No Men in Girl’s Bathrooms: Embodied Harm to Children Arguments in Anti-Transgender Campaigns

• In Event: 318 - Section on Body and Embodiment Paper Session. The Body Politic: Law, Nationalism, and the State

Abstract

In “Thinking Sex”, Gayle Rubin (2011 [1984]) proclaimed that “no tactic for stirring up erotic hysteria has been as reliable as the appeal to protect children” (141). Through a content analysis of 455 political ads, flyers, videos, and press releases from 89 anti-lgbt campaigns, I analyze claims of embodied harm to children developed by the Religious Right from 1977 to 2013. These claims imply that transgender individuals presence in public spaces with children will result in sexual harm, gender or sexual confusion, and social disorder. Historically, claims of embodied harm have been made about gender, racial, and sexual Others in order to prevent civil rights laws; building on Nirmal Puwar (2004)’s work, I argue that these claims position Others as space invaders disrupting the somatic norm of existing spaces and threatening the children of the majority. I embed these claims within a long history of anti-lgbt claimsmaking, arguing that embodied harm arguments were initially made about gay men and are now made about trans women and girls. In early campaigns claims of gay transvestite teachers conflated gender identity and sexual orientation. In the 1990s and 2000s, the Religious Right framed trans women as “men in dresses” trying to gain access to bathrooms. This claim (hetero) sexualized trans women (Westbrook and Schilt 2013). Finally, in the 2010s, the Religious Right developed claims about trans girls as predatory boys that builds on frames about trans women and adultifies and sexualizes young trans girls.

Author

• Amy L. Stone, Trinity University