In whose name? a case study of how a small group of gender variant men and women based in Cape Town understand and relate to the terms transgender and transsexual

• Main Author: Daitz, Emma
• Other Authors: Posel, Deborah
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2014
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/3880

Using a phenomenological approach and the technique of in-depth interviews, this dissertation investigates how a small sample of gender variant men and women understand, experience, and relate to the terms used to designate them in academic literature and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender/Transsexual (LGBT) activism – namely, ‘transgender’ and ‘transsexual.’ The relevance of such an investigation lies in, amongst other things, the fact that the corpus of theory – queer - that is most frequently applied to in order to theorize the lives of such men and women does not pay adequate attention to the empirical data on their lived experiences.