My article “Compliance is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy” was published in Transgender Rights: History, Politics and Law, edited by Paisley Currah, Shannon Minter, Richard Juang (2006).
Panel Transcript: The Identity Victim
Here is a transcript of a panel I participated in called “The Identity Victim” as part of Sex, Gender and Crime: The Politics of the State as Protector and Punisher, a symposium at Georgetown University, and republished in Georgetown Journal of Gender and Law in 2006. You can read the transcript here.
Freedom in a Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage and Biopolitics, with Craig Willse
I co-authored with Craig Willse “Freedom in a Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage and Biopolitics” publisehd in Widener Law Review in 2005. You can read it here.
Abstract
This paper attempts to trace the links between the Lawrence v. Texas decision and campaigns for gay marriage rights in order to envision movements that seek justice for more than just the most racially and economically privileged lesbians and gay men. The authors outline the limits of the agenda represented by Lawrence and propose alternative modes for resisting the coercive regulation of sexuality, gender, and family formations.
My Memory and My Witness
“My Memory and My Witness“ is a compilation of letters between my sibling Lis and me. Originally published in Make, these letters were reprinted in Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, edited Michelle Tea, (2004).
Excerpt:
Once More… With Feeling
My essay “Once More… With Feeling” was published in Inside Out: FTM and Beyond, edited by Morty Diamond, (2004).
Excerpt:
Transecting the Academy, with Sel Wahng
I co-authored with Sel Wahng “Transecting the Academy” in GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies in 2004. You can read the full text online or download it here.
Abstract
This piece, co-authored with Sel Wahng, was part of a set of essays published together under the title “Thinking Sex/Thinking Gender.” In this article, we explore how identity politics that underwrite many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender discourses have proved limiting in regard to potential political alliances and social change. We address this concern by looking at the questions under consideration in this forum through a particular lens: how bodies and identities interact and intersect with modern formations of power. Through this mode of inquiry we seek to relate supposedly disparate elements for the purpose of making new social, political and scholarly connections.
Resisting Medicine/Remodeling Gender
I wrote “Resisting Medicine/Remodeling Gender” published in Berkeley Women’s Law Journal in 2003 and reprinted in Sexuality, Gender, and the Law, edited by William Eskridge and Nan Hunter in 2004. You can read it here.
Dress to Kill, Fight to Win
Undeserving Addicts: SSI/SSD and the Penalties of Poverty
I wrote “Undeserving Addicts: SSI/SSD and the Penalties of Poverty” in Howard Scroll: The Social Justice Law Review in 2001. You can read it here.
Abstract
Since the late 1980’s, American media and politicians have produced and participated in a moral panic around the issue of illegal drug use. This panic has generated vivid pictures in the American imagination of drug users as a morally depraved, irresponsible, and willfully criminal underclass. Such images have fueled the “war on drugs,” a multi-faceted rhetoric and policy approach to drug use that focuses on incarceration, interdiction, and other criminal justice strategies. The punitive approach of the war on drugs has bled into poverty and disability policy with alarming persistence. The trend has influenced numerous poverty alleviation and disability programs and protections, leaving drug users increasingly isolated and unaided. This comment explores the impact of such changes on the Americans with Disabilities Act 2 (ADA) and two social security policies, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). It questions the wisdom of a punitive response to drug use by examining the alternative model of harm reduction and applying the principles of harm reduction analysis to the exclusion of drug users from poverty alleviation and disability programs. Part I describes recent changes in disability policy, which reflect a decrease in coverage for persons disabled by drug use. Part II describes the context in which these changes occurred, with the war on drugs in full force, and offers critiques of drug war strategy. Part 1I describes the harm reduction model as an alternative to the drug war approach. Part IV examines the impact of drug war policy on the poor, arguing that pushing drug users further into poverty by denying them public assistance will increase drug-related harms. Furthermore, this section suggests that strong social welfare systems can operate to reduce the intersecting harms of poverty and drug use.
