Men Trapped in Men's Bodies by Anne A. Lawrence

Dreger describes this theory and largely endorses its themes, incorporating it into her book’s wider narrative of unpopular scientific findings being challenged by activists on a political rather than an empirical basis. Bailey’s book advanced a sexological theory about trans women and their experiences of gender dysphoria, claiming that they’re motivated to transition for primarily sexual reasons – an idea that was vocally protested by many trans people. Controversy emerged due to Dreger’s coverage of various academic disputes following the publication of The Man Who Would Be Queen by psychologist J. The Lambda Literary Foundation recently rescinded the nomination of the book Galileo’s Middle Finger by historian Alice Dreger for an award in its LGBT nonfiction category. We thus end the article by exploring possibilities for forging connections between trans studies and critical disability studies that would open up options for listening and responding to the claims of transabled people. We argue that instead of seeking to “explain” these desires in ways that further pathologize the people articulating them, we need to challenge the ableism and cisnormativity that require explanations for some bodies, subjectivities and desires while leaving dominant normative bodies and subjectivities intact. This article secondly and more broadly explores how this hierarchy between “identity troubles” and paraphilias is rooted in a sex-negative, ableist, and cisnormative society, that makes it extremely difficult for activists, individuals, medical professionals, ethicists and anyone else, to conceptualize or understand the desires that some people express around transforming their bodies-whether the transformation relates to sex, gender or ability. We argue that distinctions between identity disorders and sexual disorders or paraphilias reflect a troubling hier- archy in medical, social and political discourses between “legitimate” desires to transition or modify bodies (those based in identity claims) and “illegitimate” desires (those based in sexual desire or sexuality).

This article explores different conceptualizations of, and debates about, Body Integrity Identity Disorder and Gender Identity Disorder to first examine how these “identity disorders” have been both linked to and distinguished from, the “sexual disorders” of apotemnophilia (the de- sire to amputate healthy limbs) and autogynephilia (the desire to per- ceive oneself as a woman).

Men Trapped in Men's Bodies by Anne A. Lawrence