hand, perhaps Derrida’s work was too (...) embedded in second wave feminism, and in some cases implicit misogyny and transphobia, to meet transfeminism on its own playing field. And yet, I think both suspicions shortchange these discourses. In this article, I stage a conversation between Derrida and two writers working in the area of trans feminism: Paisley Currah and Julia Serano. I explore, in particular, how their conceptions of gender neutrality or gender pluralism are complementary and together change the so-called “question of woman,” from a philosophical and political perspective. (shrink)

In 2005, Charles Mills published “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology” in Hypatia: a withering critique of much of contemporary political philosophy and ethics. For Mills such work in philosophy failed to attend to the realities of social life and politics, and in remaining silent on actual issues of domination and oppression served an ideological role in supporting the interests of white bourgeois men. Around the time that Charles Mills launched his broadside against ideal theory, trans theorists had been fighting their own (...) battle against the abstraction of theory from the realities of trans lives and oppression. Vivian Namaste (2000) and Jay Prosser (1998) argued that contemporary gender theory failed to justice to the actuality of trans life, retreating instead to understanding trans life through literary archetypes and idealized radical figures. In this chapter I’ll compare Mills’ critique of ideal theory with the transfeminist critique of 1990s gender theory, arguing that they share much in common. Centrally, both critiques share an underlying commitment to theory needing to be grounded in the actuality of oppression and power relations. This common thread, I suggest, must continue to guide transfeminist thought and action: contra Marquis Bey (2022) transfeminist thought and praxis must continue to be about trans lives, about the oppression of trans women, and about ways of actually achieving liberation from our current dire position. (shrink)

What can be learnt from Paul B. Preciado’s ecological framing of trans* and migrant world-making in An Apartment on Uranus? How might trans* and migrant solidarities affirm life in the context of capitogenic climate catastrophe and what Françoise Vergès has named the ‘racial capitalocene’? Through these guiding questions, I connect recent calls to ‘decolonize trans* imaginaries’ with translocal hispanophone knowledges that reaffirm the plurality of gender/sexuality in las Amé ricas before the conquest by braiding together strands of Preciado’s writing with (...) Latin American decolonial transfeminists such as María Lugones and Gloria Anzaldúa, among others. Reviewing recent debates on how ‘border imperialism’ unevenly shapes and restricts trans* and migrant mobility, I address criticisms of Preciado’s analogies between trans* and migrant experiences, by considering how his writings on these themes offer an intersectional reflection on the multiple cracks of the nation-state, the fictions of race and regimes of binary gender to reveal the cracks of capitalism. (shrink)

Purpose of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of the androgyny presentation in current visual culture, in particular in fashion and its philosophical and culturological comprehension. Determination of the leading trends associated with the offset of gender stereotypes and denial of the established separation into the feminine and masculine beginnings is due to the attention to the latest theories, such as transfeminism. Theoretical basis is the works of contemporary authors who develop such concepts as "gender", "gender identity", "androgyne" (...) and move within the limits of the theories of transfeminism and transgenderism. The leading French thinker J. Baudrillard outlines philosophical measurements related to the justification of fashion. The interaction issues of the feminist theory, aesthetics of gender and androgyny, which are manifested in visual images, are presented in the writings of P. Auslander, R. Crepax. Transformation of the androgyny idea is considered in the works of B. Řiháková, F. J. Galarte. S. Stryker, T. Bettcher and J. Halberstam also address the problem of transgenderism and transfeminism in their writings. Originality is to highlight the main aspects associated with actualization of androgyny, its visual presentations in fashion, and the connections with contemporary theoretical discourse. A number of concepts related to the transformation of gender stereotypes have been identified. It was revealed that the logical continuation of changes in society, science and technical development is the actualization of androgyny as an individual’s freedom in self-presentation and self-identification. It was emphasized that during the last century androgyny also serves as the basis for forming new trends in theoretical discourse, in particular, transfeminism, as well as it finds many visual manifestations in fashion and fashion industry. Conclusions contain the results of the study that describes the role of androgyny in the context of today’s culture as a measurement of personal freedom, aimed at avoiding gender stereotypes and the usual dichotomy of masculinity and femininity, which manifests itself in contemporary visual practices. (shrink)

In "Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman," Katharine Jenkins argues that Sally Haslanger's focal analysis of gender problematically excludes nonpassing trans women from the category "woman." However, Jenkins does not explain why this exclusion contradicts the feminist aims of Haslanger's account. In this paper, I advance two arguments that suggest that a trans-inclusive account of "woman" is crucial to the aims of feminism. I claim that the aims of feminism are to understand and combat women's oppression. (...) First, I argue that denial of trans identities reinforces cultural ideas that perpetuate both transphobic violence and sexual violence against women. Consequently, a feminist account of "woman" that fails to respect trans identities indirectly contributes to the oppression of women. Second, I prove that nonpassing trans women are oppressed as women through the internalization of sexual objectification. I then conclude that an account of "woman" that excludes nonpassing trans women cannot successfully advance a complete understanding of women's oppression. (shrink)

When we carry out analyses of gender and embodiment, the paradigms we employ can determine our outcomes—often in exclusive ways. While many feminists have demonstrated that philosophical paradigms can contain masculine or normative bias, Vivane Namaste has criticized gender theorists in a similar way: By abstracting the question of “gender” from economic and social factors, theorists have neglected essential aspects of transgender experience. Building upon Namaste’s insight, I wish to examine four paradigms that have been employed to analyze gender and (...) embodiment: sex/gender, queer, phenomenology, and transfeminism. While doing so, I will indicate how the limitations of certain methods affect their analyses, especially in light of transgender experience, and how engaging two or more approaches together could offset the shortcomings of each taken alone. (shrink)

This book is a series of examinations of Black queer cis and transfeminity, a personal and loving homage to "Black femmes poetics of survival during the Trump era and beyond." Tinsley examines contemporary Black femme cultural production: the music of Kelsey Lu and Janelle Monáe; the visual work of Juliana Huxtable; Janet Mock's writing/directing of the TV show Pose, and the creations of Tourmaline; the fashion of Indya Moore; and (F)empower. She is interested in Black femme representations in film, popular (...) music, television, graphic novels, and poetry to conceptualize Black femme as figuration: that is, as a set of consciously, continually rescripted cultural and aesthetic practices that disrupt conventional meanings of race, gender, and sexuality. (shrink)

Este artículo propone una breve cartografía de los transfeminismos antiespecistas y posthumanistas en el contexto latinoamericano, enfocándose en algunas intervenciones teórico-prácticas de activistas en Argentina. Se busca mostrar que tales perspectivas emergieron como prácticas plurales, heterogéneas y localizadas orientadas a propiciar otras formas de vivir y habitar el mundo. Para ello, en primer lugar, se sitúan dichas reivindicaciones en el escenario de la irrupción de diversos (trans)feminismos latinoamericanos, poniendo énfasis en la importancia que han tenido las luchas travestis trans* en (...) el territorio argentino. En segundo lugar, se retoman algunos trabajos orientados a pensar las articulaciones entre cisheteronormatividad, especismo y colonialidad. En tercer lugar, en el marco del despliegue del Ni Una Menos en Argentina, se analizan algunas intervenciones activistas antiespecistas, travestis, anticapacitistas e indígenas, a la par que se rastrean los modos en que la reivindicación de lo animal emerge como lugar de resistencia en la heterogeneidad de estas reivindicaciones. Como conclusión, se propone que la noción de animalidad puede pensarse como punto de encuentro de insurrección política de diferentes voces transfeministas antiespecistas y posthumanistas. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se inscribe en el cruce que intersecta nodos centrales de la filosofía contemporánea en el llamado giro posthumano con las experiencias y producciones teóricas transfeministas. Consideramos que tal intersección se encuentra dada en la medida en que ambos términos suponen el resquebrajamiento de las lógicas identitarias en tanto políticas del deseo que promueven formas de sujeción andro-antropocéntricas y tanato-bio-políticas. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar en qué medida estos ámbitos se retroalimentan, pero enfoncándonos especialmente en dilucidar cuáles han sido (...) los aportes de los transfeminismos al pensamiento posthumanista. Concretamente, a través de abordajes metodológicos inscriptos en el horizonte de una genealogía crítica, analizaremos la implicación que las experiencias trans y el pensamiento feminista tuvieron para la postulación del dispositivo de sexualidad en Foucault y para el devenir-mujer en Deleuze y Guattari. Como resultado de tales análisis llegamos a la formulación de lo que denominamos filosóficas transfeministas en tanto prácticas de pensamiento y pensamiento en práctica que, en el ocaso de lo humano, buscan generar políticas del deseo para nuevos devenires simpoiéticos. (shrink)