Stories without a "once upon a time": the (un)certainties of transsexuality

Abstract

From fragments of life stories of (transsexual) people, I try to explain the diversity of their livings, unique experiences, ways of making sense of the process of breaking the gender norms and sexuality. I analyze the inadequacy of medical-legal discourse, anchored in an essencialized truth on the sexualized body, to capture the possibilities of experiences in transsexuality. I argue that the destabilizing potential of transsexuality lies in withdrawing from the reductionist view, which considerss transsexuals as misguided people trapped in a body whose intelligibility would depend solely upon reassignment surgery.

Transsexuality; Gender; Sexuality; Reassignment