" "Positions brings together three interviews with Derrida, outlining his central concerns and ideas.

This article will provide a critique of tworecent English marriage law decisions, thefirst concerning a (female to male) transgenderman and the second a (male to female)intersexed woman. It will do so throughconsideration of the dialogue between each andthe landmark transgender case of Corbett v. Corbett. It will highlight howboth decisions, in seeking to minimise the factof `departure' from Corbett, serve toreproduce key elements of that decision whichserve to undermine the future prospects fortransgender law reform in the English context.In particular, both (...) decisions, in differentways, or with different emphases, ensure that`legal sex' continues to be determined by(bio)logical and temporal factors. Crucially,however, as in Corbett, it is legalanxiety over the boundaries of the `natural',and the homophobia of law, that underscoresthis anxiety, that account for these particularconstructions of `legal sex'. (shrink)

K.B. is a woman working for the United Kingdom National Health Service with a transsexual male partner. Her partner's male gender was not legally recognised in the United Kingdom and consequently they could not marry. Whilst the NHS pension scheme provides for the payment of a survivor's pension, this is only in respect of married partners. The European Court of Justice held that the combination of circumstances that prevented K.B.'s partner from receiving the survivor's pension amounted to sex discrimination in (...) pay contrary to Article 141 of the Treaty establishing the European Community. At first sight, this decision appears to represent a strengthening of the concept of gender equality in European Union law. Yet, the reasoning provided by the Court lacks clarity and coherence. Moreover, the reach of equality is compromised by the Court's determination to exclude any confrontation with the privileged status of heterosexual marriage. (shrink)

In the cases of Goodwin v. U.K.and I. v. U.K. the European Court of Human Rights held the U.K. Government to be in breach of Articles 8 and 12 of the European Convention for denying certain rights and entitlements, particularly the right to marry, to post-operative transsexuals. This article argues that although on some level these are welcome decisions, they are also conservative and recuperative in that they seek to shore up traditional binarist ideas of gender and sexuality. The article (...) concludes, however, that the Court's conservatism is problematic in a number of ways; and that it may be most profitable to read these cases as an invitation to imagine further and more profound challenges to the old order. (shrink)