CURRENT CRITICAL DEBATES IN THE FIELD OF TRANSSEXUAL STUDIES Current Critical Debates in the Field of Transsexual Studies introduces new thinking on non-conforming gender representation, addressing transsexuality as a subjective experience that highlights universal dilemmas related to how we conceive identity and exploring universal questions related to gender: its objects, objections, and obstacles. This book seeks to disassemble prejudicial orientations to the challenges and the everydayness of transsexuality and build new understanding and responses to issues including: medical biases, the problem of authenticity, and the agency of the child. Oren Gozlen leads an examination of three central pressures: transformation of a medical model, the social experience of becoming transgender, and the ques- tion of self-representation through popular culture. The chapters reframe several contemporary dilemmas, such as: authenticity, pathology, normativity, creativity, the place of the clinic as a problem of authority, the unpredictability of sexual- ity, the struggle with limits of knowledge, a demand for intelligibility, and desire for certainty. The contributors consider sociocultural, theoretical, therapeutic, and legal approaches to transsexuality that reveal its inherent instability and fluidity both as concept and as experience. They place transsexuality in tension and transition as a concept, as a subject position, and as a subjectivity. The book also reflects the way in which political and cultural change affects self and other representations of the transsexual person and their others, asking: how does the subject metabolize the anxieties that relate to these transformations and facilitations? How can the subject respond in contexts of hostility and prohibition? Offering a much-needed interdisciplinary exploration, Current Critical Debates in the Field of Transsexual Studies will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists as well as psychologists and scholars of gender studies, cultural studies and sociology. Oren Gozlan, PsyD, ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto, Canada, and the Gender and Diversity Committee (IPA) Representative for North America, International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization (IPSO). He is a faculty member at the Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. His book Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian Approach won the American Academy & Board of Psychoanalysis’ annual book prize for books published in 2015. CURRENT CRITICAL DEBATES IN THE FIELD OF TRANSSEXUAL STUDIES In Transition Edited by Oren Gozlan First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Oren Gozlan; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Title: Current Critical Debates in the Field of Transsexual Studies ISBN: 9781138481305 was successfully transmitted to the Library of Congress. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gozlan, Oren, editor. Title: Current critical debates in the field of transsexual studies : in transition / edited by Oren Gozlan. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017054545 (print) | LCCN 2017057828 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351058995 (Master) | ISBN 9781351058988 (Web PDF) | ISBN 9781351058971 ( ePub) | ISBN 9781351058964 (Mobipocket/Kindle) | ISBN 9781138481305 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138481312 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Transsexualism. | Gender nonconformity. | Gender identity.Classification: LCC HQ77.9 (ebook) | LCC HQ77.9. C874 2018 (print) | DDC 305.3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054545 ISBN: 978-1-138-48130-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-48131-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-05899-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix About the editor and contributors xi Introduction 1 Oren Gozlan PART I Aesthetic tensions 13 1 Revisiting the Friends of the Place Blanche: the transgender imaginary through the photographs of Christer Strömholm 15 David Dorenbaum 2 The two sleeps of Orlando: transsexuality as caesura or cut 36 Dana Amir 3 Gender transitions and aesthetic possibilities 48 Dina Georgis 4 Taking (my) time: temporality in transition, queer delays, and being (in the) present 59 Atalia Israeli-Nevo vi Contents PART II Diagnostic phantasies in the (failed) quest for authenticity 73 5 Psychoanalysis needs a sex change 75 Patricia Gherovici 6 Principles for psychoanalytic work with trans clients 89 Sheila L. Cavanagh 7 Realities and myths: the gender affirmative model of care for children and youth 102 Diane Ehrensaft 8 Transition and childhood: questioning the medical approaches 115 Erik Schneider 9 Golden ticket therapy: stigma management among trans men 131 Elroi J. Windsor 10 Borders of belonging: challenges in access to anti-oppressive mental healthcare for Indigenous Latino gender-fluid youth 145 Silvia Tenenbaum 11 Transgenderism in Iran 158 Mehrdad Eftekhar Ardebili PART III Cultural montage 167 12 To return to Schreber: trans literatures as psychoanalysis 169 Trish Salah 13 Wronging the right-body narrative: on the universality of gender uncertainty 181 Laine Hughes Contents vii 14 Biopower and the medicalization of gender variance: a Foucauldian analysis of trans subjectivity 194 Kinnon Ross MacKinnon 15 The professional recourse to the adolescent body: the bathroom wars and the limit of thinking in education 208 Aziz Guzel Index 221 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people who made this project possible. I owe a debt of gratitude to Routledge editor Susannah Frearson, who approached me with the idea of an edited collection, as well as to Routledge editors Kate Hawes and Charles Bath for their assistance and accommodations throughout the project. My ongoing conver- sations with distinguished professor Deborah Britzman over the years have provided intellectual stimulus. Her name comes up in a number of chapters as her work often bears on the subject of this collection. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Paola Bohorquez, in whose thoughts and invaluable suggestions I find inspiration. I also would like to thank my chief research assistant Vanessa Sluman, as well as Aziz Guzel, for their resourcefulness and tireless help. A special thanks goes to Dr. David Dorenbaum for his support and assistance in obtaining the photographs of Christer Strömholm and much gratitude to Joakim Strömholm for permitting me to include his father’s marvelous photos in the collection. Finally, my love and gratitude goes to my wife for her suggestions, editorial assistance, and unwavering support. ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS Dana Amir is a clinical psychologist, supervising and training analyst at the Israel psychoanalytic society, faculty member and the head of the interdisciplinary doctoral program in psychoanalysis at Haifa University, poetess, and literature researcher. She is the author of six poetry books and three psychoanalytic books, and the winner of many grants and awards, including four international psychoanalytic prizes. Mehrdad Eftekhar Ardebili is an associate professor of psychiatry at Iran University of Medical Sciences. He has been working with transsexuals seeking reassignment surgery for several years. He is leading a research team working on transgenderism at the Mental Health Research Center, IUMS, Sheila L. Cavanagh is an Associate Professor at York University, co-editor of Somatechnics journal and outgoing chair of the Canadian Sexuality Studies Association. She edited a special double issue on psychoanalysis in Transgender Studies Quarterly (2017) and co-edited Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (2013). Cavanagh wrote Queering Bathrooms (2010) and Sexing the Teacher (2007), and is completing a third book on transgender and psychoanalysis. David Dorenbaum graduated in Medicine with Honorary Mention from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City. He holds specialties both in Pediatrics (University of Western Ontario/University of Ottawa) and in Psychiatry (University of Toronto), and a postgraduate Diploma in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (University of Toronto). He completed his psychoanalytic training at the Toronto branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the former director of a day program for adolescents with psychotic disorders at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario. In conjunction with his private