Am I my brain or my genitals? A nature-culture controversy in the hermaphrodite debate from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s.

The groundbreaking and prophetic rhetoric of neuroscience has recently highlighted the fetal brain as the most promising organ for understanding why transsexuals feel "trapped in the wrong body", and for predicting whether children born with "ambiguous" genitalia will grow up to feel like a man or a woman.This article proposes a recent history of the cerebralization of intersexuality and of transsexuality as atypical neurodevelopmental conditions. It examines the ways in which the organizational theory of brain sex differentiation developed in the late 1950s in behavioral neuroendocrinology has gained increased prominence in and through controversies over best practice issues in the case management of intersex newborns, and the etiology of transsexuality.It focuses on the American context and on the leading warrior in this battle: Milton Diamond, now a most prominent figure in professional debates about the clinical management of intersexuality, and the intersex person's best friend. Persons with an intersexed or transsexual condition consider, not their gonads, but their brains, their core sense of self, as the primary determinant of sex. (Diamond and Beh 2005, 6-7, note 1)

Le devenir féminin transgenre : une étude qualitative et réflexive sur le genre, la corporéité et la subjectivité sexuelle

RésuméCette thèse en psychologie qualitative et critique de la santé propose un éclairage, sur la subjectivité transgenre, différent des modèles dominants en clinique. Les nosologies de type DSM et de la psychiatrie dominante focalisent sur la seule question de la transition transsexuelle, elles utilisent la sexualité comme outil dans les diagnostics différentiels permettant d'effectuer le gatekeeping de la transition médicalisée du genre. Elles sont décrites comme un dispositif de médicalisation du genre, induisant des pratiques maltraitantes. Une méthodologie qualitative inspirée de la théorie ancrée ainsi que de l'analyse réflexive est utilisée. Un échantillon de 15 personnes représentant la diversité des personnes transgenres FtM a été recruté. Les données provenant d'entrevues non directives sont analysées dans une perspective verticale et horizontale. Les résultats soulignent l'inadéquation des typologies cliniques, de la place qui est donnée à la sexualité dans les procédures diagnostiques et de l'opposition qu'elles construisent entre identité (de genre) et sexualité. Ils plaident pour une vision deleuzienne de type nomade, incarnée et sexuée de la subjectivité transgenre.AbstractThe broad of this study in critical health psychology is to build an understanding of transgender subjectivity which contrast with dominant clinical models. DSM nosology types and dominant psychiatry have traditionally focused only on transsexual transitioning. They use sexuality as a diagnostic tool to address the gatekeeping of the medical transition. These practices have been described as medicalization of gender, inducing mistreatment. A qualitative methodology mixing grounded theory and reflexivity has been used. A sample of 15 persons has been recruited to represent transgender FtM diversity. Data were collected through in-depth interview and analysed case by case and by themes. Results show that dominant clinical typologies of TG are inappropriate, as well as the way sexuality is used in this practices and the opposition between (gender) identity and sexuality. We propose a deleuzian concept of becoming and multiplicity to understand transgender subjectivity.