Transphobia

Origins and Use

Transphobia entered public discourse in the 1990s and quickly developed into a popular area of scholarly inquiry, as social science researchers explore the many factors at work and scholars in the humanities document transphobia in individual lives across the world. Transphobia entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, and in 2020, online dictionaries and references have extensive entries for transphobia.

Early research focused on exploring the origins of transphobia (i.e., a cultural belief in dichotomous gender some researchers have called genderism or cisgenderism), how it works socially (i.e., stigma), and how to operationalize and ultimately reduce transphobia using interventions in empirical research. In the social sciences, the main controversy seems to be how to measure transphobia. Measures of transphobia proliferate, each with somewhat of a different focus and, in some cases, different languages; some measures are extensive, including behavioral measures of gender-bashing, whereas others rely on shorter self-report assessments.

In contrast, writers in the humanities document and analyze transphobic comments in popular culture, mostly from public figures such as athletes, social commentators, writers, musicians, and comedians. Trans memoirs, a vibrant genre that had fallen out of favor, have become popular again since the millennium, as writers wrestle with internalized transphobia, the transphobia of their friends, family, and lovers; since 2010, most also talk about a new world of positive and multidimensional trans lives. The most significant development, however, has been the identification and critique of trans exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs, a group of feminist scholars asserting that trans women are not “real” women. The debate has largely been contained to philosophers in Britain and Australia reacting to proposed legislation that would permit people to self-select their gender. The so-called TERF Wars implicated the major feminist journal Hypatia after editors published a paper that compared being trans to being transracial, which was largely seen as harmful and transphobic. Scholars also called for the resignation of the editor of Disability & Society and for action to address transphobia in disability studies.

In legal discourse, transphobia is primarily used to argue for ending bias against institutionalized trans people, such as in efforts to establish trans rights in prisons, as well as for ending state control of “sex” on official identification documents. More broadly, transphobia has been used in legal discourse to understand the problematic nature of gender and sex, sexual citizenship, and police violence against trans people. By 2019, legislators in six states had banned the “trans panic” defense, a legal tactic used to defend killers of trans people. Federal courts have repeatedly found that sex discrimination laws such as Title VII and Title IX apply to trans people, giving federal protection against transphobic discrimination. Indeed, in 2020, a momentous U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that Title VII extended to protect transgender people from employment discrimination.

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