Knowledge Bank

Starting in the late 19th century, sexology emerged as a system that mapped human sexual diversity onto an oppressive hierarchy through pathologization. It was through sexology that the category of transsexuality initially became legible as medical. Sexology used the life narratives of trans patients to design its diagnostic criteria for transsexuality, and at the same time, trans people mined sexological knowledge in order to gain access to the medical techniques of transition that it could provide. Through pairing a history of sexology with close readings of several pieces of trans life writing, I demonstrate how trans people have interpreted sexological ideas about the organization of the bodymind. My analysis begins with Christine Jorgensen because of her immense fame in the popular media of the mid-century and her deep involvement with the sexologists of her day. I then compare her experiences with that of Lou Sullivan and Kai Cheng Thom. Using these pieces of trans life writing, I critique the hegemony of medical discourses of the bodymind and pathologized transness that continue to this day.