The Polite Residuals of Heteronormativity: Transgender Marriage in Sinophone Communities

• In Event: Queer Sinophone Studies: New Directions

Abstract

This presentation centers on the W v Registrar of Marriages court case, considered by many to be a landmark achievement in the LGBT rights movement in Sinophone communities. In May 2013, the Court of Final Appeal ruled in favour of granting transgender individuals in Hong Kong the right to marry in their post-transition gender rather than their biological sex at birth. In scrutinizing both the majority and dissenting statements, a critical analysis of the parameters of “queerness” in this ruling shows that it advances transgender rights by engendering what I call “the polite residuals of heteronormativity,” which is pivoted against a liberal figuring of gay rights. Moreover, these residuals—masked within a broader outlook of sexual progressiveness—were conditional upon a rhetoric of imperial citationality that renders giant global superpowers, especially Britain and China, as the normative frames of legal authority. This case study enriches the agenda of queer Sinophone studies by providing a solid ground for approaching other key episodes of transgender marriage—and the social responses to them—in Taiwan and Singapore since the 1970s. It also delineates the historical context underpinning a watershed event that occurred later in October 2013, when the Civil Partnership Rights Petition, the first part of which included a Marriage Equality Act, gained sufficient support and signatures and was successfully delivered to the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China for consideration, leading activists to herald Taiwan as likely to be the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.

Author

• Howard Chiang, University of Warwick