Anti-Transgender Legislation: Construction, Confrontation, and Coherency

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on Justice Policy

Abstract

United States state legislative hearings on anti-transgender bills display partisan confrontations between perceptions of the relationship between sex, gender, science, and safety. The novel construction of a legal standard for gender is analyzed using a Science and Technology Studies approach to critically assess the criminalization of transgender identity, healthcare, and public life. This content analysis uses transcripts of hearings from a novel dataset of all archived hearings on anti-transgender state legislation from 2021 to 2023. The sample of analyzed hearings is from Florida, chosen due to the high frequency of Florida’s anti-transgender bills passing into law and Florida’s role as a leader of conservative rhetoric during this time while Governor Ron DeSantis prepared to seek the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Core findings cover the rhetorical web formed of interrelated statements on the body, knowledges, harm, and the authentication of transness by state power.

Author

• Caro Mooney, University of California, Irvine