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Defence date: 7 May 2019 Examining Board: Prof. Ruth Rubio-Marín, University of Seville and European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Laura L. Downs, European University Institute; Prof. Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, University of Paris-Nanterre; Dr. Maria Federica Moscati, University of Sussex The thesis offers a doctrinal and philosophical analysis of the regime of gender identity in three European jurisdictions: France, Italy, and England and Wales. Firstly, the dissertation clarifies the role of gender categories in the law and explains why the gender binary is entrenched in the selected jurisdictions. To this purpose, the thesis analyses the legal regime to which intersex and trans identities are subjected. It begins by unfolding the demands for recognition and protection made by intersex and trans persons. It then explores the legislative and jurisprudential reactions to such demands. In so doing, the dissertation explores the doctrinal justifications, in terms of public interests and fundamental rights, offered to regulate gender identities. Moreover, through the lenses of queer theory, it conceptualises the instrumental value of gender categorisation, and identity normalisation. This analysis falsifies any rhetoric of naturalness and makes explicit the political dimension of binary categories and identities. Secondly, the thesis explains how gender categories are enforced in the law. The analysis of the legal discipline imposed on intersex and trans people indeed reveals a system of disciplinary normalisation. Through the cogs of this mechanism, identities and bodies are re-shaped to fit with the purposes which gender categories serve. The selected jurisdictions, read in conjunction, offer a great variety of legal acts, decisions, and literature. Such an abundance consents a deep analysis of the phenomenon. These jurisdictions shed light on a largely unexplored, even taken for granted, area of the law where discourses on sexuality, identity, and pathology intertwine, far too often with adverse consequences on the rights of intersex and trans people. |
