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Abstract
The selective enforcement of solicitation laws on transgender individuals—often referred to as “walking while trans”—has an especially pernicious effect on transgender people of color, immigrants, and the poor. Intersectional subjection—the interaction between multiple categories of identity and diffuse power and sources of authority within contemporary American society—facilitates processes of governmentality and makes some transgender individuals more vulnerable to forms of social control such as trans-profiling. Using intersectional subjection to analyze the selective enforcement of solicitation laws exposes how trans-profiling (1) works to marginalize and remove transgender people of color and transgender immigrants from public spaces; and (2) enforces raced and classed gender norms and reifies white cis-heteronormative privilege. The concepts of intersectionality, subjection, and governmentality elucidate the mutually constitutive relationships among informal and formal actors and institutions in sanctioning the profiling of individuals for “walking while trans” as a tool for mitigating the threat transgender people of color and trans-immigrants pose to dominant power structures and narratives.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing: Police Abuse of LGBTQ Communities of Color in Jackson Heights (New York, 2012), p. 20, available online at: <http://www.maketheroad.org/pix_reports/MRNY_Transgressive_Policing_Full_Report_10.23.12B.pdf>
2 Ibid., 4; Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk: Condoms as Evidence of Prostitution in Four U.S. Cities (Washington: Human Rights Watch, 2012), p.19, available online at: <http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0712ForUpload_1.pdf>; PROS Network and the Sex Workers Project, Public Health Crisis: The Impact of Using Condoms as Evidence of Prostitution in New York City (New York: Urban Justice Center, 2012), available online at: <http://sexworkersproject.org/downloads/2012/20120417-public-health-crisis.pdf>
3 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012), p. 197.
4 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, Lectures at the College de France, 1978–1979 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 108–109.
5 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2004), p. 94.
6 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” The University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), pp. 139–167.
7 Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York: Random House, 1981); bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman (New York, NY: South End Press, 1981); Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (eds), All the Women are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us are Brave (New York: The Feminist Press, 1982).
8 Alexander, The New Jim Crow; David Cole, No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System (New York: New Press, 1999); Kimberlé Crenshaw, “From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally about Women, Race and Social Control,” UCLA Law Review 59 (2012), pp. 1418–1472; Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime and the Law (New York: Vintage, 1998).
9 Crenshaw, “From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration,” p. 1427.
10 Elijah Adiv Edelman, “Walking While Transgender: Necropolitical Regulations of Trans Feminine Bodies of Colour in the Nation’s Capital,” in Jim Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, and Silvia Posocco (eds), Queer Necropolitics (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp.172–190; Jordan Blair Woods, Frank H. Galvan, Mohsen Bazargan, Jody L. Herman, and Ying-Tung Chen. “Latina Transgender Women’s Interactions with Law Enforcement in Los Angeles County,” Policing 7:4 (2013), pp. 379–391.
11 Toby Beauchamp, “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Transgender bodies and U.S. State Surveillance after 9/11,” in Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura (eds), The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 46–55; Pooja Gehi, “Gender (In)security: Migration and Criminalization in the Security State,” Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 35:2 (2012), pp. 357–398; J. Jeanty and H.J. Tobin, Our Moment for Reform: Immigration and Transgender People (Washington: National Center for Transgender Equality, 2013), available at: http://transequality.org/sites/default.files/docs/resources/OurMoment_CIR_en.pdf; Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011) pp. 1–19, Chapter One; Dean Spade, “Documenting Gender” Hastings Law Journal 59:1 (2008), p. 731–832.
12 Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (New York: South End Press, 2011); Dean Spade, “Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform,” Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38:4 (2013), pp. 1–25; Jane Ward, Respectably Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008).
13 Spade, Normal Life; Spade “Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform.”
14 Heath Fogg Davis, “Sex Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination: An Intersectional Critique,” Perspectives on Politics 12:1 (2014), pp. 45–60.
15 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing; Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk; PROS Network and the Sex Workers Project, Public Health Crisis.
16 Spade, Normal Life, p. 27.
17 Ibid., 25.
18 See Amnesty International, Stonewalled—Still Demanding Respect: Police Abuses Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in the USA (London: Amnesty International Publications, 2006); Edelman, “Walking While Transgender”; Frank H. Galvan and Mohsen Bazargan, Interactions of Latina Transgender Women with Law Enforcement (Los Angeles: Bienestar Human Services, 2012), available online at: <http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Galvan-Bazargan-Interactions-April-2012.pdf>; Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk; Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing; Andrea J. Ritchie, “Crimes Against Nature: Challenging Criminalization of Queerness and Black Women’s Sexuality,” Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law 14:2 (2013), p. 355–374; Woods et al., “Latina Transgender Women’s Interactions with Law Enforcement in Los Angeles County.”
19 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 4.
20 Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, pp. 2, 24.
21 Ibid., 20.
22 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 21.
23 Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, p. 19.
24 Jaime M. Grant, Lisa A. Mottet, Justin Tanis, Jack Harrison, Jody L. Herman, and Mara Keisling, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (Washington: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011), p. 163, available online at: <http://www.thetaskforce.org/static_html/downloads/reports/reports/ntds_full.pdf>
25 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 20.
26 PROS Network and the Sex Workers Project, Public Health Crisis.
27 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 4.
28 Mike Ludwig, “‘Walking While Woman’ and the Fight to Stop Violent Policing of Gender Identity” Truthout, available online at: <www.truth-out.org> (accessed May 7, 2014).
29 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population.
30 Ibid.
31 Butler, Precarious Life, p. 52.
32 Ibid., 60.
33 Amnesty International, Stonewalled, p. 58.
34 Butler, Precarious Life, p. 54.
35 Alexander, The New Jim Crow.
36 Ibid., 185.
37 Ibid., 197.
38 Butler, Precarious Life, pp. xx–xxi.
39 Mogul et al., Queer (In)Justice, Chapter One, pp. 1–19.
40 Beauchamp, “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility,” p. 49.
41 Spade, Normal Life.
42 Fogg Davis, “Sex Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination: An Intersectional Critique.”
43 Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn, p. 2.
44 Ibid., 65.
45 Ibid., 64.
46 Ibid., 2.
47 Ibid., 3.
48 Ibid., 4.
49 Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, pp. 16–17; PROS Network and the Sex Workers Project, Public Health Crisis, p. 12.
50 Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, p. 20.
51 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, pp. 10–11.
52 Ritchie, “Crimes Against Nature,” p. 369.
53 Gehi, “Gender (In)security,” p. 385.
54 Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, p. 19.
55 Ibid., 22.
56 Ibid., 50–51.
57 Jeanty and Tobin, Our Moment for Reform: Immigration and Transgender People, p. 6.
58 Ibid., 8.
59 Ibid., 6.
60 See Edelman, “Walking While Transgender.”
61 Butler, Precarious Life, p. 98.
62 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 22.
63 Sarah Lamble, “Queer Investments in Punitiveness: Sexual Citizenship, Social Movements and the Expanding Carceral State,” in Jim Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, and Silvia Posocco (eds), Queer Necropolitics (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 151–171.
64 Ibid., 159.
65 Spade, Normal Life, pp. 53–54.
66 Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn, p. 163.
67 Galvan and Bazargan, Interactions of Latina Transgender Women, p. 1.
68 Butler, Precarious Life, p. 98.
69 Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, pp. 24–25.
70 Ibid., 19.
71 Edelman, “Walking While Transgender,” p. 178.
72 Ibid., 179.
73 Spade, Normal Life, pp. 53–54.
74 Mogul et al., Queer (In)Justice, pp. 36–37.
75 See Beauchamp, “Artful Concealment”; Gehi, “Gender (In)security.”
76 Spade, “Documenting Gender.”
77 REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub.L. 109–13, 119 Stat. 302; Beauchamp, “Artful Concealment,” p. 50.
78 Spade, “Documenting Gender,” p. 799.
79 Beauchamp, “Artful Concealment.”
80 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 23.
81 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996, PUBLIC LAW 104–208, 110 STAT. 3009, 546.
82 Gehi, “Gender (In)security,” p. 380.
83 Jeanty and Tobin, Our Moment for Reform, p. 21.
84 Spade, Normal Life, p. 27.
85 Edelman, “Walking While Transgender,” p. 176.
86 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 1.
87 Paisley Currah and Lisa Jean Moore, “‘We Won’t Know Who You Are’ Contesting Sex Designations in New York City Birth Certificates,” in Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura (eds), The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 607–622.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid., 610; Beauchamp, “Artful Concealment.”
90 Butler, Precarious Life, p. 26.
91 Ibid., 27.
92 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
93 Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. 2.
94 Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, p. 23.
95 Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. 3.
96 PROS Network and the Sex Workers Project, Public Health Crisis, p. 21.
97 Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. 16.
98 Ibid., 4.
99 Ibid., 95.
100 Beauchamp, “Artful Concealment,” p. 50.
101 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 11.
102 Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn, p. 5.
103 Ibid., 6.
104 Mogul et al., Queer (In)Justice, p. 50.
105 Amnesty International, Stonewalled; Human Rights Watch, Sex Workers at Risk, pp. 25–26; Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 5.
106 Make the Road New York, Transgressive Policing, p. 23.
107 Amnesty International, Stonewalled, p. 22.
108 See, for example, Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn, p. 162; Kae Greenberg, “Still Hidden in the Closet: Trans Women and Domestic Violence,” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice 27:2 (2012), pp. 198–251.
109 Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn, p. 6.
110 Gehi, “Gender (In)security,” p. 388.
111 Greenberg, “Still Hidden in the Closet,” p. 233.
112 Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn, p. 158.
113 Ibid., 159.
114 Mogul et al., Queer (In)Justice, p. 130.
115 Talia Mae Bettcher, “Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion,” in Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura (eds), The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 278–290.
116 Butler, Bodies that Matter.
117 Dean Spade, “Trans Law Reform Strategies, Co-Optation, and the Potential for Transformative Change,” Women’s Rights Law Reporter 30: 2 (2009), pp. 288–314.
118 See Spade, Normal Life.
119 Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee and Dean Spade, “Building an Abolitionist Trans Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got,” in Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura (eds), The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 653–667.