Transgender Rights

2006

Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter, editors

The first comprehensive work on the transgender civil rights movement

With analysis from legal and policy experts, activists and advocates, Transgender Rights assesses the movement's achievements, challenges, and opportunities for future action.

Contributors: Kylar W. Broadus, Judith Butler, Mauro Cabral, Dallas Denny, Taylor Flynn, Phyllis Randolph Frye, Julie A. Greenberg, Morgan Holmes, Bennett H. Klein, Jennifer L. Levi, Ruthann Robson, Nohemy Solórzano-Thompson, Dean Spade, Kendall Thomas, Paula Viturro, Willy Wilkinson.

At last! Transgender Rights is the only book any activist, ally, or family member should really need to figure out the tactics of most if not all gender bullies and stop them dead in their tracks. Yippee for the good guys, the good girls, and all the rest of us good folks.

Kate Bornstein, author of Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws

Over the past three decades, the transgender movement has gained visibility and achieved significant victories. Discrimination has been prohibited in several states, dozens of municipalities, and more than two hundred private companies, while hate crime laws in eight states have been amended to include gender identity. Yet prejudice and violence against transgender people remain all too common.

With analysis from legal and policy experts, activists and advocates, Transgender Rights assesses the movement’s achievements, challenges, and opportunities for future action. Examining crucial topics like family law, employment policies, public health, economics, and grassroots organizing, this groundbreaking book is an indispensable resource in the fight for the freedom and equality of those who cross gender boundaries. Moving beyond media representations to grapple with the real lives and issues of transgender people, Transgender Rights will launch a new moment for human rights activism in America.

Contributors: Kylar W. Broadus, Judith Butler, Mauro Cabral, Dallas Denny, Taylor Flynn, Phyllis Randolph Frye, Julie A. Greenberg, Morgan Holmes, Bennett H. Klein, Jennifer L. Levi, Ruthann Robson, Nohemy Solórzano-Thompson, Dean Spade, Kendall Thomas, Paula Viturro, Willy Wilkinson.

Awards

2007 Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies

Paisley Currah is associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a founding board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute.

Richard M. Juang is co-chair of the National Center for Transgender Equality Advisory Board.

Shannon Price Minter is legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a founding board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute.

At last! Transgender Rights is the only book any activist, ally, or family member should really need to figure out the tactics of most if not all gender bullies and stop them dead in their tracks. Yippee for the good guys, the good girls, and all the rest of us good folks.

Kate Bornstein, author of Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws

A valuable contribution to understanding this evolving edge of human experience.

Susan Stryker, independent scholar and filmmaker

This book introduces transgender/transsexual/intersex social, political, and legal issues to a broad audience. I think this is an urgently important configuration of concerns, and I was moved, grateful, and profoundly excited to find that the editors have brought into being a collection that presents them so well.

Janet Halley, Harvard Law School

Transgender Rights is a must for any transperson, family member, or parent who is concerned with transgenders’s legal rights.

Dave Parker, President of PFLAG Transgender Network

This is a cutting-edge book full of new information and new ideas.

Patrick Califia, author of Public Sex and Sex Changes

This closely reasoned and researched volume explores the many avenues available to those who are otherly-gendered in our culture. Authors of the essays are highly knowledgeable and involved in the ongoing trans revolution/evolution. These informative essays will not only provide guideposts for the transgender individual, but will offer information on the legal, historical, and political aspect for their questioning family, friends, and allies.

Lavender

Transgender Rights packs a surprising amount of information into a small space. Offering spare, tightly executed essays, this slim volume nonetheless succeeds in creating a spectacular, well-researched compendium of the transgender movement. By giving voice to the needs and a blueprint for survival of transgender people, it opens a window affording mainstream America a view of the extreme difficulties and injustices this community suffers on a daily basis. It also documents the inroads made into changing laws and cultural perceptions with respect to transgender people and the fearlessness required of these individuals to rightfully live as their authentic selves. As each essay cites to a wealth of valuable resources, librarians whose institutions collect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and/or human rights materials will find in the footnotes a wonderful collection development aid. Sure to be considered a classic.

Law Library Journal

With Transgender Rights, Paisely Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter have edited a complex, coherent, and necessary collection of articles. The collection does provide insight into the legal politics of transgender experience in the contemporary U.S. and into the politics of rights more broadly.

Law and Politics Book Review

Transgender Rights is an indispensable resource for those who cross gender boundaries.

Lambda Book Report

The essays in Transgender Rights challenge us to redefine our concepts of sex and gender while examining the many obstacles facing the trans movement. This book is an excellent resource of the subject of queer theory.

Standout Magazine

Transgender Rights is an impressive compilation of work from lawyers and scholars whose contributions range from disturbing to inspirational.

TransNation

A reader who looks through even a few of the essays in the book is likely to step away with a sense that the two words in the title each have problems and possibilities huddled within them.

Rain Taxi Review of Books

The first comprehensive work on the transgender civil rights movement, this invaluable book offers legal analysis and critical essays that move beyond media representations to grapple with the real lives and issues of transgender people.

Curve Magazine

An attention-getting education in trans issues for lay persons.

Echo Magazine

Bridges the gap between academic inquiry and the experiences of transgender activists.

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies

A thoughtful and interesting book.

Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy

Transgender Rights is a magisterial collection of essays covering cutting-edge legal developments, movement histories, and political theory, written by some of the most celebrated names in both trans activism and scholarship. In addition to the three editors—all national figures in the transgender movement—contributors include some of the leading lights in gay and lesbian legal scholarship, such as Kendall Thomas and Ruthann Robson. The collection even includes an essay by Judtih Butler, whose pioneering work using the practices of drag to understand gendering makes her both celebrated and controversial. The essays are all relatively short and accessible to a wide audience, yet they are also uniformly theoretically challenging and conceptually rich, suggesting heroic labor on the part of the editors. This is an indispensable collection.

Women’s Studies Quarterly

Transgender Rights is an insightful anthology edited by three scholars and activists who have done a tremendous amount of work in advancing the rights of transgender peoples in the United States. . . . Transgender Rights is helpful for all activists, lawyers, and students who care about social justice. For those new to the topic, it presents a well-rounded introduction. For seasoned activists, it reaffirms the importance of this fight and potentially offers new perspectives. This is a resource that will be useful for a wide audience. Occasionally a book can serve as a catalyst for an internal transformation that leads to the building of a committed community. I firmly believe Transgender Rights has the potential to be such a book.

Berkely Journal of Gender, Law, & Justice