Reading Guide
Pedro Bonilla
Spring 2017
Author: Dean Spade
Title: “Administrating Gender.” In Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law
Year: 2015
Other bibliographic details: Durham, NC: Duke University Press
- Where or what in time-space is the study’s object? What is the work’s spatial scale and scope?
The study is within the US and starting from the declaration of the War on Terror. The study seems to focus on the obliteration of trans individuals from the public sphere in which they are unable to be as equal as cisgender when their identities are put into question, denied, health care, and separated from others in sex-segregated sectors.
- What is/are the work’s key question(s)?
What impact did the War on Terror have on trans politics? How does the notion of Population Level Programs play into Trans politics? And what how does categorizing people work as a key method of control? How may it be harmful to trans only?
- Who is the announced and/or implied audience for the work?
I believe the implied audience is for trans people and policy-makers. Trans need to understand the struggles they will have to face when transitioning in which they would have to advocate and work on lobbying local, state, or federal congress. This is also meant for policy-makers so that they can create reform and integrate trans in the US society and end discrimination.
- What are the work’s structure and style?
The writer first provides readers with a brief introduction on how population level programs work and its purpose to society is. The writer also explicitly makes his argument that, in theory, categorization works, but, in practice, it is impossible. He further categorizes his paper with three main focal points: health care, identity documentation, and sex-segregated facilities.
- What method(s) does the researcher use, if noted?
The researcher makes his argument persuasive through the contexts of the War on Terror in which there was an automatic increase of policing. This affected trans lives from transitioning or being productive in society because of the constant oppression of legal restrictions, placed on them.
- What problems and issues are posed?
As mentioned, the issue relate to health care, identity documentation, and sex-segregated facilities. Importantly, the writer mentions intersectionality, of which undocumented, colored, and working class trans individuals would encounter more struggles than, let’s say, Caitlyn Jenner.
- What are the arguments? In other words, how does the writer use the theory, method, and evidence to propose answers (or make claims)? (List 3-5)
- Rather than fixing policies to assimilate trans life, people must resist and understand the trans exploitation as well as the concept of maldistribution.
- “Deemphasizing law reforms more broadly, an ensuring that law reform is not the primary demand of our movements” (Spade, 155).
- The writer proposes that trans and non-trans individuals identify common issues and work on them together, so no one life is greater than the other.
- What evidence does the writer use? Why do these examples (stories, visuals, graphs) stand out above others?
The writer uses data collection and management-focused programs in relations to driver’s licensing, Social Security benefits, and taxation. Spade provides readers with many statistics.
- What ideas and/or assumptions serves as the writer’s guide to action?
The writer assumes that those in power ought to reform oppressive laws while working with non-trans. I believe that the write assumes this, in order to develop a convention among trans and non-trans while maintaining peace, and not reprimanding one party over the other.
- What is the role of the external actors such as the state or institutions, and how are they defined?
Some external factors, in this paper, include public institutions and the federal government. The public institutions are what allow sex-segregated facilities, making homeless shelter, health care, and accommodations, rather rare. The federal government is what allows such discriminatory acts because it does nothing to protect trans lives; therefore, the writer proposes that there be law reforms to finally fix such issue.
- What works for you? What does not? Why?
I agree with Spade about both trans and non-trans individuals having to work together to create legal reforms. I only desired that the writer proposes that there be intersectionality within the trans lives so that not one race is treated better over the other.
New Vocabulary
| Term | Definition (in your own words) |
|
Trans Politics
Population-Level Programs
|
Gender data collection that governs spaces and determines whose a citizen and who would acquire resources
Created to address the issues of the people, which would provide the government with data and analysis on distributing resources appropriately, so that all individuals can prosper under protection and security |
Significant Authors or Texts mentioned (list significant authors or texts discussed)
| Author/Text | Significance |
| Mitchell Dean
James C. Scott
|
A description of Foucault’s analysis of government that is useful for thinking about the multiple locations of the production of sex classification standards and the incoherence of sex classification systems.
A work that shows how gathering information and creating population-level programs using such information is what defines the modern nation-state. |
Black Boxes (sections you do not yet understand)
Description Page number(s)
N/A
Questions (That occur to you as you read):
- What impact did the War on Terror have on Trans Politics?
- To what extent does heteronormativity and homonormativity play in degrading trans politics?
- In relations to gender classification, is the issue harder for white trans than colored trans? If so, then to what extent?
One sentence summary of reading:
Trans politics is greatly affected by the theoretical framework of population level programs that categorizing citizens by gender; however, trans are unable to acquire resources for protection and security when they are prevented or made harder from obtaining identity documentations, health care, and accommodated facilities.
Freewriting (Recommended. A short, or long, response to what you have read focusing upon anything you would like.)
The notion of categorizing citizens for the sake of distributing resources is rational in a theoretical lens. However, it is impractical because of heteronormativity in which oppressing trans is acceptable because they do not fit in the notion of “normal.” I writer suggests that both trans and non-trans work together so that not one party is greater than the other. I agree with this suggestion, but it would be hard for privet enterprise to make such a convention. This brings up the issue of neoliberalism. This essay would have been more persuasive if the writer were to implement neoliberalism and how it affects trans politics.
Reading Guide
Pedro Bonilla
Spring 2017
Author: Michelle Billies
Title: Low Income LGBTGNC (Gender Nonconforming) Struggles Over Shelters as Public Space
Year: 2016
Other bibliographic details: ACME: International Critical Geographies 14 (4): 989-10007
- Where or what in time-space is the study’s object? What is the work’s spatial scale and scope?
The study that Billies uses to discuss on the topic of low income LGBTGNC is a survey conducted in NYC to provide readers with an understanding of struggles in relations to health care, homeless shelters, income, and public assistance.
- What is/are the work’s key question(s)?
Hoe does Neoliberalism affect LGBTGNC lives?
- Who is the announced and/or implied audience for the work?
The implied audience for the work is the LGBTQGNC community so they can learn in depth about their struggles and the need to reform laws, and urban administrators.
- What are the work’s structure and style?
This word provides readers with many statistical accounts on oppression, in relations to space. How the writer structured her writing was by defining important key words such as paradoxical spatial, then arguing the mal-effects of neoliberalism on homeless shelters and LGBTGNC lives.
- What method(s) does the researcher use, if noted?
By providing a definition of paradoxical spatial, readers can apply its meaning to the statistics that evaluates the measure of struggles that LGBTGNC people encounter. Also, this is applied to homeless shelters. Therefore, the understanding of this reading is well put.
- What problems and issues are posed?
Because of neoliberalism, private enterprise exploit color people, undocumented immigrants, LGBTGNC, et cetera, by increasing policing in public spheres, which reduces their presence, making way for hetero- and homonormativity.
- What are the arguments? In other words, how does the writer use the theory, method, and evidence to propose answers (or make claims)? (List 3-5)
- The amount of homelessness in the LGBT community must be made visible, so rather than having a PRIDE march, implement the struggles LGBTGNC people encounter so the awareness spreads.
- Neoliberalism must be put into an end when it affects the lives of people to the extent of being denied healthcare and protection and security. This shall be done by exploiting its flaws such as not ensuring freedom for all people when some people are being denied health care or housing.
- The writer does mentioned that “[N]ot only were shelters reconstructed as a ground for collective organizing, but the homeless LGBTGNC contingent challenged the neoliberal conversion of Pride from gay protest to gay consumption (Bell and Binnie, 2004), confronting homonormative urban space as it was being constructed” (Billies, 15).
- What evidence does the writer use? Why do these examples (stories, visuals, graphs) stand out above others?
The writer uses three types of charts that surveyed Low Income LGBTGNC through demographics, public benefits, and taker housing. Evidently, readers can evaluate the forms of struggles to examine government and nonprofit institutions,
- What ideas and/or assumptions serves as the writer’s guide to action?
The writer assumes that neoliberalism is the faulty to the denial of homeless shelters, healthcare, identity documentation, and, ultimately, access to public spaces. Neoliberalism must be exploited to demonstrate its systematic flaws towards individuals, and that it only serves well to the rich and powerful who are mainly white, mid and high-income, men.
- What is the role of the external actors such as the state or institutions, and how are they defined?
In this writing, the role of the public institution is oppressing LGBTGNC with the use of neoliberalism that allows high policing in public areas.
Paradoxical Spatial: addresses multiple violence, queer practices of resisting and confronting sexual and gender norms while “transgressing” and “subverting” disciplining process of race and class
- What works for you? What does not? Why?
I disagree with the writer’s proposition that LGBTGNC construct gender space rather than entering a preexisting landscape of normative racialized masculinity. Even though the mistreatment on LGBTQGNC community is meant to exploit neoliberalism faulty, the people’s attitudes within public institutions, such as homeless shelters, remain unchallenged. Rather, they perpetrate more oppression by beating LGBTGNC individuals who do not fit into the institutional norms, and public institutions continue to prevent an sort of equality among LGBTGNC and heteronormative/homonormative individuals.
New Vocabulary
| Term | Definition (in your own words) |
| Neoliberalism
Paradoxical Spatial Freedom
|
A modified version of capitalism that strictly enforces private enterprises. In practice, this economic system exploits minority groups. In this case, the minority group is LGBTGNC and people of color—to be explicit.
It addresses multiple violence in which queer practices of resisting and confronting sexual and gender norms while “transgressing” and “subverting” disciplining process of race and class, and space is theorized in different perspectives—undocumented immigrant, people of color, LGBTGNC, low-income—in order to find common issues and reform them so that it respects all parties, not just one. |
Significant Authors or Texts mentioned (list significant authors or texts discussed)
| Author/Text | Significance |
|
Mitchell, 2003; McArdle, 2011
Bell and Binnie, 2004; Lefebvre, 1991
|
The rise of neoliberal urbanism follows the collapse and withdrawal of urban industry and ensuing capital flight in the 1970s, of which profit making in the neoliberal urban economy has become hooked to expanding middle and upper class public space and the elimination of “diverse” space.
Homonormative process works as heteronormative process in which a selective group of people are allowed to prosper economically in a given setting under the guise of neoliberalism. This form of representation depoliticized and desexualized the gay community of a given setting. |
Black Boxes (sections you do not yet understand)
Description Page number(s)
N/A
Questions (That occur to you as you read):
- How does homonormative play the role in preventing the actual truth that neoliberalism has on low income LGBTGNC community?
- What is the purpose of the 2010 survey demographic data?
One sentence summary of reading:
The 2010 survey of low income LGBTGNC exploits neoliberalism principles such as freedom and economic prosperity, and which serves as visibility to policy makers and the LGBTGNC of the injustice imposed on the community, so that awareness can spread.
Freewriting (Recommended. A short, or long, response to what you have read focusing upon anything you would like.)
Queering public space is to exploit neoliberalism principle of freedom and economic prosperity. Hetero- and Homonormative individuals and ideals are given protection and security under the guise of “white-washing” minority groups. Certain minority ideals are kept if and only if it serves for the economic purpose to white people. I agree with this concept. What I disagree with is the concept that LGBTGNC queer public spaces, when oppression is so strong to the point that they are beaten, killed, and exploited. Personally, queering space is to grasp attention by policy makers, in order to reform accommodations for LGBTGNC individuals.