Transforming Citizenships: Transgender Articulations of the LawIsaacWest. New York: New York University Press, 2014.

Abstract

Transforming Citizenships: Transgender Articulations of the Law Isaac West. New York: New York University Press, 2014.When transactress Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black) graced the cover of Time magazine a year ago for the cover story Transgender Tipping Point, it became more than apparent that transgender identity, rights and representations were achieving unprecedented visibility and acceptance in the United States. The recent revelations of Caitlyn Jenner and the accompanying celebration of her transformation have even more thoroughly popularized as well as legitimized trans presence and participation in American society. Critics of assimilationist, neoliberal political strategies might view these events more grimly, as manifestations of homonormativity. In this view, the culture industry's inclusion of trans identity exploits the desire to be normal and, far from challenging status quo norms of identity, fosters loyalty to consumer capitalism, allegiance to the state, and divests Jenner, Cox, and their fans of any kind of oppositional agency.A central thread of Isaac West's Transforming Citizenships: Transgender Articulations of the Law remains to contest the assumption that trans struggles for equal rights and full inherently pander to heteroand homonormativity, that striving for equal rights inevitably coincides with embracing sameness, erasing difference, and undermining oppositional agency. The historical examples and theoretical explorations of Transforming Citizenships provide compelling evidence that transgender struggles for equal rights can result in normative assimilation, but they can also change public, mainstream perceptions of citizenship and the identities encompassed by that label.Transforming Citizenships is a remarkable book for many reasons, in particular, West's dual commitments to practice and theory. Engaging in what he calls cultural studies of the law, West remains as concerned with the intricacies of concrete crusades for justice and political battles over identity as in theoretical disputes in trans, queer, and cultural studies. The book focuses on trans gender struggles for civil rights in recent US history: Debbie May ne's concerted campaign in 1950s Los Angeles to be granted legal status as a woman, which involved seeking arrest and publicity to push the point; the work of People in Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms (PISSAR), a coalition of genderqueer and disability activists seeking reform of public restrooms at the University of California-Santa Barbara; Congressional tussles over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which included gay congressman Barney Frank's willingness to sacrifice gender identity protections to insure coverage of lesbians and gay men versus the resounding support of LGBT groups for trans inclusion; and the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance's (INTRAA) efforts to include trans protections in Bloomington's Human Rights Ordinance. …