Moral Panics Regarding Transgender Inclusive Public Facilities: Exploring Anti-Transgender Bias in Public Policy

Background/Purpose:

Transgender individuals face stigmatization and significant social and health disparities, including harassment and violence, delayed healthcare engagement, and increased rates of HIV infection and suicidality. Understanding mechanisms by which stigmatization impacts public policy is critical and the theory of moral panics represents a useful framework for examining these mechanisms. Moral panics occur when marginalized populations are constructed as public threats and a cause of social dysfunction. In identifying a perceived common enemy, these constructions aim to build public consensus for polices that restrict and suppress the rights of the targeted group. Often, moral panics target sexual and gender minorities, constructing them through social discourse as morally deviant and dangers to society. There has been increased discourse around transgender rights regarding access to public facilities (e.g., restrooms, locker-rooms). Much of this discourse has called for the creation of local and state policies restricting unregulated use of public facilities by transgender individuals. This research seeks to show this discourse as a moral panic and describe its impact on polices that restrict transgender rights. 

Methods:

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used to explore discourse around transgender rights as related to movements to democratize gendered public facilities. CDA is used to examine how language facilitates social/political objectives through shared understanding and consensus. This analysis relied on multiple sources of data, including news sources (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News); political cartoons; political interviews/speeches, and state/local laws, that were generated between 2011 (one-year before the creation of protective transgender policies) and 2017 (when protections for transgender students were rescinded). The texts were first examined for comprehensive descriptions of transgender individuals and changes over time. Second, arguments for and against inclusion were explored in the texts to identify underlying beliefs about the social threat represented by inclusion or exclusion in public facilities. Finally, the social discourse was compared to the written policies/laws to determine the extent negative constructions impacted emergent policies.       

Results:

Analysis of anti-transgender public facility policies indicated clear foundations in moral beliefs opposing sexual/gender minorities and a claimed threat of transgender individuals as potential child predators (making inclusive facilities risky). These are key characteristics of moral panics. The analysis also indicated increased negative constructions of transgender populations as a counter-reaction to pro-transgender rights movements within some cities. Therefore, the inaccurate and exaggerated threats of transgender individuals as predators were used to counter and devalue data showing transgender individuals as victims of stigmatization and to build support for more restrictive policies.  

Conclusions/Implications:

Moral panics shift blame for public problems and dysfunction to vulnerable, easily scapegoated, populations and obscure structural causes of inequality. Utilizing a moral panic framework is an effective strategy for exploring underlying bias in restrictive public policy, and thereby broadening debate regarding unjust laws. These findings specifically explored the mechanisms by which anti-transgender bias is being inculcated into public policy. Understanding how these mechanisms are used to create anti-transgender policy is critical for developing strategies that counter these negative constructions and harness public consensus towards more inclusive, protective legislation.