United Therapeutics; Terasem Movement

Martine Rothblatt is responsible for launching several satellite communications companies, including the first nationwide vehicle location system (Geostar, 1983), the first private international spacecom project (PanAmSat, 1984), the first global satellite radio network (WorldSpace, 1990), and the first non-geostationary satellite-to-car broadcasting system (Sirius, 1990). As an attorney-entrepreneur she was also responsible for leading the efforts to obtain worldwide approval, via new international treaties, of satellite orbit/spectrum allocations for space-based navigation services (1987) and for direct-to-person satellite radio transmissions (1992). In the 1990s Dr. Rothblatt entered the life sciences field by leading the International Bar Association’s project to develop a draft Human Genome Treaty for the United Nations (submitted in 1999), and by founding a biotechnology company, United Therapeutics (1996). Dr. Rothblatt is the author of books on satellite communications technology (Radiodetermination Satellite Services and Standards, Artech, 1987), gender freedom (Apartheid of Sex, Crown, 1995), genomics (Unzipped Genes, Temple University Press, 1997) and xenotransplantation (Your Life or Mine, Ashgate House, 2003). She is also cyberscripted and produced one of the first cybermuseums, the World Against Racism Museum.

Technological Transexualism (TT) was born in the 20th century as an accommodation to individuals insisting on expressing a self-determined self radically at odds with their socially determined selves.  Over the course of decades TT has achieved a partial cloak of human rights and has achieved a measure of success in challenging essentialist ideas regarding human identity.  This paper maps the struggles and conflicts of TT to comparable iconoclastic challenges faced by other forms of technological self-determination.  The paper analyzes the consequences for technological self-determination of following the normalization path trail-blazed by TT.