TRANSGENDERISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF ONTOLOGICAL PERSONHOOD

Resumen

Transgenderism is a condition in which a person’s chosen gender is different from their biological sex at birth, this has implications for personal identity theories. Previous studies on Transgenderism approached it from the physiological perspective by applying curative measures of realigning a person’s gender, whereas minimum attention was paid to ontological being. This study was therefore, designed to interrogate the ontological being with a view to establishing that the surgical realignments of the body cannot change essential being. Interpretive design was used to interrogate Doyle and Paludi’s Sex and gender: The human experience, it points to hormonal abnormalities in many people and the consequent gender dysphoria and gender phobia, translating to the experience and feeling of living in a ‘trapped body’ and Conway’s Vaginoplasty: male to female sex reassignment surgery. Proffer physiological and surgical attempts to realign a person’s ‘body’, but research shows this as insufficient resolution. The work explored ‘An essay concerning human understanding’ for Locke’s notion of personal identity to insists that identity lies in the sameness of continual life located in conscious memory, this served as the framework, leading to the crucial question about ‘what should identify a person through time’. The philosophical tools of conceptual clarification, criticism and reconstruction were employed, thereby revealing that an understanding, and an attempt to examine the question of identity, will help reduce the gap that people feel when they examine their bodies along unrealistic social expectation. Selfexamination when approached professionally, reveals the true self and individual essence.