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What is a Woman

This lecture, which takes as its title that of a notorious anti-trans documentary, explores the notions of gender roles portrayed in contemporary political polemics in both France and the US. It shows how such a deceptively simple question is tied up not only with many years of gender theory, but also with the ways in which images of masculinity are used to create good and obedient workers, and, in particular, good and obedient soldiers. Trans individuals, in particular, disrupt the mechanisms of creating these obedient subjects. Often the great personal cost of being a good worker or good soldier is offset by promised privilege. The promise of these privileges, reinforced by the rhetoric of prominent political figures, can foster a deep culture of grievance among men while underlining a restrictive role of woman as a reproductive worker, which also plays into neo-eugenicist discourse across the Western world.