Legal Engendering of Trans People

The main focus of this chapter is the activity of professional agencies, especially those within the legal system, as they participate in the co-Creation and co-Production of a trans individual’s new legal persona. Yet, for all the talk of change and transition associated with transgender identity, the more common account given by transgender people themselves is one of coming to live as the person they have always been. This process of “coming to live as” is in part transformative, but it is also in part confirmatory. This is the case for every human as they come to inhabit, express, and perform their social persona, but as a matter of degree is often more apparent and radical in the case of trans people. The confirmatory character of the trans person’s process of transition can be regarded as being in two key senses a process of making a new social persona. The first sense is making in terms of personal development or growth. According to the definitions set out in earlier chapters, this is making in the sense of Creation. The second sense is making in terms of presenting or performing the new persona in society before the scrutiny of a public audience. This is making in the sense of Production. What “coming to live as” does not encompass is the original instigation of transgender identity, which is making in the sense of Invention. Consideration of the originating factors that cause a person to identify as transgender in the first place – in other words, asking as a matter of genesis, “what makes someone transgender?” (as also the question, “what makes a cisgender person identify with their chromosomal or birth-assigned sex?”) – lies beyond the ambit of this study.