Transgender Liberalism
How an Elite Class Shaped an Identity
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Publishing:26th Mar '27
£24.95
This title is due to be published on 26th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A provocative new history of the elitist roots of contemporary transgender culture and politics.
It is often thought that transgender identity is a stable category that encompasses a culturally and politically unified group. In Transgender Liberalism, acclaimed scholar Jules Gill-Peterson upends such simplistic notions by showing that the transgender identity that emerged in the United States across the twentieth century, roughly from the New Deal era onward, was largely shaped by a middle-class elite who denigrated working-class practices of changing sex, especially those of transsexual women.
Drawing on the extensive archives of prominent figures and advocacy organizations, Gill-Peterson details how changing sex was domesticated over the course of the twentieth century by bourgeois orthodoxies from the New Deal to Great Society liberalism. In particular, the architects of transgender identity ensured its compatibility with liberal and neoliberal values that became prevalent in these periods, such as personal choice and responsibility, individual rather than collective flourishing, and individualist rather than structural approaches to opportunity. The guiding principle of this worldview was that the economic and social risks of transitioning should be privatized.
A history at once theoretically rich and vividly told, Transgender Liberalism leaves little doubt that transgender identity—alongside other identitarian frameworks—has displaced class consciousness and provided a bulwark against truly transformative mass politics.
Indispensable and bracing. A refreshingly materialist account of how transgender politics emerged within midcentury liberalism as a middle-class solution to the profound fear of changing sex. Gill-Peterson capably shows us that we will not be able to repel the contemporary assaults on trans people—or lift academic trans studies out of its intellectual poverty—until we see sex change as part of a larger set of economic demands. -- Andrea Long Chu, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Females and Authority
This daring new interpretation brilliantly elucidates the class tensions embedded in transgender identity—boldly critiquing the latter in part by positioning poor transsexual women at the heart and center of the analysis. A highly original, provocative, risky, and even field-changing book. -- Margot Canaday, author of Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America
Transgender Liberalism is a revelatory history of the class divides, gender norms, and social inequalities that have shaped the troubled relationship between transexual and transgender politics since the 1930s. This deeply researched and passionately argued book is a significant and provocative contribution to ongoing debates about the emancipatory potential of transgender politics. Gill-Peterson’s searing account of influential strands of contemporary scholarship on gender and sexuality simultaneously indicts both academia and modern liberalism's diminished and self-serving social vision. A book to be reckoned with. -- Brent Cebul, author of Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century
Transgender Liberalism raises profound questions about whether transgender politics and trans studies are marked by an anti-transsexual sentiment. Drawing on the historical record, Jules Gill-Peterson pulls no punches in demonstrating how and why trans politics has implicitly disparaged those who would change sex. Whether or not you agree, you should read this book. It forges new knowledge that is necessary to understand our current turbulent times. -- Viviane Namaste, author of Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People and Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism
Bringing an analysis of class to bear on the politics of gender and sexuality, Jules Gill-Peterson reveals how transgender liberation has never meant one thing for everyone—and how its meaning is tied up with economic inequality. -- Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America
ISBN: 9780674298965
Dimensions: 235mm x 156mm x 22mm
Weight: 664g
352 pages