This chapter explores the traditional strategies for democratic defense developed in response to the rise of fascism in the twentieth century within the context of American political constraints and constitutional jurisprudence. Democracy is not naturally occurring. It demands the intentional commitment, and recommitment, to a shared future based on shared values. During periods of political polarization and economic stress, authoritarianism offers the illusion of unity through restrictive and exclusionary policies that promise a return to a “great mythic past.” The twentieth century democratic defense scholarship grappled with how to resist the appeal of the easy but dangerously costly answers offered by antidemocratic movements. Building on this democratic defense scholarship, this chapter recognizes the limitations of implementing intentionally antiauthoritarian safeguards within the American constitutional and political context. As an alternative, it proposes the development of a nonlinear, collaborative queer and trans liberation agenda and outlines a practice of queer transformative democratic resistance that is founded in principles of social movement theory.

This chapter examines intensifying state-led attacks on LGBTQ people and reproductive rights in the United States through the lens of patriarchal authoritarianism. It connects the rise of the worldwide anti-gender movement with the historic exploitation of preexisting patriarchal power disparities by fascist and authoritarian regimes. It exposes the retrenchment towards state control over reproductive, bodily, and sexual autonomy as a tangible marker of a nation’s transition towards patriarchal authoritarianism and a time-tested fascistic tool. Patriarchy can be wielded as a fascistic tool and help facilitate a slide into authoritarianism by expanding social control and narrowing acceptable expressions of individuality, dignity, and freedom. Patriarchy excludes women from the public sphere while also exerting control throughout the private sphere of the family. Patriarchal authoritarianism further reinscribes patriarchy by exerting state control over reproduction, sexuality, and the family. Restricting opportunities for women and narrowing avenues for gender and sexual expression support the consolidation of power by limiting individuality and nonconformity.

This chapter shifts addresses the advocacy agenda of the LGBTQ rights movement, specifically the pivotal role played by the US Supreme Court. In less than two decades, the Court recognized the right to engage in same-sex sex, mandated recognition of same-sex marriage, and interpreted Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include discrimination on the basis of transgender status and sexual orientation as prohibited forms of sex discrimination. These developments fundamentally altered the legal lives of LGBTQ people. However, systemic efforts to undermine the integrity of the courts threaten these victories and the lives built around them. This chapter concludes that the current dominant interpretive approach of the US Supreme Court, known as originalism, is overly restrictive and arguably an expression of restorative nostalgia that prevents the Court from fulfilling its duty as a constitutionally mandated check against tyranny. An independent judiciary can serve as a powerful bulwark against democratic decline; however, courts can also provide a powerful legal veneer for otherwise patently autocratic policies. Democracy scholars refer to this as autocratic legalism. The increasing specter of autocratic legalism in the Unites States threatens to diminish the role of the Court as a tool for democratic self-defense.

This chapter addresses the deepening crisis of democratic decline and political instability in the United States. It charts the erosion of our longstanding democratic norms and institutions and explores the contours of foundational terms, such as authoritarianism, fascism, fascistic tools, and autocratic legalism. By examining the American experience in the broader global context of democratic backsliding, this chapter explains how attempts to consolidate power by imposing conformity and restricting individual rights can serve as an early warning signal of a fascistic rise. It asserts that the most recent attacks against LGBTQ people in the Unites States are part of a dangerous antidemocratic movement using scapegoating and demonization to stoke populist anger. Through this lens, the MAGA movement’s flagship policies of gender conformity and patriarchy are both a symptom of democratic decline and a fascistic tool that can be used to consolidate power. Although many Americans have only recently begun to come to terms the realities of our democratic decline, generations of queer and transgender people have spent their lifetimes navigating the fault lines of this unfolding crisis.

This chapter continues the discussion of the advocacy agenda of the LGBTQ rights movement by examining the development of the institution-based civil rights advocacy that came to define the movement during the Obama and Biden administrations. During this period, the LGBTQ rights movement secured a rapid expansion of LGBTQ rights through a combined campaign of impact litigation and congressional and administrative lobbying that was bolstered by public advocacy campaigns, corporate outreach, media buy-in, and public education. Although effective in the moment, this approach is highly dependent on functioning democratic institutions and ultimately produced gains that have been revealed to be all too temporal. This chapter critiques the constraints of civil rights advocacy in the age of neoliberalism and explains how institutional-based lobbying fundamentally narrowed the horizon of LGBTQ resistance from a potentially expansive and creative democratic project into to a competitive, rights-bound universe. It concludes that the queer and trans movements must embrace the work of democratic creation and transformation as part of a broader pro-democracy or democratic resistance movement.

This chapter looks beyond traditional concepts of democratic defense and provides a framework for the queer and trans community to engage in the process of democratic creation within the broader pro-democracy and democratic resistance movements. It argues that the queer and trans experience with rejection, vulnerability, and collaborative survival has uniquely prepared us to navigate the unfolding American democratic crisis. It encourages LGBTQ people to embrace the powerful status of being an “outsider” in service to the larger democratic project. Rooted in feminist and queer theory, this chapter concludes that both our societally manufactured difference and our innate equal dignity and humanity can help us to see beyond the restrictive binary thinking of mainstream society. This chapter argues that pro-democracy movements must be fueled by a commitment to collaborative survival and mutual aid. It recognizes that the celebration of our authentic expression and humanity are radically pro-democratic actions, especially when faced with state mandated conformity.

This chapter explores the use of restorative nostalgic political propaganda by antidemocratic forces to pursue a myth of a “golden age” and reinstate policies built on racism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny. Although conservative political figures in the US have long capitalized on the allure of restorative nostalgia to delegitimize progressive social and political reforms, today’s populist MAGA movement is different in both kind and degree. In a quest to “make America great again,” the MAGA movement aims to turn the clock back on decades of social justice gains by villainizing the social progress and expansion of rights that have made many of our lives possible. This chapter explains the historic use of restorative nostalgic propaganda by fascist regimes to blame modernity and the expansion of civil and political rights for the loss of a “great mythic past” defined by simplicity and prosperity. Under this view, individuals who advocate for progressive reforms are demonized and branded as enemies of the state. Restorative nostalgic political propaganda demands the exclusion and erasure of nonconforming individuals to restore the “simple life” and regain national glory.

Trans and non-binary people face many barriers to accessing healthcare. There is also a lack of research and guidance focusing on the health of transgender and non-binary people. Many clinicians also do not feel confident in their knowledge of specialist care for trans and non-binary people. As part of gender-affirming care, trans and non-binary people may start gender-affirming hormone therapy to provide masculinising or feminising changes that are more congruent with their gender identity. This has shown to a positive impact on the mental health and quality of life of trans and non-binary people. Over the life course, trans and non-binary people may also access other hormonal medications such as contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy for menopause. There are unique considerations for prescribing these medications for trans and non-binary people, especially if they are on gender-affirming hormones. In this chapter, we summarise evidence around the care for trans and non-binary people with specific considerations for the intersection between gender-affirming hormones, mental health, and sexual and reproductive healthcare.

This chapter concentrates on the ways that writers improvised with the discourse of what Amy Kaplan first described as “manifest domesticity”—a discourse pressing domestic life in the US into the service of empire-building. Their improvisations are a courageous attempt to do nothing less than insert queer lives into the national narrative. Beginning with Walt Whitman’s antebellum fiction, the chapter takes readers all the way into the twentieth century, collating a wide range of writers (some canonical, others now obscure) who shared an interest in queer lives avant la lettre—before, that is, same-sex desire was codified and transformed into an identity rather than a behavior. What emerges astonishes the twenty-first–century’s commonsense of nineteenth-century America: a culture surprisingly open-minded about non-normative desires that is, in many ways, less restrictive than our own; models of domesticity that challenge, rather than reinforce, the rapacious elements of empire; gay sex published and, in some cases, canonized.

The first part of this chapter discusses issues of sex structure. It next considers sex as a demographic concept, and then considers the five biological definitions of sex. It next focuses on demographic indexes of sex composition, especially the sex ratio and the sex ratio at birth, followed by discussions of the importance of sex and the demographic processes. The section ends with a discussion of intersex. The second section of the chapter focuses on gender identity; first discussed are definitions and terminology dealing with gender identity, particularly transgender. It next examines various issues dealing with trans men and trans women, trans gender nonbinary persons, and cis men and cis women. Empirical research is next discussed comparing trans persons with cis persons. There are significant differences between the trans male and trans female populations compared to the cis male and cis female populations.

This chapter explores how the law has identified the biological sex of an individual where it is indeterminate or contested. Legal systems with highly ridged sex-based rules developed social and legal mechanisms for authoritatively determining what sex a person was where this was unclear. The traditional approach of the law was to categorise the individual in question by reference to which sex was more ‘predominate’, following a crude assessment of physiology. The classification of sex has evolved significantly since then, with the House of Lords identifying a precise list of ‘indicia of human sex’. In determining biological sex, the law looks for congruence between a person’s chromosomes, gonads and genitals at birth. If there is congruence, then the law will treat that person as biologically male or female as the case may be. If there is incongruence between the physiological factors, that person is recognised as having a DSD and is subject to a separate legal analysis which looks to further factors to determine what sex an individual is classed as, including social upbringing and self-perception. Our law does not conflate issues of sexual development with issues of gender identity. The default position in our law is that a transgender person is legally recognised as being of their biological sex, regardless of medical intervention.

This chapter explores the scientific connection between sex and sport. It begins by examining the meaning of sex and the criteria used to assign individuals to the male or female category. It ends by exploring the link between sex and sport and identifying the sex-related traits that have the greatest impact on athletic performance.

The question of whether transgender girls should be permitted to participate in girls’ sports has been one of the most politically contested and socially controversial of the last decade. Neither law nor medicine provides definitive answers. This book takes on the absolutist positions staked out by both the left and the right and argues in favor of a more nuanced framework that seeks to ensure all girls and boys –both transgender and cisgender – have access to the benefits of organized sports.

This chapter examines the arguments for transgender girls’ exclusion from girls’ sports that have dominated right-leaning public and political discourse. The chapter articulates the argument for exclusion based on fairness and contends that it cannot justify total exclusion of transgender girls from girls’ sports at every age and level. The chapter next uncovers the claims about human flourishing and personal dignity that also motivate arguments for exclusion and argues that such claims are too empirically dubious and normatively controversial to drive policy decisions.

There are no natural or neutral eligibility rules for girls’ sports. All rules say something about who and what society values. Courts and policymakers will ultimately need to decide how eligibility rules should or must be drawn. In answering these questions, they will need to decide what the social goal of sex-segregated sports is, and which eligibility rules best serve this end. This book started from the premise that transgender and cisgender girls are entitled to equal concern and respect. It then offered a pragmatic and workable framework for optimizing individual and group benefits of sports for both transgender and cisgender girls.