The Best Place on the Planet to Be Trans? Transgender Equality and Legal Consciousness in Scotland

Cowan, Sharon

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-48830-7_8

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The timing of the survey data collection resulted in an atypically large sample (n = 3101) 2 for a social scientific non-randomly sampled study, in which there was a preponderance of feminist views objecting to trans-inclusion (cf. Cowan 2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There were hints in 'against gender' of decertification potentially contributing to undoing gendered normativities with attendant possible benefits to those marginalised (see Cooper and Emerton 2020). And as Cowan (2021) notes "the uncertainty over the future of legal gender, as well as the damage that the toxicity of the current debate is causing, is hugely detrimental to all trans and non-binary people's well being" (222). We agree that the cisgenderism and transphobia that is manifest discursively has material, detrimental consequences for gender diverse people, and that the potentialities of 'against' stances are stymied in the present context.…”

Section: Conclusion: Readiness To Decertify Legal Gender and The Prom...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

Peel

Newman

2023

Fem Leg Stud

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This article examines three divergent constructions about the salience of legal gender in lay people’s everyday lives and readiness to decertify gender. In our interviews (and survey data), generally participants minimised the importance of legal gender. The central argument in this article is that feminist socio-legal scholars applying legal consciousness studies to legal reform topics should find scrutinizing the construction of interview talk useful. We illustrate this argument by adapting and applying Ewick and Silbey’s (1998) ‘The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life', ‘before’, ‘with’ and ‘against’ typology to interview talk about legal gender, and critique their cognitivist approach by offering a constructionist alternative. In our analysis, we offer a detailed discursive explication of three key legal consciousness themes. These themes offer a balanced representation of a dataset problematically ‘skewed’ towards sex-based rights feminist perspectives, namely that ‘before’ legal gender is an anti-decertification account, decertification would be risky for natal females; a ‘with’ legal gender construction is neither for nor against decertification per se, though the impact of decertification is produced in accounts as limited and unimportant; and ‘against’ legal gender is a pro-decertification classification, as not abolished legal gender is constructed as harmful to already marginalised groups. In concluding, we explore the reasoning for the lack of readiness for decertification currently, and return to the value of examining the construction of lay discourse about legal matters as talk is a form of social action. We suggest that applying discursive analysis to themes in legal consciousness studies enables a refocusing on the how rather than purely the what of divergent legal consciousnesses, and that this approach is a fruitful addition to feminist socio-legal studies.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion: Readiness To Decertify Legal Gender and The Prom...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

Peel

Newman

2023

Fem Leg Stud

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“…Building on the foundational work of Sarat (1990) and Silbey (1992, 1998), a substantial body of socio-legal research has explored the everyday life and power of law (on the varieties of legal consciousness research, see, e.g., Halliday 2019). Since complicated and expanded, 11 Ewick and Silbey's original classification of legal consciousness into 'before the law', 'with the law' and 'against the law' continues to have relevance for contemporary research, including research relating to sex, gender and sexual orientation (see, e.g., Cowan 2020;Harding 2010;Hull 2016;Peel and Newman 2023). Briefly, a 'before the law' orientation regards the law with respect and reverence and as rational, impartial, objective and majestic.…”

Section: Situating the Research: Legal Consciousness Idioms And Touchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“We’re not there yet” but it’s not “pie-in-the-sky”: Legal Consciousness, Decertification and the Equality Sector in England and Wales

Emerton

2023

Fem Leg Stud

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Drawing on 38 in-depth, qualitative interviews, this article explores how people working in the equality sector in England and Wales view and use the current law around sex and gender, and how they imagine law’s future, particularly potential decertification, where the state would withdraw from certifying and regulating a person’s sex/gender. Whilst situated in the bureaucratic strand of the literature, the paper also contributes to wider legal consciousness studies. This literature has generally focused on people’s relationships to law in terms of domination, alienation and game-playing. Drawing on idioms and the language of touch, the paper unpacks the way in which equality actors talked about law not as remote or alienating, but as close and familiar; not as oppressive, but as “precious” and hard-won. Some also regarded law as a place of safety in unsafe times. These proposed ‘attached to law’ and ‘protective of law’ strands of consciousness enrich and extend Ewick and Silbey’s classic ‘before the law’ narrative. The findings are also useful for critical legal and feminist scholarship. Combined with the equality sector’s pragmatic and tactical use of law to problem-solve, this close and protective orientation towards law reproduces its hegemony. The paper concludes by exploring a recurrent refrain that, in relation to decertification, “we’re not there yet” and that gender equality would need to be achieved before decertification would “fly”.

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“…We cannot claim that we live in a post-feminist world when violence against women and other minorities is at epidemic proportions (Valverde 2014). Our work is incomplete when people are subjected to gender-based violence based on who they love (Cowan 2021). At the time of writing, certain European Union Member States have introduced legislation that bans the 'display and promotion of homosexuality' and denies women's reproductive rights.…”

Section: Our Grand Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, Justice and Social Transformation: Grand Challenges and Good Trouble

FitzGerald

Carline

2021

Front. Hum. Dyn.

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The Best Place on the Planet to Be Trans? Transgender Equality and Legal Consciousness in Scotland

Cited by 3 publications

References 41 publications

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

“We’re not there yet” but it’s not “pie-in-the-sky”: Legal Consciousness, Decertification and the Equality Sector in England and Wales

Gender, Justice and Social Transformation: Grand Challenges and Good Trouble

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