Grooming Authoritarianism: Anti-Trans/Queer Panic as Pedagogy for Democratic Decline

Abstract We address the anti-trans/queer panic integral to the ascendance of authoritarian politics in America and respond by calling on all political scientists to “queer” political science by undoing the cisheteronormativity of the discipline. We contend that this is not the special obligation of LGBTQ scholars but all political scientists. In this we follow Eve Sedgwick’s orientation away from a “minoritizing” to a “universalizing” epistemological perspective that situates this responsibility relative to resisting democratic decline.