Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:05:25.573Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Governing Juridical Sex: Gender Recognition and the Biopolitics of Trans Sterilization in Finland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2018

Jemima Repo
Jemima Repo*
Affiliation:
Newcastle University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In many countries, compulsory sterilization is still a precondition for amending juridical sex. Drawing on feminist and queer debates on the entanglement of recognition with governmentalization, this article moves beyond a human rights frame to examine how struggles for legal gender recognition are bound up with the production and discipline of trans subjectivities, bodies, and relationships. It argues that rights and recognition may not only reinscribe regulation, but also they are a means of rendering trans subjects governable. By theorizing gender identity as a biopolitical discourse that produces trans subjects, the article genealogically examines the problematization of “gender identity” in Finnish welfare population governance practices leading up to the 2003 Finnish gender recognition law. The analysis demonstrates how the discourse of “equality” was key for producing a clearly defined trans population that could be identified, assessed, and, hence, governed. While the sterilization requirement was justified as a replacement for former castration laws which had been used by male-to-female transsexuals to access genital surgery, it also acted as a disciplinary technology to neutralize the alleged threats to normative forms of kinship that could be produced through gender recognition. Finally, the article considers points of resistance and avenues for further research.

Keywords

Transgendertrans rightslegal gender recognitionpopulationFoucaultreproductionstategovernmentality
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 83 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank Mark Griffiths, Daniela Alaattinoglu, and my colleagues in Newcastle University's Sociology Seminar Series for their helpful comments on this article. I am also grateful to Jaakko Hillo and Adam Clark for their research assistance and to the activists and NGO workers who generously shared their knowledge and experience with me in interviews. This research was funded by the Academy of Finland and a Newcastle University GPS Small Research Grant.

References

REFERENCES

Aizura, Aren Z. 2006. “Of Borders and Homes: The Imaginary Community of (Trans)sexual Citizenship.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 7 (2): 289–309.Google Scholar
Ayoub, Phillip M., and Paternotte, David. 2014. “Introduction.” In LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe?, eds. Ayoub, Phillip M. and Paternotte, David. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–28.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, Toby. 2013. “The Substance of Borders: Transgender Politics, Mobility, and US State Regulation of Testosterone.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 19 (1): 57–78.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 1995. States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bryant, Karl. 2006. “Making Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood: Historical Lessons for Contemporary Debates.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 3 (3): 23–39.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carastathis, Anna. 2015. “Compulsory Sterilisation of Transgender People as Gendered Violence.” In (In)Fertile Citizens: Anthropological and Legal Challenges of Assisted Reproduction Technologies, eds. Kantsa, Venetia, Zanini, Giulia, and Papadopoulou, Lina. Athens: Alexandria, 79–92.Google Scholar
Davis, Heath Fogg. 2014. “Sex Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination: An Intersectional Critique.” Perspectives on Politics 12 (1): 45–60.Google Scholar
Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.Google Scholar
De Mauro Rucovsky, Martin. 2015. “Trans* Necropolitics: Gender identity Law in Argentina.” Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad (Rio de Janeiro) 20: 10–27.Google Scholar
Donzelot, Jacques. 1979. The Policing of Families: Welfare versus the State. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, Tom. 2012. “The ‘Half-Invention’ of Gender Identity in International Human Rights Law: From Cedaw to the Yogyakarta Principles.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 37 (1): 33–50.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1981. The Will to Knowledge. Vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974–1975. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Golder, Ben. 2015. Foucault and the Politics of Rights. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Golder, Ben, and Fitzpatrick, Peter. 2009. Foucault's Law. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1982. “Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers.” Humanities in Society 5 (3–4): 279–95.Google Scholar
Hausman, Bernice. 1995. Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Helén, Ilpo, and Jauho, Mikko. 2003. Kansalaisuus ja kansanterveys [Citizenship and national health]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.Google Scholar
Hemminki, Elina, Rasimus, Anja, and Forssas, Erja. 1997. “Sterilization in Finland: From Eugenics to Contraception.” Social Science & Medicine 45 (12): 1875–84.Google Scholar
Hietala, Marjatta. 1996. “From Race Hygiene to Sterilisation: The Eugenics Movement in Finland.” In Eugenics and the Welfare State: Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, eds. Broberg, Gunnar and Roll-Hansen, Nils. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 195–258.Google Scholar
Holli, Anne Maria. 2003. Discourse and Politics for Gender Equality in Late Twentieth Century Finland. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.Google Scholar
Honkasalo, Julian. 2016. “When Boys Will Not be Boys: American Eugenics and the Formation of Gender Nonconformity as Psychopathology.” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 11 (4): 240–86.Google Scholar
Irni, Sari. 2016. “Steroid Provocations: On the Materiality of Politics in the History of Sex Hormones.” Signs 41 (3): 507–29.Google Scholar
Leino, Unni. 2016. “Conceptualising Sex, Gender, and Trans: An Anglo-Finnish Perspective.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 3 (3–4): 448–61.Google Scholar
Lettow, Susanne. 2015. “Population, Race, and Gender: On the Genealogy of the Modern Politics of Reproduction.” Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 16 (3): 267–82.Google Scholar
Mbembé, J. A., and Meintjes, Libby. 2003. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40.Google Scholar
McNay, Lois. 2009. “Self as Enterprise: Dilemmas of Control and Resistance in Foucault's The Birth of Biopolitics.” Theory, Culture & Society 26 (6): 55–77.Google Scholar
Meadow, Tey. 2010. “‘A Rose Is a Rose’: On Producing Legal Gender Classifications.” Gender & Society 24 (6): 814–37.Google Scholar
Meyerowitz, Joanne. 2002. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Population Register Centre. 2002. “Eduskunnan sosiaali- ja terveysvaliokunnalle” [Statement to the Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs and Health]. February 21.Google Scholar
Preciado, Beatriz. 2013. Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era. New York: Feminist Press.Google Scholar
Repo, Jemima. 2015. The Biopolitics of Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Repo, Jemima. 2016. “Gender Equality as Biopolitical Governmentality in a Neoliberal European Union.” Social Politics 23 (2): 307–28.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Andrew N. 2007. “A Critique of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.” Bioethical Inquiry 4 (1): 33–42.Google Scholar
Smart, Carol. 1989. Feminism and the Power of Law. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Social Affairs and Health Ministry. 2000. “Transseksuaalin aseman kehittämistyöryhmän muistio” [Memorandum of the Working Group on the Status of Transsexuals]. Memoranda of the Social Affairs and Health Ministry 2000: 2.Google Scholar
Spade, Dean. 2015. Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. Rev. ed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Stryker, Susan. 2014. “Biopolitics.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (1–2): 38–41.Google Scholar
Transgender Europe. 2017. Transgender Rights Europe Map & Index. https://tgeu.org/trans-rights-map-2017/ (accessed January 3, 2018).Google Scholar
Valentine, David. 2007. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. 1999. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wessel, Merle. 2015. “Castration of Male Sex Offenders in the Nordic Welfare State in the Context of Homosexuality and Heteronormativity, 1930–1955.” Scandinavian Journal of History 40 (5): 591–609.Google Scholar
Whittle, Stephen, and Turner, Lewis. 2007. “‘Sex Changes’? Paradigm Shifts in ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’ Following the Gender Recognition Act?” Sociological Research Online 12 (1). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/1/whittle.html (accessed June 12, 2018).Google Scholar
Yesilova, Katja. 2009. Ydinperheen politiikka [The politics of the nuclear family]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.Google Scholar
Zivi, Karen. 2012. Making Rights Claims: A Practice of Democratic Citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zivi, Karen. 2014. “Performing the Nation: Contesting Same-Sex Marriage Rights in the United States.” Journal of Human Rights 13 (3): 290–306.Google Scholar
Zullo, William. 2015. “‘Do You Think I Look Like an “F” Anymore?’: Trans Identities, Biopolitics and Navigating State and Medical Spaces in Québec, Canada.” Master's thesis, Concordia University.Google Scholar