Bøker av Riki Wilchins

If we could go back to 2020, we would be shocked at lives of transgender children, who changed their names and birth certificates, played school sports, and got puberty blockers and hormone treatment freely and without comment in all 50 states. But in three short years it would all disappear. Without warning, over 1,000 bills would be introduced across half the country criminalizing nearly every facet of their lives virtually overnight. What happened? Evangelical Christian nationalists-enraged after string of devastating Supreme Court defeats-had pivoted from gay to transgender, investing hundreds of millions of dollars into remaking trans youth as the new face of the anti-gay culture war. And it worked, beginning in Texas, which enacted the nation's first effective ban on treating transgender youth by redefining providing gender affirming medical care as felony child abuse, criminalizing loving parents, and sending scores of families fleeing across its borders in panic. This is the story of how that happened. Filled with exclusive new details and behind-the-scenes interviews, this book is the first in-depth account of how evangelical Christian nationalists and their Republican allies conceived, plotted, launched, and prosecuted the nationwide War on Transgender Youth.

In 2018, transgender teens in all 50 states could freely be prescribed hormones and blockers, legally change their names and pronouns , and play in gender-appropriate school sports. No one cared. But before the year was out, terror would come. The evangelical Christian right -enraged and vengeful from a long series of legal defeats-was seeking an issue to reignite its endless war on homosexuality. In just a few years, over 1,000 anti-trans bills would be introduced into state legislatures nationwide, as the names, pronouns, genders, and bodies of a few thousand children were transformed virtually overnight into an issue of state concern, and animus towards them an integral fiber in the evangelical Christian right's tribal identity. Terrified parents of transgender children found themselves suddenly under investigation, threatened with charges of felony child abuse, in danger of imprisonment, and fearing the loss of their children to state foster care, began fleeing their home states. They were part of huge wave of internal political refugees unknown in the U.S. since the terrible days of chattel slavery, and in their wake they left behind their homes, careers, extended families, pensions, and life savings as they streamed across state lines in search of safety for their transgender children.

This book provides a starting point for a long overdue movement to elevate "applied gender studies", providing both a reference and guide for researchers, students, policymakers, funders, non-profit leaders, and grassroots advocates.