Georg-August-University Göttingen 10th European Feminist Research Conference September 12-15, 2018

How to cite this document Baril, Alexandre (2018). “Keynote Address: Cripping Trans Studies and Transing Crip Studies: Transness and Disability,” 10th European Feminist Research Conference: Difference, Diversity, Diffraction: Confronting Hegemonies and Dispossessions, The European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation (ATGENDER), Georg-August-University Göttingen (Germany), September 12th.

Presentation based on selected arguments developed in detail in these papers: Baril, A. (2018). “Hommes trans et handicapés: une analyse croisée du cisgenrisme et du capacitisme” (“Trans and Disabled Men: An intersectional analysis of cisgenderism and ableism”), Special Issue: Sexuality and disability: An approach through social sciences, Genre, Sexualité & Société, (19): 1-26.

Baril, A. (2016). “‘Doctor, Am I an Anglophone Trapped in a Francophone Body?’ An intersectional analysis of trans-crip-t time in ableist, cisnormative, Anglonormative societies”, Special Issue: French and Francophone World , Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 10 (2): 155-172.

Baril, A. (2015). “Transness as Debility: Rethinking intersections between trans and disabled embodiments”, Special Issue: Frailty and Debility, Feminist Review, 111, p. 59-74.

Baril, A. (2015). “Needing to Acquire a Physical Impairment/Disability: (Re)Thinking the connections between trans and disability studies through transability”, Special Issue: New Conversations in Feminist Disability Studies, Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 30, 1, p. 30-48.

Author affiliation and contact information Alexandre Baril, Ph.D., Assistant Professor School of Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa 120 University, Room FSS12023 Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5 Phone: 613-562-5800 #6386 | Email: [email protected] Web: https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/804 Academia.edu: https://uottawa.academia.edu/AlexandreBaril

Short biography Alexandre Baril, Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, is an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa, specializing in diversity, including sexual, gender, (dis)ability, and linguistic diversity. Alexandre Baril’s interdisciplinary training combines ten years in philosophy/ethics, a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies and two postdoctoral fellowships in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council/SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship), and in Political Science at Dalhousie University (Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship). He has published articles in journals such as Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy; Feminist Review; TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly; Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice; Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies; Annual Review of Critical Psychology; Medicine Anthropology Theory; Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies; Canadian Journal of Disability Studies; Disability & Society; Recherches féministes; Enfances, familles, générations; and Recherches sociologiques & anthropologiques. His intersectional research places gender, feminist, queer, trans, and disability/crip studies in dialogue with the sociology of the body, health, and social movements. A. Baril | Georg-August-University Göttingen | 12-09-2018 | Please do not distribute | 2

Cripping Trans Studies and Transing Crip Studies: Transness and Disability

Hello, everyone. When I accepted the invitation a year ago to give a keynote at this conference, it seemed so far away and I certainly didn’t expect to be giving the opening keynote in front of such a large audience! I must admit, it is quite intimidating!

POWERPOINT 1 PRELIMINARY REMARKS Firstly, I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to present today and also to acknowledge all the volunteer, free, and invisible work done by many people, some of whom belong to marginalized communities, to make this event possible. Thank you very much to all of you for being here this afternoon. [CLICK] The second thing I would like to mention is that I have a few paper access copies (in large and regular font) of this talk available if anyone would like one. Please raise your hand and someone will bring you a copy. [CLICK] The third thing I would like to say is that this paper is a thought-provoking work-in-progress, an essay that raises delicate questions and doesn’t offer definitive answers, but rather aims to stimulate critical reflections on how to deal with difference and diversity among social movements, as the title of this conference suggests, and more specifically among trans* and disability rights movements and their related fields of study. Because my time is limited, and I cannot fully develop my arguments here, [CLICK x 4] I invite you to take copies of articles I have written, in which I present more detailed and nuanced arguments, and which I brought here today [from Canada, so please take copies because I don’t want to fly back with them!]

POWERPOINT 2 CRIPPING TRANS* STUDIES AND TRANSING CRIP STUDIES Today I am going to spend about 40 minutes talking about the necessity for a reconceptualization of boundaries between trans* studies and movements and disability studies and disability rights movements. It is important to state that this presentation is not based on empirical data from fieldwork; it relies on secondary data from other qualitative and quantitative studies, as well as first-hand narratives from trans* and disabled people in essays, blogs, books, and so on. Nonetheless, my reflections are relevant for starting dialogues between fields of study, such as , trans* studies, and disability and crip studies, where, on the one hand, conversations about the intersections between gender identity, transness, and disability are under- theorized, while, on the other hand, conversations about intersections between cisgenderism and ableism are critical, but remain nearly absent from academic literature. More specifically, I will focus on trans* realities and embodiments through theoretical and political tools developed in critical disability studies to look at the heuristic value of thinking about transness through a disability and crip lens, a process we can call “cripping” trans* studies. By doing so, as my title suggests, I also aim to offer a form of “transing” disability and crip studies, in order to make disability and crip studies more accountable toward trans* people. My research is anchored in feminist, trans*, queer, and crip scholarship, and adopts an intersectional perspective to rethink relationships between transness and disability. It is also informed by my own lived experience as a trans and disabled man.

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POWERPOINT 3 DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS Since this conference brings together a large group of diverse people, I want to take two minutes to define a few terms that I will be using during my presentation.

Similar to the resignification of the word “queer” by sexual minorities, the term “crip” is derived from the insulting adjective “crippled” but has been resignified to question biomedical assumptions about health and ability. [CLICK] Within the wider field of disability studies, crip studies, based on crip theory put forward by Robert McRuer (2006), represents a more radical and anti-assimilationist school of thought contesting normality with respect to the abilities of body/mind.

[CLICK] The term “cisgenderism” is a synonym for . It refers to a system built by and for people that discriminates against, excludes, and marginalizes trans* people. The prefix “cis” is the opposite of “trans”: cisgender people are therefore not trans*.

[CLICK] I use trans* with an asterisk to indicate the inclusion of a wide range of gender identities, such as , transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, agender, gender fluid, and two-spirit people, to name only a few.

POWERPOINT 4 A FEW STATISTICS Despite the fact that I am very critical of a positivist approach to research, let’s start with a few statistics to illuminate some aspects of the topic I am discussing today. I am currently part of a team conducting a research project about trans* youth in Canada. [CLICK x 3] Despite the fact that our research project is not connected to disability or health, we have discovered that 71% of our small sample of 24 trans* youth identify as disabled (Pullen Sansfaçon et al. 2017a; 2017b). While we might think that this significant percentage results from examining a very small and biased sample, larger quantitative studies tend to indicate a similar reality: a significant percentage of trans* people are disabled or disabled people are trans*.

POWERPOINT 5 Indeed, according to Trans Pulse Survey, the largest quantitative study on trans* people in Canada, where I am from, [CLICK] 55% of the Canadian trans* population lives with disability or chronic illness (Bauer and Scheim 2015; Bauer et al. 2012). [CLICK]. In the United States, of a sample of more than 27,000 trans* people, 39% state they live with a disability or chronic illness (James et al. 2016: 57). [CLICK] One extensive North American literature review also concludes that more than one in two trans* people (52%) live with disability, including high rates of mental/psychological disability (Davidson 2015: 43).

POWERPOINT 6 AN ABSENCE OF RESEARCH [CLICK] Despite the fact that a significant number of trans* people are also disabled, with the exception of a few authors including Eli Clare (1999; 2007; 2013; 2017), A.J. Withers (2012), Alison Kafer (2013), Jasbir Puar (2014; 2015), Damien Riggs and Clare Bartholomaeus (2017), or myself, research in the fields of trans* and disability studies has not looked at the intersections between gender identity, transness, and disability, nor between cisgenderism and ableism. This

A. Baril | Georg-August-University Göttingen | 12-09-2018 | Please do not distribute | 4 lack of research leaves us poorly equipped to understand the lived experience of trans* people with disabilities or to understand how cisgenderism reinforces ableism and vice versa. [CLICK] For example, do these disabilities pre-exist transition? Do these disabilities have iatrogenic causes? Are these disabilities caused by difficult lived experiences resulting from forms of oppression, such as cisgenderism, that can affect physical and mental health? Are disabled people, who experience various forms of non-normative embodiments, more prone to question their gender identity? Responses to these questions are much needed in order to respond adequately to the specific needs of trans* people living with disability and chronic illness. This topic is particularly important because as empirical data shows us (James et al. 2016; Bauer and Scheim 2015), trans* people living at the intersections of other marginalized identities, such as trans* people of color, trans* people on the feminine spectrum, or trans* people living with disability, are most highly impacted by violence and discrimination.

POWERPOINT 7 WHEN TRANSNESS AND DISABILITY MEET I would now like to read two quotes from trans* people regarding body modifications linked implicitly to disability. The first is from a racialized woman who had industrial silicone injected in different body parts, a common practice among socio-economically disadvantaged trans* women to feminize their bodies at a lower cost. The second is from a man who opted for a phalloplasty, genital reconstruction that involves an average of five to six surgeries over many years. [quote]

[CLICK] “Me too, to have a beautiful body, in Peru, I got silicone. First I got 2 litres, then 3 litres, then a whole jug of silicone in my breasts. Now, the silicone, when you fall, it necroses, your joints don’t move well, you feel pain, and in the end it’s a fantasy that hurts us.” [end quote] (Trans* person’s testimonial in Namaste, Oversight, 2015: 94)

POWERPOINT 8 [quote] “Since 2005 I have had seven major surgeries performed in hospitals and at least 16 more procedures performed in the surgeon’s office. […] So far I’ve been working on this for almost six years now and still have no ability to void or have an erection yet. […] After the next stage (which will give me the ability to function) I will have spent in excess of $100,000. […] Phalloplasty should not be taken lightly. The process will test even the strongest of hearts in many ways. I can honestly say that phalloplasty has been one of the hardest things I have ever done. To date it has tested me mentally, emotionally, physically and financially.” [end quote] (Trans* person’s testimonial in Cotten, Hung Jury, 2012: 106)

My research strives to unpack the complex experience of transness and disability being articulated in these passages. These trans* people experience physical dysfunction, pain, and the side effects of treatments, but, in spite of this, their experiences are not conceptualized, by themselves or by others, as disabilities.

POWERPOINT 9 This brings me to the questions at the heart of my presentation: [CLICK] Why is the experience of transness so often excluded from the category of disability? [CLICK x 3] Why is the overlap between trans* and disabled experiences and embodiment unthinkable?

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POWERPOINT 10 To answer these questions, [CLICK] I first briefly critique the limits of the medical and social models of disability. [CLICK x 4] Second, inspired by feminist disability scholars who propose an alternative model of disability, which I call the “socio-subjective model of disability,” I suggest the application of this model to transness. In addition, to address issues experienced by a large percentage of people who are both trans* and disabled, applying this model to transness allows me to deconstruct the assumed mutual exclusivity of the trans* and disabled categories.

POWERPOINT 11 TWO MODELS OF DISABILITY

POWERPOINT 12 There are two main models for conceptualizing disability: medical and social. [CLICK] The medical model understands disabilities as individual pathologies to be cured. [CLICK] Criticized for its focus on assimilating disabled people into able-bodied communities, the medical model is considered reductionist and ableist by many activists and theorists. [CLICK] (Lewis 2010; Shakespeare 2010: 268). The social model distinguishes between impairment, defined as a neutral physical/mental condition, and disability, situated at the junction of impairment and the environment (Crow 1996; Wendell 1996; Shakespeare 2010). [CLICK] In the social model, disability is the result of an environment that does not allow the participation of disabled people.

Although it has many advantages, the social model is not without limits (Wendell 1996; Mollow 2006; Shakespeare 2010). [CLICK] It tends to neglect disabled people’s subjective experiences, positing that an accessible society would eliminate disability (Shakespeare 2010: 269-271). Because impairment is seen as a neutral element that does not cause suffering, eliminating ableist oppression is thought to be sufficient to liberate all disabled people. However, a more complex approach reveals this as reductive. The social model is also criticized for focusing on “typical” disabilities: physical, visible, measurable, and unrelated to illness and suffering (Wendell 2001: 21). In other words, it offers a disembodied understanding of disability issues. For people who are unhealthy or whose disabilities are mental, invisible, unmeasurable, or chronic, the social model’s solutions are incomplete (Crow 1996; Wendell 1996; Nicki 2001; Mollow 2006; Jung 2011; McRuer and Mollow 2012: 9-12). In addition to leaving us poorly equipped to reflect on suffering related to disabilities, the social model, like the medical model, produces its own forms of violence and exclusion. This leads me to ask the following question: [CLICK] Would the eradication of ableism eliminate suffering for all disabled people?

POWERPOINT 13 [CLICK] Although the medical model of disability has not been directly applied to trans* identities, transness has historically been viewed through a model based on the medical paradigm (Meyerowitz 2002). [CLICK] In the medical model, transness is seen as the cause of distress; trans* people are thought to develop gender identities different from their “biological sex” due to hormonal or psychological problems. [CLICK] Like disability, transness is considered a personal tragedy to be eliminated through normalization (Irving 2008) and cured with hormonal and surgical treatments, a conceptualization that erases social oppression. The problem resides, I argue, not in the concept of transness as a disability itself, but in the individualist, neo-liberal, and ableist views of disability associated with the medical model.

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[CLICK] In the social model, trans* identities are understood as varieties of sex/gender identities stigmatized by cisgenderist structures. Although recourse to medical treatment is not condemned, social solutions are prioritized. Like disability activists who conceptualize neutral impairments on which oppression is built (i.e., disability) (Crow 1996), I argue that trans* activists’ efforts to counterbalance the medical model—in which transness is the source of the problem—result in setting transness aside and casting it as a neutral element to which social prejudices are attached. [CLICK] According to this view, the problem is never transness, but what society does with it. [CLICK] But the question remains: Would the eradication of cisgenderism (or transphobia) eliminate all suffering for all trans* people?

POWERPOINT 14 THESIS: SOCIO-SUBJECTIVE MODEL OF DISABILITY

POWERPOINT 15 As a disabled man who suffers from invisible disabilities and a transgender man who has been through the medicalized journey of a physical transition, [CLICK] I argue that transness, like disability, has too often been perceived through the lens of either a medical or social model, without the benefit of a third option. However, just as the medical and social models of disability are insufficient to describe the subjective experience of impairment intertwined with the social experience of ableist society, [CLICK] medical and social theoretical understandings of trans* identities insufficiently describe the complex experience of transness.

POWERPOINT 16 [CLICK] Inspired by feminist disability scholars such as Liz Crow (1996), Susan Wendell (1996, 2001), Anna Mollow (2006), Alison Kafer (2013), and Eli Clare (1999, 2013, 2017), I propose the application of a “socio-subjective model of disability” to trans* identities that makes space for a conception of transness capable of including some of its disabling aspects. I wish to theorize some of the embodied aspects of the experience of transness in a way that avoids the pitfalls of both the medical and social models. [CLICK] While considering structural oppression, the socio- subjective model also makes it possible to reflect on some trans* people’s transition-related, subjective, embodied realities; affects; and potential suffering in terms of “disability.”

POWERPOINT 17 [CLICK x 2] Use of the “disabled person” category is vast: disabled people may have physical, intellectual, mental, emotional, or learning disabilities, or health conditions, and these conditions may be stable or degenerative, visible or invisible, chronic or intermittent, mild or severe, and so on. Such impairments and disabilities can interfere with many spheres of life. [CLICK] Given this broad definition of disability, it is surprising that trans* people are not generally considered nor do they often identify as “disabled people.” I argue that trans people are excluded from the disabled category, despite the fact that some trans* people, like disabled people, may experience psychological, emotional, and physical consequences that interfere with many spheres of life, and that these effects are intertwined with experiences of social oppression.

POWERPOINT 18 TRANSNESS AS DISABILITY: FOUR ARGUMENTS

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POWERPOINT 19 I will present four arguments to consider some aspects of transness in terms of disability for some trans* people. First, let us consider the psychologically disabling dimension of transness. Since the 1980s, [CLICK] transness has had a mental health diagnosis (previously “Gender Identity Disorder,” now “Gender Dysphoria” in the DSM-5 2013; Gorton 2013). However, despite this diagnosis, transness is not considered a disability. Many laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, explicitly exclude “Gender Dysphoria”, as Dean Spade (2003) and Jasbir Puar (2014; 2015) remind us.1 [CLICK] This is a double standard. Although transness is categorized as a mental illness, trans* people do not generally have access to the same protections as other disabled people. Although debates surrounding diagnosis are not the focus of my presentation, many trans* people assert that the dissonance they feel between their body and gender identity creates emotional distress (Rubin 1999; Clare 2013: 265). Empirical studies show that dysphoria can have an impact on daily life, yet the distress it can cause is rarely qualified as disabling. The extent to which dysphoria can be disabling is illustrated by this testimonial from a person who states that finding out that the surgery relieving their gender dysphoria might be cancelled was worse than receiving a double diagnosis of HIV and hepatitis: [quote]

POWERPOINT 20 “Then suddenly my dreams came to a screeching halt when I received devastating news four days before my scheduled departure to Serbia [for surgery]. The test results from my Hepatitis C and HIV screening had come back positive. […] I collapsed on the bedroom floor and sobbed […]. Looking back now, I am surprised that my response was not about the test results themselves, but rather about the prospect that my surgery would be cancelled and that no surgeon would want to operate on me.” [end quote] (Trans* person’s testimonial in Cotten, Hung Jury, 2012: 79-80)

POWERPOINT 21 Second, let us consider the physically disabling dimension of transness. [CLICK] The dysfunction or absence of body parts or physical characteristics resulting from transitioning are not considered disabilities, despite the fact that conditions related to these same body parts or characteristics are diagnosed as health issues or disabilities in cisgender people. I offer two examples.

POWERPOINT 22 First example: Cisgender men who have lost the use of their penis following a disease are considered to have health issues, but trans* men who do not have a penis are not considered disabled. Instead, from a cisnormative point of view, these trans* men are considered “normal” because they are “really” female (Bettcher 2014: 392-393). [CLICK x 2] As a result, prosthetic penises are deemed medical devices for cisgender men and sex toys for trans* men and are not considered medical necessities in a lot of national medical systems. To give another example, the assumption that breast implants are medical devices for cisgender women following a cancer, and purely cosmetic for trans* women, as is the case in the Canadian context, is based on a restricted understanding of the importance of secondary sex characteristics in trans* people to be correctly gendered in cisgenderist contexts.

1 Puar (2014: 79) cites the ADA: “the term ‘disability’ shall not include (1) transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders; […] (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. § 12208 [1990])”.

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POWERPOINT 23 Second example: Disabilities can emerge from transition-related treatments. Many trans* people have reduced or no sensation in reconstructed organs and other operative sites or lose mobility in their limbs from surgical donor sites (Cotten 2012; Baril 2013, 2014). Silicone used by trans* women often causes disability, illness, and sometimes even death, as Viviane Namaste reminds us (2015: 94). Skin, nerve, and bone grafts from the legs, back, abdomen, or arms used in reconstructive surgeries can lead to a variety of physical impairments. In the words of another trans* person: [quote]

POWERPOINT 24 “I lost some mobility and function and was unable to exercise for extended periods of time. I lost muscle density […] [and] the surgeries affected my ability to do work […].” [end quote] (Trans* person’s testimonial in Cotten, Hung Jury, 2012: 94)

Difficulty considering some trans* body issues in terms of disability has negative consequences for trans* people on economic, professional, legal, and social levels.

POWERPOINT 25 The third argument concerns the functionally disabling dimension of transness. [CLICK] Transness, like disability, can affect many spheres of activity, including professional, social, and personal activities (Levi and Klein 2006: 84-87). The interpersonal sphere provides one example: [CLICK] if the lack of a leg can have an impact on an individual’s personal and sexual life and is considered a disability, then sexual characteristics or genitals discordant with a person’s gender identity can have an impact on trans* people’s interpersonal relationships as well (Devor 1997). The workplace provides another example. Many reconstructive surgeries cannot be completed in one step. Trans* people describe how transness affects their professional activities, as they are forced to use their holiday time and try to heal as quickly as possible to meet the neo-liberal imperative of productivity (Cotten 2012). Similar to the way in which disabled people live a different temporality, a crip time, as we call it in disability studies, trans* people experience a temporality that clashes with neo-liberal expectations of productivity.

POWERPOINT 26 The fourth argument is linked to the socially disabling dimension of transness. As with other disabled people, trans* people face multiple forms of discrimination and difficulty accessing spaces like women’s and homeless shelters (Serano 2007), facilities like washrooms (Mog and Swarr 2008; Kafer 2013), and services like health care (Bauer et al. 2009) because of their identity and body configuration. Here are two quotes illustrating this aspect: [quote]

POWERPOINT 27 [CLICK x 2] “I had acute meningitis and went in for treatment and the doctor just refused to see me and said, ‘I don’t work on people like you […].’” [end quote] (Trans* person’s testimonial in Shelley, Transpeople, 2008: 65)

[CLICK x 2] [quote] “So I can remember sliding that [washroom] latch and the door opening… and they grabbed me. There must have been eleven security guards surrounding me and grabbing me. […] I was questioned for about two hours. They ultimately decided that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.” [end quote] (Trans* person’s testimonial in Shelley, Transpeople, 2008: 73)

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POWERPOINT 28 I am not suggesting that the presence of these four elements is necessary to qualify transness as a disability. For example, trans* people who do not identify as having a mental illness may nonetheless experience debilitating physical consequences of their transition. My point is this: [CLICK] unlike other disabilities, whose disabling effects are partially or completely recognized, transness is generally not considered a disability and its disabling effects on daily life are not recognized by laws, workplaces, institutions, and so on. This brings us back to my initial question: [CLICK] Why is the overlap between trans* and disabled experiences unthinkable?

POWERPOINT 29 INTER-SECTIONS: CONCEPTUALIZING OVERLAP BETWEEN TRANS* AND DISABILITY STUDIES

I argue that three main factors have prevented the conceptualization of transness as a potentially disabling condition.

POWERPOINT 30 [CLICK] Firstly, the perceived exclusivity of these categories has guided the construction of disability and trans* studies as distinct disciplines. Through the lens of Foucauldian genealogy, I question the disciplinary divide between these fields that persists despite a shared interest in body differences. Due to a fragmented view of the body, some of its parts are ascribed to disability and crip studies and others to trans* studies. [CLICK x 2] As I state elsewhere, [quote]

“Disability studies are concerned with bodies that differ from ableist norms, but stop short at markers of sex/gender; a bodily difference involving the hand, back, and so on, is the domain of disability studies, but the moment genitalia are involved, these differences become the concern of trans, gender, and sexuality studies.” [end quote]2.

POWERPOINT 31 [CLICK x 2] Secondly, disability and crip studies are interested in conditions affecting sexed parts of the body (e.g., infertility, breast cancer), but only when they are not a result of sex/gender transition. The fact that disability studies include conditions involving sexed parts of cisgender people’s bodies, but not of trans* bodies, is a manifestation of cisnormativity (Baril 2013, 2014; Kafer 2013: 153-157).

[CLICK] Thirdly, trans* studies and movements are often ableist. For example, poster slogans supporting the depsychiatrization of trans* identities [CLICK], such as “Trans, not disabled” and “Trans, not ill,” distance trans* people from disabled people and relegate them to the status of “Others” (Baril 2013; Clare 2013; Kafer 2013: 156-157; Puar 2014). In their legitimate quest for social recognition, trans* communities have reproduced forms of exclusion of disabled people through ableist attitudes and politics. I argue that these three factors have prevented the conceptualization of the overlaps between transness and disability.

2 Baril, Alexandre (2015). “Needing to Acquire a Physical Impairment/Disability: (Re)Thinking the Connections Between Trans and Disability Studies Through Transability”, Hypatia, 30, 1, p. 37-38.

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POWERPOINT 32 In addition to these three factors, I think that one of the problems preventing us from thinking about the porousness of the boundaries separating disability and trans* studies is that, historically, each has conceptualized embodiment through a very different lens. I would like to turn here to a reflection offered by Francis White in 2014 on the intersections of transness and fatness and apply it to transness and disability. White argues that both trans* and fat studies have theorized the importance of “being at home” in your body. While being at home in one’s body is at the centre of both fields of study, in trans* studies, being at home means accepting potential transformation of your body (for example, through hormone therapy, surgery, exercise, embodied gender expression, and so on), but, in fat studies, it means staying in your body as it is and transforming your perceptions of your body. [CLICK] White (2014: 93) asks the following question: “[…] what do these conflicting discourses offer someone who is both fat and trans in terms of their hope of feeling ‘at home’ in their body?” In relation to our topic today, I assert that, in a fashion similar to fat studies, disability studies, through the historical dominance of the social model of disability, has insisted on the aphorism “change the world, not our body-minds,” as Eli Clare reminds us (2017: 181), and this insistence on keeping the body “as it is” has, in some ways, cast disability studies’ ambitions regarding embodiment as radically different than trans studies’ understanding of embodiment. If we raise White’s question in this context, we could ask: [CLICK] What do the conflicting discourses of disability and trans* studies on embodiment offer someone who is both disabled and trans*, in terms of their hope of feeling at home in their body? [CLICK] While these two identities and realities are not contradictory, the way trans* and disabled categories have been conceptualized over the past few decades, by societies, but also by researchers, activists, and trans* and disability scholars, have forced people who are both trans* and disabled to think about our identities and oppressions in silo, even though they are enmeshed, intertwined, and interlocking. For example, Riggs and Bartholomaeus (2017) show that the trans* men they interviewed tended to hide their emotional distress and mental disabilities from health care practitioners in order to avoid being delegitimized and to avoid experiencing further gatekeeping during their transition process. Therefore, the interviewees’ mental health needs remained unmet. This is only one example among many showing the extent to which, in the current cisgenderist and ableist context, trans* and disabled people are placed in difficult situations where they have to prioritize one aspect of their lived experience over another or compromise one part of life to be able to fully live another. This is why we need to better understand the complex links between transness and disability.

POWERPOINT 33 CONCLUSION: RETHINKING TRANS* EMBODIMENTS THROUGH A SOCIO- SUBJECTIVE MODEL OF DISABILITY

POWERPOINT 34 To conclude my presentation, I would say that [CLICK] applying the socio-subjective model of disability to transness allows me to problematize cisgenderist oppression and acknowledge some trans* people’s subjective experiences of suffering. This model creates a space receptive to trans* people who experience transness as a disability and are currently silenced by the social model dominant in trans* studies. [CLICK] The application of this model to trans* issues has the potential to affect laws, policies, workplaces, the health care system, and more. I also hope that the reflections proposed here will help solidify alliances between trans* and disabled communities, as well as trans* and disability studies.

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POWERPOINT 35 All my research is grounded in my conviction that every form of violence, exclusion, and stigmatization is unacceptable and must be denounced. In my work, I turn a critical eye on the discourses, norms, and practices within social movements and theories, like feminist, trans*, and disability studies/movements, which sometimes reproduce these forms of oppression. [CLICK] I believe that intersections involving oppressions that remain unthought, like the connections between cisgenderism and ableism, represent missed opportunities.

I believe that my intersectional approach to these internal exclusions reproduced in social movements is one way to shed light on these unthought opportunities, to enrich solidarities between marginalized groups, and to work toward greater social justice. [CLICK] I would like to bring these unthought opportunities into the realm of the thinkable.

POWERPOINT 36 Thank you.

POWERPOINT 37 Questions and discussion.