The Raah Lab organized a roundtable discussion on the increasing trend of anti-trans legislation across North America on 25 January 2024. The roundtable aimed to consider how gender and sexuality are socio-political projects, how the projects of gender, sexuality and race are co-constitutive, how the organization of gender and sexuality become integral to maintaining the boundaries of the nation-state, and how the transphobia and/or dysphoria of the state emerges around particular spaces and medias such as the ID card, healthcare, the school, bathrooms. And through these broader topics also negotiate what movements, borders, economies, and communities look like for trans peoples. The use of transient in the title gestured toward a movement in and out of frame, in a way invoking how transness grapples with a visible invisibility that is made and unmade, lived and unlived. And in thinking about the temporal dimensions of the transient, we want to bring to the fore how the trans and transphobia are considered problems of the past, present, and the future.
Participant Bios:
Cael M. Keegan (he/him) is Associate Professor of Critical Sexuality and Film/Moving Studies at Concordia University. He is the author of Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender and co-edited the dossier "Transing Cinema and Media Studies" in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies as well as Somatechnics (8.1) on the transgender cinematic body. Keegan was a 2021 Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University and currently co-edits the book series Queer Screens.
Rine Vieth (they/iel) is a socio-legal researcher with an interest in governance, identity, and human rights. Their current research portfolio is focused on two projects: 1) asylum claims in Canada and questions of exclusion from admissibility, and 2) theorizing the impacts of anti-gender movements in policymaking. They currently hold a 2023-2024 bourse postdoctorale de l'ÉRIQA for research in the Département de science politique at the Université Laval. They are also a volunteer with efforts to track anti-trans legislation in the US, Part-Time Faculty in the Department for the Study of Religion at Saint Mary's University, and an External Affiliate at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University. They received their PhD in Anthropology from McGill University in 2023, where they studied how UK asylum claims on the basis of religion are assessed. They also hold graduate degrees from SOAS and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Khadija Mbowe (they/them) has half a Sociology degree, half of an English degree, and a whole degree in Vocal Performance, focusing on Opera. They are a self proclaimed "cool, fun millennial aunty", "non-binary hippie with a bougie pallet", and a "sentient garbage disposal in need of love". Somehow they've managed to turn these passions of theirs into a nebulous yet suspiciously steady career...They remain cautiously optimistic...Either way, they believe in learning, love, collaboration, work ethic (not exploitative labor), death, and laughter. They want to do their best to help make their sphere of influence a safe place for all kinds of people to learn, laugh, love, play, talk to each other, and in turn build community. Like they’ve said... they’re a hippie."
Shahroze Rauf (she/her) is a journalist (writer and artist) based in Montreal, originally from the GTA. Her passion for journalism is rooted in her need to showcase stories that represent her own community, and other underserved communities.
Mya Walmsley (they/them) is a graduate student in philosophy at Concordia University. They research the history and consequences of sex testing in sport. They are an organizer with the Concordia Research and Education Workers (CREW) Union, and an amateur boxer.
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