The social and political stakes of the body: biological sex

• In Event: Transgender and Queer Embodiments

Abstract

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order proclaiming that the United States would only recognize “two sexes, male and female.” This occurred after spending millions on anti-trans ads throughout his presidential campaign, foreshadowing his administration’s brazen stance on gender. Notably, while these social and political attacks are anti-queer and transphobic, they also coexist alongside the overturning of Roe v Wade, various restrictions on birth control and IVF, and attempts to criminalize drag performers. Because these efforts exist within a broader proliferation of policies that place restrictions on women, transgender, and other LGBTQ+ people, an inquiry into the social and political stakes of the body may reveal a broader patterning of the state’s stake in a binarized gender order. In what follows, I argue that while the stakes in the binarized gender order and the state’s anti-gender policies influence the everyday lives of queer and trans people, broader efforts to define sex and gender into law solidify hegemonic gender ideals to control the masculine entitlement to reproductive labor. Reviewing sociological research and literature, and by incorporating feminist and queer theory, I analyze and critique sociology of gender frameworks as they pertain to the gender binary, and discuss whether they are sufficient in addressing how the materiality of the sexed and gendered body is regulated in U.S. society. Further, I draw on scholarship demonstrating how queer and trans people mobilize the materiality of their bodies to subvert oppressive social and political power, positioning queer embodiment as a direct threat to patriarchal control over bodily autonomy. In this way, the stakes of the sexed and gendered body extend beyond the state and beyond the bodies of non-normative gender identified people, and in fact aim to maintain multiple hierarchies of power.

Author

• Merrily LeBlanc, Northeastern University