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When i give talks in academic venues about discrimination cases brought by transgender plaintiffs, marriage litigation involving transsexual spouses, and attempts to get the state to issue identity documents that recognize the reassigned gender of transgender men and women, the question i’m often asked is:“yes, but… doesn’t all the advocacy you’re talking about just reinscribe gender as a binary category? don’t those transsexual marriage cases reinforce the idea that sex and gender are either–or propositions?” From taking gender and sexuality studies courses, the questioner has learned that gender is a category “constructed through relations of power,” and that sex itself is not something we should see as a priori or natural but something that is “materialized” through “normative conditions.” often the follow up question will be,“When some transgender rights advocates assert that transsexuality is a medical …