8th Annual NYLON Graduate Student Conference

ARIZA, LUCÍA Y SCHWARZ, PATRICIA

Conferencia; 8th Annual NYLON Graduate Student Conference; 2010

Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University

I wouldlike to beginmycomment of Tey?spaperbythankingtheauthorforsuchanillustrative and thought-provokingpiece of ethnographicresearch. Reading thepaper I certainlylearnt a lotaboutendocrinology and psychiatry and theirstruggles to define gender and itsvariance, abouttheappropriation and reworkings of suchexpertcategories in thecontext of familiar experience of transgender, and ?more generally- aboutwhattheauthorveryrelevantlycalls ?thepublicepistemologies of theself in modern times?, all of which are some of thetopicspicked up byTey in heranalysis. As I seeit, there are twomainparts in Tey?spaper, onethatfocusesonthepopularization of biomedicine?s and psychology?sstruggles to define certainforms of gendervariance as psychopathology, and anotheronethat examines theappropriation of expertdiscoursesbyfamilieswithtransgenderchildren and adolescents. And hereiswhereI?dlike to contributemyfirstcomment. In effect, thepaperseems to workuponthebasisthatthere are two ?sides? to thequestion of howgender ?and thegenderidentities of gendervariantyouth in particular- are produced. Thereistheside of experts, representedherebypsychiatric/psychological and biomedicaldiscourses, and the ?lay? side of gendervariantchildren and theirfamilies. Yetthepaperalsofruitfully shows howthereis a constantcirculationbetweenthesetwodomains, be it in theform of thefamilies? appropriation of expertknowledge to predicateontheirchildren?sgender, or in theallusions to theways ?social genderlogics? (p.7) influencetheproduction of ?scientific? knowledge. Theterm ?popularization? workshere as one of suchpracticesthatallowsthebidirectionaltraffic of knowledges. Oneconclusionthat I think can be drawnfromthiscirculationisthusthatthe ?dear to social sciences- expert/lay dichotomydoesnotconveyfullywhatisrathertheco-constitution of domains of practicesthroughthearduouswork of distillingstablecategories as that of ?normal? or ?psychopathological? gender.