The state we’re in: Locations of coercion and resistance in trans policy, part 2

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, the transgender rights movement has burgeoned in the United States. A handful of states and dozens of localities in the United States have passed nondiscrimination legislation inclusive of gender identity; courts have begun to rule that transgender people should be treated equally; educational institutions and companies are beginning to include gender identity and gender expression in their nondiscrimination policies. The term transgender has moved into mainstream discourse with increasingly positive representations of trans lives in the media—from countless local newspaper articles on transgender people and their transitions, to respectful mentions in (some) political candidates’ speeches, to the ongoing appearance of trans characters in soap operas. Lagging behind that tremendous upsurge in awareness of transgender issues, however, has been research on transgender lives and practices that centers on the concerns and perspectives of those whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to social expectations. Of course, no shortage of research (Billings & Urban, 1982; Hausman, 1995; Raymond, 1979) has reproduced traditional pathologizing narratives of transgender people. Similarly, although work in queer theory (FaustoSterling, 2000; Halberstam, 1998) has raised important questions about gender as a process, as well as the liminality of gender, those approaches are not of much utility to trans advocates. Whereas this work has situated gender as something that shifts and that results, ultimately, from social forces, in legal and policy contexts gender tends to be understood as one of the most stable and grounded of all social identifiers. As a result of this definition, transgender individuals are often viewed either as being unstable and illegitimate or as frauds. Furthermore, in many law and policy contexts, transgender advocates try to steer clear of explicitly referring to social theories that highlight gender as ungrounded because such social theories inadvertently resonate with what most policymakers already believe about transgender people. Because of this sharp contrast between theoretical frames being used to understand gender and the frames employed by policymakers, who often hold the lives of trans people in their hands, advocates struggle to devise policy solutions that improve the lives of trans people, are politically viable in gender-binary-reliant administrative contexts, and still comport with the notion that gender is not grounded in the body. However, with the rise of the new social movement in the United States that has coalesced around the term transgender, the subjects of that data have begun to revolt (Stone, 1991; Stryker, 1998). So, too, has a new generation of researchers and researcher-advocates. But before we discuss the newer players and the work that we are delighted to showcase in this special issue of Sexuality Research & Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, The State We’re In: Locations of Coercion and Resistance in Trans Policy, we want to step back and frame some of the tensions inherent in the relationship between research with transgender people and advocacy for transgender communities. Transgender rights advocacy is almost always grounded in a human rights framework. This framework might be articulated differently depending on the particular viewpoints of the advocates or on the particular social and historical context in which such advocacy takes place but, in any case, its general gist is that (a) individuals