Enacting neurogenders: a critical analysis of sex/gender within neuroscientific studies of transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people

Trans and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people’s autonomy and lived experiences are consistently under fire by the broader public and media. Neuroscientific work that seeks to better understand TGNC people, regardless of intention, has historically contributed to their pathologization. In response, neurofeminism has addressed the unjust way sex/gender differences are engaged with in neuroscience and its wider implications. Utilizing a neurofeminist lens derived from critical neuroscience, and science and technology studies (STS), the present work analyzes how sex/gender is enacted within contemporary neuroscience studying TGNC people and the implications thereof for their bodily integrity and subjectivity. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) of neuroscientific studies published between 2018-2023 (n = 20) was conducted. This analysis accounts for how terms relating to sex/gender are (i). defined, (ii). operationalized, and (iii). interpreted, and what ideological assumptions, unresolved tensions, and discourses are embedded therein. Data was inductively coded using ATLAS.ti to analyze instances of engaging with sex/gender and to account for new ideas (or absences) implicit within neuroscience. On the basis of this analysis, this paper contributes to theorizing on the role of the biological sciences, specifically brain imagery, in shaping the sexed and gendered self. Ultimately, it appears neuroscience (in)directly contributes to the governance of TGNC people’s bodily integrity and subjectivity by delineating whose bodies are ‘normative/ordered’ and whose subjective experience of sex/gender is legitimate, thus, obstructing enactments of sex/gender that fall outside of dominant hetero-cis-normative frameworks.