Between Gay Marriage and Eugenics: The Contradictory Logics of Marriages Involving Transsexuals

This paper explores the relationship between eugenics discourse, genital surgery, and the history of marriages involving transsexuals. First, I locate the emergence of "sex-changing" surgical and hormonal techniques within the history of eugenics in the 20th century United States. Second, I explore the contradictory arguments that, historically, have been made about marriages involving transsexuals. In some instances, post-operative transsexuals have been forbidden to marry because they can no longer biologically reproduce, and in other instances they have been required to have sterilizing genital surgeries in order to marry. In either case, it is the specter of "gay marriage" that was being warded off. The paper concludes by arguing that contemporary contradictions in transsexual access to marriage emanate from the layering, in the present, of different regimes of bodily control that target different aspects of embodiment, and which emerged in different historical moments but continue to operate now.