Queer Theory, Transgender Realities: Authentication in Anti-Transgender Legislation and Queer Criminology’s Interdisciplinary Future

• In Event: Addressing Legal Issues and Concerns for LGBTQ+ Populations

Abstract

This study centers the authentication of transness in lawmaking spaces where novel legal standards for gender are defined. Using a content analysis of archived Florida state legislative hearings, this project examines politicians’ presentations of knowledges, statements on bodies, and references to harm in their authentication of transness. Florida is selected as a case study from a novel dataset of all archived hearings of anti-transgender state legislation from 2021 to 2023. This work’s methodological implications reveal that, as Queer Criminology moves forward in the context of anti-transgender legislation, a closer relationship with Queer Theory will enable the critical analysis of normative state power needed to address the criminalization of transgender people in the United States.

Author

• Caro Mooney, University of California, Irvine