Out/Performing Our Selves: Sex, Gender and Cartesian Dualism

Elements of feminist and queer theories and of phenomenology are used to engage with Cartesian dualism, in order to clarify the political implications of medicalized male-to-female (MTF) discourses. Particular attention is paid to descriptions of MTF as being in the `wrong' body. The author argues that this idea depends on a `shallow' model of corporeality, and suggests that a chronotopic model, by which the body is conceptualized as a process existing in both time and space, is more useful in counter-hegemonic theory.