Transgender Community and Political Economy in Beirut

Abstract

This thesis project examines the question of community among people who relate to the category of transgender in Lebanon. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with working-class transfeminine individuals, it shows how trans women developed a culture of “fierceness” as a survival strategy under conditions of systemic violence. The study also interrogates idealized notions of "trans community" by attending to moments of tension between trans people. In doing so, it accounts for diverse transgender desires, and ways of being with gender, that cannot be collapsed into a single category. To address the limitations of predominant liberal frameworks of gender identity, the project suggests alternative theoretical frameworks rooted in political economy and trans-affirmative Lacanian psychoanalysis that can better account for the diverse ways gender-variant individuals (including shemales and transgender women) live with and against the transgender category.