Reassessing the "Bad Parents Narrative": Gender-Policing of Trans, Gender Nonconforming, and Nonbinary People Through Ghost Policing

• In Event: New Perspectives on the Perils and Possibilities of Reform

Abstract

Typically understood to be “protective," the family is often a site of isolation and rejection for many transgender, gender nonconformity, and nonbinary (TGNCNB) people. Much of the analysis of the family in the fields of criminology and queer criminology studies, however, relies on what this paper titles the “bad parents narrative” to describe the connection between the criminal punishment system and family isolation of TGNCNB people, particularly TGNCNB young people of color. Developed with attentions to memory and haunting, this paper theorizes a relationship between the family as an institution of gender-policing that moves beyond the “bad parents narrative” and instead considers TGNCNB people’s experiences with gender-policing from family as endemic to the dominant hegemonic U.S. family form. Largely brought to the field of criminology studies through Saidiya Hartman’s framework of the afterlife of slavery, Reuben Miller’s framework of the afterlife of mass incarceration, and the burgeoning sub-field of ghost criminology, memory and haunting show up in this paper through a developing theoretical framework built alongside interviews with TGNCNB people themselves, coined ghost policing. Ghost policing seeks to broaden criminological theorizing concerned with gender-policing and surveillance from the family, by considering that an analysis of the family as an institution that participates in carceral logics, even without the police themselves being present, helps to illuminate that the family form is what promotes isolation and rejection of TGNCNB people, not simply “bad parents."

Author

• Ash Stephens, University of Illinois Chicago