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Transgender Identities: Towards a Social Analysis of Gender Diversity emerges from, and speaks to, recent sociological considerations of 'transgender.'
The term 'transgender' denotes a range of gender experiences,
subjectivities and presentations that fall across, between or beyond stable
categories of 'man' and 'woman.' 'Transgender' includes gender identities
that have, more traditionally, been described as 'transsexual,'1 and a diversity
of genders that call into question an assumed relationship between gender
identity and presentation and the 'sexed' body.

Transgender studies is a heterogeneous site of debate that is marked by tensions, border wars, and rifts both within the field and among feminist and queer theorists. Intersecting the domains of women's studies, sexuality, gender and transgender studies, Debates in Transgender, Queer, and Feminist Theory provides a critical analysis of key texts and theories, engaging in a dialogue with prominent theorists of transgendered identity, embodiment and sexual politics, and intervening in various aspects of a conceptually and politically difficult terrain. A central concern is the question of whether the theories and practices needed to foster and secure the lives of transsexuals and transgendered persons will be promoted or undermined - a concern that raises broader social, political, and ethical questions surrounding assumptions about gender, sexuality, and sexual difference; perceptions of transgendered embodiments and identities; and conceptions of divergent desires, goals and visions.

In response to concerns voiced by Judith Butler and Joan Copjec regarding the possible incompatibility of the discourses of Lacanian psychoanalysis and gender studies, this paper argues that gender studies and Lacanian psychoanalysis can hope for a meeting ground precisely around the topic of ``sexual difference.'' Questions about transgender subjectivities afford a point of entry for thinking through the impasses and political purchase of a necessarily contestatory integration of these two domains; however, imagining this integration requires in part an analysis of each discourse's limitations. This paper suggests that one of the limitations of Lacanian psychoanalysis resides in the too easy capitulation of the terms ``feminine'' and ``masculine'' to ``gendered'' readings. Arguing that Jacques Lacan's formulas of sexuation write against the facile collapse of sexual difference into gender identity, the paper considers what it would look like to conceptualize transgender subjectivity as an expression of the logic of sexual difference, ultimately suggesting there may be a way of reading transgenderism as a ``feminine'' phenomenon. The paper responds to two texts also invested in the integration of Lacanian psychoanalytic and queer/feminist concerns: Judith Butler's Antigone's Claim and Tim Dean's Beyond Sexuality. Dean's project to ``de-gender'' desire offers a reply to Butler's concerns about the compulsory heterosexuality of the Oedipal scene; however, both texts, in their preoccupation with scenes Oedipal and object based, occlude to some extent a ``feminine'' perspective and by extension significant ``feminine''/transgender insights concerning sexual difference.

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of employers' responses to the restroom requests of transgender employees, and to assess the ability as educators to reduce transphobia in the students.Design/methodology/approach– Subjects were 194 undergraduate business students at a medium-sized public university in the northeastern USA who were enrolled in an undergraduate course in organizational behavior. During class, they read a brief case which asked the students to play the role of a CEO in Little Rock, Arkansas, receiving a complaint from a female employee about using the same restroom as a coworker who is transitioning from male to female.Findings– The most inclusive response was also the rarest, with only 27 percent of students recommending unisex bathrooms. Hostile actions, forcing the transitioning employee to use the men's restroom, were recommended by 38 percent of those who correctly realized that an employee would be unprotected by sexual orientation discrimination law in this case and by 30 percent of those who thought that she could sue for that type of discrimination in that jurisdiction.Research limitations/implications– It would be interesting to replicate this with non-student samples such as human resource managers and executives. The use of a US sample and of a text-based case can also be viewed as weaknesses. Because gender identity is embodied, self-constructed, and socially constructed, no single research study can capture the totality of work life for transgender employees.Practical implications– Transphobia is so powerful that a substantial percentage of the students recommended courses of action that they believed to be illegal even though the study was designed to discourage a hostile response. Employers that are concerned about transgender rights will need to do a lot more than just grafting the word "transgender" onto their extant set of policies.Social implications– Since today's business students are tomorrow's business leaders, the authors could eventually make the business world more tolerant if the authors could identify a message that resonates with the students and causes them to re-evaluate their homophobia and transphobia.Originality/value– Empirical studies of transgender issues have been dominated by the qualitative approach, so there is a need for more quantitative research on this topic. The hostile responses usually indicated greater acceptance of transgender employees who have completed gender reassignment surgery. This seems difficult to reconcile with a conception of transphobia as a generalized distaste towards all those who transgress gender norms.

Transgender Migrations brings together a top-notch collection of emerging and established scholars to examine the way that the term "migration" can be used not only to look at the way trans bodies migrate from one gender to the (an?) other, but the way that trans people migrate in the larger geopolitical contexts of immigration reform, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the increased policing of national borders. The book centers trans-ing experiences, identities, and politics, and treats these identities as inextricably intertwined with other social identities, institutions, and discourses of sexuality, nationality, race and ethnicity, globalization, colonialism, and terrorism. The chapter authors explore not only the movement of bodies in, through, and across spaces and borders, but also chart the metamorphoses of these bodies in relation to migration and mobility. Transgender Migrations takes the theory documented in The Transgender Studies Reader and blows it up to a global scale. It is the logical next step for scholarship in this dynamic, emerging field.

Sex-classification policies are unjust because they prompt and authorize administrative agents to use their own subjective gender judgments to target, inspect, and exclude transgender-appearing people from the public accommodations under their watch. The vast majority of sex-classification policies are not rationally related to legitimate policy goals because there is no objective, socially agreed upon test for determining who is male and who is female, and legitimate policy goals such as fraud prevention, safety, security, and privacy can almost always be met more effectively by alternative means that do not subject people to gender inspection. I make a legal-normative argument for using gender-identity antidiscrimination laws to abolish sex-classification policies. I ground this radical proposal in a modified liberalism that treats sexual self-definition as an integral feature of liberal self-definition. Gender and intersectionality theorists rightly point out the deep structure of race-sex-class perception and oppression, but many of these theorists are too quick to dismiss the radical potential of gender-identity discrimination laws to eliminate, rather than modify, longstanding sex-classification policies. Racial, class and gender perception intersect to generate the possibility, rather than the inevitability, of invidious sex administration. And that is more than enough reason to abandon sex-classification policies.

Take an in-depth look at what works?and what doesn't?in research with GLBT populations! This essential book examines the usefulness of current frameworks for research with GLBT populations and highlights the necessity for greater complexity in the conceptualization and design of research with these populations. It will help you understand the need for more inclusive and representative samples and the need to protect the privacy of GLBT research participants-and ways to accomplish these goals. In addition, Research Methods with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Populations considers the