Who Is the Subject of Gender Self-determination?

This essay poses two critical questions about trans politics as elaborated in the Global North today: Who is the subject of gender self-determination? And what, precisely, is mobilized by tying political sovereignty to gendered persecution and ethical world-making, trans or otherwise? To answer those questions, both liberal and antistate iterations of gender self-determination are read through the lens of Judith Butler’s writing on the fractious relationship between ethical responsibility and politics. Focusing on Butler’s engagement with Emmanuel Levinas through a Jewish tradition, the author argues that trans politics have grounded claims to liberal individual and radical collective sovereignty alike in a diasporic metaphor of displacement from a rightful home. In the final analysis, Butler’s work outside of the theory of gender’s performativity helps make clear that gender, as a vector of self-determination and political assembly, advances colonial and settler interests—even when trans.