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The introduction to this special issue comes in a time of global transformation and, simultaneously, amidst severe reinforcement of the borders of knowledge, embodiment, life and death, movement, and social value that often work to secure the territories of racialized and gendered civility within Europe, and indeed worldwide. Trans political struggles across European countries have successfully intervened in the legal and medical regulation of the borders of gender embodiment/identification. This includes making over legal gender recognition processes within a self-determination model and increasing the available gender markers for official documents beyond male/female (ILGA World 2020). Activists and experts have also collaborated with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, to remove the trans-related categories in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11) from the chapter titled “Mental and Behavioral Disorders” to “Sexual Health,” under a new code, “gender incongruence” (Suess Schwend 2020).1 In terms of public culture and media, the European continent is also gripped by a wave of trans and gender-expansive visibility, heralded by the bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst of Austria winning the hugely popular Eurovision Song Contest in 2014, and capped by the 2020 appointment of Europe's first openly transgender minister, Petra De Sutter, as the new deputy prime minister in Belgium.
↳ https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-8890509