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This article aims to question the concept of “third sex” (Saladin d’Anglure, 2006) in the French context of expression and politic supports for trans people issues, by asking the following question: can tertiarized sex represent the social experiences of trans people? In this perspective we will understand how the various sciences (anthropology, but also medicine and psychoanalysis for exemple) have used the term third sex toward trans people, to demonstrate that it covers polyphony and highly contradictory meanings (Murat, 2006). However, gender identifications and trans people can never be reduce to this triptych of gender (Alessandrin and Espineira, 2015; Giami, 2011). The latest research in France shows, at the opposite, that all the transgender identities are multiple and various. Moreover, in the last research of Arnaud Alessandrin and Karine Espineira on the experience of transphobia in France, there were counted thirty-five different kinds of gender identification (MtF, FtM, trans, MtU, etc.). This shows how tertiary categories, such as binary, are limited to understand the subjective experiences of the trans people (Fausto-Sterling, 2012). That is why, it seems more appropriate to analyse the transgender experiences by a new category, in terms of “gender careers” (Alessandrin, 2011), in order to explain the dynamics realization of identity. Through interviews from my thesis and my recent research, I would try to show that, in the French context, and towards the individuals experiences (Dubet, 1995), the concept of third sex does not account for subjectivities that are deployed.

Research Framework: This article revisits a recent survey conducted by Alessandrin, Franquet and Dagorn (2016) about women’s travels in the city. Objectives: The objective of this article is to highlight the way teenagers and students use the city. Methodology: This survey is based on 5,210 questionnaires, of which 13.8% of the respondents were minors and 51.3% were women aged 20 to 25 years. In addition to this methodological device, focus groups, exploratory walks and observations in the greater city area and its public spaces was investigated (Bordeaux and its agglomeration). Results: This survey investigates the central notions of age and gender and apprehension about urban environments and travels in the city. While teenagers and young women say they feel comfortable in the city, they are the ones who are the most often the victims of sexist attacks, discrimination and harassment in public spaces. Conclusions: In conclusion, this article highlights the use the city and it investigates the urban climate as perceived teens and young women. It also encourages a differentiation between ‘students’ and ‘high school students’ and it strongly questions the social spaces of youth in the expression of sexist phenomena. Contribution: Based on recent empirical data and extensive quantitative research, this research sheds light on the relationship of girls to the city in a context of social and political discussion around the notion of "harassment".

En septembre 2011, le gouvernement français a instauré l'apprentissage du « genre » dans les manuels de sciences et vie de la terre en première L (littéraire) et ES (économique et sociale). Un an avant les débats autour de l'ouverture du mariage aux couples de même sexe, la France se divise sur le double sujet polémique de l'école et du genre. Cet article retracera cet épisode annonciateur des grandes manifestations homophobes que la France a connu en 2012-2013. Il portera son attention sur les programmes en tant que tel, mais aussi sur leur efficacité et sur ce qu'ils laissent entrevoir de la manière dont la France réagit aux questions de genre et de sexualité.

At the intersection of gender, space, and health issues, are ‘trans studies’. For a long time, the question of trans-identities have been contained in spaces which are, at the same time, on stage (the cabaret, the night’s world), coded obscene (prostitution, physical transformations) or related to psychiatrisation, pathologisation… The world has limited its spaces of interactions with trans people into what are often ‘suffocated’ spheres: the surgery block and some disgracing press coverage. With the trans movement, as a structured and politicized social movement, the visibility of transidentities has increased. Trans associations, as well as the news media, have established a new polity of visibility, that is more complex and less pathologized. The geography of transidentities gradually leaves the secret of doctor’s offices to conquer more supports (on screens), legal and public interfaces. In France nevertheless, research around the spaces of transidentities is still limited. Trans studies, themselves are new in the French academic field (Espineira, 2008) and sometimes have difficulty being heard (Espineira, 2013). As such, the attempts to create LGBT geographies remain mainly focused on a “gays” analysis (Jaurand, 2005; Leroy, 2005, 2009; Raibaud, 2013) or “lesbian” research (Clerval and Cattan, 2011; Amari, 2013). International litterature is, more plentiful (Doan, 2007). Now, trans courses disrupts the supposed neutrality of space and highlight its stressful size, in particular when the gender expression does not return to sex assignment at birth.… The trans testimonies in particular, insist frequently on the spaces of intimity which are rare and precious and submitted to multiple controls by the parents, by relatives or by doctors, bruising privacy. At another scale, spaces of health and media spaces are good markers of the tensions which mark out the trans lifecourses. With consideration given to this context, the first part of this article examines the literature dealing with the space and the transidentities. Then in a second part the purpose is to examine the way the trans people are involved in more or less stressful spaces, more or less visible spaces also, and the way women’s and homosexual movements helped them to build an interface for dissident gender expression. It will be necessary, also, to underline that the geography of transidentites creates favorable maps to analyse the neutral or impersonal reading of the space and inaugurates a particular reading of the space and the interactions which take place there. A geography of transidentities shows, in hollow, a geography of the “cisgender privilege” to resume the expression of Julia Serano (2007). From this point of view, this article appears as a sketch for one social geography of transidentities and the progressive implementation of trans studies in the French university landscape.

According to surveys conducted in Quebec (Canada) and in France, school experiences of trans youth are particularly chaotic. Despite similar ground-based observations, France and Quebec present school environments that are in some ways different for their trans youths. In this comparative paper, we interrogate the existence of educational policies that aim at reducing and preventing transphobia in high schools, as well as promoting a safe and welcoming environment for trans students. In Quebec, despite the legitimacy conferred to the fight against homophobia since the 2000s, the schooling experiences of trans students have only barely been subjected to specific strategies. In French schools, it remains impossible to talk about trans issues, partly because of the predominance of the notion of equality between girls and boys. Only concerted efforts from political and educational instances, as well as a frank discussion about gender issues, can ultimately weaken the heteronormativity in schools in France and in Quebec.