Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices by Toby Beauchamp

Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices Reviews

• 
  Alok Vaid-Menon

  For more on TSA security practices against trans and gender non-conforming people I recommend “going stealth” by Tony Beauchamp. Beauchamp describes how state surveillance practices have a long history of criminalizing gender non-conformity & typecasting gender non-conformity as threatening/suspicious. He uses the word “gender non-conforming” versus “trans” to reflect how surveillance of gender affects anyone who isn’t able to align with normative gender (especially Black people, people of color, and working class people). He shows how gender normativity is actually upper classed whiteness, & anyone who cannot or is not interested in participating in it is seen as a threat to the system.
  
  What I find most helpful about this book is his critique of how The Real ID Act was created to offer “verifiable” identity documents to prove “sex,” as a corrective for ambiguous gender being seen as a threat. The problem is for TGNC people to get these IDs we often have to be conferred medical diagnosis/procedure — herein the double bind: to be legitimized we have to have access to legitimacy to begin with. Also, he critiques mainstream trans activism for normalizing surveillance — advancing medical transition as the only means to disappear non-normative gender & evade scrutiny. Rather than saying that people should be able to be gender non-conforming, many mainstream trans organizations have perpetuated the idea that you can only be granted privacy & respect by passing as a man or a woman.
  
  Privacy & bodily integrity should be conferred to all people, not only white & gender normative people. The most exciting parts are when he talks about anti-trans bathroom bills as part of a larger state sanctioned project of biometric surveillance — the idea that bodies have immutable physical characteristics that can be mined as raw data for monitoring. Making gender & sex fixed, rather than recognizing their fluidity, allows for better data mining & population control.
• 
  daniel dillon

  A compelling analysis of the powerful logic of surveillance to create and police categories, even queer ones, in order to bring more people and practices under the purview of surveillance agencies. I'm especially taken with how Beauchamp's discussions implicate civil society and some forms of activism premised on recognition and visibility, which often unintentionally bring (gender) non-conforming people in for added scrutiny and violence.
• 
  Brett

  Really strong chapters concerning how U.S. identification documents and surveillance practices work to establish and subsequently marginalize trans and gender non-conforming people as inherently duplicitous and deserving of scrutiny.
  
  I really dig trans scholarship in this vein, but its hard to read without feeling just so damn tired.
• 
  Krzys Chwala

  great analysis of how surveillance practices/programs, new and old, are rooted in categorization and biopolitical management. And here, specifically with transgender as a category and its production/regulation/contestation. also great discussion of the dangers of visibility
• 
  Kelly

  Really intriguing analysis about how surveillance and security are inherently trans issues. Loses a star for lack of true recommendations about policy direction, but overall is a fascinating analysis on how deviance is policed.
• 
  emmy

  Included in a blog post and resource list at
  https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019...
• 
  S.J.

  4.5 stars.
• 
  Mills College Library

  363.23 B372 2019