Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere | TJ Billard, PhD
Channel: Center for Applied Transgender Studies
Date: 2023-10-30

(in conversation with Oliver Haimson, PhD)

During the uncanny presidency of Donald Trump, transgender issues became the latest flashpoint in the so-called culture wars. Faced with unrelenting hostility and an increasingly complicated media system, transgender activists crafted new communication strategies to fight for their equality. Voices for Transgender Equality offers an insider’s view into how trans activists in the nation’s capital fought back during the first two years of the Trump administration, stalling attempts to undermine their rights and winning the support of large swathes of the public. Drawing on extensive on-the-ground observation at the National Center for Transgender Equality, Voices for Transgender Equality shows how activists navigated the complex flows of information and ideas among these different domains of the communication system as they worked to shape the national conversation on transgender rights.

TJ Billard, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and, by courtesy, the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University and Executive Director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.

Oliver Haimson, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.