Transgenre

Transgender experiences are not specific to Western societies and have been documented in many socio-cultural contexts where vernacular terminologies based on the masculine/feminine opposition exist. The first half of the 20th century saw the emergence of ethnographies documenting transgender experiences on the basis of biographical accounts and observations of personal trajectories. This research proliferated in the 1970s and 1990s, initiating a debate on the use of « third gender » to describe these experiences. In the first decades of the 21st century, the growing influence of gender, queer and trans studies led to new approaches that focused on the subjectivation processes, the effects of cultural globalisation and the intersectional dimension in order to understand the diversity and complexity of contemporary transness.