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7 Australasian Gay & Lesbian L.J. 1 (1997)
The Transsexual and Marriage: Law's Contradictory Desires

handle is hein.journals/agllj7 and id is 5 raw text is: The Transsexual and Marriage: Law's Contradictory Desires Andrew Neville Sharpe Lecturer in Law, Macquarie University, Sydney Love is natural and real But not for you, my love Not tonight, my love Love is natural and real But not for such as you and 1, my love (Morrissey) 1 This article will contend that at the heart of legal discourse on transsexuality lies a fundamental contradiction, an incompatibility in legal desire. On the one hand, law desires to incorporate transsexual2 persons within an existing gender dichotomy so that I Morrissey was the vocalist and lyricist with the now defunct Smiths. The lyrics are from the song 1 Know Its Over (1986), Rough Trade/Warner Bros Music Ltd. 2 In medico-legal discourse the term transsexual is generally applied to persons who possess a chromosomal, gonadal and genital structure which is congruent at birth, consider themselves to be men or women despite official designation to the contrary sex category and who have either under- gone reassignment surgery or have manifested a desire for such surgery. While the term trans- sexual is used throughout this article to reflect legal usage it is important to appreciate that the term, or at least the meaning with which it has been imbued by medicine and law, fails to exhaust the field of sex contestation. Rather, the term serves to divide sex claims into those of greater and lesser legitimacy and truth. In particular, the term pre-operative transsexual conveys conno- tations of being in some state of limbo, or of being in the wrong body, whereas for some individuals there are no wrong bodies (see Prince, V Transsexuals and Pseudotranssexuals (1978) 7 Archives of Sexual Behaviour 263-9 ; Perkins, R (1983) The Drag Queen Scene: Transsexuals in Kings Cross, Allen & Unwin, Sydney; Hooley, J (1994) What is this thing Called 'Gender Dysphoria'? Tranys With Attitude, the Newsletter of the Transgender Liberation Coalition Inc (now called the Transgender Lobby Group), September (2): 6-11, Sydney.

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