Practices of freedom and the disruption of binary genders: Thinking with trans

Abstract

This article, inspired by a reading of O’Shea’s piece in this journal in 2018 which problematized the production of ‘normal’ identities, considers the ‘practices of freedom’ performed by non-binary trans people and their capacity to embody resistance against binary heteronormative gender intelligibility. We want to think with trans in order to challenge gender binaries and argue that their practices of freedom not only transform themselves, but also others. We suggest that this could be understood as a form of Foucault’s ‘care of the self’, producing new ways of doing gender which are not reducible to ‘man’ or ‘woman’ but that produce new histories and subjectivities. Given the complicated ways in which non-binary trans people engage in care of the self, we propose that it is possible to understand this as a form of organizing that embodies an ethics which disturbs and recodes the dominant way that gender is organized. They prefigure an idea and practice of trans organizing, attempting to move beyond dualisms, opening new possibilities for liveable lives.