Transgender Youth Are Under Attack: The Work of Response

Abstract

This is a terrifying time to be LGBTQ in America. In the first 2023 legislative session alone, Republican lawmakers introduced more than 100 new bills specifically targeting transgender youth. This is part of a coordinated, multi‐state attack on transgender Americans about which there is open and very public acknowledgement. If you look, you'll see medical and psychiatric governing boards, major human rights organizations, policymakers, researchers like myself, and parent activists scrambling to speak back in what has become an impossible rhetorical landscape. The single most powerful move conservative lawmakers have made is to place transgender Americans and our advocates on an endless hamster wheel of response to a seemingly never ending series of aggressions. Part of how homo‐ and cis‐sexism function is to set the contours of public debate. This is a reflection on being a sociologist in the midst of these ongoing cultural conversations.