Trans, Feminism: Or, Reading like a Depressed Transsexual

Trans and feminism, it seems, are caught in a continually reiterated conflict. Reading this conflict as being motivated by the desire for an integrated theory of gender that is undermined by the perhaps irresolvable political desires of each field, this essay is interested in how the expression of this failure of integration is articulated (on both “sides”) as a feeling of being annihilated and the displacement of these bad feelings onto the other. Rather than seeking new terms of resolution—and focusing, in particular, on how transmasculinity has increasingly posed an un- or misrecognized problem for imagining trans-inclusive feminisms—I excavate the “depressed transsexual” and develop this as a reading position from which to think through the possibility of living with the lack of integration, even if it does not feel good.