2018
Re Georgio: An Intimate Account of Transgender Interactions with Law and Society
By Katherine Fallah
Winner, Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2018)
Abstract:
In its everyday operation, the law presumes to narrate trans stories and shape trans lives. This piece shines a light on law’s claims to authority over transgender identities and transgender bodies, and offers an alternate, intimate account of one transgender person’s interactions with law and society. The stories recounted here offer glimpses into the life of Georgio. Written from the perspective of Georgio’s close companion — in response to a journal call for inter-disciplinary, first-person accounts of law and gender — this essay assembles incomplete fragments of the joys and frustrations of Georgio’s gender transition. The style and form of this piece are part of an effort to reimagine human rights scholarship; the essay is an exploration of possibilities for inviting deeper reflection on legal assumptions about the human rights and lives of transgender people. It represents an attempt to breathe humanity into law’s cold scripts of gender identity.
About the author:
Dr Katherine Fallah is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Technology Sydney and a member of the Australian and New Zealand Professional Association for Transgender Health.