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Transgender Transitions: Sex/Gender Binaries In The Digital Age, Kay Siebler

English Faculty Publications

Contemporary representations of transgendered people often reinforce rigid gender binaries of masculinity and femininity, leading transgendered individuals to feel they must seek out hormones or surgery to “correctly align” their bodies with their gender. Cultural texts (e.g., films, television, Internet, digital texts) reinforce this “pre-op or post-op” ideology for trans identity. The pre-op or post-op MTF or FTM binary mandates an alignment with the heterosexual gender system (feminine female or masculine male). In this article, the author focuses on trans identities and how representations codify the need or desire for surgery and hormones and examines the paradoxical reification of gender …