Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is juxtaposition of legal and political discourses pertaining to transgenderism in Poland and analysis of the conceptualizations of gender and gender ambiguity over the last 30 years.

Paper long abstract:

Transgender people in Poland have had access to diagnosis and sex reassignment procedures since the 1960s. Before 1989 the law was relatively liberal and the medical procedures were funded by the state. Legal discourse was based on medical accounts of transsexualism and documents change was seen as part of therapy, which aimed at reinstating the binary gender system. After 1989 existing legal solutions came to be considered a threat to the legal order of the state. Since 1995 transsexuals' parents are defendants in the sex reassignment proceedings, since 2000 public funding has been withdrawn. The site of disciplining practices has been thus shifted from the families, who are becoming considerably more supportive of transgender identities, into the realm of law.

Transgender activism is a relatively recent development in Poland, which emerged in 2007 and gradually gained public attention through frequent media appearances. Its most urgent aim is to introduce new regulations that would acknowledge the existence of transgender individuals by Polish law. Transgender activists conceptualize their experience using the languages of sexology, human rights discourse and queer theory in order to achieve their goal.

Languages employed by legal scholars and transgender activists reveal struggle for vocabularies, which would allow for - respectively - exclusion or inclusion of gender ambiguity. Certainty of gender as the basis of legal order is threatened by Western discourses emphasizing the individuals' right to decide upon their gender identity.

The paper is based on ethnographic research among transgender community and analysis of legal and media discourses.