ABSTRACT

Transgender (or trans) and intersex are umbrella terms. The former refers to a variety of gender nonconforming experiences (Stryker, 2008) and the latter to individuals born with sexual anatomies various societies deem to be nonstandard (Rubin, 2012). Both trans and intersex people are subject to disproportionately high levels of discrimination, pathologization, and violence in the global North and West as well as in some parts of the global South and East. 1 This is because trans and intersex ontologies and epistemologies, broadly construed, call naturalized understandings of sexual dimorphism and gender binarism into question, throwing into crisis deeply held conventions and beliefs about the nature of sex and gender as they intersect with other forms of human difference such as race, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability.