Transness as Insecurity: Anti-Trans Movements and the Security Politics of Reproduction

Despite increasing contestation surrounding trans rights globally, transness has been largely overlooked in Security Studies. This article analyses the security politics of opposition to trans rights in the US and UK. It argues that, through concern with the in/security of genitalia, internal organs, fertility, hormones, orgasms and virility, opposition to ‘gender ideology’ articulates – and attempts to govern – reproductive ability and disability. These security politics surrounding transness are produced through, and constitutive of, the broader security politics of reproduction.The article develops an analytic framework combining Alison Howell’s critical approach to global health security with scholarship on reproductive nationalism. It then outlines a history of transatlantic security politics surrounding reproduction, showing that, despite the sense of newness often attached to transness, today’s moral panic extends a long lineageof reproductive security politics. Turning to analyse diverse contemporary transatlantic anti-trans politics, the article argues that these approach children’s and/or feminized bodies as sites of national, racial and/or societal security, in need of defence against invasive, reproductively disabling or degenerate trans threats. Overall, transness is approached as reproductive insecurity, requiring anti-trans policies aimed at national fortification and defence.