CENTERING THE “EVIL TWIN”
Rethinking Transgender in Queer Theory
V Varun Chaudhry
“Thinking Sex/Thinking Gender,” special issue edited
by Annamarie Jagose and Don Kulick. GLQ 10.2 (2004).
“The Transgender Issue,” special issue edited by Susan Stryker.
GLQ 4.2 (1998).
“Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential
of Queer Politics?,” by Cathy J. Cohen. GLQ 3.4 (1997).
Nearly ffteen years after the publication of GLQ’s 2004 forum “Thinking Sex/
Thinking Gender,” tensions continue between studies of gender and sexuality. The
ongoing institutionalization of the category transgender, through the codifcation of
transgender studies as a feld of inquiry and increased attention to trans and gender-
nonconforming communities in the nonproft sector, both clarify and complicate
the ways scholars can and should study “gender” and “sexuality.” The 2004 GLQ
forum ventured into this terrain positing gender/sex/sexuality as simultaneously
separate and related. The articles in the forum refuse to answer the question of
whether and how “transgender” can ft neatly into what we conceptualize as “queer
theory.” While that specifc question is beyond the scope of this essay (or any sin-
gular project), I am interested in how studies of “sexuality” — particularly queer
studies and queer theory — can address the needs of trans and gender-noncon-
forming communities, and gender (in)justice more broadly.
Here, I take histories of funding for US-based transgender-focused advo-
cacy as an object of inquiry, focusing specifcally on the convergence and diver-
gence between LGB(T)Q and “transgender.” Institutional relationships between
categories — which have also persisted in scholarship — reveal the evident and
often necessary interconnections between gender and sexuality. On the fip side,
GLQ 25:1
DOI 10.1215/10642684-7275278
© 2019 by Duke University Press
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