Whose chosenness counts? The always-already racialized discourse of trans – response to Rogers Brubaker

The Jenner/Dolezal moment, while it appears to provide a neat comparative experiment in gender and racial classifications, is itself the artefact of an invisible, already racialized gender system. If we take this question at the heart of Rogers Brubaker’s provocative new book on its own terms, we find, like Brubaker, that very different rules, and indeed, different institutional architectures, govern the two categorical systems. Closer inspection reveals the ways claims to gender legitimacy are always strained through the mesh of racial legitimacy. What is more, the social forces at work in trans “recognition” politics may underwrite some of the most pernicious forms of racialized violence in the contemporary United States.     

Is trans-race possible in an era of unsettled identities?

Brubaker’s book Trans is an important intervention in debates about sexual/gender and racial/ethnic identities in a period of generalized identity unsettlement. It challenges us to think precisely about identities and social categories. Thinking with trans proves to be intellectually productive, showing us the similarities and differences between transgender and trans-race. This contribution to the book symposium raises questions about the specificity of Indigenous identities framed by settler-colonial relations. It also discusses transgender in a global context where non-Western identities have been challenged, and where non-Western protagonists have responded to cultural liberalization at times with forms of gender and sexual repression.     

The Dolezal affair: race,gender, and the micropolitics of identity

ABSTRACT

This article treats the pairing of “transgender” and “transracial” in the intertwined discussion of Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal as an intellectual opportunity rather than a political provocation. I situate the Dolezal affair in the context of the massive destabilization of long taken-for-granted categorical frameworks, which has significantly enlarged the scope for choice and self-fashioning in the domains of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and sexuality. Anxieties about opportunistic, exploitative, or fraudulent identity claims have generated efforts to “police” unorthodox claims – as well as efforts to defend such claims against policing – in the name of authentic, objective, and unchosen identities. Instead of a shift from given to chosen identities, as posited by theories of reflexive modernity, we see a sharpened tension between idioms of choice, autonomy, subjectivity, and self-fashioning on the one hand and idioms of givenness, essence, objectivity, and nature on the other.     

The “Normalization” of Intersex Bodies and “Othering” of Intersex Identities in Australia

Once described as hermaphrodites and later as intersex people, individuals born with intersex variations are routinely subject to so-called “normalizing” medical interventions, often in childhood. Opposition to such practices has been met by attempts to discredit critics and reasserted clinical authority over the bodies of women and men with “disorders of sex development.” However, claims of clinical consensus have been selectively constructed and applied and lack evidence. Limited transparency and lack of access to justice have helped to perpetuate forced interventions. At the same time, associated with the diffusion of distinct concepts of sex and gender, intersex has been constructed as a third legal sex classification, accompanied by pious hopes and unwarranted expectations of consequences. The existence of intersex has also been instrumentalized for the benefit of other, intersecting, populations. The creation of gender categories associated with intersex bodies has created profound risks: a paradoxically narrowed and normative gender binary, maintenance of medical authority over the bodies of “disordered” females and males, and claims that transgressions of social roles ascribed to a third gender are deceptive. Claims that medicalization saves intersex people from “othering,” or that legal othering saves intersex people from medicalization, are contradictory and empty rhetoric. In practice, intersex bodies remain “normalized” or eliminated by medicine, while society and the law “others” intersex identities. That is, medicine constructs intersex bodies as either female or male, while law and society construct intersex identities as neither female nor male. Australian attempts at reforms to recognize the rights of intersex people have either failed to adequately comprehend the population affected or lacked implementation. An emerging human rights consensus demands an end to social prejudice, stigma, and forced medical interventions, focusing on the right to bodily integrity and principles of self-determination.     

Follow the money: international donors,external homelands and their effect on Romani media and advocacy

ABSTRACT

While Roma are both Europe’s largest minority, there is no “homeland” state that claims to guard their interest. The lack of “an external national homeland” [Brubaker, R. 1996. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] to watchdog and safeguard their rights has a particular effect on how Roma engage as political actors and subjects. International donors/foundations have assumed the role of “external homeland”. This article explores the effect that donors’ funding priorities have on Romani advocacy – specifically Romani journalism. Drawing upon multi-sited fieldwork in five countries, extensive document analysis, and interviews, Idemonstrate that the change in Romani media content over the past two decades reflects the shift in funders’ priorities, particularly in relation to the European project. “The Roma” become a tool for donors and European institutions to build a “European” identity while Romani-led advocacy becomes increasingly marganilized.     

Possibility,legitimacy, and the new ontologies of choice: a comment on Brubaker

In Trans, Rogers Brubaker makes a major argument about the contentious politics of the contemporary self. In this commentary, I first lay out what is think is the solidity of the book’s contrasting tableau of the functioning of race and gender in American society and beyond. I then point to Brubaker’s bundling together of issues of legitimacy and issues of ontology and begin to imagine what alternative analyses can come out of their unbundling – suggesting that race and gender are perhaps more analogous social formations than Trans argues. Finally, I bring attention to the role of ontological hierarchy in the formulation and policing of identity claims and conclude that the return of biology and the new empire of choice may not be two parallel, independent developments but one and the same process. Theoretically, I amplify one of the book’s epistemological contributions by calling for a reflexive turn in social-constructionist thought.     

Determinants of ethnic identification in the USSR: The soviet Jewish case

This article critically examines the generation of discourses on Greek identity following an episode that took place in northern Greece (2000/2003) when an Albanian student was elected flag-carrier in a commemorative parade. Three versions of Greek identity emerged in this context: the first was based on civic understandings of identity, promoting the current Europeanist project of citizenship as belonging. The second version drew upon the notion of “culture” as an all-encompassing concept to promote ideas of Greek cultural “purity” that have roots in Greek ethnogenesis. The third version adopted an understanding of the “nation” in terms of racial affiliation, transforming it thus into a natural category. The argument put forward is that in the context of the 2000/2003 episode (a) Greek self-perceptions are affected by the problematic economic and cultural position of Greece within Europe and (b) Greek discourses of identity are a form of resistance to processes of Europeanization that threaten traditional “imagined communities” embedded in history.     

Race and racism: Towards a global future

There is a deepening and worldwide contradiction in the meaning and structure of race and racism. The age of empire is over; apartheid and Jim Crow have ended; a significant consensus exists that the concept of race lacks an objective basis; and yet the concept persists, as idea, as practice, as identity, and as social structure. This suggests that the global racial situation remains not only volatile but also seriously undertheorized. Five key racial problems of the twenty-first century are stressed: (1)Nonracialism vs. Race Consciousness; (2)Racial Genomics; (3)The Nation and its Peoples; (4)Race/Gender/Class “Intersectionality”; and (5) Empire, Race, and Neoconservatism. A radical pragmatist approach is proposed, stressing the ineluctable link between racialized experience and racialized social structure. This argument, that racial hegemony has not been secured, draws on the DuBoisian legacy as well as racial formation theory. Because racial rule is essential to rule itself, these contradictions are destined to deepen, not diminish.     

Genetic-gonadal-genitals sex (3G-sex) and the misconception of brain and gender,or, why 3G-males and 3G-females have intersex brain and intersex gender

The categorization of individuals as “male” or “female” is based on chromosome complement and gonadal and genital phenotype. This combined genetic-gonadal-genitals sex, here referred to as 3G-sex, is internally consistent in ~99% of humans (i.e., one has either the “female” form at all levels, or the “male” form at all levels). About 1% of the human population is identified as “intersex” because of either having an intermediate form at one or more levels, or having the “male” form at some levels and the “female” form at other levels. These two types of “intersex” reflect the facts, respectively, that the different levels of 3G-sex are not completely dimorphic nor perfectly consistent. Using 3G-sex as a model to understand sex differences in other domains (e.g., brain, behavior) leads to the erroneous assumption that sex differences in these other domains are also highly dimorphic and highly consistent. But parallel lines of research have led to the conclusion that sex differences in the brain and in behavior, cognition, personality, and other gender characteristics are for the most part not dimorphic and not internally consistent (i.e., having one brain/gender characteristic with the “male” form is not a reliable predictor for the form of other brain/gender characteristics). Therefore although only ~1% percent of humans are 3G-“intersex”, when it comes to brain and gender, we all have an intersex gender (i.e., an array of masculine and feminine traits) and an intersex brain (a mosaic of “male” and “female” brain characteristics).     

Risky cultures to risky genes: The racialised discursive construction of south Asian genetic diabetes risk

Type 2 diabetes within UK South Asian populations has increasingly become the focus of health science discourse. Growing rates across the globe have been a public health concern for a number of decades. Diabetes discourse has focused on lifestyle and a generalized idea of “cultural” factors as contributory factors. These have become part of what I identify as a South Asian diabetes “risk-package.” This risk formulation is extended to an additional genetic discourse which generates new causal explanations for this heightened “risk.” South Asian groups are already the subject of discursive, racialized risk constructions, which positions them as active owners of “risky culture.” The mobilization of genetic arguments repositions them as additionally passive owners of “risky genes.” I argue that the use of racial categories in genetic diabetes science, despite the relative uncertainty and ambiguity of scientific knowledge claims, is problematic and requires critical re-situating.     

Afropolitan projects: African immigrant identities and solidarities in the United States

This article explores how Africans born or raised in the United States employ ethnicity to understand their racial and cultural identities. I argue that African immigrants engage positive narratives about Africa along with their experiences of anti-black racism to articulate identities as “Africans of the world”. I call this articulation of identity Afropolitan projects. The Afropolitan as an ethnicity is not meant to shield Africans from anti-black racism, but instead helps articulate a particular relationship to this form of inequality. The following analysis derives from a qualitative case study of a voluntary association comprising Ghanaians primarily raised in the United States. I find that the group’s identity is as much about being black, African, and American as it is about being middle-class, Christian, and heterosexual. Through their Afropolitan projects, this group emphasizes solidarities with a global middle-class heterosexual patriarchy while foreclosing solidarities with working class, queer, and other people of colour.     

How Sex Selection Undermines Reproductive Autonomy

Non-medical sex selection is premised on the notion that the sexes are not interchangeable. Studies of individuals who undergo sex selection for non-medical reasons, or who have a preference for a son or daughter, show that they assume their child will conform to the stereotypical roles and norms associated with their sex. However, the evidence currently available has not succeeded in showing that the gender traits and inclinations sought are caused by a “male brain” or a “female brain”. Therefore, as far as we know, there is no biological reason why parents cannot have the kind of parenting experience they seek with a child of any sex. Yet gender essentialism, a set of unfounded assumptions about the sexes which pervade society and underpin sexism, prevents parents from realising this freedom. In other words, unfounded assumptions about gender constrain not only a child’s autonomy, but also the parent’s. To date, reproductive autonomy in relation to sex selection has predominantly been regarded merely as the freedom to choose the sex of one’s child. This paper points to at least two interpretations of reproductive autonomy and argues that sex selection, by being premised on gender essentialism and/or the social pressure on parents to ensure their children conform to gender norms, undermines reproductive autonomy on both accounts.     

‘I'm black and I'll always be that way’: black identities through the lens of interracial intimacy

Early research on black racial identity development cautioned that close relationships with whites signalled an alienation from blackness and a subconscious acceptance that ‘white is right’. These assumptions mirrored popular media and political discourse suggesting that romantic relationships outside of one's racial group reflect a devalued or inauthentic racial self. More recent scholarly research presents a mixed picture about the role of interracial intimacy on black racial identities. Using in-depth qualitative narratives with forty-two interracially partnered African Americans, this article explores whether interracial intimacy recasts the meaning or intensity of black racial identities. Findings affirm that black racial identities are heterogeneous – some partners experienced blackness as a central, fundamental identity while others possessed ambivalent attachments to blackness. Across these experiences, however, adult interracial intimacy had at most an incremental influence on racial identity. Interracial contact during adolescence was far more influential because it allowed blacks to develop dimensions of white cultural identity.     

Introduction: Who's at the bottom? Examining claims about racial hierarchy

Why do claims about racial hierarchy matter? The question whether some groups are worse off than others is highly pertinent at a time when there is growing recognition of multiple forms of racisms and racial oppression. It is widely accepted that racial hierarchies are still with us today, and this concept is peppered throughout writings on “race” and racisms, but, what, exactly, are racial hierarchies, how do racial hierarchies continue to matter, and in what ways do they operate? This special issue, which focuses on the USA and Britain, also addresses the following questions: Does the concept of racial hierarchy aid us in illuminating racial inequalities and the differential experiences of groups in Western multi-ethnic societies such as the USA and Britain? What sorts of criteria are used in arguments about the place of groups along racial hierarchies? What are the political implications of claims made about racial hierarchies?     

Gender and ethnic identity among second-generation Indo-Caribbeans

This article discusses second-generation Indo-Caribbean (West Indian of Indian descent) teenagers’ ethnic identities, through a look at their taste preferences and self assertions of identity. Both Indo-Caribbean young men and women draw from multiple influences on their identities. In terms of tastes in clothing and movies, however, girls are more interested in things Indian, and in “Indian culture”. Boys, on the other hand, choose to distance themselves from an Indian identity. Three factors explain these gender differences in choices about ethnic identity: (1) different media images for South Asian men and women; (2) a school context lending different levels of peer symbolic status to perceived Indian boys and girls; and (3) a gendered process of migration by which women maintain stronger cultural roots in the new country. The findings in this article point to the need to pay attention to gender differences when considering ethnic incorporation.     

Racialized national identity construction in the ancestral homeland: Japanese American migrants in Japan

This article examines Japanese Americans in Japan to illuminate how ‘Japanese American’ – an ethnic minority identity in the US – is reconstructed in Japan as a racialized national identity. Based on fifty interviews with American citizens of Japanese ancestry conducted between 2004 and 2007, I demonstrate how interactions with Japanese in Japan shape Japanese Americans’ racial and national understandings of themselves. After laying out a theoretical framework for understanding the shifting intersection of race, ethnicity, and nationality, I explore the interactive process of racial categorization and ethnic identity assertion for Japanese American transnationals in Japan. This process leads to what I call racialized national identities – the intersection of racial and national identities in an international context – and suggests that US racial minority identities are constructed not only within the US, but abroad as well.     

Sex Cells: Gender and the Language of Bacterial Genetics

Between 1946 and 1960, a new phenomenon emerged in the field of bacteriology. “Bacterial sex,” as it was called, revolutionized the study of genetics, largely by making available a whole new class of cheap, fast-growing, and easily manipulated organisms. But what was “bacterial sex?” How could single-celled organisms have “sex” or even be sexually differentiated? The technical language used in the scientific press – the public and inalienable face of 20th century science – to describe this apparently neuter organism was explicit: the cells “copulated,” had “intimate contract,” “conjugal unions,” and engaged in “ménage ã trois” relationships. And yet, to describe bacteria as sexually reproducing organisms, the definition of sex itself had to change. Despite manifold contradictions and the availability of alternative language, the notion of sexually active (even promiscuous) single-celled organisms has persisted, even into contemporary textbooks on cell biology and genetics. In this paper I examine the ways in which bacteria were brought into the genetic fold, sexualized, and given gender; I also consider the issues underlying the durability of “bacterial sex.”     

Reconstructing race and gender in American cosmetic surgery

While scholars have examined how cosmetic surgery can reinforce gender norms, the development of racially specific standards is a more recent phenomenon that has received less scrutiny. This article examines how cosmetic surgeons conceptualize race and its intersection with gender. Through analysis of eighty surgeon-authored procedural guides, I find that surgeons engage in what I term the biological construction of social difference, mixing discourses of biology and physical difference with social and cultural discourses to describe patient beauty ideals. Surgeons develop an expert discourse on race and gender that is simultaneously about difference and beauty. The development of “ethnic” specific cosmetic surgery standards enshrines a “white” default referent even as it opens the door to other configurations of physical appearance. Cosmetic surgery implies that physical markers of race and gender are mutable – literally, via the surgeon’s scalpel – even as it relies on and reinforces established notions of racial difference.