Mad Trans Ritual

The relationship of transness to psych regimes is fraught. Caught between a long and still living history of attempts to eradicate transness, on the one hand, and, on the other, the practical need for validation from the gatekeepers of medical treatment, trans people must navigate a narrow middle way of proving themselves sufficiently gender-distressed to merit treatment without being deemed too mentally unwell for such treatment. This institutional demand for trans sanity is incompatible with the realities of trans life under cisheteropatriarchy, which both produces and punishes trans Madness. Trans Day of Remembrance has the potential to be a ritual space of resistance to the violence of the gender regime and a site for trans life to be honored in the fullness of its trans Madness and prophetic maladjustment.