Stepping back, looking outward: Situating transgender activism and transgender studies — Kris Hayashi, Matt Richardson, and Susan Stryker frame the movement

A coda to two special journal issues which highlight research that is of immediate, practical value to transgender rights advocates and policy reformers, this piece, a roundtable, considers the broader outlines of the activism -- usually branded in LGBT communities and, increasingly, in the popular press as the transgender rights movement -- that has challenged not only the state's enforcement of the gender binary but also its power to do so. How does this movement articulate with other movements for social justice, such as antiracist work? Can it be framed in relation to analogous struggles for gender self-determination in locations outside the United States without merely exporting the Western notion of transgender? Have the notions that gender is also racialized, that racial categories are also enforced through gender norms, influenced the policy goals of the movement and, if so, how? How might the relationship between the movement's past, its present, and its future be understood? It also reflects on the relation between the newly emerging academic field of transgender studies and its central object of study -- the challenges by gender-nonconforming people to traditional gender normativities. Discussants include Kris Hayashi, Matt Richardson, and Susan Stryker. References. Adapted from the source document.