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Compulsory Legibility: How Purity Logic Governs Transitioned Women

Illustrated cover for “Compulsory Legibility: How Purity Logic Governs Transitioned Women” by Liora Wren, showing a green networked female silhouette beside an ECT machine, failed classification papers, dead trees, fencing, and an Olympic stadium.

This essay develops a framework for understanding how contemporary institutional responses to transitioned women operate through hidden origin markers, compelled disclosure, and bureaucratic reclassification. It argues that what is being governed is not visible trans difference, but imperceptible difference — the socially unmarked transitioned woman whose ordinary legibility as a woman defeats the classificatory system’s preferred cues.