Banner photo by Aiden Craver on Unsplash<\/em><\/p>\n Mia Fischer\u2019s Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State<\/i> analyzes how (some but not all) trans populations are regulated and scrutinized under the heading of state surveillance and securitization. Theoretically and methodologically, the book takes a transdisciplinary approach that combines trans and queer theory, media studies, critical race theory, and surveillance studies. Equally, it demonstrates a creative organizing framework in its use of scavenger methodology that finds valuable links between a broad range of primary sources, including news media, legal discourses, ethnography, reality television, and social media discourses.<\/p>\n The book is linked by three case studies, which Fischer astutely deploys to illustrate how certain gendered and racialized bodies are seen as \u201cthreats\u201d and work to continuously construct the boundaries of \u201cnational security.\u201d While the focus of the book is largely the United States, many of the findings can be extrapolated to other countries and regions throughout the Global North (e.g., Europe, Australia, etc.). This monograph makes an excellent contribution to a growing body of trans studies scholarship that complicates issues of visibility and challenges teleological narratives that suggest that we have somehow reached a \u201ctipping point\u201d that heralds in full acceptance and recognition of trans, non-binary, and gender-diverse people.<\/p>\n Fischer opens the book with the now-infamous Time <\/i>magazine cover depicting a confident Laverne Cox and emblazoned with the words \u201cThe Transgender Tipping Point: America\u2019s Next Civil Rights Frontier.\u201d Now, ten years later, that 2014 magazine cover has, on one hand, proved quite na\u00efve in its vision of a different world where trans folks are fully accepted in society. On the other hand, it has become emblematic in the field of transgender studies, with several scholars using it as the starting point for their own analysis and interrogation of teleological narratives that suggest we have somehow achieved equality and inclusion. Similarly, Fischer uses this example to illustrate the paradox that with increased visibility and representation of trans people in popular culture comes increased violence directed at trans populations, in particular black and brown trans women.<\/p>\n In the book\u2019s introduction, entitled \u201cA Transgender Tipping Point?\u201d, Fischer lays out the stakes of the book\u2019s broader argument that contrasts upticks in media representation of trans people with trans and gender diverse people\u2019s everyday experiences, including how these media portrayals actually \u201c(re)produce their surveillance and management\u201d (6). The surveillance practices that Fischer refers to include policing, violence, and discrimination, amongst others. As Fischer writes, visibility actually creates a \u201cdouble bind\u201d and is connected to bio- and necropolitical regulation and management by the state (14).<\/p>\n Fischer offers a series of provocative questions that underpin the book\u2019s argument and intervention: \u201cWhat types of trans visibilities and identities are constituted as normative subjectivities deserving of national belonging and access to U.S. citizenship rights? Whose bodies and identities are rendered as deviant and thus undeserving and abject by media and state institutions?\u201d (18). The book responds to these open-ended questions through three case studies that illustrate the dynamics upon which the book\u2019s key arguments of visibility, media coverage, and state surveillance lie. Both Chapter 1 (\u201cPathologizing and Prosecuting a (Gender) Traitor\u201d) and Chapter 2 (\u201cTranspatriotism and Iterations of Empire\u201d) are focalized around the case of former US Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning. After having been charged for leaking sensitive military documents and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison, Manning came out as transgender. Fischer\u2019s concept of transpatriotism, which forms the core of the book\u2019s second chapter, is an excellent intervention and a helpful supplement or corollary to Jasbir K. Puar\u2019s articulation of both homonationalism and trans(homo)nationalism. Fischer\u2019s furthering of these concepts helps us analyze who belongs and who does not, as well as who is considered a \u201cproper\u201d trans person and can therefore be integrated into the national imaginary.<\/p>\n Chapters 3 and 4 (\u201cBlind(ing) (In)justice and the Disposability of Black Life\u201d and \u201cMaterializing Hashtag Activism and the #FreeCeCe Campaign\u201d) home in on the story of CeCe McDonald, who was sent to prison for manslaughter after killing the man who had assaulted McDonald and her friends. Fischer combines ethnography and social media analysis to analyze how the media colludes in state surveillance and exacerbates the daily violence experienced by trans women of color. Chapter 5, entitled \u201cSex Work, Securitainment, and the Transgender Terrorist,\u201d turns to Monica Jones, an American sex worker activist who was deported from Australia because she was perceived as a threat to national security. The chapter examines how the Australian reality television show Border Security<\/i> worked with customs officials at the Sydney airport to make a spectacle of Jones, effectively showing that being a trans person of color is itself perceived as a \u201cnational security threat.\u201d<\/p>\n The stories of these three women are, sadly, not exceptional but instead reflect how, as Fischer writes, \u201ccertain racialized others are always already criminal\u201d (13). Taken together they also effectively highlight how media coverage is itself part and parcel of state surveillance. Fischer provides a clear rationale for why the book centers on trans women specifically. Nonetheless, it is my hope that this approach also lays the groundwork for future research on how (and to what extent) trans masculine folks and non-binary populations may (or may not) illustrate similar and different tensions between visibility, representation, and violence.<\/p>\n The book ends with a short coda that returns to provocations similar to those in the Introduction, asking: \u201cHow can trans lives be seen and recognized as deserving of protections with the ability to live fully but without subjection to violent state intervention processes? How do we conceive of different modes of recognition and collectivity without falling into the traps of the visual, of bio- and necropolitical systems of valuation and economic extraction?\u201d (179) These critical questions remind us that this work \u2013 both academic and activist \u2013 is and must be ongoing. Even in the short time since Terrorizing Gender<\/i> was published, drastic and unprecedented changes (both in the US and internationally) have occurred that seek to restrict trans people\u2019s access to healthcare, sports, the military, and education, effectively damaging the livelihood and survivability of trans and non-binary communities. By the most recent count, in the US 83 anti-trans bills have passed, with an additional 359 active bills. While 32 national anti-trans bills have also been introduced, the majority of successful bills have occurred at the state level and tend to be concentrated in right-leaning states with conservative politicians and legislators. That said, by no means should we assume this anti-trans approach will be relegated to red states, particularly with a contentious 2024 presidential election currently taking shape.<\/p>\n Mia Fischer\u2019s Terrorizing Gender<\/i> makes a significant contribution to a topical and urgent issue. It takes us beyond simple progress-oriented narratives that suggest we have arrived at that mythical transgender tipping point or civil rights frontier that would have heralded in social and legal equality. This approach follows in the vein of monographs like Toby Beauchamp\u2019s Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices<\/i> (2019), Eric Stanley\u2019s Atmospheres of Violence <\/i>(2021), and Aren Aizura\u2019s Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment<\/i> (2018). Fischer\u2019s book makes a valuable addition to scholarship on (the failures of) assimilationist and rights-based LGBT political movements. It also intervenes in broader social and cultural debates about the politics of inclusion and the politics of visibility, with the chosen case studies offering a vital counterpoint to progress-oriented narratives. It promises appeal to gender and sexuality studies scholars and students working in media studies, cultural studies, critical race studies, and surveillance studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fischer, Mia. Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. 282 pp. ISBN (hardback): 978-1-4962-0674-9, ISBN (paperback): 978-1-4962-3053-9. By C.L. Quinan, University of Melbourne Banner photo by Aiden Craver on Unsplash Mia Fischer\u2019s Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16662,"featured_media":0,"parent":2582,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2567,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2566\/revisions\/2567"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}