ABSTRACT

This chapter disentangles the web of terms that knots together the medical naming of transsexualism, the mediatised practices of trans sex and what might today be recognised as the multiplicities of trans sexualities. It focuses on two domains that provide insight into the cultural shifts around how trans sexualities are mediatised: transfeminine activism in queer pornography and, by way of conclusion, some notes on news coverage of how to talk about trans sex. In cultures that organise gender and sexual norms in ways that afford bodily transformation, value a multiplicity of gender expressions and honour legal rights to self-determination, reported stress and suicide rates decrease dramatically. Visual representations of trans people are always already coded as sexual due to the socio-cultural reduction of gender identity to the sexed status of genitals. Discussions of trans sexualities, bodies and identities are now marked by trans people's refusal to be silenced and misrepresented by medical practitioners, academics and cisgender media-makers.