Transgender: examining an emerging political identity using three political processes

Abstract

This study examines the construction of a new political identity category in the USA during the 1990s, transgender, focusing on three political processes: (1) conflict over meanings associated with the identity category; (2) backlash in the form of stigmatization from other groups that prompted frame transformation; and (3) representation, particularly across political venues where information about the new identity category is disseminated. Using a Historical Discourse Analysis approach to the archived documents of transgender social movement activists, publications, and interest groups from 1990 to 1999, this study shows how activists and leaders shaped what had previously been disparate groups into a unified identity category and associated interest group coalition to represent transgender-identified people. While this new identity category and coalition allowed the projection of unity that is necessary in contemporary interest group politics, this analysis shows that it also obscured important differences within the transgender identity category and helped to produce within-group marginalization and exclusions that endure in contemporary transgender, lesbian, and gay politics.