Date: TBD

Time: TBD

CFP 89 - Regular: The Biopolitics of LGBTQ+ Lives in the Age of Disinformation
Room: TBD

Sponsor: Gender, Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities

Organizer: Kat Fuller, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Presider: Michelle L. Estes, Rowan University

Description: 

This session examines how transgender, nonbinary, and intersex communities are governed through the overlapping forces of state power, medical authority, and disinformation. Presenters analyze how contemporary political actors increasingly rely on distorted narratives, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and media-driven fear to justify surveillance, restriction, and exclusion. Across national and institutional contexts, the papers demonstrate how transgender, nonbinary, and intersex individuals are constructed as threats to be managed through law, policy, and bureaucratic classification, resulting in dehumanization and material harm.

Papers:

“Anti-Trans Legislation: Illegible Harm, Impossible Truths, and Discrimination by Disbelief,” Caro A. Mooney, University of California, Irvine

“Codifying Binaries: Moral Entrepreneurs and Anti-Transgender Legislation in U.S. State Legislatures Between 2018-2024,” Anneliese M. Schenk-Day and Jack G.R. Wippell, The Ohio State University

“Executive Order Declares Intersex People Do Not Exist! Federal Efforts to Recapitulate Victorian Misunderstandings of Sex,” Cary Gabriel Costello, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

“‘Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government’: What Does This Mean for Incarcerated Transgender Individuals?” Michelle L. Estes, Rowan University, Rachel Schmitz, Oklahoma State University and Zachary T. Carlisle, St. Ambrose University

“‘Gender’ and the Triumph of the MAGA Right in the Heritage Foundation Projects 2025 and 2026 and the First Year of the Trump Administration,” Gillian Niebrugge Brantley and Patricia Lengermann, The George Washington University

“The Glocal Right Circuits: Mapping the Transnational Flows of Anti-LGBTQ Conservatism between Taiwan and the United States,” Ying-Chao Kao, Virginia Commonwealth University

---