Concealed Threats: Gender Policing and Surveillance of Trans, Gender Nonconforming, and Nonbinary People

Concealed Threats: Gender-Policing and the Surveillance of Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, and Nonbinary People, explores transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary (TGNCNB) people’s experiences with gender-policing and surveillance through three central questions: What are TGNCNB people’s overall experiences of gender-policing and surveillance? How do these experiences vary based on race, gender identity/expression, nationality, disability, and immigration status? And how do TGNCNB people think about structural change? Arguing that the policing and surveillance of TGNCNB people traverses traditional criminal legal institutions such as law enforcement and nontraditional institutions such as the family, the purpose of this research is to offer a broader definition of policing and surveillance within the field of criminology studies, in order to bring about institutional and interpersonal change. Concealed Threats applies the methodology of critical ethnographic criminology, which includes people-based methods of interviews, ethnography, and participant observation. I use interviews with TGNCNB people who experienced gender-policing and surveillance, and participant observation within community-based organizations organized by and for gender nonconforming people of color. Using this people-based method, my research shows how race, gender identity/expression, nationality, disability, and immigration status shape experiences of policing and surveillance, as well as strategies used to assess potential risk. Beginning with the most informal institution of the family, followed by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and concluding with law enforcement, Concealed Threats looks at four institutional spaces that have a gradual progression toward overt state violence.