Re-Imagining Feminist Theory: Transgender Identity, Feminism, and the Law.

Abstract

The raid by police in September 2000 of the Pussy Palace, a women's bath house in Toronto, the 2003 decision of the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver Rape Relief Society v. Nixon, and the 2005 decision of the BC Court of Appeal in the same case highlight some of the ways in which the law and law enforcers act to marginalize the transgender community. Feminist legal theory must ensure that it is not complicit in this marginalization. In order to ensure this, feminists must ask themselves what a feminist theory would look like that could think with, rather than against, the transgender community. Drawing on some established feminist theories, this article isolates aspects that are useful for dealing with transgender issues in the law and identifies a feminist ethics of responsibility as a means of incorporating these elements into a new approach. This approach is then applied to an analysis of cases, including cases from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, in an attempt to identify positive and negative developments in the law that have an impact on the transgender community and transgender identity.

Keywords: Transgender identity, feminist theory, queer theory