The Center for Writing Studies invites you to our lecture on Thursday, October 16, featuring Dr. Toby Beauchamp, an Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and affiliate faculty in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Lecture:
"Embracing Trans Regret under Authoritarianism"
12pm-1pm, Illini Union Bookstore, Rm 514
In the face of organized attacks on trans health care, trans advocates frequently emphasize empirical research showing vanishingly low rates of regret about transition. This talk considers how the public denial of regret and other "bad feelings"—though used to defend trans people—is ineffective in an authoritarian political context. I show how this strategy can demand an unwavering sense of happiness, enlisting trans people to police our own emotions and greatly limiting the affective scope of trans life. I draw from reproductive and disabilty justice as models that intentionally hold space for regret, grief, and ambivalence, even under significant political pressure to reject them. At its heart, this talk argues that embracing such feelings, rather than denying them, can better counter authoritarian efforts to constrain and diminish trans life.