Negotiating the Borders of the Gender Regime

1. Why did you chose this topic?

My book shows how struggles over legal gender recognition and trans-related healthcare in the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1960s to 2014 contributed to producing and challenging concepts, practices and procedures that delegitimise or enable trans(sexual) subjects as socially viable embodiments of gender. The study also offers insights into how the gender regime sustained itself in historically-specific ways in the time and space outlined above despite being contested.

2. What new perspectives does your book offer?

The theoretical framework of heteronormative hegemony and axioms of sophisticated feminist theories of the state allows conceptualising social and institutional dimensions of the abovementioned processes. In contrast to studies with a monodisciplinary focus, the interdisciplinary approach captures the complex interactions within and between sexology, the law, federal politics and the trans movement. The study also contributes to research on the social movement from the late 1990s to 2014.

3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?

The book consistently shows how the (re-)production of socially acceptable genders and historically-specific regulations of homosexuality presupposed the marginalisation and discrimination of trans, evoking resistance in their wake. The study offers a critical reflection of hegemonic assumptions on gender and sexuality that governed and, to a lesser extent, continue to shape the production of knowledge in sexology, the law and politics and its regulatory effects in a rapidly changing field.

4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!

I would like to discuss this book with students and researchers in transgender, gender and queer studies, sexology, law, sociology of law, political sociology and political science and activists and practitioners interested in issues related to (trans)gender and basically anybody passionate about making the world a more hospitable place for diverse genders.

5. Your book summary in one sentence:

Developments in sexology, the law, politics and the trans movement show that trans, gender and heteronormative hegemony are relational and dynamic social constructions.