Transfeminist Epistemologies and Gender Identity in Childhood: From Essentialism to the Subject of Knowledge

Transfeminist Epistemologies and Gender Identity in Childhood: From Essentialism to the Subject of Knowledge

Siobhan Fenella Guerrero Mc Manus, Leah Muñoz Contreras

Trans childhoods have become a battlefield with multiple battlefronts. Thus, there are positions in which they are described as instances of eugenics, hence disbelieving of their legitimate existence. On the other hand, there are positions closer to medicine and the discourse based on human rights wherein there is no doubt about their legitimate existence and the relevance of working in their favor. Be this as it may, one of the central topics in this debate has been the epistemic authority of children regarding their own gender identities. In this paper we follow transfeminists epistemologies and queer ecology with the aim of problematizing some presuppositions traditionally recruited in the erasure of this already mentioned epistemic authority of children, regarding their own gender identities and, furthermore, in the disavowing of evanescent trans experiences. Also, we claim that these presuppositions have led to a new mode of essentialism in which trans experiences are considerate legitimate only when grounded on the premises of immutability and developmentalism; we describe this logic as the imposition of a cis-heterophenomenological gaze.

2018

Transfeminismo, ecología queer, epistemología feminista, etiología de la transexualidad, inconformidad infantil de género

10.24201/eg.v4i0.168

Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México

El Colegio de México, A.C.

Women. Feminism, Men