While transgender individuals and rights sometimes make headlines for their positive accomplishments, as when Danica Roem won a seat in the Virginia state house of delegates in 2017, more often news stories about members of the transgender community are about how they have been attacked, murdered, or challenged in their right to live openly as their identified gender, including their ability to serve in the U.S. military or to access health care. The transgender community is small – estimated at 0.6% of the U.S. population – and transgender people face staggering levels of poverty and violence. Yet, they also have achieved a remarkable level of political support and legal protection in recent years, and at a fairly rapid pace. Jami Taylor, Daniel Lewis, and Donald Haider-Markel set out in this wide-reaching and deeply researched book to explain how that happened. As the authors note in the introduction, “Although there have clearly been political and policy setbacks to the transgender movement…Even some Republican moderates now openly support transgender rights or at least attempt to block legislative harm to transgender people” (p. 5).
How is this possible? “How are they doing that?” (p. 6). Among the major strengths of this book is the broad variety of data and approaches the authors use to develop an answer to such questions. This includes three major national surveys; interviews with advocacy organization leaders and elected officials; quantitative data such as results from all local ballot measures on transgender issues and an analysis of LGBTQ organization financial information; and reviews of legal battles and court decisions. As the authors turn to each arena – from the rise of the inclusion of transgender rights into LGBTQ advocacy, to state legislation on nondiscrimination policies, to how health care policy affects transgender individuals – they analyze different types of data best suited to the topic at hand. This methodological diversity and flexibility is extremely effective. The three main authors are in part able to do this thanks to the inclusion of chapter co-authors who are experts in a variety of subfields, including Andrew Flores, Patrick Miller, and Barry Tadlock on public opinion, Jason Pierceson on the judiciary, Mitchell Sellers on executive power (including presidents and governors) and the bureaucracy, and Ryan Combs on health care policy. The wealth of data used and the broad expertise of the various chapter co-authors allow for a book that goes below the surface of transgender politics as normally addressed in political science scholarship and delves into the details of issues that tend not to make headlines.
Classic political science models would predict a much more arduous road for a small, stigmatized group. The group most closely affiliated with the transgender community in the public mind and in advocacy organizations – the gay and lesbian community – has been fighting for equality for much longer, is wealthier, and comprises a larger proportion of the population. This is precisely related to one of the answers the authors provide for the question they pose about this remarkable and rapid record of success: Sometimes, it is easier to “slip gender identity into bills” focused on sexual orientation, piggybacking on the success of legislation focused on gays and lesbians (p. 41). This reliance on the size, strength, and popularity of the gay and lesbian movement to advance transgender rights has clear advantages, given the general public’s current strong levels of support for same-sex relationships. For example, in 1977, only 43% of the U.S. public believed that gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should be legal; by May 2018, 75% of the public agreed, a shift of 32 percentage-points (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx). In contrast, a Pew Research Center survey in late 2017 found that fewer than half of the U.S. public (44%) agrees that a person’s sex can be different from their sex at birth (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/08/transgender-issues-divide-republicans-and-democrats/).
Public opinion about transgender people and rights is also improving, but slowly, and with large levels of uncertainty and malleability. Thus it is not surprising that some victories in the fight for transgender rights have come quietly, sometimes intentionally avoiding the word “transgender” and instead advocating in favor of “gender equality” (p. 121) or “bundling gay and transgender protections together” (p. 122) on the advice of LGBTQ advocacy groups. The large public opinion surveys conducted for this book show strong support for transgender protections from discrimination and for transgender rights, but also negative feelings towards transgender people and low levels of personal comfort. Members of the general public often don’t have firm opinions about transgender issues and are unfamiliar with transgender people or issues, and they tend not to have interpersonal contact with transgender people – they are an unknown, and, at least in their day-to-day lives, invisible community. Thus, while the public supports transgender rights that conform with their general support for U.S. values—such as equality and human rights—they are less willing to support rights for transgender people that might affect them or their children personally, such as access to public restrooms or gender-inclusive housing in college dorms or in school sports. In the substantive chapters devoted to each policy area, the authors describe how advocates have used various tactics to generate supportive court decisions and policies, using the federalist nature of our democracy and the decentralized nature of our judicial and bureaucratic systems to their advantage. Some policy changes meant to protect the rights of transgender people such as antidiscrimination policies (p. 41) or allowing changes to gender markers on identity documents (chapter 8) are often done “without much fanfare” (p. 299).
As many LGBT scholars have noted, the rapid shift in public attitudes about gays and lesbians is a result of increased visibility, including not just interpersonal contact but also mediated contact (e.g. with characters on popular television shows) or media attention to LGBTQ issues. Making gay and lesbian people and rights part of the conversation leads to increased support for gay and lesbian rights. This raises the possibility that taking the short-term gain of legislative support for transgender rights without the accompanying public debate and visibility may come at the long-term cost of a more difficult road ahead, when further gains require stronger public support. This is even more true for subgroups within the genderqueer community who are often marginalized in public campaigns for transgender rights, such as nonbinary individuals or transgender people whose appearances do not conform to society’s dominant gender binary. In short, the strategy transgender rights advocates have pursued, while remarkably successful, suggests a challenging future. If policies are changed without visibility or public discussion, and without underlying support from the public, how secure are those victories? The authors note that much of the success regarding transgender rights has been in Democratic parts of the country, and while the next president may reverse some policies, “one thing that will not be easily altered is the reshaping of the judiciary by President Trump” (p. 303). Continued success in the fight for transgender rights will require further improvements in public opinion, including in Republican areas, possibly through more interpersonal and mediated contact, but also through exposure to campaigns that push individuals past their feelings of discomfort and towards increased familiarity with, and thus comfort with, the issues transgender people and their families face.
Overall, this comprehensive and well-written explanation for the successes of the transgender movement is sure to become a standard reference for scholars of LGBTQ politics as well as for community activists hoping to protect those accomplishments and push for future gains. More broadly, the details of how a small, stigmatized, and under-resourced group managed to achieve these legal and policy victories is an insightful story of how groups can fight for equality within our majority-rule, money talks system.
