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To the delight of some and the horror of others, the world is alive with transgressive social movements-fractious, colorful, awkward, provocative, and as important as ever. The streets are full of dissent and questioning, principles said to be part of the character and social fabric of the United States. In considering these movements, lurching toward challenge and change, we find ourselves wondering, what role does psychoanalysis play? Can it play a role? Does it desire to play a role?
Such questions have diverse answers, implications, and centers of gravity. We approach them from the perspective of the emergent transgender movement.
Transgender: once a specific term, now grown to embrace and hold space for all who find something slippery or incongruent about regarding birth-assigned gender as the definitive, indisputable, or “correct” expression of their true gender. Under the vernacular umbrella, “trans,” one finds those who the medical community identifies as transsexuals, along with those who self-identify as gender-queer.
It is impossible to reduce all of the potential the terms hold into a satisfying sound bite. The terms' very resistance to being oversimplified mirrors the ways the transgender movement questions and subverts rigid, linear ideas about development and reified concepts of gender as a strict binary.
Trans issues have moved out of the shadows and into our collective face. The evidence is in the news media (recent Washington Post headlines about empowered trans protests against police inaction in the face of the latest round of brutal attacks), popular culture (this summer's hit reality show, The Glee Project, had an African American teen who does drag), academic discourse, and talking points from the Republican presidential candidate race. And, of course, the fight for trans issues to be heard and understood continues in the streets, likely in your neighborhood-maybe even in your office-whether you are aware of it or not.
One way to appreciate our cur