Incoherent Assemblages: Transgender Conflicts in US Security

Abstract

Several identity-verifying procedures implemented in the wake of September 11, 2001, created conflicts for transgender people in the US who had different sex designations marked on various forms of identification. Trans studies scholars note that these conflicts highlight the assumption that sex is a stable marker of identity and expose that assumption as a fiction. The use of body scanners in airport security illuminates a similar reliance on binary sex categories. However, identity documentation policies and biometrics in airport security operate through different logics about how to solve the problem of affixing individual identities to changing bodies. The experiences of trans people with both identity documentation and airport security body scanners demonstrate that the requirements for passing as a proper citizen differ depending on the context: identity document policies prioritize medical alteration of the body while biometrics register medical alteration of the body as a potential threat to security.