About this item
Trans Kids is a trenchant ethnographic and interview-based study of the first generation of families affirming and facilitating gender nonconformity in children. Earlier generations of parents sent such children for psychiatric treatment aimed at a cure, but today, many parents agree to call their children new names, allow them to wear whatever clothing they choose, and approach the state to alter the gender designation on their passports and birth certificates. Drawing from sociology, philosophy, psychology, and sexuality studies, sociologist Tey Meadow depicts the intricate social processes that shape gender acquisition. Where once atypical gender expression was considered a failure of gender, now it is a form of gender. Engaging and rigorously argued, Trans Kids underscores the centrality of ever more particular configurations of gender in both our physical and psychological lives, and the increasing embeddedness of personal identities in social institutions.
About the Author
Tey Meadow is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. After receiving her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, and PhD from New York University, she joined the Princeton Society of Fellows as the Fund for Reunion-Cotten Fellow in LGBT Studies. Prior to joining Columbia's faculty, she was Assistant Professor of Sociology and Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University.
