Putting the ‘T’ into South African human rights: transsexuality in the post-apartheid order

Vincent, Louise; Camminga, Bianca

Title: Putting the ‘T’ into South African human rights: transsexuality in the post-apartheid order
Creator: Vincent, Louise
Creator: Camminga, Bianca
Date Issued: 2009
Date: 2009
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141606
Identifier: vital:37989
Identifier: DOI: 10.1177/1363460709346108
Description: Informed by narratives provided by self-identified South African transsexuals, whose lives span different periods of South Africa’s political and social history, this article seeks to explore how South Africa’s medical, legal and military establishments have exerted power over the transsexual body. A variety of studies outline the extent to which the apartheid state was a highly gendered state characterized by inflexible patriarchal norms and the dominance of violent and authoritarian forms of masculine expression. Hyper masculinization and militarization were explicit goals of the apartheid state. Deviance from the state’s prescribed gender norms was not simply socially unacceptable, it was, in many cases, punishable. South Africa’s post-1994 democratic Constitution, in contrast, explicitly outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But the democratic legal framework, which provides significant protections for freedom of sexual expression and freedom from discrimination for homosexuals has arguably had less of an impact on the lives of South Africa’s transsexual community. The state, even the post-apartheid state, has been loathe to move beyond the idea of a necessary correlation between the physical make-up of the body and the gender identity of a person in the way in which it has treated the idea of transsexualism.
Format: 23 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Sexualities
Relation: Vincent, L. and Camminga, B., 2009. Putting the ‘T ’into South African human rights: Transsexuality in the post-apartheid order. Sexualities, 12(6), pp.678-700.
Relation: Sexualities volume 12 number 6 678 700 November 2009 1461-7382
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Sage Journals Terms of Use statement (https://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/terms-of-use)

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Vincent, Louise (Prof)

RU Department of Political and International Studies

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