Défaire et refaire le sexe, le genre, la sexualité

• Published in: Socio
• Main Author: Coburn, Elaine
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: French
• Published: Les éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme 2017
• Subjects: genre; intersexe; sexualité; sciences sociales; subjectivité; intersexué; transgenre; Inuit; anthropologie; troisième sexe social; Françoise Héritier; Bernard Saladin d’Anglure; gender; intersex; sexuality; social sciences; subjectivity; trans; anthropology; third social sex; Françoise; inuit
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/socio/2900

The matrix sex/gender/sexuality structures everyday relations, but also knowledges, including at the university. Challenged, this matrix nonetheless reproduces “common sense”: the idea that there are two sexes, that only heterosexuality and some forms of homosexuality are possible, and that gender is distinct from sex but that both are stable from birth. This disciplining, normalizing matrix shapes our laws and our formal political institutions, the media and popular culture, our everyday lives and political struggles. But, it is contested by new political subjects—intersex, trans and queer persons. These subjects emergent from what were pathologizing medical diagnostic categories. Their existence as intellectuals, activists and no longer as abnormal, as crazy, as criminal, has been won with difficulty. Now, they offer us critical new social analyses of everyday human experiences, overdetermined, but never reducible to binary sex and gender norms. In an inevitably partial, fragmentary and often contradictory way, they help us to imagine social relations beyond the often narrow practices and norms of the present. La matrice sexe/genre/sexualité structure les relations au quotidien, mais également les savoirs, y compris au sein de l’université. Bien que contestée, cette matrice incarne cependant le « sens commun » : l’idée qu’il n’y a que deux sexes, que seules l’hétérosexualité et éventuellement certaines formes d’homosexualité sont possibles, et que le genre est distinct du sexe mais, comme lui, stable depuis la naissance. Cette matrice disciplinaire et normalisatrice façonne nos droits et nos institutions formelles politiques, les médias et la culture populaire, nos vies quotidiennes et les luttes politiques. Mais elle est remise en cause par des sujets politiques nouveaux – les personnes intersexes, trans et queer. Ces sujets émergent de ce qu’étaient des catégories médicales diagnostiques pathologisantes. Leur existence en tant qu’intellectuels, activistes, et non comme anormaux, fous, criminels, a été ...