Newborn bio/logics and US legal requirements for changing gender/sex designations on state identity documents. (May 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: van Anders, Sari M; Caverly, Nicholas L; Johns, Michelle Marie
• Other Names: Smith T Evan guest-editor.; Yost Megan R guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Feminism & psychology. Volume 24:Number 2(2014:May)
• Page Start: 172
• Page End: 192
• Publication Date: 2014-05
• Subjects: Transgender -- transsexual -- gender -- sex -- genetics -- hormones -- genitals -- law -- psychology -- psychiatry; Women -- Psychology -- Periodicals; Feminist psychology -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; 150.82
• DOI: 10.1177/0959353514526222
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0959-3535

Abstract

Legal enactments are de facto definitions of gender/sex and affect the day-to-day lives of trans-identified individuals. We assessed requirements for changing gender/sex designations on US driver's licenses and birth certificates alongside their potential foundations to explore these legal definitions. Analyses showed that surgico-medical authority and sex reassignment surgery were privileged over lived experiences, psychology, and physiology (e.g. genetics; hormones). Though 'biologism' is typically theorized to explain legal conceptualizations and treatments of gender/sex and transgender, we argue for a diverse set of 'bio/logics' (implicit biological decision rules) that have profoundly different implications for trans lives. Over two other possibilities (trace bio/logics: a conceptual or physiological persistence of sexed origins; and interior bio/logics: a privileging of more embedded and immutable sex features), we conclude that US state enactments of gender/sex rely on 'newborn bio/logics': those binaristic features of genital sex immediately observable in newborns and naturalized via surgico-medical authority.