“Transsexuality” and Gender Ratio in Poland: A Case Study in the East/West Dichotomy

Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a presentation by cultural studies scholar Ludmiła Janion (University of Warsaw), moderated by Małgorzata Mazurek, Associate Professor of Polish Studies, Columbia University.

In this talk, Ludmiła Janion will investigate scientific and journalistic discourses around differences in gender ratio among trans persons. The disparity between Poland and several Western countries, first noted in the 1980s, was repeatedly associated with the different gender politics in the capitalist West and (post)state socialist East. The talk will examine this explanation to show how the ratio was employed as a comparative and ultimately normative tool. Janion hopes to elucidate the interrelations between (trans)sexuality and anxieties over European geopolitics in the 1980s and 1990s.