Contextualizing Trans Children's Human Rights Violations in the United States: A Foucauldian Perspective

The growing trend in the United States towards anti-transgender legislation has contributed to a social environment in which transgender children's fundamental rights to self-expression and life are threatened. Previous research into this trend has examined anti-transgender legislation in the political and social context, however, there have been few attempts to philosophically examine anti-transgender legislation. Using Michel Foucault's understanding of discourse as it relates to power, this paper contextualizes anti-transgender legislation in the United States from a Foucauldian perspective. In doing so, it proposes that a "scientactic" discourse is created, one that attempts to justify itself using scientific language without using a scientific method. This paper argues that while anti-transgender legislation in the United States attempts to enshrine biological sex as the sole determinant of gender, it does so at the expense of legitimate scientific reasoning and ignores the potential human rights violations that result.