MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

When exploring the intersections of feminist theory and the realities of trans-activism, the contention of these two sociopolitical powerhouses is made evident in the conversations occurring between contemporary thinkers, workers, and doers. While intersectional readings of trans experience have emerged in more contemporary theoretical pursuits, the conversation surrounding gender and gender variance have been centered around the evaluation of masculinity and femininity as sociopolitical, economic, and cultural markers of social access and power. The primary aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which the concept of passing is read in contention as either anti-feminist or, in contrast, a radical change from binary understandings of feminism in contemporary thought through the lens of ecocriticism. By exploring the reaches of transfeminism, the reaches of contemporary or ‘mainstream’ feminism become subjected to the realities of the binaries placed on the body, both politically and scientifically. Through the mold of ecofeminism, an intersectional approach to transfeminism offers an avenue through which to imagine and invent a feminist praxis that is devoted to deconstructing, destabilizing, and demystifing variance in all its forms. Throughout this paper, I explore two principal questions: 1. How does the trans experience complicate the seemingly well-established theoretical confines of present feminism? and 2. How can we then use these complications to create a more progressive and accessible praxis of liberation and movement that lies outside of a traditional gender binary or biological sexual system within both scientific and political pursuits? I argue that the objectification of passing in transfeminism is witnessed through the effects of location and temporality on the language of trans activism and its subsequent use as a tool for creating and widening feminist spaces of language and theoretical construction, particularly through the use of ecofeminism as an avenue of liberation work.