Normal Life

Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law

Author: Dean Spade
ISBN: 9780896087965

Wait—what’s wrong with rights? Much of the legal advocacy for trans and gender nonconforming people in the US has reflected the civil rights and “equality” strategies of mainstream gay and lesbian organizations—agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee equal access, nondiscrimination, and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the state and its legal, policing, and social services apparatus—even its policies and documents of belonging and non-belonging—are neutral and benevolent. While we all have to comply with the gender binaries set forth by regulatory bodies of law and administration, many trans people, especially the most marginalized, are even more at risk for poverty, violence, and premature death by virtue of those same “neutral” legal structures. Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law raises revelatory critiques of the current strategies pivoting solely on a “legal rights fr

Publisher: South End Press
Publish Date: 2011

Subjects: Law / Gender & the Law, Social Science / LGBT Studies / Gay Studies, Social Science / Gender Studies

This book is available in the following Community Centers: LGBT Recource Center (Location: )