Gender Panics About Transgender Children in Religious Right Discourse

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Abstract

This paper is a content analysis of political flyers and messages developed by Religious Right campaigns between 1974 and 2013 to fight legislation supportive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. The analysis focuses on 16 campaigns in which Religious Right groups made claims about transgender adults and children. In these messages (n = 60), transgender children are presented as similar to adults; campaigns frame these children as immutably gendered, confused, and sexually predatory. This research advances the body of literature on the adultification of minority children. I argue that transgender girls are adultified and sexualized rather than framed as innocent or imperiled, which perpetuates cisgender domination of transgender people.

Identifier

10.1080/19361653.2017.1395305

Publisher

Routledge

Publication Information

Journal of LGBT Youth

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