“TRANSGENDER FAMILIES” FROM ABNORMALITY AND OTHERNESS TO PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SOCIAL SPACE: AN ANALYSIS BASED ON MICHEL FOUCAULT’S NOTION OF DISCOURSE

Abstract

This article’s objectives are to present the issues of “transgender people” and “transgender families” as discourse and analyze it based on Michel Foucault’s notion. In order to discover untold and unexplored truths suppressed by social rules of the mainstream sexuality, the article also discusses how the “transgender people” and “transgender families” form personal identity and social space.

According to Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse, the society conceives of transgender people as binary opposition against heterosexuality, or the mainstream sexuality. Oftentimes binary opposition is caused by verbal reproduction, condemnation and discrimination against those whose sexualities are different from the mainstream one. In other words, those who do not fit in the mainstream sexuality such as homosexual people tend to be labeled as “abnormal” or “unnatural”. This conflict about sexuality can be seen through discourse and reactions by various members and institutes in the society. Due to such conflict, the transgender people have been prevented from accessing fundamental social space. Attempts to form personal identity and social space thus have been made by the transgender people to gain collective identity, which can be seen as a symbol of their own identity claim. For them, to stay collectively as a group and build their own social space allows them to exit from otherness according to the mainstream discourse.