What to Make of Me: The Transgender Body as a Valuable Resource
FAIN: FZ-287125-22
Eric Douglas Plemons
Arizona Board of Regents (Tucson, AZ 85721-0073)
Research and writing of a book on the ethics and history of how transgender medical procedures have supported more traditional reproduction and organ transplant technologies.
Research is underway that would transform the tissues removed during transgender people’s reconstructive genital surgeries from medical waste into valuable resources. My book project, What to Make of Me, investigates the conditions and interrogates the implications of two uses to which researchers hope these tissues might be put. In the first case, trans women’s penile tissue is already being used to engineer penises for soldiers who have lost them in battle. In the second case, trans men’s uteruses (and one day possibly vaginas) could be used to enable others to become pregnant. In this emerging medical research, the historically marginalized trans body is resignified as a source of uniquely valuable material capable of consolidating another’s normative gender in ways that nothing else can.
Associated Products
What to Make of Me: uterine transplant and the surgical future of sex (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: What to Make of Me: uterine transplant and the surgical future of sex
Abstract: At the turn of the 21st century, surgeons announced a new use for transplant technology. No longer focused exclusively on vital organs that are transplanted to save recipients’ lives, transplantation could also be used for non-vital body parts meant to “enhance” their lives. The first of these “life-enhancing transplants,” or vascularized composite allografts (VCAs), replaced lost hands, arms, and faces, and were motivated by a desire to improve recipients’ quality of life by restoring capacities that, while not needed to stay alive, advocates argued were necessary to live well. The newest life-enhancing, non-vital organs to be transplantable are uteruses and penises. Like other VCAs, the transplantation of these organs aims to improve recipients’ quality of life and, for the first time in the history of modern organ transplant, the quality of life they describe is a distinctly gendered one. While current practice relies on the explicit value of male virility and female maternity, efforts that center transgender desires and capacities may signal a very different future. In this talk, I explore the development and practice of penile and uterine transplant and consider the ethical and medical implications of ongoing efforts to incorporate transgender bodies as donors and recipients of these uniquely valuable body parts.
Author: Eric Plemons
Date: 02/21/24
Location: McGill University
Primary URL:
http://www.mcgill.ca/ssom/upcoming-events/mlseminarPrimary URL Description: Website listing my public lecture