Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

In the first comprehensive academic treatment of the emerging social, medical, and psychological category of the transgender child, ethnographer Tey Meadow introduces readers to a generation of parents who actively facilitate gender nonconformity in their children. Whereas previous generations of parents sent such children for psychiatric treatment aimed at a cure, these families call their children new names, allow them to wear whatever clothing they choose, and even approach the state to alter their legal gender. Drawing from sociology, philosophy, psychology, and sexuality studies, Meadow depicts the intricate social processes that shape gender acquisition. Whereas once atypical gender expression was considered a failure of gender, now it is a form of gender. It is a form that underscores both the centrality of ever more particular configurations of gender in psychic life and the increasing embeddedness of personal identities in social institutions.