ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Beyond Binaries in LGBTQI+ Histories of Sexology: Bi, Trans, Intersex

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This panel explores three LGBTQI+ identities and concepts and their entanglements with notions of the binary in the history of science and sexology, LGBTQI+ history, and their historiographies: bisexual/bisexuality, trans/transness, and intersex/intersexuality. All three concepts have been taken up by historical actors to challenge neat, binary conceptual frameworks, whether of sexual orientation (homosexual/heterosexual), gender identity (man/woman and cisgender/transgender), or biological sex (male/female). Yet bisexuality, transness, and intersexuality often fall by the wayside and/or are oversimplified in LGBTQI+ historiography and the historiography of science and sexology.

Intervening into scientific, sexological, and intellectual histories as well as sociocultural LGBTQI+ activist and community histories, this panel uses bisexuality, transness, and intersexuality to explore the radical historical contingencies of sexual orientation, gender identity, and biological sex. It spotlights the ways in which ideas about bisexuality, transness, and intersexuality have been constructed both on and against binaries, and been used both for and against classed, racial, and eugenic projects. Connecting to this year’s theme of “Shifting Perspectives: Plural Worlds, Contested Sciences,” panelists grapple with who gets to establish sexological truths, how marginalized voices contest such truths, and the politics of categorization, medicalization, and counting. They demonstrate how LGBTQI+ historians of science can contribute to shifting perspectives on categories such as sexual orientation, gender identity, biological sex, race, ethnicity, and more. Even as the panelists highlight the potential gains of moving beyond the conventional binaries that have structured LGBTQI+ histories of science, they simultaneously employ historical analysis to problematize the notion that the act of transcending conceptual binaries is inherently liberatory.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Beans Velocci, University of Pennsylvania

Individual Presentations

• The Conceptual Confusion of Bisexuality in American Sex Science, c.1924–1953 - Robin Franklin, Princeton University

• The Substances of Sex/ology in Egypt and Algeria - Beshouy Botros, Yale University

• Who Counts as Intersex? Definitional Debates and Intersex Numbers in American Intersex Sexology and Activism - Matthew Marciello, George Washington University

Session Organizer

• Matthew Marciello, George Washington University