understanding of “sex” would have in our thinking about how gender hierarchy works in global politics. For example, while many feminists have a more complicated understanding of ‘gender’ than biological sex, sometimes even feminist participation in things like gender mainstreaming is reducible to representation of people and interests associated with people understood to be biologically ‘women.’ Often, feminist theorists have trouble understanding what (if any) ‘other’ to the masculine and the feminine exists. Trans- theorists tend to talk about gender not in terms of masculinities and femininities (which feminisms almost always pluralize but still often set in opposition to each other) and more in terms of “gender diversity,” which might enhance feminisms’ (and IR’s) understandings of diversity in global politics (Lane 2009; Moreno 2008). Thinking of and genders as multiple provides several insights that might complicate feminist thinking about gender in IR. First, it urges us to critically interrogate the ease with which we adopt social constructionist approaches as an alternative to biological essentialism without either looking for the downsides or for a third approach. As Lane warns, methodology tends to invite ontological belief that gender is produced by socialization” (2009, 144). Lane’s concern is that feminist IR’s constructivist and poststructuralist epistemological choices reflect (and produce) an understanding of gender as social construct or as performed that does not resonate with trans- people’s experiences. Instead, taking trans- theory seriously might encourage rethinking the role of the biological in a way that acknowledges the strong role that it plays in some gender narratives (particularly those of many trans- people) without falling into the traps of essentialism. Perhaps work like that of Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000; 2005), Lauren Wilcox (2010), and Iver Neumann (2008) which thinks seriously about questions of embodiment alongside questions of performance and
cultural terms (“crossing cultures from male to female is big; it highlights some of the differences between men and women, and some of the similarities too” (2000, xii)) and in psychological terms (as “change, migration, growing up, self-discovery” (2000, xiii)). Roen (2002) describes the act of crossing as a political one, moving from one defined and exclusive group to another. As one crosses, in trans- theorizing, many trans- people express concern about “passing.” A trans- person is said to have “passed” when the people around them in a given social or professional situation believe that they are of the biological sex which they see themselves as/understand themselves to be/have changed their physical appearance to resemble. A trans- person that may “pass” to some may not “pass” to others, or someone may be able to “pass” in a distant or sterile work environment where they would not be able to “pass” in an intimate setting. The idea of changing defined groups is not new in IR; people change religions and state citizenships frequently, even as we think that those matter pretty fundamentally in defining international conflicts. People ‘cross’ sides of wars and conflicts (like those people seeking peace in Israel/Palestine despite their governments’ behaviors, or, more explicitly, Prussia’s changing sides in the Napoleonic Wars). Though IR speaks of it less, people also cross ethnic groups and castes (Dirks 2001). For example, some of the leading ‘Hutu’ perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide had been born to Tutsi parents, but become accepted into the ‘tribe’ of Hutus, even when acceptance or rejection was a question of life or death (e.g., Landesman 2002). At the same time, IR often cannot account for the process, logic, or consequences of these crossings between seemingly un-crossable divides.