Title

Like Sexual Orientation? Like Gender?: Transgender Inclusion in Nondiscrimination Ordinances

Document Type

Contribution to Book

Publication Date

2009

Abstract

This chapter interrogates how local political actors create and enact social perceptions about the importance of transgender protections. These political actors develop their own moral and definitional perceptions of transgender inclusion and make either "like sexual orientation" or "like gender" analogies, with consequences for the language of transgender protections. These perceptions are part of a larger construction of transgender protections. These perceptions are part of a larger construction of transgender as a new minority, one that is inextricably linked to the LGBT movement. In this chapter I compare two Michigan cities—Ypsilanti and Ferndale—where public officials passed transgender-inclusive non-discrimination ordinances in the late 1990s. In both of these cases, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual ally (LGBH) activists were critical in communicating the necessity for transgender protections. Both LGBH activists and local public officials rarely had definitional perceptions of transgender issues but were swayed by moral concerns about discrimination.

Editor

Scott Barclay, Mary Bernstein, & Anna-Maria Marshall

Publisher

New York University Press

City

New York

ISBN

9780814791318, 9780814791301

Publication Information

Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law

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