In her search for an alternative understanding of scientific objectivity, the feminist science critic Donna Haraway developed an extremely productive epistemological concept back in the 1980s that emphasises ethical and political aspects of knowledge production without reducing them to this. Haraway describes the positivist ideology of the researcher as neutral as a "God trick" (being able to see everything from above/nowhere) and as an illusion, since we are all always in the middle of things and can only produce knowledge as embodied beings, located in complex power relations. Therefore, all knowledge is necessarily partial and localised, regardless of "personal involvement" or supposed "neutrality". From an ethical perspective, it is therefore of central importance to reflect on one's own localisation, to make it transparent and to take responsibility for the knowledge that one generates.

Due to the emphasis that all knowledge is embodied, partial, biased, situated and political, I believe that Haraway's approach is also suitable as an introduction to a critical discussion within inter* and trans* research on the question of who produces what kind of knowledge and with what consequences. Above all, Haraway's perspective makes it possible to expose supposedly neutral research as situated and biased, as well as to abandon the naive idea that those affected are automatically the better researchers, without pretending that it does not matter who does research from which position. However, Haraway leaves open how researchers who do not want to or cannot afford an outing (of any kind) can still critically incorporate their own positioning into their work.

Being politically and personally involved in one's own research topic is repeatedly used as an opportunity to delegitimise such research as 'unscientific' (as in the recent anti-feminist attacks on gender studies). In contrast, it is not only in gender studies that an understanding of science has been developed that fundamentally denies any possibility of disinterested, 'neutral' research. However, basing claims to validity on identity instead (i.e. the claim to have privileged access to 'better' knowledge 'as a woman', 'as a trans* person'...) is also problematised here with good reason.

Even if the debates on this area of tension are anything but new, it seems sensible to me to take them up again with regard to the "relationship of people working on trans* or inter* to their subject". I do not want to do this in a general abstract way in my presentation, but rather on the basis of my own experiences in the context of sociological research critical of bisexuality (especially on trans*-queer gender practices in the context of drag kinging, but also in the context of a thesis on "cross-dressing women" in the early modern period). I would first like to describe relationships to "objects of research" that can be understood neither as identity/identification nor as fundamental difference or distance, and ask which possibilities of cognition, which fade-outs and which movements can be associated with such a specific entanglement with the research topic. In a second step, I would like to reflect on what it can mean in the context of recognition structures in the academic field to become visible and/or marked in a particular way through this entanglement. With such preliminary considerations, I hope to stimulate a discussion of possible meanings of positionalities and localisations in which different experiences and attitudes can be discussed.

"Stepping in front of the class we become laboratory rats, frogs in the dissection tray, interactive multimedia learning experiences". Jamison Green uses these words to describe situations in which trans* activists carry out educational work at universities and schools. The metaphorical use of frog and lab rat illustrates prevailing epistemological power relations and can be read as a critique of forms of positivist objectivity, as formulated primarily from feminist and decolonial perspectives. In his educational work, Green focuses on the singularity of the human, which effectively counteracts a pathologising perspective. From a scientific perspective, however, the question arises as to how critical knowledge can be produced that refrains from reducing trans* people to mere objects of knowledge without falling into aesthetic escapism or pure subjectivism.

In my lecture, I will discuss a method of objectification that is based on the double participation of trans*gender and scientific knowledge cultures. Cultural and artistic artefacts function both as mental images that enable an "objectification of the subject of objectification" (Bourdieu) and as objects of research: by means of participatory reading, they can be read as condensations of transgender (sometimes implicit) knowledge that can uncover heteronormative patterns of thought and classification.

In the dissertation "Negotiating the boundaries of the gender regime", I use medical and Law literature, court judgements and parliamentary debates to examine how sexual science and legal discourses and practices on transsexuality have mutually condensed and changed since the 1960s, and how this has been mediated by the legislative and reform process for the Transsexuals Act (TSG, 1981), resulting in normative knowledge about trans and gender and gender regimes.

Guiding questions are:
1) How have trans subjects been constructed in medicine, law and politics in relation to conventionally gendered subjects during this period?
2) What dynamics emerged between medicine, law and politics?
3) What shifts took place within the hegemonic dual-gender order?
The investigation is carried out using a discourse-analytical method and from a deconstructivist perspective. My work shows in a historically specific way and within the above-mentioned parameters the complex (re-)production of hegemonic binary gender and heteronormativity and the associated minorisation, objectification and homogenisation of trans subjects, as well as the gradual change in this rigid attitude that has emerged in recent times.

In my lecture, I will present the main results of my work and explain how I have dealt methodically, analytically and ethically with the challenges of transdisciplinarity, the complexity of the topic - especially in view of the fact that trans in sexual science, federal policy and the trans movement has so far been largely lacking in systematic coverage - and the social relevance of the work.

My presentation is dedicated to "normative and intersectional relations of violence against trans(gender) people" in Germany and Europe. Firstly, current and constantly changing medical framings of trans(gender) people under the psychiatric diagnosis of 'gender identity disorder', mainly 'transsexualism' and 'transvestism', in the international disease classification catalogue of the World Health Organisation International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) of the American Psychiatric Association will be critically discussed. Secondly, legal regulations on trans(gender) people in the German Transsexuals Act (TSG), which has also been subject to constant change, are analysed. The TSG requires the pathologisation of trans people under the above diagnoses as admission requirements for the legally recognised change of first name and civil status.

It is argued that the legal and medical regulation of trans people in the ICD-10 and Transsexuals Act represents a normative-systemic violence: through the institutionalised pathologisation and abjectification therein, trans people have unequal opportunities in life, as they are excluded from their status as non-pathological, equal civic subjects and are increasingly exposed to violence. The effects of medical and legal standardisation, pathologisation and objectification are reflected in particular in the high degree to which trans people are affected by social exclusion, unemployment and the associated poverty and social isolation.

The systemic-normative exposure of trans people to violence (through the two-gender norm) is further illuminated within intersectional power relations. Based on the analysis of German and international discrimination and violence studies and reports, an expanded understanding of violence is proposed: as normative-systemic violence against trans people, which in intersectional power relations exposes trans people in particular to multiple discrimination for life-threatening violence and premature death. The increased exposure to violence through racialised and economic violence is particularly evident in the fact that 75% of registered murders of trans people worldwide were committed against (migrant) sex workers (of colour) and trans people of colour. At the same time, trans people facing multiple discrimination are particularly affected by premature death due to HIV infection and denied access to the (trans) healthcare system.

The medico-legal pathologisation and specific regulation of trans (gender) people are further discussed controversially in the context of biopolitical continuities of population regulation: as partial bisexual normalisation and legal recognition of certain bisexually re-integratable trans people, and simultaneous maintenance of the normative two-gender order, largely through reproduced pathologisation and objectification processes. In the context of biopolitics, it is discussed that the population regulation of people who deviate from the heteronormative gender binary has shifted from the historical pathologisation and criminalisation of homosexuals to the pathologisation and specific medical and legal regulation of trans(gender) and inter(sex) people.

How normative violence and biopolitical population regulation of non-bisexual people is exercised and legitimised through law and medicine is made particularly clear by the fact that the German Transsexuals Act legalised the forced sterilisation of trans people for the legally recognised change of civil status until the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court of 11 January 2011; as well as by the fact that the semi-legal 'gender reassignment surgery' on inter(sex) people in infancy was not banned as unconstitutional in the Bundestag resolution of 31 January 2013.

How do young trans* people negotiate their self-positioning with the normative, nationally coded expectations in their schools? What forms of support do they experience as useful, what help would they have wished for? With these questions I approach an ethnographic study with trans* adolescents/young adults in Sweden.

Research on (more rarely: with) trans* adolescents and young adults is usually conducted in the context of queer-feminist youth and school research or in medical-psychological research. A frequent starting point is a problem formulation of discrimination and the resulting risk factors (Darj & Nathorst-Böös, 2008; Sausa, 2005; Zethrin et al., 2010). Perhaps we are at an important point here: while it is still necessary to point out discrimination in order to highlight and shift the underlying mechanisms, it is equally necessary to question the victimisation that sometimes accompanies it.
A starting point for my research will be that the focus is not on the participants' gender identifications and presentations, but on their experiences with and analysis of the mostly highly gender-normative context of school. In doing so, I am aligning myself with the Swedish ethnologist Signe Bremer, among others, who emphasises that researchers must work critically with the structure of being examined to which trans*people are often exposed (Bremer, 2011). At the same time, I situate this project in my research on institutions/organisations and especially schools as places/contexts that produce affiliations.

I am still at the very beginning of this work, and would therefore like to place research ethical and methodological questions at the centre of my contribution. Currently, as a white middle-aged queer lesbian feminist cis researcher, I experience the transitions and boundaries between friendships/ activism/ academia and questions of interpretive sovereignty as loaded. How can I anchor the study in the Swedish trans*communities (where there is justified resistance to being researched)? What structures can there be for community feedback? With these questions, I would like to update the feminist and queer-feminist methodological debates and deal with demands on cis researchers in trans*research (e.g. Green & dickey, n.d; Hale, 2009 [1997]).

The lecture presents the results of my psychological Diplom thesis, in which I conduct qualitative interviews with trans* people. The wishes of the trans* people interviewed in relation to the people around them, in particular the supportive behaviour of these people, will be explored. When selecting the participants to be interviewed, the aim is to pay attention to different privileges and experiences of discrimination. The interviewer is themselves white and positioned as non-binary trans*. This means that the cisprivileged, trans*-hostile scientific view that is common in psychology is not already reproduced in the design of the interview situation and insights of a new quality are made possible. It is possible that trans* people with experiences of discrimination on racist or ableist grounds or with clearly binary gender identities report differently than they would have reported to a similarly positioned interviewee. This is a limitation of the study. The questions asked in the structured interviews are based on the wishes of various people around trans* people, for example strangers, colleagues, acquaintances, family members, partners and friends.

It is not uncommon for trans* people to experience discrimination in the world of work, in connection with legal regulations or the healthcare system. But intrusive questions from colleagues, jokes from family or acquaintances or even verbal or physical violence from strangers can also represent an enormous psychological or physical burden (see Grant et al. 2011; Fuchs et al. 2012; Motmans 2010). The fact that this topic is nevertheless on the fringes of (scientific) interest is shown by the relatively small number of studies, most of which only approach the topic from a quantitative perspective (cf. Franzen & Sauer 2010).

In contrast, the research project carried out at the University of Vechta in 2014/2015 aimed to gain qualitative insights. In a two-part survey process, trans* people were first asked about previous experiences of discrimination in order to focus on possible causes and explanations for the forms of discrimination described. As part of the study, it was possible to identify interdependencies between various forms of discrimination as well as key explanations for the discrimination experienced, which will be highlighted in the presentation, not least with a view to potential prevention and intervention concepts.

What can allied self-reflective positions within gender studies (and other sciences) look like today in the context of empirical participatory research with inter*people? I would like to use reflexive grounded theory as an example here. This approach focuses on the interaction between the researcher and the research subject and emphasises the influence of all researchers in the joint process. This can lead to empowering research processes that are not determined by others and in which traditional criteria such as objectivity, neutrality and the hierarchical relationship between researcher and interviewee are broken down. How can interviewees, as acting subjects, help decide, supplement and criticise in individual steps? What are the limits of these approaches?

How can other structures of discrimination that simultaneously affect people (racism, ableism, sexism/genderism, classism....) always be taken into account in the research process without losing sight of inter* demands, realities of life and discrimination? I would like to discuss this using my dissertation topics and questions as examples.

In doing so, I would also like to address the special historical co-responsibility of gender studies in connection with intersexuality and how this can be used as an instrument - as a building block - for human rights and equality in inter* contexts as a non-appropriating and alienating science. As a former student and current doctoral student of gender studies, I have often witnessed the silence about - and/or the appropriation of - inter* issues within gender studies and also in LGBTT*Q contexts. In order to become an ally in the academic field, I believe it is essential that non-inter* people, including myself, continuously reflect on their positionings and privileges in their writing and speaking - in their research activities - and thereby put their learned theories behind inter* concerns and demands.

Adrian de Silva, Erik Meyer, Arn Sauer, Uta Schirmer

The key feature of participatory research approaches - which are still little known in Germany - is the involvement of stakeholders as co-researchers. Ten experts from science, clinical and psychosocial care and trans* activism have been working together in a network in the Participatory Trans* Health Research working group since 2013. The psychosocial and health situation of trans* people in Germany is to be systematically researched in several interconnected sub-projects. The aim is to create a knowledge base in order to sustainably improve healthcare for trans* people on as many levels as possible.

The presentation will introduce the procedures and possibilities of participatory research and relate them to the needs of the trans* community. Initial ideas and plans on how this could be implemented will then be discussed with the participants.

Under the pseudonym "N. O. Body", Karl M. Baer published his memoir Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren in 1907. The choice of the ambiguous pseudonym marks the body as a relevant category of the text and the narrator Norbert O. Body reports how he was assigned female at birth, grew up as Nora O. Body, studied, worked and was only 'recognised' as male by a doctor at the age of 21. This doctor was the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who also writes the epilogue to the memoirs. The two not only co-operated on the publication of the memoirs, but also worked together on other occasions: Hirschfeld writes the medical report for the change of civil status, promotes the book and Baer supports Hirschfeld at public lectures. While Baer's masculinity and heterosexuality were legitimised by the scientist, Hirschfeld was able to use the story of the misunderstood man as an image campaign for the often discredited sexual science he represented.

In my dissertation on "Intervening in Intersexualisation: The Clinic and the Colony" in 2010, I examined the neo-colonial generation of knowledge on inter*sexuality. Not categorised as inter* myself, I would like to address this type of research at the conference and put it up for discussion. As a researcher, I examine the knowledge productions of others in non-Western regions, in this case the "anthropological paradise" of Papua New Guinea, which was scientifically colonised by Western anthropologists and physicians long after political colonisation. The anthropologist Gilbert Herdt, known for his anthology "Third Sex / Third Gender", spent more than 30 years researching homosexuality in Papua New Guinea. His concept of "ritualised homosexuality" was important for the development of an anthropology critical of heteronormativity, among other things. When he realised that there was an additional gender category to male and female among the Zambians, he also began to take an interest in this. He brought the medical doctor and psychoanalyst Robert Stoller (known from inter*sex research and John Money's opponent) to Papua New Guinea to conduct an interview with Sakulambei, one of the representatives of this alleged third gender category. In my lecture, I would like to present this interview and examine it under the aspects of neo-colonial knowledge generation, the underlying normative two-gender assumption and the standardising epistemic-anthropological gaze. Herdt also invited the endocrinologist Julian Davidson from the States to investigate blood and urine tests on site in Papua New Guinea and to define this third gender category not only psychologically but also biologically. Of particular interest to me here is the transcultural construction of the sociological and biological third gender.

Moderation: Ulli Klöppel & Josch Hoenes

Within academia, people often talk about trans* and inter* people and rarely with trans* and inter* people. This often also affects scientists who are trans* or inter* themselves and conduct research in these areas. The concerns, needs and political demands of inter* and trans* people are therefore not recognised in academia, or only very marginally. In this respect, it is obvious and important to let trans* and inter* people have their say in science, to demand spokesperson positions for them and to listen to them. Some allies in academia who have a close political and lifeworld connection to trans* and inter* people have also advocated for this practice. At the same time, such a practice also raises a variety of questions and problems:

Which trans* and inter* people are invited, allowed and able to speak? Who or what can they legitimately represent? What effort and what risks are involved in speaking as a trans* or inter* person in academia?

What other political practices and opportunities are there to make the needs and demands of trans* and inter* people heard within academic discourse?

Do, should or should trans* and inter* people in academia take on the task of representing political demands and concerns in academia? How does such a claim relate to the demands placed on their own research?

The plenary will discuss these recurring questions in relation to the appointment of spokespersons in academia. Should and can this follow a logic of identity politics? When, where and why can this be useful/helpful? Or should this be strictly avoided? What are the alternatives? And what are the gains, risks and losses associated with different forms of politics?

We would like to discuss these questions with all interested parties on the basis of brief inputs.

For trans* people, the 1980s were characterised by more opportunities for social recognition - e.g. the introduction of the Transsexuals Act in 1981 -, conflicts with the women's* and lesbian* movements and associated questions about which political strategies would be promising in order to reduce discrimination and achieve social change. Should it be about placing value on "passing", which would promise social recognition as a woman* or man*, or would it not be necessary to organise as trans* people, to form a common "we" and then to be heard politically as a social movement? And if such a common identity of trans* people could exist, what would it be based on and would this basis be strong enough to achieve social change?

This article will attempt to analyse two newspapers - EZKU and TS Journal - in order to trace the discussions on the question of identity politics versus being binary-gendered, which laid the foundation for the formation of the first nationwide interest groups of trans* people from the early 1990s. This provides a basis for a better understanding of the history and origins of today's trans* organisations and the difficulties and differences that still often characterise the relationship between different currents of trans* movements today.

Trans* people are exposed to a variety of difficulties in the binary gender system and have to make individual decisions about their lifestyle, possibly time and time again. In addition to support in their personal environment and through self-help groups, this may also require professional help. Trans* people who are aiming for a permanent "transition" to their gender identity and want to take advantage of legal and/or medical measures must undergo psychiatric assessments and possibly also psychotherapy, which is not always desired by those affected. This "help", combined with the dependence on bureaucratic decisions, is experienced by many trans* people as an additional burden.

In recent years, very different and less clearly organised support structures have developed within the trans* community in German-speaking countries. Self-help groups and trans*-supportive people, the so-called "allies" (relatives or friends), play an important role in this. In addition - in contrast to the above-mentioned assessments and required therapies - trans* affirmative counselling (see Meyer, in print) is offered in a few places based on the concepts of "gay counselling" or "gay affirmative therapy" by professionals from the psychosocial field who themselves have a trans* background or are involved as allies. In the meantime, there are initial efforts to professionalise self-help according to the peer-to-peer approach by offering further training in the sense of qualified lay help.

This article attempts to provide a systematised overview of trans*positive support services from self-help, counselling and therapy. The aim is to create greater transparency for those seeking advice.

For some years now, more and more political initiatives have been emerging from and for a trans* community. In my research project, I am investigating the politics of and for trans* and questioning their affective implications. I am interested in the concept of community and the feeling of belonging to a community, which is expressed in a political-activist way and, according to my initial hypothesis, is affectively charged. I focus on politics in the context of interest groups in organisations of and for trans* people. From an affect-theoretical perspective, I pursue the thesis that trans* activism produces transnationally circulating knowledge that is affectively structured as a sense of belonging to a community. This affective sense of belonging is ambivalent, paradoxical and/or questioned as trans*activist knowledge traverses local fields of action, languages, national contexts, etc. The article examines trans*activism as a community beyond the notion of a politically unified context as a paradoxical and therefore affectively structured community.

What possibilities can be found in contemporary trans cinema that refer to alternative worlds in the films and go beyond the normalisation structures of the representation of trans?

In the lecture, I will present my recently completed doctoral thesis Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes. A Transfeminist Reading of Utopian Sensibility and Gender Dissidence in Contemporary Film and my analyses of the so-called exit scapes. The exit scapes in Trans Cinema represent a way of reading these films beyond their recurring forms of violence, of experiencing affirmative places in the film and of creating conceptually utopian space-times.
Utopias and especially the feeling of hope are meaningful through their political potential, the driving force they can contain and their existence in the exit scapes in trans cinema is not only important for trans politics, but also represents a vital counter-project to, for example, the naked-body shots in trans cinema, as well as to the isolation of the characters and their continuous threat through a possible lack of passing. The exit scapes are constantly recurring scenes of song, dance and dream in trans cinema. In my presentation, I will focus on one of these exit scapes, discuss it in the context of a multisensorial methodology (Laura Marks; Vivian Sobchack) and explore its tense relationship to the concept of the utopian (Sara Ahmed; José Muñoz).

I position myself as genderqueer and it is precisely from this perspective that an alternative examination of trans cinema is important to me, one that avoids remaining within the structures of victimhood, but goes beyond them and deals with affects and strategies of hope, collectivity and agency.

Although transgender studies have become increasingly important since the 1990s in the course of the popularisation of queer studies, there is a lack of monographs on transsexuality in film, especially in film studies. Feminist film theory only implicitly dealt with transsexuality, using it as a category to theorise constructions of the gaze and processes of identification. My research has a different focus. The aim is to understand how and why the figure of the transgender and the subject of transsexuality were portrayed. This is important insofar as the cinematic visualisation of the transgender has undergone and continues to undergo a development that is characterised by ruptures, limitations and, since the emergence of New Queer Cinema, by reorientations whose ideas about and realisations of transsexuality need to be traced. Transsexuality is not understood exclusively as a cinematic construct, but as a media construct, which is fed by social ideas about transsexuality, the film figure of the transgender and transgender discourses in film studies. This interaction between different levels of discourse will be reconstructed and problematised for New Queer Cinema using the methods of systematic film analysis (Korte 2010, Bordwell/Thompson 2013) and critical discourse analysis (Jäger 2012). In addition, the extent to which the emergence of a New Queer Cinema movement contributes to the discursive circulation of emancipatory potentials for transgender.

The lecture is to be understood as part of a work-in-progress of a dissertation project on the topic of the same name.

In the field of "knowledge(science) productions on inter*/trans*", I would like to discuss the results of my dissertation, in which I analyse the question of an apparent affinity between monsters and transsexuals based on both my lived trans* experience and my artistic practice. To this end, I combine the fields of transgender and monster studies and analyse not only the problematic equation of trans* people with monsters, but also ask about the possible potential of subversive monstrosity and its limits.

As part of my research, I define some soma techniques of monstrosity, with the help of which rules of the game of dehumanisation of certain bodies(soma) can be made visible in the interplay with techniques(techné). Both the soma techniques of monstrosity and the idea of a subversive monstrosity make it possible to highlight the interconnectivity of trans* and other discriminated and dehumanised bodies and thus to criticise not only heteronormative bisexuality, but also other pathologisations and racialisations of (cis) bodies.

In the context of my dissertation, I have chosen a form of knowledge production that allows me to apply my findings in the form of a critique to films that lie outside the trans* film field. In this way, new knowledge is produced about existing cultural texts.

The transsexual body is an unnatural body. (Stryker 2006: 245)

I give an insight into my dissertation project, in which I theoretically and artistically search for alternative, queer ways of representing trans*. Artistic representations of trans* often show (naked) bodies as other bodies of the norm; with visible effects of surgical and hormonal interventions. However, such representations are problematic, as identitarian visualisations only ever show certain bodies and identities and exclude other subjects from the field of the recognisable.
The task of my dissertation is therefore to design non_representations of bodies that can be located in time and space and build on trans*-relevant knowledge and politics, but do not rely on a representation of biological corporeality. Beyond dichotomies and linear-temporal body histories, I develop trans*-specific ambiguities and fillings of in-between spaces. To this end, I appropriate the pathologised false body as a radically disruptive body that betrays notions of bisexuality and heteronormativity. This body does not have to refer to materialisations of the biological, but can be imagined with the help of the viewer's feelings and memories as a trans* body without a body in Zwischen_RaumZeit .

Input: Arn Sauer, Moderation: Josch Hoenes

The Inter*Trans*Science network was founded in 2012 to facilitate an exchange between trans* and inter* people working in science and scientists researching these topics from an emancipatory perspective. What do we value about this network? What would we like to see different? What else do we need? And above all: What opportunities are there to further strengthen the current network? Should a more permanent organisational structure or an internet presence be created? What wishes and utopias are there? And who is interested in working on and in the network? In the plenary discussion, we want to discuss how further work can be done on and in the network and which concrete steps are being taken by whom.