Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The Desire of Recognition: Discussion on Trans Normativity in Taiwan
Hsu Sun
ABSTRACT:
Under the influence of neoliberalism, Taiwan has embraced the transgender movement pioneered by the United States. Despite being acknowledged as the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage and positioning itself as a modern human rights trailblazer in Asia, Taiwan’s transgender movement encounters significant challenges within the global anti-gender movement. Depth interviews were used to collect the lived experiences of 15 Taiwanese transgender individuals. This research concurrently incorporates queer theory and the author’s experiences as a transgender activist in Taiwan to support the analysis. The research examines the desire for recognition among transgender individuals, considering it a constructed desire under the gender governance of neoliberalism, potentially leading to transnormativity. By introducing the perspective of gender play, this research challenges the binary opposition between advocacy within and outside the system in social movements, emphasizing the limitations of the discourse on transnormativity. Within the international political context postCold War, the transgender movement in Taiwan is better understood as a response to issues of subjectivity, geopolitical factors, and temporality, emphasizing the struggles of Taiwanese transgender individuals in this complex situation and their efforts to reconcile various relational aspects. In the international arena, particularly within the purview of the Asian LGBTQ+ community, recent developments in Taiwan will serve as a crucial reference for queer studies in Asia. This paper suggests that future research should continue to focus on the changes in Taiwan under this unique political structure, becoming an important reference for gender movements.
keywords: activism; desire; neoliberalism; queer theory; subjectivity