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Transsexual women’s strategies of disclosure and social geographies of knowledge
DOI link for Transsexual women’s strategies of disclosure and social geographies of knowledge
Transsexual women’s strategies of disclosure and social geographies of knowledge book
Transsexual women’s strategies of disclosure and social geographies of knowledge
DOI link for Transsexual women’s strategies of disclosure and social geographies of knowledge
Transsexual women’s strategies of disclosure and social geographies of knowledge book
ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the decisions and processes of disclosure among transsexual women. Although transsexual identities are generally subsumed in the larger category of transgender identities, most transsexuals unambiguously identify as either men or women and usually express and pursue a desire for permanent hormonal and surgical body modification. Assuming that transsexuals and cissexuals share a common sense morality that idealises enduring honesty codes, morality is nonetheless an ongoing process of both reproducing and challenging social relations. If sexual aspects of the body are central to disclosure contexts, for instance whether or not transsexual women have undergone genital reassignment surgery (GRS), then the ubiquitous metaphor of being born in the wrong body prevails in narratives. Through the mixed disclosure models of social geographies of knowledge and a language of exclusion, a functional morality emerges: the ciscentric right to know functions as the right to determine, while the transcentric right not to make known functions as the right to self-determine.