QTKO reviewed Going Stealth by Toby Beauchamp
A must-read on the crossroads between US government surveillance and trans identity
5 stars
This book is a fantastic read. It's a little dense, and the chapter on mid-2010s transphobic bathroom bills is definitely padded for page length, but otherwise it's excellent.
Beauchamp's basic idea is that our medical-legal framework pushes trans folks to "fully transition" - which is to say, to eventually read as cisgender and erase any signs of transness. At the same time, it requires a paper trail of documents that prevent a trans person from fully assimilating in the eyes of the law; there has to always be some record of a trans person's previous life. It's a contradiction that shows the true nature of trans-directed policy: to categorize people between the compliant model citizen and the suspicious other. And as you can imagine, this creates complex issues when transness is cast along the lines of race, class, and disability.
Did you know that photo ID laws started with the …
This book is a fantastic read. It's a little dense, and the chapter on mid-2010s transphobic bathroom bills is definitely padded for page length, but otherwise it's excellent.
Beauchamp's basic idea is that our medical-legal framework pushes trans folks to "fully transition" - which is to say, to eventually read as cisgender and erase any signs of transness. At the same time, it requires a paper trail of documents that prevent a trans person from fully assimilating in the eyes of the law; there has to always be some record of a trans person's previous life. It's a contradiction that shows the true nature of trans-directed policy: to categorize people between the compliant model citizen and the suspicious other. And as you can imagine, this creates complex issues when transness is cast along the lines of race, class, and disability.
Did you know that photo ID laws started with the Chinese Exclusion Act and were specifically designed to screen based on Western gender norms? Did you know that TSA millmeter-wavelength scanners got their start in prisons? If you want to understand the root of these things - or if you want to understand the full context in the modern day - read this book.