Can Luce Irigaray\u27s Notion of Sexual Difference be Applied to Transsexual and Transgender Narratives?

For over thirty years, Luce lrigaray\u27s work on sexual difference has been the subject of debate about whether sexual difference is essential, necessary, oppressive, or some combination of these. I examine critiques from people who claim that her work is based on an essentialism that is dismissive and harmful to transsexual and transgender discourse. I argue that lrigaray\u27s ethics, based on sexual difference, has the potential to lead to discussions about all difference, including differences in sexuality. lrigaray\u27s complex understanding of sexual difference as natural, cultural, spiritual, and morphological can help us interpret transsexual narratives, narratives by people who seek medical intervention to attain the correct embodiment (Feinberg l996; Prosser 1998). Transsexual and transgender narratives can also help us to better understand Irigaray\u27s insistence that corporeality is indispensable for cultivating sexual difference. However, accounts of transgender experience — people whose gender identity does not correspond to their sex and assigned gender identity (Feinberg 1996; Halberstam 2005) — challenge any conception that sexual difference can be only binary