Sexology’s Photographic Turn: Visualizing Trans Identity in Interwar Germany

Creating a space for trans self‐narrative in 1930s Turkey: Kenan Çinili's memoir

“…As these photographs registered the pleasures of cis-heteronormative voyeurism, Kenan could also showcase through them that they had mastered various styles of masculine self-presentation. 90 In analysing the vernacular photography of the era, Özge Baykan Calafato identifies four types of masculinity represented: the joyful soldier, the gentleman, the modern husband and the father -two of which Kenan actively embraced and embodied. Additionally, Kenan assumed a seductive, flirtatious masculinity, potentially inspired by Western popular cultural representations which exuded charm and allure.…”

“…91 Yet, even though taken by the magazine's photographers, these photographs still 'exemplify the conscious self-stagings of individual subjectivity and involve careful manipulation of the camera'. 92 The caption under the photographs attempts to undo the effect of Kenan's convincing gender performance by claiming that they have 'retained the look and smile of a young girl [sic], despite wearing men's clothes'. 93 Below this sequence of headshots, one can notice Kenan's smiling face positioned on the far-right side of the image, combined with a female-clad body in Figure 7 through photomontage.…”

Modern European sexological and orientalist assimilations of medieval Islamicate ‘ilm al-bahto erotology

“…Scholars such as Ann Laura Stoler, Claire Cosquer, Leon Rocha, and several others have complained that Foucault's ambivalent evocation of the ars erotica / scientia sexualis dichotomy reflected an orientalist flattening and homogenisation of different cultures throughout world history, thus itself evincing a colonial habit of thought in which the West is reductively distinguished from ‘the rest’ (Cosquer, 2019: 16; Fuechtner, Haynes, and Jones, 2017: 6–8; Rocha, 2011; Stoler, 1995: 14–15; 2010: 146). Other scholars have also destabilised the dichotomy by showing how even in the peak era of Europe's supposed scientia sexualis moment – between 1860 and 1930 – there were also important literary and artistic genres presenting both eroticised and medicalised perspectives that, in turn, impacted the development of modern scientific discourses of sexuality, something Foucault himself acknowledged but did not explore in satisfactory detail (Bauer, 2009; Byrne, 2013; Cryle, 2008, 2018; Downing, 2002; Finn, 2011; Funke et al , 2017; Schaffner and Weller, 2012; Sutton, 2018). Scientia sexualis was a Latinised variation of the earlier Greek-derived erotology ( eros + logos ) evoked in 19th-century works describing non-European forms of sexual medicine and erotic description, later serving to delineate 19th-century European sexual science as something unprecedented and without debts of inheritance to any earlier or non-European traditions.…”