Pressured to ‘Pass’: Performance, Surveillance, and Medicalisation Explored as a Trans Sociology

ABSTRACT

This article aims to problematise the idealisation of passing in both the trans and gender diverse (TGD) community and the medical field that holds epistemic privilege over the TGD community. Through an exploration of Butler’s concept of gender-as-performance, this paper finds the idealisation of passing as contributing to a reinforcement of the gender binary, despite TGD existence broadly being considered otherwise. Through a further elaboration on the mechanisms of regulation and normalisation that drive TGD people to surveil, and in turn normalise themselves—both in the form of social and physical discipline, this paper concludes that passing is, in itself, a harmful ideal for TGD people and society in a broader sense, and is a mechanism of control, rather than true freedom, for TGD communities. Although it is concluded that passing as an ideal is problematic, I caveat that it is a realistic desire that comes as a symptom of a society with an oppressive and rigid gender binary, and attempts to challenge this binary must come from areas beyond simply the rejection of passing