Trans-Pessimism Kritik - HSS 2017

Trans- Pessimism Kritik
Part of the Opening Starter Pack additional research will expand on both sides of this debate.
Please note that some of the 1NC Shell cards also appear in some 1NC case frontlines (when the Aff is running
discrimination-based advantages).
1NC Shell
1NC Shell
Next off is the Trans- Pessimism Kritik
History proves Anti-Discrimination laws will fail. Scope is too narrow and few can afford to sue anyway.
Spade 12
Dean Spade is a lawyer, writer, and Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law This article is originally
from a book chapter of the same title called :"What's Wrong with Trans Rights?" It originally appeared in the book:
Transfeminist Perspectives: In and Beyond Transgender and Gender Studies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012)
edited by Anne Enke #CutWithKirby - The chapter was made available at:
https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/_file/Justice_for_All/CLE_Professor_Dean_Spade.pdf
As the concept of trans rights has gained more currency in the last two decades, a seeming consensus has emerged about
which law reforms should be sought to better the lives of trans people.' Advocates of trans equality have primarily
pursued two law reform interventions: anti-discrimination laws that list gender identity and/or expression as a category of
non-discrimination, and hate crime laws that include crimes motivated by the gender identity and/or expression of the victim as triggering
the application of a jurisdiction's hate crime statute. Organizations like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) have supported state
and local organizations around the country in legislative campaigns to pass such laws. Thirteen states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois,
Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington) and the District of Columbia currently
have laws that include gender identity and/or expression as a category of anti-discrimination, and 108 counties and
cities have such laws. NGLTF estimates that 39 percent of people in the United States live in a jurisdiction where such
laws are on the books.'' Seven states now have hate crime laws that include gender identity and/or expression.'1' In 2009 a federal law, the
Matthew Shepard and Tames Byrd. Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, added gender identity and/or expression to federal hate crime law. An
ongoing battle regarding if and how gender identity and/or expression will be included in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a
federal law that would prohibit discrimination the basis of sexual orientation, continues to be fought between the conservative national gay and
lesbian organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), legislators, and a variety of organizations and activists seeking to push an inclusive
bill through Congress. These two legal reforms, anti-discrimination bills and hate crime laws, have come to define the idea of "trans rights" in the
United States and are presently the most visible efforts made by nonprofit organizations and activists working under this rubric.
The logic behind this law reform strategy is not mysterious. Proponents argue that passing these laws does a number of important
things. First, the passage of antidiscrimination laws can create a basis for legal claims against discriminating employers,
housing providers, restaurants, hotels, stores, and the like. Trans people's legal claims when facing exclusion in such contexts have often failed
in the past, with courts saying that the exclusion is a legitimate preference on the part of the employer, landlord, or business owner.iv Laws that
make gender identity/expression-based exclusion illegal have the potential to influence courts to punish discriminators and provide certain
remedies (e.g., back pay or damages) to injured trans people. There is also a hope that such laws, and their enforcement by courts,
would send a preventative message to potential discriminators, letting them know that such exclusions will not be tolerated; these laws
would ultimately increase access to jobs, housing, and other necessities for trans people.
Hate crime laws are promoted under a related logic. Proponents point out that trans people have a very high murder rate and are subject to a great
deal of violences In many instances, trans people's lives are so devalued by police and prosecutors that trans murders are not investigated or trans
people's murderers are given less punishment than is typical in murder sentencing. Proponents believe that hate crime laws will intervene in these
situations, making law enforcement take this violence seriously. There is also a symbolic element to the passage of these laws: a statement that
trans lives are meaningful, often described by proponents as an assertion that trans people are human. Additionally, both proponents of anti-
discrimination laws and hate crime laws argue that the processes of advocating the passage of such laws, including media advocacy representing
the lives and concerns of trans people and meetings with legislators to tell them about trans people's experiences, increases positive trans visibility
and advances the struggle for trans equality. The data-collection element of hate crime statutes, through which certain government agencies keep
count of crimes that fall into this category, is touted by proponents as a chance to make the quantity and severity of trans people's struggles more
visible.
The logic of visibility and inclusion surrounding anti-discrimination and hate crime laws campaigns is very popular, yet there are many
troubling limitations to the idea that these two reforms comprise a proper approach to problems trans people face in
both criminal and civil law contexts. One concern is whether these laws actually improve the life chances of those who are
purportedly protected by them. Looking at categories of identity that have been included in these kinds of laws over the last
several decades indicates
that these kinds of reforms have not eliminated bias , exclusion, or marginalization. Discrimination
and violence against people of color have persisted despite law changes that declared it illegal. The persistent and growing racial
wealth divide in the United States suggests that these law changes have not had their promised effects, and that the structure of systemic racism is
not addressed by the work of these laws." Similarly, the twenty-year history of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) demonstrates
disappointing results. Courts have limited the enforcement potential of this law with narrow interpretations of its impact, and people with
disabilities remain economically and politically marginalized by systemic ableism. Similar arguments can be made about the persistence of
national origin discrimination, sex discrimination, and other forms of pervasive discrimination despite decades of official prohibitions of such
behavior. The persistence of wage gaps, illegal terminations, hostile work environments, hiring/firing disparities, and bias-motivated violence for
groups whose struggles have supposedly been addressed by antidiscrimination and hate crime laws invites caution when assuming the
effectiveness of these measures.
Hate crime laws do not have a deterrent effect. They focus on punishment and cannot be argued to actually prevent bias-motivated violence. In
addition to their failure to prevent harm, they must be considered in the context of the failures of our legal systems and, specifically, the violence
of our criminal punishment system. Anti-discrimination laws are not adequately enforced. Most people who experience discrimination
cannot afford to access legal help, so their experiences never make it to court. Additionally, the Supreme Court has severely
narrowed the enforceability of these laws over the last 30 years, making it extremely difficult to prove discrimination short of a signed letter from
a boss or landlord stating, "I am taking this negative action against you because of your [insert characteristic]." Even in cases that seem as
obvious as that, people experiencing discrimination often lose. Proving discriminatory intent has become central, making it almost
impossible to win these cases when they are brought to court. Theselaws also have such narrow scopes that they often do not
include action taken by some of the most common discriminators against marginalized people: prison guards , welfare bureaucrats,
workfare supervisors, immigration officers , child welfare workers, and others who have significant control over the lives of
marginalized people in the United States. In a neoliberal era characterized by abandonment (reduction of social safety net and infrastructure,
especially in poor and people of color communities) and imprisonment (increased immigration and criminal law enforcement), anti-
discrimination laws provide little relief to the most vulnerable people.
Anti-Discrimination Laws are worse than nothing. They boost oppression by obscuring structural factors that
create ongoing disparate outcomes. Holding onto the Law only hampers actualization of the Negatives
Alternative.
Spade 12
edited by Anne Enke Modified for language that may offend - #CutWithKirby - The chapter was made available at:
Critical race theorists have developed analyses about the limitations of antidiscrimination law that are useful in
understanding the ways these law reforms have and will continue to fail to deliver meaningful change to trans people .
Alan Freeman's critique of what he terms the "perpetrator perspective" in discrimination law is particularly helpful in conceptualizing the limits
of the common trans rights strategies.xi Freeman's work looks at laws that prohibit discrimination based on race. He exposes how and why
antidiscrimination and hate crime statutes do not achieve their promises of equality and freedom for people targeted by discrimination and
violence. Freeman argues that discrimination law misunderstands how racism works, which makes it fail to effectively address it.
Discrimination law primarily conceptualizes the harm of racism through the perpetrator/victim dyad , imagining that the
fundamental scene is that of a perpetrator who irrationally hates people on the basis of their race and fires or denies service to or beats or kills the
victim based on that hatred. The law's adoption of this conception of racism does several things that make it ineffective at
and help it contribute to obscuring the actual operations of racism . First, it individualizes racism. It
eradicating racism
says that racism is about bad individuals who intentionally make discriminatory choices and must be punished. In this
(mis)understanding, structural or systemic racism is rendered invisible (less apparent). Through this function, the law can only
attend to disparities that come from the behavior of a perpetrator who intentionally considered the category that must not be considered (e.g.,
race, gender, disability) in the decision she was making (e.g., hiring, firing, admission, expulsion). Conditions like living in a district
with underfunded schools that "happens to be" 96 percent students of color,xii or having to take an admissions test that has been proven to
predict race better than academic success*11' or any of a number of disparities in life conditions (access to adequate food,
healthcare, employment, housing, clean air and water ) that we know stem from and reflect long-term patterns of exclusion and
exploitation cannot be understood as "violations" under the discrimination principle , and thus remedies cannot be won. This
narrow reading of what constitutes a violation and can be recognized as discrimination serves to naturalize and affirm the status quo of
maldistribution. Anti-discrimination law seeks out aberrant individuals with overtly biased intentions.xlv Meanwhile, all the daily disparities
in life chances that shape our world along lines of race, class, indigeneity, disability, national origin, sex, and gender remain untouchable and
affirmed as non-discriminatory or even as fair.
The perpetrator perspective also obscures the historical context of racism. Discrimination is understood as the act of taking into
account the identity that discrimination law forbids us to take into account (e.g., race, sex, disability) when making a decision, and it does not
regard whether the decision-maker is favoring or harming a traditionally excluded group. In this way, the discrimination principle has been used
to eviscerate affirmative action and desegregation programs.^' This erroneously conceptualized "colorblindness" undermines the
possibility of remedying the severe racial disparities in the United States that are rooted in slavery, genocide, land theft,
internment, and immigration exclusion, as well as racially explicit policies that historically and presently exclude people of color from
the benefits of wealth-building programs for US citizens like Social Security, land grants, and credit and other homeownership support.' The
conditions that created and continue to reproduce such immense disparities are made invisible by the perpetrator perspective's insistence that any
consideration of the prohibited category is equally damaging. This model pretends the playing field is equal, and thus any loss or gain in
opportunity based on the category is harmful and creates inequality, again serving to declare the racial status quo neutral. This justification for
systemic racism masquerading as a logic of equal opportunity gives rise to the myth of "reverse racism," a concept that misunderstands racism to
suggest parallel meanings when white people lose opportunities or access through programs aiming to ameliorate impacts of racism and when
people of color lose opportunities due to racism.
Discrimination laws reliance on the perpetrator perspective also creates the false impression that the previously excluded or marginalized group
is now equal, that fairness has been imposed, and the legitimacy of the distribution of life chances restored. This declaration of equality and
fairness papers over the inequalities and disparities that constitute business as usual and allows them to continue.
Narrowing political resistance strategies to seeking inclusion in anti-discrimination law makes the mistaken assumption
that gaining recognition and inclusion in this way will equalize our life chances and allow us to compete in the (assumed fair)
system. This often constitutes a forfeiture of other critiques, as if the economic system is fair but for the fact that bad discriminators
are sometimes allowed to fire trans people for being trans.3" Constituting the problem of oppression so narrowly that an anti-
discrimination law could solve it erases the complexity and breadth of the systemic, life-threatening harm that trans
resistance seeks to end. Not surprisingly, the rhetoric accompanying these quests for inclusion often casts "deserving workers" people
whose other characteristics (race, ability, education, class) would have entitled them to a good chance in the workforce were it not for the
illegitimate exclusion that happened.xviii Using as examples the least marginalized of the marginalized, so to speak, becomes necessary when
issues are framed so narrowly that a person who faces intersecting vectors of harm would be unlikely to benefit from anti-discrimination law.
This framing permitsand even necessitatesthat efforts for inclusion in the discrimination regime rely on rhetoric that affirms the legitimacy
and fairness of the status quo. The inclusion-focus of anti-discrimination law and hate crime law campaigns relies on a strategy of simile,
essentially arguing "we are just like you; we do not deserve this different treatment because of this one characteristic." To make that argument,
advocates cling to the imagined norms of the US social body and choose poster people who are symbolic of US standards of normalcy, whose
lives are easily framed by sound bites that resound in shared notions of injustice. "Perfect plaintiffs" for these cases are white people with high-
level jobs and lawful immigration status. The thorny issues facing undocumented immigrants, people experiencing simultaneous discrimination
through, for example, race, disability and gender identity, or people in low-wage jobs where it is particularly hard to prove discrimination, are not
addressed by anti-discrimination law. Laws created from such strategies, not surprisingly, routinely fail to protect people
with more complicated relationships to marginality. These people, who face the worst economic vulnerability, are not lifted up as the "deserving
workers" that anti-discrimination law advocates rally to protect.
The Alternative begins by rejecting the Affs appeal and places Trans- resistance outside the Law. Critical
trans- resistance solves without masking broader systems of violence.
Spade 12
If we shift our framework from trans rights to critical trans resistance , we find ourselves with new analysis of the
harms that people who defy gender norms face, and new ideas for how we might dismantle systems that produce and enforce
gender norms. Such a shift means that we move from demands for recognition and inclusion in law to demands for material
changes to our lives. We recognize formal legal equality as a window dressing for harmful and violent political and
economic arrangements (settler colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, heteropatriarchy), and we come to understand
that what we want and need will never be won through a legal system founded in and dedicated to preserving
racialized-gendered property statuses. Our social movement strategies , then, become centered in mobilization, and our
targets become the sites of violence we see producing trans death. The demands for wealth redistribution, prison abolition and an end to
immigration enforcement that are emerging from trans communities suggest an emergent critical trans politics guided by the urgent circumstances
we face and a desire to center those living under the most severe forms of coercive violence as a guide for prioritization. The social
movement infrastructure we need to win these demands is far more participatory, democratic, and decentralized than what
has emerged in law-reform centered rights-seeking formations. The loud concerns raised within social movements in the last decade
about the roles non-profitization and professionalization have played in containing and undermining transformative social change are useful to
trans politics as we perceive the current push to institutionalize our work in those same hierarchical, elitist, undemocratic, unaccountable
forms to push for the same narrow status-quo affirming agenda.xxxiii Across the US, local communities are proposing and creating different
tools, forms and agendas to address these concerns and to innovate infrastructure for trans resistance. This resistance refuses to make itself
legible in a neoliberal framework, to articulate demands for rights that reproduce racist, ableist, anti-poor, xenophobic
frameworks of deservingness and undeservingness, to sell off transformative goals for funding opportunities, or to endorse violent
institutions for a chance at being nominally invited to be part of them. Co-developing this critical trans politics requires all of us to
tap our creativity, imagination, bravery, compassion, humility, self-reflection, patience, generosity, and perseverance, as we seek
change deep enough to dismantle the violences that are foundational to our current conditions .
2NC-1NR extensions
2NC-1NR Alt and Framework Wall
Extend our Framework and Alt argument its the last card from the 1NC shell.
Our framework says that the role of the ballot should involve locating resistance strategies that do not prop-
up violent systems of oppression.
Only the Neg Alt operates within that role of that ballot it proves Trans- resistance must take place entirely
outside the Law. Conventional Anti-Discrimination Laws not only fail to solve for trans- dignity, they also
prop-up unacceptable modes of intersectional violence. Conventional Rights like the ones the Aff seeks to
advance simply reproduce racist, ableist, colonialist, anti-poor, and xenophobic frameworks. Our Spade ev
supports all of these claims.
Our Alt of critical trans- resistance can solve without masking broader systems of violence. Even if it initially
fails, rejecting the Affs legal appeals endorses a new educational framework that will reveal new and effective
strategies.
Nicolazzo 12
Z Nicolazzo is a doctoral student in the Student Affairs in Higher Education program at Miami University (OH). Hir research
interests are transgender and gender non-conforming student populations, immigrations, gender performativities, and applications
of critical and queer politics within higher education. Prior to hir studies, ze worked in residence life, sexual violence prevention,
and greek affairs. This evidence also internally quotes Dean Spades book Normal Life Spade is a lawyer, writer, and Associate
Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Article Title Review: Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical
Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law by Dean Spade - InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 8(1)
#CutWithKirby - - Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9sr319cb
Colleges and universities have begun to discuss how inclusive their campuses are for transgender students, faculty, and staff. Common
trans-
inclusive measures include anti-discrimination policies or "gender-neutral" restrooms and residence hall floors: however, these
efforts are not enough to address the lived experiences, potential threats of violence physical, emotional, and psychic -and
discrimination that transgender individuals face daily. Despite the proliferation and application of critical and poststructural
perspectives such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and queer theory, a critical exploration of transgender perspectives has been noticeably absent.
Dean Spade's book. Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law addresses this absence through a focus
on the ways in which transgender bodies and perspectives are made visible through the traditions set by legal scholars and critical theorists. As he
articulates in the introduction of the book.
Trans people are told by the law, state agencies, private discriminators, and our families that we are impossible people who
cannot exist, cannot be seen, cannot be classified, and cannot fit anywhere. We are told by better-funded lesbian and gay rights groups, as they
Inside this
continually leave us aside, that we are not politically viable; our lives are not a political possibility that can be conceived.
impossibility , I argue, lies our specific political potential ...A critical trans politics is emerging that refuses empty
promises of "equal opportunity" and "safety" underwritten by settler colonialism , racist , sexist , classist , ableist , and
xenophobic imprisonment, and ever-growing wealth disparity', (p. 41. emphasis added)
This book challenges educators to ( re)conceptualize the true meaning of creating trans-inclusive environments.
Spade, in the introduction, states clearly that "We need a critical trans politics that is about practice and process rather than
arrival at a singular point of 'liberation'" (p. 20). He explains and explores major tenets of CRT, specifically intersectionality
(Crenshaw. 1996) and interest-convergence (Bell. 1996), as a way to lay the foundations of his argument, orient the reader for where he will go in
the remainder of the book, and show how critical trans politics should be viewed in conceit with such work.
It's try-or-die for the Alt. The Aff fails because of its single-issue focus on trans- inclusivity with the Law.
Only the Alts broader focus can succeed.
Nicolazzo 12
Z Nicolazzo is a doctoral student in the Student Affairs in Higher Education program at Miami University (OH). Hir research
interests are transgender and gender non-conforming student populations, immigrations, gender performativities, and applications
of critical and queer politics within higher education. Prior to hir studies, ze worked in residence life, sexual violence prevention,
and greek affairs. This evidence also internally quotes Dean Spades book Normal Life Spade is a lawyer, writer, and Associate
Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Article Title Review: Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical
Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law by Dean Spade - InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 8(1)
#CutWithKirby - - Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9sr319cb
In the first chapter. "'Trans Law and Politics on a Neoliberal Landscape." Spade develops the argument that there is a "general trend in
neoliberal politics of denying that unequal conditions exist, portraying any unequal conditions that do exist as natural or neutral, and suggesting
that key access/resource issues are a matter of individual 'freedom" or 'choice'" (p. 58). He suggests a legal-only approach to rights
effectively colludes in rendering the transgender community invisible. The legal-only approach to rights is steeped in
the construction of messages, legislation, and a movement that is palatable to the broader public (one that is able to generate
revenue through fundraising and private donors). Seeking this broad-based support creates a normalizing effect whereby the transgender
community is placed on the periphery within the lesbian and gay movement as untenable and non-viable. Instead, Spade argues that a critical
trans politics should seek community and advocacy with other highly marginalized populations who continue to be
left behind in the effort for some groups to gain social access, rights, and privileges . Rather than think solely about the
trans gender community , critical trans politics must pay attention to how the struggle for trans gender equity is
inextricably linked to immigration reform, criminal justice reform, and demilitarization. Gone are the days of single-
issue advocacy and resistance , as Spade makes a call to practice a politics of emancipation that lays bare how working
for the liberation of one group at the cost of further marginalizing another is counterproductive .
2NC-1NR Epistemology Card
The Aff is epistemologically flawed solvency claims are wishful rationalization. It much more likely that the
Law will strengthen systems of oppression.
Spade 12
Much of the thinking behind the need for hate crime and anti-discrimination legislation, including by advocates who
recognize how limited these interventions are as avenues for increasing the life chances of trans people, is about the
significance of having our experiences of discrimination and violence named in law. The belief that being named in this
way has a benefit for the well-being of trans people has to be reexamined with an understanding that the alleged
benefits of such naming provides even greater opportunity for harmful systems to claim fairness and equality while
continuing to kill us. Hate crime and anti-discrimination laws declare that punishment systems and economic arrangements are now non-
transphobic, yet these laws not only fail to eradicate transphobia but also strengthen systems that perpetrate it.
This analysis illuminates how law reform work that merely tinkers with systems to make them look more inclusive while
leaving their most violent operations intact must be a concern of many social movements today. For example, prison abolitionists in
the United States argue that the project of prison reform, which is usually aimed at reducing certain kinds of violence or unfairness in the prison
system, has always functioned to maintain and expand imprisonment*** Prison reform efforts aimed at a reducing a variety of harms, such as
gender and sexual violence, medical neglect and abuse, and overcrowding, to name but a few, have often been made by well-meaning people who
wanted to address the horrors of prison life. But these reform efforts have been incorporated into the project of prison expansion, mobilized as
rationales for building and filling more and more prisons. Abolitionists caution that a system designed from its inception as a technology of
racialized control through exile and punishment will use any rationale necessary to achieve that purpose. A recent example of particular interest
to feminism and trans politics is the 2003 National Prison Rape Elimination Act (NPREA). While passed in the name of preventing sexual
assault, the NPREA has been used to further enforce and increase penalties against prisoners for consensual sexual activity, including activities
such as handholding. Abolitionist activists doing prisoner support work have pointed out that because some of the main tools the Act uses are
punishment tools, those tools have become just another part of the arsenal used by punishment systems to increase sentences, target prisoners of
color and queer and trans prisoners, and expand imprisonment. It is unclear whether the new rules have reduced sexual violence, but it is clear
that they have increased punishment. Activists considering using law reform as a tool, then, have to be extraordinarily vigilant to determine if
they are actually strengthening and expanding various systems' capacities to harm, or if our work is part of dismantling those capacities.
In both prison and immigration reform contexts, trans activists are raising concerns about the danger of dividing affected populations by
mobilizing ideas about who constitutes a "deserving" or "undeserving" subject Campaigns that focus on immigrants portrayed as "hard-working"
(racist, anti-poor code for those who do not need support like public benefits or housing) and "law-abiding," (not caught up in the criminal
punishment system) or that frame immigration issues in terms of family unity relying on heteropatriarchal constructs further stigmatize those who
do not fit the "deserving" frame, and create policies that only benefit a narrow swath of affected people. Similarly, campaigns about
imprisonment that only focus on people convicted of nonviolent crimes, "political" prisoners, or on people exonerated by the introduction of new
evidence, risk refining the system in ways that justify and legitimize the bulk of its continued operation by eliminating its most obvious
contradictions.
Three concerns about law reform projects permeate many sites of resistance. First, these projects change only what the law says about
what a system is doing, but not its actual impact Second, they refine a system in ways that help it continue to target the most
vulnerable people, while only partially or temporarily removing a few of the less vulnerable from its path. And finally, law
reform projects often provide rationales and justifications for the expansion of harmful systems.
2NC-1NR A-to Permutation
The 1NC evidence has already defeated the perm:
First the perm is not net beneficial. Theres no value-add to bringing the Law along with our Alt. The Law
not only fail, but adding it will contribute to obscuring the actual operations of bigotry. Thats our 1NC
Spade ev.
Two Only the Alt operates within our role of the ballot. The Aff and perm adds the Law. That addition will
fail and boost violence. We must endorse an uncompromising commitment to a pure bottom-up approach.
Quinones 12
Martin Quinones, JD Cal-Berkeley. Also self identifies as a sex activist. From the article: Book Review: Normal Life:
Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the Law by Dean Spade - 27 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF
GENDER, LAW & JUSTICE (2012). This evidence internally references Dean Spade who is a lawyer, writer, and Associate
Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. #CutWithKirby - Available at:
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bglj/vol27/iss2/8
Spade's message about using mainstream law reform tactics to improve the lives of trans people is succinct : " they
just will not work." (p. 101) His uncompromising thesis is that mimicking the strategies of the mainstream lesbian and gay
movement, seeking protection via hate crime laws, and focusing narrowly on inclusion and recognition can only cede more
power to legal and social systems that have rarely served trans people well. The most promising avenue for combating
the institutional brutality that trans people face in virtually every facet of life is to constantly foster mass mobilization, "led
by those living on the sharpest intersecting edges of multiple systems of control.*' and to avoid the kind of compromise
that inevitably leaves behind the most vulnerable potential allies (p. 224). The structural change that would give trans
people longer and less violent lives " only trickles up , it never trickles down." '
Third Perm will get co-opted and will only boost oppression. Its Try-or-die for the Alt.
Quinones 12
Spade's central argument in Normal Life is that the economic and educational opportunities of trans people will not improve
through the pursuit of legal inclusion and recognition generally. Traditional law reform strategies have proven
ineffective at remedying systemic problems facing other marginalized groups, and will likely serve the trans
community no better. Activists must stop trying to "change what the law says about a particular group to make it say
'good things' . . . and not 'bad things,'" because the prevailing narrative about the effects of law does not correlate with how
resources and opportunities are actually distributed (p. 29). The only option is to transform how systems of power
operate throughout society at large. Spade marshals analysis from Critical Race Theory, Native American scholars, anti-capitalist
scholars, and his own prior work to argue that "the law and legal reform strategies can be an ineffective or even a co-opting and
neutralizing force for social movements"5 and that the trans movement can expect no different.
2NC-1NR - Link + Solvency Premise
Plan is a trap Trans- population should not learn the lessons of seeking change via politics and litigation.
Haddad 17
et al - Mark E. Haddad is an attorney with Sidley Austin LLP and served as Counsel of Record for this Amicus Brief. Mark has
argued cases in the United States Supreme Court and clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. The author holds a
J.D. from Yale Law School; an M.A. from Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar); and an A.B. from Stanford University. Amicus
Brief - Gloucester County School Board, Petitioner, v. G.G., by his next friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm, Respondent. On Writ
of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit - AMICI CURIAE BRIEF OF SCHOLARS WHO
STUDY THE TRANSGENDER POPULATION IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT- Available at SCOUTS blog along with all
amicus briefs on this matter- March modified for language that may offend #CutWithKirby -
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/16-273bsacscholarswhostudythetransgenderpopulation.pdf
As a minority comprisingjust 0.6% of the total adult population, transgender people lack political power to protect
themselves in the political process against a hostile majority. Bd. of Educ., 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131474, at *59-60 (finding
transgender community politically powerless "as a tiny minority of the population, whose members are stigmatized for their gender non-
conformity in a variety of settings"); see also Obergefell v. Wymyslo, 962 F. Supp. 2d 968, 989-90 (S.D. Ohio 2013) (citing "small population
size" as factor establishing powerlessness of gays and lesbians), rev'd sub nom. DeBoer v. Snyder, 772 F.3d 388 (6th Cir. 2014), rev'd sub nom.
Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015).
Further evidence that transgender people lack political power is reflected by the lack of openly transgender elected or
appointed political officials. In Adkins, the court recognized the absence of openly trans gender members of the United
States Congress or federal judiciary. 143 F. Supp. 3d at 140. A recent study found only three openly transgender elected officials serving
nationwide, all at local levels, and that very few transgender people have ever even been candidates.65
Although there are no conclusive answers as to why transgender individuals are underrepresented in elected and appointed office, research
suggests that an enormous hurdle is getting transgender candidates - who may have to overcome fears of violence, discrimination, or backlash - to
run.66 Transgender individuals also may lack the support needed to get elected if political parties and influential donors
do not believe transgender candidates can win elections or are otherwise reluctant to give their support to transgender
candidates.
Transgender people's political power is also undermined by laws requiring voters to have a certain form of
identification in order to vote. These laws risk disenfranchising many transgender individuals, who face administrative
obstacles to obtaining identification that reflects their correct gender identity. According to one recent study, the strictest of
these voter-identification laws may have disenfranchised over 34,000 transgender people in eight states in the November 2016 general election.67
2NC-1NR Bathroom Policy = wont solve Trans- Oppression
Bathroom policy alone is woefully insufficient to solve for trans- oppression

Francois 17
et al; Aderson B. Francois currently serves as the Director for Institute for Public Representation Civil Rights Law Clinic as well
as a Professor of Law at The Georgetown Law School. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, Professor Francois directed the
Civil Rights Clinic at Howard University School of Law, where he also taught Constitutional Law, Federal Civil Rights, and
Supreme Court Jurisprudence. Professor Francois received his J.D. and B.A. from New York University. While the author serves
as the Counsel of Record for this Amicus Brief. it is important to note that this Amicus Brief is submitted on behalf of REAGAN
GREENBERG, ACHIM HOWARD, ALEXA RODRIGUEZ, JEYMEE SEMITI, AVATARA SMITH-CARRINGTON,
SAVANNA WANZER, & SAM WILLIAMSON who, identity as transgender people and individuals whose gender identity
may not fit the rigid categorization of male or female. Amicus Brief - Gloucester County School Board, Petitioner, v. G.G., by his
next friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm, Respondent. On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit - BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE REAGAN GREENBERG, ACHIM HOWARD, ALEXA RODRIGUEZ, JEYMEE
SEMITI, AVATARA SMITH-CARRINGTON, SAVANNA WANZER, & SAM WILLIAMSON IN SUPPORT OF
RESPONDENT - Available at SCOUTS blog along with all amicus briefs on this matter- March modified for language that
may offend #CutWithKirby - http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/16-273-resp-amicus-greenberg.pdf
Although it seems obvious that every human being should be treated with dignity, this has not been a reality for the
transgender community. Rampant discrimination still exists against the transgender community36 with regards to
education , employment , health , family life and public accommodation , and the ability to use the bathroom just
touches the surface of the myriad of hardship faced on a daily basis .3' Further, despite the diversity of gender expression that
has existed for centuries in the United States, transgender people have historically faced a unique set of challenges in accessing institutions and
public accommodations. Shortly after the Civil Rights Movement in 1969, riots at the Stonewall Inn began where the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender) community "as a group forcefully and vocally assei'ted their rights."38 However, largely left out of the gay rights
narrative are the voices of those who spearheaded the riot: transgender women of color such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.39 Even
historic LGBTQ establishments such as The Stonewall Inn had exclusionary practices regarding transgender individuals, rendering them with no
sanctuary to express their gender safely.40
2NC-1NR Ahistorical/Appeals to Law will fail
Affs appeals to the Law are ahistorical and wont solve broader anti-trans- discrimination. History goes neg.
Delaye 17
et al ;Jaime Huling Delaye - Deputy City Attorney, Complex and Affirmative Litigation San Francisco City Attorney's Office.
The author also holds a J.D. from Stanford University Law School Amicus Brief - Gloucester County School Board, Petitioner, v.
G.G., by his next friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm, Respondent.On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for
the Fourth Circuit - BRIEF FOR THE CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, THE CITY OF NEW YORK, AND 29
OTHER JURISDICTIONS AND MAYORS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT - Available at SCOUTS
blog along with all amicus briefs on this matter- March - #CutWithKirby - http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/16-273_bsac_san_francisco.pdf
As important as they are,laws barring discrimination in public accommodations address only one aspect of the exclusion
and harassment that transgender members of our communities face on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many of the findings
that motivated San Francisco to adopt its equal-access laws remain true today: "persons who are perceived to be transgender! 1
are considered by some as less than human and therefore assumed to be fair game for objec-tification, violence, and discrimination. Hate
violence is perpetrated against transgender I ] persons as much as, if not more than, any other group." S.F. Human Rights
Comm'n, Investigation into Discrimination Against Transgendered People at 44. The tens of thousands of transgender and gender-
nonconforming individuals who live in our cities are among our most vulnerable residents . Crime statistics show that
transgender individuals are disproportionately more likely to fall victim to violence in public facilities such as bathrooms.
Transgender people also face staggeringly high rates of poverty, harassment, violence, and poor health, as well as discrimination in housing and
employment.
Aff answers
2AC Frontline
( ) Perm do both.
( ) Alt fails and the Aff doesnt. Many examples prove that Courts are distinct. Despite pessimism, they can
succeed in contingent areas. We also solve a disparate violence add-on which operates within their role of
the ballot.
McKanders 17
Karla McKanders is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Howard University College of Law for the 2016 2017 academic year
where she teaches in the Civil Rights Clinic and Refugee Law. She is a tenured professor at the University of Tennessee, College
of Law Amicus Brief - Gloucester County School Board, Petitioner, v. G.G., by his next friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm,
Respondent. On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit - BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE
HOWARD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW CIVIL RIGHTS CLINIC IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS- Available at
SCOUTS blog along with all amicus briefs on this matter- March modified for language that may offend #CutWithKirby -
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/16-273_bsac_196_members_of_congress.pdf
The Court should not allow society's apprehension of change to determine the scope of transgender students' rights.
These students' rights should be determined by the Constitutionnot by society's discomfort with change in the existing social order. The
school board policy at issue here, mandating separate, single-sex restrooms for transgender students, is reminiscent of
the "separate but equal" doctrine that hindered racial equality for school children for over half a century. The policy singles out and labels
transgender students as being different from others, rather than affording all students uniform rights. The policy is based on unfounded fears,
which are inadequate to negate an individual's right to equality. Fear should never undermine the importance of equal protection and fairness
under the law.
Furthermore, and perhaps equally important, the separate restroom policy will have a disparate impact on Black and Brown
transgender students in lower socioeconomic school districts. In order to execute a policy similar to the one at issue in this case, schools will
be required to build new, single-sex restrooms. Often, Black and Brown students attend schools with fewer financial resources; these schools,
therefore, will likely have difficulty installing truly "equal" facilities. As a result, students in these schools will be subject to
makeshift accommodations that will be both separate and unequal. This unintended consequence will
disproportionately impact many Black and Brown transgender students who already face a variety of challenges due
to inadequate resources.
This case affords the Court an opportunity to uphold the principles of equality enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution and
Title IX's prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex in education. In upholding the Fourth Circuit's decision, this Court will continue
its tradition of ensuring equality for all Americans, as it did in Brown.
This case is about more than the right to use a restroom. It is about equality. Equality is a fundamental principle at the foundation
of American society and "at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment." Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967). At its core, this case is "about
the founding ideals that have led this country - haltingly but inexorably - in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans."3
Protecting equality implicates all Americans, especially those who do not fit within existing social norms and the status quo. In protecting G.
Grimm ("G.G."), a transgender boy, this Court will affirm "the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we,
as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them - indeed, to protect all of us."4 G.G. has been singled out and forced to use separate
restrooms in accordance with the Gloucester County Public School's ("GCPS") policy. J.A. 34. G.G. and other transgender students who will be
impacted by this Court's decision only "ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law." Obergefell u. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 2608 (2015).
The Equal Protection Clause and Title IX are not simply aspirational in nature; instead, this Court has made those principles a
reality in the face of societal fear and resistance to change in the social hierarchy and the status quo. The United States has witnessed
discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress towards equality in our nation's history. The separation and discrimination G.G.
(Grimm) has faced is reminiscent of moments in our country's history where immutable differences have been a
marker to justify disparate and discriminatory treatmentthe antithesis of equality. Throughout U.S. history, however, this Court
has been the stalwart in safeguarding individuals who have been the targets of discrimination because of their differences. See
State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938) ( allowing in-state tuition for African-American students ); Sipuel v.
Bd. of Regents of Univ. ofOkl., 332 U.S. 631 (1948) ( allowing African Americans to enroll in law school ); Brown v. Bd. of Ed.
ofTopeka, Shawnee Cty., Kan., 347 U.S. 483 (1954) ( Brown I ), sub nom. Brown v. Bd. of Educ. ofTopeka, Kan., 349 U.S. 294 (1955)
( Brown II ) (eliminating discrimination in public schools based on race ); Loving, 388 U.S. 1 ( eliminating discrimination in
marriage based on race ); Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998) (recognizing discrimination in workplace
based on same-sex harassment); Obergefell, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (extending marital rights to same-sex couples).
Accordingly, this Court's decision will have a critical role in affirming the principles of equality enshrined in the Constitution and
promulgated in Title IX to ensure that we continue to make progress towards a more equal society in the face of potential social discomfort and
unfounded fear. The theme of equal rights in American society continues to hold the force of power that will bridge the gap
between the Constitution's promise of equality and the reality of deconstructing a social hierarchy where race, class,
sex, and gender have unjustly been determinative of the dignity accorded to members of our society.
( ) Link premise is false. Pessimism K is dated. Laws not categorically violent to trans- people and can be re-
captured for contingent legal gains.
Weiss 14
Dr. Jillian T. Weiss has a J.D. and a Ph.D. in Law, Policy & Society. Currently Professor of Law and Society at Ramapo College
of New Jersey, her research area is gender identity and law. She has authored over 50 academic publications, presentations and
other scholarly works, as well as approximately 40 articles an d interviews for media organizations including The New York
Times and Associated Press. Dr. Weiss provides legal representation to transgender employees in cases involving gender identity
and gender expression discrimination. She also consults with private and public organizations regarding gender identity policy
and employee gender transitions, including Harvard University, Boeing and New York City. Her volunteer work includes serving
as a member of the Board of Directors of Lambda Legal, the oldest and la rgest U.S. national legal organization whose mission is
to safeguard and advance the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact
litigation, education and policy work. She is also Chair of the annual Transgender Law Institute, currently held at the National
LGBT Bar Associations annual Conference. The Transgender Tipping Point: An Overview for the Advocate - November 2014
- #CutWithKirby - https://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/Weiss_-_The_Transgender_Tipping_Point.pdf
Time Magazine recently declared "The Transgender Tipping Point." asserting that "another social movement is poised to challenge deeply held
cultural beliefs."1 Until recently, however, transgender people have remained relatively hidden from public consciousness, due in part to
the severe stigma against them. They have largely been regarded as strangers to the law, and are often without legal protection because
of their transgender identity. Though there have been great strides in providing that protection under the current Administration, the
conservative nature of law means it will take years to change the legal regime that routinely withholds rights from transgender people, and
progress may be reversed if politics takes a turn to the right . Therefore, it is crucial that progressive advocates act now
to advance and consolidate these civil rights gains for transgender people.
Estimates suggest there are approximately 15 million transgender people in the world today, with about 700,000 located in the United States.
Transgender refers to people whose gender identity (internal sense of gender) or whose gender expression (social gender characteristics) is not
that traditionally related to the sex they were assigned at birth. Examples of well-known transgender people today include Chaz Bono, Laverne
Cox and Janet Mock. Transgender identity is not a new phenomenon, and there is a long history of transgender communities reaching into
prehistory.
Until recently, transgender people have been considered strangers to the law, not entitled to protection from
discrimination based on their gender identity or expression. Discrimination against transgender people has long been rampant in all
areas of public and private life, including employment, education, housing, credit, public accommodations, child custody, out-of-home care for
youth, incarceration, health care and marriage.4 When transgender people attempted to use laws for protection, courts told them that the state
recognized only their sex assigned at birth, and legislators did not intend to protect them. However, this situation is changing, due in
part to the willingness of some judicial officials to recognize that interpretations of law that exclude trans gender
persons from relief are incorrect and unjust.
( ) Prefer a policy framework centered on teaching workable mechanisms for garnering collectives change.
Non-policy frameworks allow endless items become nexus question. They also move the discussion away from
the 1AC which matters.
Bryant 12
(Levi Bryant is currently a Professor of Philosophy at Collin College. In addition to working as a professor, Bryant has also served as a Lacanian
psychoanalyst. He received his Ph.D. from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, where he originally studied 'disclosedness' with the Heidegger
scholar Thomas Sheehan. Bryant later changed his dissertation topic to the transcendental empiricism of Gilles Deleuze, Critique of the
Academic Left, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/)
Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction. Its good at carrying out critiques that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of realistic constructions of alternatives. This
Im reminded by the
because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how networks, assemblages, structures, or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a workable alternative. Here
underpants gnomes depicted in South Park: The underpants gnomes have a plan for achieving profit that goes like
this: Phase 1: Collect Underpants Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Profit! They even have a catchy song to go with their work: Well this is sadly how it often is with the academic left.
Our plan seems to be as follows : Phase 1: Ultra- Radical Critique Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Revolution and complete social transformation!
Our problem is that we seem perpetually stuck at phase 1 without ever explaining what is to be done at phase 2. Often the critiques articulated at phase 1 are right , but
there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those critiques nonetheless. In order to reach phase 3, we have to produce new collectives. In order for new collectives to
be produced, people need to be able to hear and understand the critiques developed at phase 1. Yet this is where everything begins to fall apart. Even though these critiques are often right, we express them in ways that only an
academic with a PhD in critical theory and post-structural theory can understand. How exactly is Adorno to produce an effect in the world if only PhDs in the humanities can understand him? Who are these things for? We seem to
always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at the Naomi Kleins and David Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive academic journals that only universities can
afford, with presses that dont have a wide distribution, and give our talks at expensive hotels at academic conferences attended only by other academics. Again, who are these things for? Is it an accident that so many activists look
away from these things with contempt, thinking their more about an academic industry and tenure, than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesnt make a sound! Seriously dudes
and dudettes, what are you doing? But finally, and worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We denounce others, we condemn them, we berate them for not engaging with the questions we want to
, and we vilify them when they dont embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are every bit as off-
engage with
putting and unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister or the priest of the inquisition (have people yet understood that Deleuze and Guattaris Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the
This type of revolutionary is the greatest friend
French communist party system and the Stalinist party system, and the horrific passions that arise out of parties and identifications in general?).
of the reactionary and capitalist because they do more to drive people in to the embrace of reigning ideology than to undermine
reigning ideology. These are the people that keep Rush Limbaugh in business. Well done! But this isnt where our most serious shortcomings
lie. Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2. We almost never make concrete proposals for how things ought to be
new material infrastructures and semiotic fields need to be produced, and when we do, our critique-
restructured, for what
cynics and skeptics immediately jump in with an analysis of all the ways in which these things contain dirty secrets, ugly motives, and
intoxicated
are doomed to fail. How , I wonder, are we to do anything at all when we have no concrete proposals? We live on a planet of 6 billion people.
These 6 billion people are dependent on a certain network of production and distribution to meet the needs of their consumption. That network of production and distribution does involve the extraction of resources, the production of
food, the maintenance of paths of transit and communication, the disposal of waste, the building of shelters, the distribution of medicines, etc., etc., etc. What are your proposals? How will you meet these problems? How will you
navigate the existing mediations or semiotic and material features of infrastructure? Marx and Lenin had proposals. Do you? Have you even explored the cartography of the problem? Today we are so intellectually bankrupt on these
points that we even have theorists speaking of events and acts and talking about a return to the old socialist party systems, ignoring the horror they generated, their failures, and not even proposing ways of avoiding the repetition of
these horrors in a new system of organization. Who among our critical theorists is thinking seriously about how to build a distribution and production system that is responsive to the needs of global consumption, avoiding the
problems of planned economy, ie., who is doing this in a way that gets notice in our circles? Who is addressing the problems of micro-fascism that arise with party systems (theres a reason that it was the Negri & Hardt contingent,
not the Badiou contingent that has been the heart of the occupy movement). At least the ecologists are thinking about these things in these terms because, well, they think ecologically. Sadly we need something more, a melding of the
I would love, just for a moment,

ecologists, the Marxists, and the anarchists. Were not getting it yet though, as far as I can tell. Indeed, folks seem attracted to yet another critical paradigm, Laruelle.
to hear a radical environmentalist talk about his ideal high school that would be academically sound. How would he provide for the energy needs of that school? How would he meet building codes
how would she
in an environmentally sound way? How would she provide food for the students? Wh a t would be her plan for waste disposal? And most importantly,
navigate the school board, the state legislature, the federal government, ? and all the families of these students
What is your plan? What is your alternative? I think there are alternatives. I saw one that approached an alternative in Rotterdam. If you want to make a truly revolutionary
contribution, this is where you should start. Why should anyone even bother listening to you if you arent
proposing real plans? But we havent even gotten to that point. Instead were like underpants gnomes, saying revolution is the answer! without addressing any of the infrastructural questions of just how
revolution is to be produced, what alternatives it would offer, and how we would concretely go about building those alternatives. Masturbation. Underpants gnome deserves to be a
category in critical theory; a sort of synonym for self-congratulatory masturbation. We need less critique not
because critique isnt important or necessary it is but because we know the critiques, we know the problems . Were
intoxicated with critique because its easy and safe. We best every opponent with critique. We occupy a position of moral superiority with critique. But
What we need today , more than ever, is composition or carpentry. Everyone knows
do we really do anything with critique?
something is wrong. Everyone knows this system is destructive and stacked against them. Even the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic system, despite having the wrong economic theory.
None of us, however, are proposing alternatives . Instead we prefer to shout and denounce. Good luck with that.
( ) Anti-discrimination law do work. Even if it fails, they still set norms. The Alt is way worse.
Beiner 14
Theresa M. Beiner - Nadine Baum Distinguished Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Development, University of
Arkansas at Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law. THE MANY LANES OUT OF COURT: AGAINST
PRIVATIZATION OF EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION DISPUTES - Maryland Law Review 2014, 73 Md. L. Rev. 837
l #CutWithKirby - awrev; allrev
After Congress enacted the first laws prohibiting employment discrimination in 1964, n1 workplaces changed
significantly. No longer could employers segregate workplaces based on race or sex . n2 In many workplaces, workers who
had been separated now worked side by side. One only need board an airline flight to realize how law can transform jobs and
workplaces. Instead of seeing only the pretty, slim, young, unmarried "stewardesses" of the 1960s, it is not
uncommon to have an entirely male flight attendant crew that includes workers over age fifty. n3 Indeed, both the pilot
and co-pilot on a commercial flight might well be women. While this transformation in workplaces is one of Title VII's key successes, in more
recent years, scholars have lamented that employment discrimination laws have not proven effective in eliminating
the many vestiges of discrimination in the workplace that still linger. n4 Many scholars blame the [*838] lackluster
enforcement of employment discrimination laws on the federal courts' inability to understand or theorize about the
lingering aspects of discrimination based on race and sex that still pervade the modern workplace. n5 In addition, some scholars
have opined that the federal courts are hostile to employment discrimination claims and do not wish to hear them. n6 This
may lead one to believe that out-of-court processes might better serve the aims of anti-discrimination laws.
This Article will argue the opposite: that there is a distinct need for employment discrimination cases to be tried in
court before juries. This Article charts the many processes the federal courts have used over the last twenty years to withdraw themselves from
the employment discrimination [*839] business. n7 In a series of cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has opened the door to
alternative forms of dispute resolution in order to "get rid of" these cases. n8 Whether it be through a robust pro-arbitration jurisprudence, an
uncalled-for reliance on employer internal grievance mechanisms, or aggressive settlement conferences, courts are shunting employment
discrimination cases out of the court system and into the sphere of private dispute resolution. n9 Notably, the courts are not the only movers of
this trend; even the federal agency tasked with enforcing these laws - the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") - is finding
means other than court cases for addressing these claims. n10 In addition, lower courts have used invigorated civil procedure rules, including
summary judgment motions and motions to dismiss, as an effective tool to clear their dockets, leaving plaintiffs with no relief at all. n11
The resulting dearth of employment discrimination cases going to trial may not be cause for much concern. Indeed, it could be that the efforts of
prior plaintiffs have resulted in the elimination of employment discrimination based on race, sex, and religion from the American workplace.
Nevertheless, discrimination has become more subtle, n12 and evidence of continued employment discrimination based on sex and race abounds.
n13 It could also be, given arguments regarding judicial hostility to these cases, that these alternative practices are more effective in bringing
relief to plaintiffs and in furthering the purposes of antidiscrimination laws. [*840] Unfortunately, there is no way to know how methods of
alternative dispute resolution - such as arbitration, mediation, settlement, or internal employer grievance mechanisms - are actually working. Most
of these alternative dispute resolution systems are not studied and scrutinized by professionals. They exist "in the shadow of the law," as
commentators suggest. n14 There is no realistic way to know if these alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are bringing about just results. In
addition, these mechanisms do not alert employers and employees to what is and is not acceptable workplace behavior. n15
There is another problem with condemning these alternative schemes. When Congress enacted these laws, it provided for a conciliation process
and clearly envisioned that litigants would resolve at least some of these cases outside the court system. n16 Thus, one could argue that the
system is working consistently with Title VII's conciliation goals by encouraging non-court dispute resolution. This Article proposes that court-
driven alternative dispute processes have gone well beyond what Congress envisioned in enacting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, n17
the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ("ADA"), n18 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 ("ADEA"), n19 and does not,
in the long run, further the many purposes of anti-discrimination laws. n20
Most importantly, however, these alternative schemes suffer from a significant problem aside from difficulties in
assessing their efficacy. These schemes provide no support for the "norm-enforcing" scheme that is the American
legal system. This Article, in the tradition of Professor Owen Fiss's Against Settlement, n21 addresses the potential effects of employment
discrimination laws being enforced - if at all - through private dispute [*841] resolution mechanisms. n22 Anti-discrimination laws serve
a vital public purpose - they set norms of behavior for workplaces and workers in the area of equal employment opportunity. Indeed,
some areas of employment discrimination law involve assessing what the "reasonable person" would believe. n23 What other group is in a better
position to make this assessment than a group of twelve jurors? n24 Picking up on Marc Galanter's work regarding the vanishing American trial,
n25 this Article argues that trials in this area provide an important public function in setting norms of appropriate workplace
behavior and practices as well as setting monetary values for the harm employment discrimination causes its victims. n26 As this Article will
explain, there is cause for concern when alternative dispute schemes supplant jury trials in this area of the law.
( ) Their K is wrong and links to roll-back. Essential gains for trans- populations are lost. They also cause
external offense in the form of violent losses for racial and gender groups.
Levi & Shay 12

Jennifer Levi and Giovanna Shay. Jennifer Levi is the director of the Transgender Rights Project of GLAD (Gay and Lesbian
Advocates and Defenders). Jennifer has participated in successful efforts to pass transgender-inclusive antidiscrimination laws
throughout New England. Giovanna Shay is a co-chair of the Corrections Committee of the American Bar Association Criminal
Justice Section. She has participated in institutional change litigation involving prisons, as well as efforts to enforce the Prison
Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and amend the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Both serve on the faculty of Western New
England University School of Law. - The dangers of reform - Source: The Women's Review of Books. 29.4 (July-August
2012): p30. Info Trac database #CutWithKirby
Spade, a law professor at Seattle University School of Law and noted transgender activist, criticizes several law-reform
In his recent book, Normal Life, Dean
movements, including those to improve prison conditions, win marriage equality for same-sex couples, and ensure that hate crimes and antidiscrimination laws include transgender
people. Spade finds fault with LGBTQ rights organizations' efforts to win mainstream acceptance, arguing that instead of pursuing an equality agenda, they should focus on changing "the
distribution of life chances," by "demand[ing] radical redistribution of wealth and an end to poverty." Spade's critique has the most force in the context in which it originated--calling for an end to
what David Garland first described as mass incarceration, the system many refer to as the "prison industrial complex." It is less persuasive when applied to the realm of free-world LGBTQ rights.
Spade's perspective is shaped by the prison-abolitionist movement, as well as, he says, by critical race theory and "woman of color feminism." In 2002, Spade founded the Sylvia Rivera Law
Project (SRLP), which provides free legal services to transgender and gender nonconforming people, and whose mission, according to its website (slrp.org/about), is "to guarantee that all people
are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination, or violence." Normal Life is rooted in this experience,
and fits comfortably within a series of recent prison-abolitionist works focusing on the experiences of queer and transgender people, including Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT
People in the United States (2010), and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (2011), a collect ion of essays to which Spade contributed. Spade writes that his
purpose in Normal Life is to describe a "critical trans politics ... that demands more than legal recognition and inclusion." Arguing that equality of life chances, or distributive justice, cannot be
achieved through law reform alone, he calls for a broader agenda: "prison abolition, the elimination of poverty, access to full health care, and an end to immigration enforcement." These goals, he
submits, "cannot be conceptualized or won within the realm of US law." Citing the work of critical race theorist Alan Freeman, Spade questions the focus of antidiscrimination law on violations
of individual rights, which, he argues, tends to obscure more systemic and structural kinds of disadvantage. Instead of pursuing a rights-based law reform strategy, Spade writes, the trans
movement should focus on "population-level operations of power," such as ending mass incarceration. The models he recommends for pursuing "transformative change" will resonate with those
familiar with the work of organizers such as "rebellious lawyering" proponent Gerry Lopez, Brazilian educational reformer Paolo Freire, or civil rights campaigner Ella Baker: "[M]eaningful
change," Spade says, "comes from below," and "those most directly impacted" should lead the fight. Normal Life's leftist critique of liberal reform has deep roots in the history of US social
movements. For example, in his book Stories of Scottsboro, James Goodman describes how, in 1931, during the trial of the Scottsboro Boys (nine African American teenagers falsely accused of
raping two white women), leaders of the International Labor Defense (ILD) organization attacked the NAACP as "an instrument of the white capitalist class for the perpetuation of the slavery of
the negro people." ILD members marched with signs equating "lynchers, reformers, and enemies of the Negro people." Then as now, leftists viewed the racialized criminal-punishment system as
a tool of broader economic oppression. Spade writes that advocates seeking to remedy prison conditions should beware of inadvertently strengthening the prison system. He explains: We must
avoid proposals that include constructing buildings or facilities to house trans prisoners, to hire new staff, or make any other changes that would expand the budget and/or imprisoning capacities
of the punishment system. He goes on to say, "[W]e must ensure that legal work is always aimed at dismantling the prison industrial complex ... [k]nowing that the system is likely to try to co-opt
our critiques to produce opportunities for expansion."This is essentially the criticism of prison reform leveled by Angela Y. Davis in her 2003 book, Are Prisons Obsolete? She
argues that, despite the good intentions of advocates, prison reform can produce more prisons--new and sanitized versions built to reduce overcrowding. Davis warns that discussions of
prison reform focus "almost inevitably on generating the changes that will produce a better prison system." Although some reforms may be significant, she writes, "frameworks that
rely exclusively on reforms help to produce the stultifying idea that nothing lies beyond prison." It is not only prison abolitionists who share Spade's
concern about the unintended consequences of prison reform. The sociologist Heather Schoenfeld writes that prison-conditions litigation in Florida contributed to a prison building boom
there. Other commentators--including James Jacobs, Malcolm Feeley, and Van Swearingen--argue that prisoners' rights litigation contributed to the "bureaucratization" of prisons, consolidating
administrators' power even as it asserted prisoners' rights. Examples of double-edged US criminal-punishment reforms extend well beyond prison conditions. As described by Kate Stith and
Steve Y. Koh (in "The Politics of Sentencing Reform: The Legislative History of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines," Wake Forest Law Review, 1993), some of the initial proponents of federal
Unfortunately, as innumerable commentators have
sentencing guidelines were liberal academics and judges, who wanted to rationalize sentencing to make it fairer and more consistent.
adopting an all-or-nothing
recounted, the implementation of the guidelines produced draconian sentences, ultimately contributing to the growth of US prisons. In
approach, however, Spade fails to acknowledge ways in which the liberal prisoners' rights movement has helped to advance critical
trans politics . At a minimum, prison-reform litigation generated information, through civil discovery, that advocates used to draw
attention to prison conditions. Access to prisoners has been facilitated by the minimal legal protections and professional norms that the
prisoners' rights movement helped to achieve. Rather than undermining the radical project that Spade promotes, liberal law-reform
efforts arguably laid foundations for the prison- abolition ist movement. As for hate crimes prohibitions, Spade writes that they "strengthen and legitimize the
criminal punishment system," which targets poor people of color and singles out poor trans people of color for particular harassment. "Changing what the law explicitly says about a group," he
points out, "does not necessarily remedy the structured insecurity faced by that group." We ourselves are agnostic on the question of hate crimes penalties for crimes against LGBTQ people: the
exclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity from existing laws not only minimizes the seriousness of anti-LGBTQ violence but also nearly guarantees a dearth of law enforcement
resources. Nevertheless, we are also acutely aware of the danger of expanding the already massive criminal-punishment system in any way. In the context of mass incarceration, in which reform
can produce ever cleaner and more technologically advanced human warehouses, Spade's arguments are well-taken. His critique is less persuasive when he moves into the broader arena of
LGBTQ rights. Spade believes that law reform is at odds with distributive justice. In his view, advocacy that departs from the idealized approach he champions harms the transgender community.
While we laud his critique of some elements of liberal law reform, we disagree with his zero-sum frame. Law reform is only one piece of a strategy. It cannot
a necessary precondition to reach other goals and, at a minimum, is not
achieve everything, but it is sometimes ing
a causative element for diminished opportunities and status. A movement that transgender equality
includes expansion of antidiscrimination laws and marriage equality among its goals is coextensive with the project of
"transformative change." Spade argues that antidiscrimination laws "create the false impression that ... fairness has been imposed, and the legitimacy of the distribution of life
chances restored." But such protections merely ensure that a person's sexual orientation or gender identity cannot be an obvious basis for an adverse employment action. They are nowhere near
excluding gender identity and sexual orientation from
broad enough to promise substantive equality, for transgender people or anyone else. However,
existing employment protections is far more damaging than committing the resources for the advocacy required to expand them. In addition,
organizing to pass antidiscrimination laws has activated and radicalized LGBTQ advocacy organizations . The California-
based Transgender Law Center (incubated by the National Center for Lesbian Rights) and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (first envisioned by GLAD staff members and
interns) are two examples of the generativity of liberal law reform efforts. Both organizations share many of the distributive justice goals of SRLP. Spade is not the first to criticize the movement
for marriage equality for same-sex couples. In "Arguing Against Arguing for Marriage" (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2010), Shannon Gilreath claims that "marriage is dangerous for
Gays conceptually, in its patriarchal and heteropatriarchical foundations." In less absolute terms, Katherine Franke writes in the New York Times (June 23, 2011) that same-sex marriage is a
"mixed blessing," which may undermine other arrangements that LGBTQ people have used to "order our lives in ways that have given us greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-
all rules of marriage." Spade goes too far in applying the same critique to both prison reform and marriage equality. Removing gender discrimination from the institution of marriage does not
strengthen it in the way that modifying the criminal-punishment system reinforces mass incarceration. The institution of marriage has an evolving social meaning. Extending it to lesbians, gay
men, bisexual and transgender people reaffirms our human dignity. Even the most steadfast critics of the marriage-equality movement--including the lesbian activists and law professors Nancy
Spade ignores
Polikoff and the late Paula Ettelbrick--have acknowledged that critiques of marriage and the marriage equality movement need not be on a collision course. In addition,
reform efforts spearheaded by LGBTQ legal organizations other than those focused on hate crimes, anti-discrimination, and marriage. These include challenges
law-
to discriminatory health care access and to prison regulations that deny essential medical care to transgender inmates; immigration
reform advocacy ; and support for transgender students and homeless LGBTQ youth. To ignore these efforts is to miss
the ocean for the tidal pool beside it.
( ) Only the Aff solves and the Alt does not. Trans- pessimism of the Law may be correct. But non-
traditional modes of education like the Aff are a pre-req for shaping new norms.
Klein 17
et al; Linda Klein is the president of the American Bar Association and The Counsel of Record for this Amicus Brief. Amicus
of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit - BRIEF FOR THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT- Available at SCOUTS blog along with all amicus briefs on this
matter- March - #CutWithKirby - http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/16-273_bsac_aba.pdf
These fundamental principles of anti-discrimination law are entirely consistent with interpreting Title IX to guarantee
transgender students the right to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity. That interpretation frees
transgender students from the differential treatment and stereotypes that would deny them equal access to educational
opportunities, and thus gives them an equal opportunity to participate in the civic life of the community.
Equal Access For Transgender People To Educational Opportunities Is Critical To Expanding Access To Professional Life
And Helping The Legal Profession Better Serve The Community
The deleterious effects of exclusion in schools follow studentsboth transgender students and their classmatesinto
their adult lives, and harm as well the broader society in which they live. Moreover, these effects hamper the legal
profession in its efforts to provide empathetic representation to clients from all backgrounds and render justice that
accounts for the full breadth of the community's experiences .
This Court's Jurisprudence Emphasizes The Role Of An Inclusive Educational Community In Improving Educational And
Professional Outcomes For All Students And In Making The Legal System More Effective
1AR and backline cards
Extensions Perm
Extend the perm its the best option. It gives us Defense against the link because we no longer are defending
the most traditional modes of Law. Its also the only way to solve in the short-term which avoids the
disparate impact created by their extreme Alt.
The Negs wrong about the perm. No Neg methodology explains why change must be uncompromising
Quinones 12
A possible weakness of Spade's argument is that at times he seems to conflate the strategies of law reform and its
substantive goals. He writes that the mainstream gay and lesbian law* reform movement "is an example of [the] shift from a more
transformative social movement agenda to an inclusion- and incorporation-focused professionalized non-profit legal reform project." (p. 59)
Looking at examples of "formal legal equality demands [like legalizing same sex marriage], and the limited potential of those demands to
transform the conditions facing highly vulnerable queer and trans people." Spade concludes that law* reform as a tactic is not
worthwhile (p. 62). He doesn't leave room for the possibility that a more nuanced law reform agenda, focused on
changing policies that cause day-to-day hardship, could use the non-profit tools and structures already in place to more
effective ends without starting from scratch.
Part of Spade's argument is that law reform tactics, by virtue of how they are deployed, dictate substantive goals (pp. 62-65). The
lesbian and gay movement "has come to reflect the needs and experiences of [its] leaders more than the experiences of queer and trans people not
present." and done so in spaces dominated by lawyers and other professionals (p. 65). Nevertheless, his suggestion that law reform must
be abandoned as a strategy does not follow inevitably from the experience of the lesbian and gay movement or others.
If Spade is right and transformation of tactics is what is required, it's not clear why that effort can't profitably be spent making
existing law * reform tools more effective and more responsive to the neediest populations. Indeed, it is intuitively likely
that many legal readers who enjoy class, race, gender, and educational privilege, and who are persuaded by Spade's critiques, will choose the
more familiar path and look for better versions of strategies they already know. Spade's deep distrust of that method notwithstanding,
there is no clear reason why the only viable avenues for change must be invented from whole cloth.
Even Spade votes for the perm Law can be part of a toolkit to counter anti-trans- violence. The perm
doesnt link to co-optation.
Spade 12
Examining the operation of legal systems that administer life changes at the population level, such as welfare systems, punishment
systems, healthcare systems, and immigration systems, can expose how law operates to sort people into subpopulations facing different
exposures to security and insecurity. Looking at sites of the legal administration of societal norms, we can see how certain populations come to
have such pervasive experiences with both abandonment and imprisonment. From that vantage point we can strategize about how to
use legal reform tools as part of a broader strategy to dismantle capitalism's murderous structures while we build
alternative methods of meeting human needs and organizing political participation. Because of the obvious failures of the most
popular contemporary law reform strategies to address harms trans people are facing, trans experience can offer a location from
which to consider the broader questions of the neoliberal cooptation of social movements through law reform and the
institutionalization of resistance, and from which to reframe the problems of violence and poverty that impact marginalized populations in ways
that give us new inroads to intervention.
Extensions - Alt fails & Pessimism K is wrong in this instance
The Alt abandons contingent use of Federal Law for checks on anti-trans- Local schools. Thus, only the Neg
increase material racist violence. EVEN IF PROGRESS NARRATIVES ARE USUALLY FALSE, THEY
ONLY FAIL BECAUSE OF INACTION LIKE THE NEG SANCTIONS.
McKanders 17
THE SEPARATE TRANSGENDER REST-ROOM POLICY WILL HAVE THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE
OF DISPROPORTIONATELY IMPACTING BLACK AND BROWN TRANS GENDER STUDENTS IN LOWER
SOCIOECONOMIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS.
GCPS claims that by providing G.G. with two utility closets that it converted into restrooms and by planning to build new unisex restrooms in the
future, it has satisfied Title IX's non-discrimination provisions. J.A. at 34. If accepted by this Court, GCPS's claim will have a severely disparate
impact on low-income students, many of whom will be students of color, because school districts with fewer financial resources will struggle to
True progress is going to lie in the Court pushing decision-
create even grossly unequal and facilities for transgender students.
makers to consider the potentially racially disparate impact of actions and policies. Because Black and Brown children
disproportionately attend lower income school districts, they would be impacted more than other children if this
Court finds that the GCPS policy is constitutional.
The complex funding structure of the public education system, in which property taxes govern school resources, creates a rigidly stratified system
where wealth is determinative of the quality of a student's educational experience. Jill Barshay, The Gap Between Rich and Poor Schools Grew
44 Percent Over a Decade, The Hechinger Report (Apr. 6, 2015), http://hechinger report.org/the-gap-between-rich-and-poor-schools-grew-44-
percent-over-a-decade/. Within this complex funding structure, approximately 10% of school revenue comes from federal dollars, while 45% of
revenue comes from state funds and 45% from the local government. Leachman, et. ah, Most States Have Cut School Fund-ing, and Some
Continue Cutting, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Jan. 25, 2016), http://www. cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/most-states-have-
cut-school-funding-and-some-continue-cutting. More than one-third of school funding relies on local property taxes, which differs from
neighborhood to neighborhood and district to district. Cory Turner, Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem, NPR (Apr. 18, 2016),
http://www. npr.org/2016/04/18/ 474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-prob-lem. In a March 2015 report, the U.S. Department of
Education found that the "richest 25 percent of school districts receive 15.6 percent more funds from state and local governments per student than
the poorest 25 percent of school districts." Id.
This funding structure manifests itself in the form of the inequitable distribution of resources for school districts. The effect of the funding
structure is a disproportionate impact on Black and Brown children. A 2016 Atlantic Report found the most powerful predictor of racial gaps in
education achievement is the extent to which students attended schools with low-income peers. Janie Boschma and Ronald Brown-stein, The
Concentration of Poverty in American Schools, The Atlantic (Feb. 29, 2016), https://www. theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/concentrat
ion-poverty-american-schools/471414/. In a survey of nearly 100 cities, 85.6% of African-American students and 88.5% of Hispanic students
attended schools with classmates from a low socioeconomic background. Id. In addition, this report found that a school's poverty is a proxy for
the school's quality, as low-income schools have less economic and social capital. Id.
The funding gap in schools across the United States results in significant resource variation. Id. In most instances, this funding gap is further
exacerbated by the fact that school districts may not use federal funding to support construction projectslike constructing separate and unequal
unisex restrooms.13 Given the disparities in resource allocation within different school districts, an unconstitutional segregated transgender
restroom policy will disproportionately impact Black and Brown transgender children of lower socioeconomic status as these schools already lack
equal-resource funding.
Even GCPS has struggled to implement its separate unisex restroom policy. In order to comply with its own separate restroom policy, GCPS
converted two utility closets and a faculty restroom into a temporary restroom for transgender students to use, pending plans to construct new
unisex restrooms. Br. Opp'n at 9. GCPS and the dissenting judge on the Fourth Circuit dismissively accept the subpar, unequal unisex restrooms
by claiming that the existence of the current facilities is evidence that the district is in compliance with Title IX. Id. at 30; Grimm, 822 F.3d at
737 (Neimeyer, J., dissenting). On the contrary, a utility closet is hardly an appropriate alternative for a restroom for adolescent children and is
but a modern version of the unconstitutional policy of separate but equal.
Upholding the separate restroom policy will have the unintended but serious consequence of creating a dual system
for Black and Brown transgender students based on the financial resources of the school district in which they reside. Such a policy
will disproportionately impact transgender students who reside in school districts with fewer financial resources and an even greater
percentage of these students will be students of color. Secretary Duncan, Urban League President Mortal to Spotlight States Where Education
Funding Shortchanges Low-Income, Minority Students, U.S. DEP'T of EDUC. (Mar. 13, 2015), http:// www.ed.gov/news/media-
advisories/secretary-duncan-urban-league-president-morial-spotlight-states-where-education-funding-shortchanges-low-income-minor-ity-
It is not likely that school districts , already crumbling under the pressure of current educational compliance requirements,
students.
would be able to provide transgender students with anything remotely approaching "equal" alternative facilities.
With a dearth of financial resources, following GCPS's lead, other under-resourced school districts will attempt to convert utility closets into
subpar facilities, which would only compound the stigma and inequality created by forcing those students to use separate facilities solely because
they are transgender in the first place. Thus, if this Court vacates the Fourth Circuit's decision, it will force a disproportionate
number of Black and Brown transgender students, who attend lower income school districts, to be relegated to facilities that
are not only separate and stigmatizing but grossly unequal.
This case provides the Court with the opportunity to uphold the principles of equality enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
and Title IX's prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex in education. In upholding the Fourth Circuit's decision, this
Court will continue its tradition of upholding principles of equality and not bending to the influence of public fear of
change to existing social order.
Alt fails non-State movements wont solve. In the current context, learning appeals to the Law are
necessary.
Allen 17
Samantha Allen is a senior reporter for The Daily Beast. She holds a Ph.D. in Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from
Emory University. Whatever Happened to the Transgender Tipping Point? Daily Beast March 31st - #CutWithKirby -
http://www.thedailybeast.com/whatever-happened-to-the-transgender-tipping-point
After the optimism of 2014 the 'Transgender Tipping Point' as decreed by Time magazinetrans people are facing an
onslaught of legislative prejudice.
In 2014, Time magazine announced The Transgender Tipping Point.
Laverne Cox adorned the cover in a blue dress.
The author of the cover story, Katy Steinmetz, declared that another civil rights movement is poised to challenge long-held
cultural norms and beliefs, chalking up the emergence of new policies to the new transparency that transgender
people were exhibiting after emerging from the margins to fight for an equal place in society.
The narrative was clear: Transgender visibility was good. It could change the country. And although Steinmetz herself was careful to
qualify that the transgender revolution still has a long way to go, Times headline made it seem like a critical threshold had been
crossed. Progress is linear, it supposed, and there is no going back.
That narrative I am sad to say on March 31, the Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) is wrong.
In 2017, the White House rolled back federal guidance protecting transgender students, effectively scuttling a
potentially precedent-setting Supreme Court case in the process.
There have already been at least seven reported murders of transgender people in the United States, placing it on track to be one of the most
violent years on record.
And even after North Carolina reached a controversial legislative compromise yesterday over its bathroom bill under pressure from the
NCAA, some Texas legislators are trying to pass a bill similar to HB2 this year.
If 2014 ever could have been described as a Transgender Tipping Point, we might say that were now in the
Trans gender Dipping Point a moment when, despite increases in media representation, the sort of tangible progress that felt within our
grasp a few years ago may now have been delayed well into the next decade or beyond.
Wherever you look, transgender people may be more visible but they are still facing the same problems in 2017 as they were in 2014.
They are still being denied life-saving health care, discriminated against at work, and harassed in public. Transgender
athletes are still being stigmatized for daring to participate in sports. Cisgender actors are still being cast in transgender parts.
All the while, anti-LGBT groups have been doubling down on transphobia, fundraising around bathroom laws now that the same-sex marriage
decision seems all but irreversible.
Even liberals have yet to fully embrace transgender rights, with a sizeable 30 percent of Democrats in a Public Religion Research Institute survey
saying that they favor anti-transgender bathroom legislation.
Imagine a magazine cover today announcing The Transgender Tipping Point. The thought is almost laughable.
Whatever burst of momentum there supposedly was in 2014 has given way to a seemingly endless war of attrition between civil
rights groups and anti-LGBT groups, with lives hanging delicately in the balance.
Yes, transgender people are on TV now. But its clearer now than it has ever been that visibility is no silver bullet for transphobia.
Emerging from the margins, as transgender people were reportedly doing in 2014 according to that Time cover story, can be
tantamount to placing a target on your own back.
And the new transparency of 2014 has actually opened up transgender peoples lives to an unprecedented new level of
legislative scrutiny .
Thisas weve learned the hard waycan lead to discriminatory anti-LGBT bills that are cruel in their attention to detail:
requiring original birth certificates because anti-LGBT groups know that transgender people can often update theirs; defining gender by
chromosomes because they know that transgender people can change sex characteristics with hormones and surgery; even effectively placing a
bounty on transgender people who use the appropriate restrooms because they know that the bills would be all but unenforceable without
financial incentives for citizens to sniff transgender people out.
TDOV is a day when we rightfully celebrate those transgender people with the right combination of privilege and courage to live openly.
Given that the only other day for transgender peopleTransgender Day of Remembrance on November 20focuses on the horrific violence
the community endures, it is an important Spring counterweight to that more solemn day in the Fall.
But in 2017, its worth probing the possible relationship between March and November, between visibility and violence. Visibility is important.
But visibility without empathy is just spectacle. And transgender people cant only be seen; they have to be understood.
Transgender people and their allies have been predicting the potential downsides of visibility for years.
At the end of 2014, I wrote that visibility is no substitute for change and the following December, I noted that 2015s anti-trans backlash was
an inevitable consequence of [the] progress we had seen over the prior year.
In 2016, in an essay for the Pacific Standard entitled After the Transgender Tipping Point, Melissa Gira Grant warned that the flip side of
visibilityespecially when it appears to be sudden, and media-driven is vulnerability.
That simultaneity with which that same sentiment occurred to a wide range of LGBT writers and advocates should be alarming. The pessimism of
2016 was widespread: Salon explored the dark side of visibility, and Medium was awash in essays observing that being visible was not all it
was cracked up to be, but rather a double-edged sword, as Jessica Oros wrote, that can inflict deep wounds.
Tiq Milan observed in a Guardian article that visibility was accompanied by an uncloaking of an ongoing strain of anti-trans prejudice and
hatred, and Eliora Avraham announced the anti-trans backlash had arrived in an article for the Australian journal Overland.
Many saw this backlash coming. As far back as 2014, for example, Jos Truitt noted in a Feministing essay that visibility is not necessarily a
good thing, particularly for trans women, adding that visibility wont feed or clothe or house you.
At best, it seems, an unqualified call for more visibility (attention) can be a red herring that distracts from more substantial issues; at worst, its an
invitation for punishment.
Looking back now, 2014 may have only ever perceived as a Transgender Tipping Point because we had been conditioned to believe that LGBT
visibility in the media signals some sort of civil rights momentum. After all, wasnt it Ellen that paved the way for the acceptance of gay people?
Perhaps the most famous endorser of that idea was former Vice President Joe Bidenhimself an early and vocal supporter of transgender
rightswho said in 2015 that Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybodys ever done so
far.
Attributing progress on gay rights to the entertainment industry is an interesting ideaand theres a poll here or there to suggest that it played a
rolebut theres no way to tease out how much it truly mattered in the grand scheme of things.
Its hard enough for statisticians to peer into hearts and mindsand even the good polling on this topic suggests that getting to know LGBT
people in real life was far more influential in influencing social attitudes than film and television characters were.
Still, the narrative that Hollywood won the day has a certain intuitive pull in media circles, as we can trace in myriad think pieces from 2015.
Its impossible to know how much entertainment ever drives society rather than merely reflecting it, wrote Spencer Kornhaber in one such
essay for The Atlantic. But its hard to avoid the feeling that the past five or six years have seen a virtuous cultural cycle [between Modern
Family and gay rights].
Theres no doubt that representation is important. But we need more than a feeling to gauge the progress of civil rights movements. Correlation
is not causation, the chicken-egg dilemma is still unsolvable, and the LGBT rights movement doesnt follow the same path for every letter.
Its easy to get excited when a new group of people starts showing up on screens both small and silver but it doesnt necessarily prove that the
deeper mechanisms of change are functioning as they should.
Are TV characters like Orange is the New Blacks Sophia Burset or Transparents Shea playing a part in the transgender revolution? Yes. Does
the same go for transgender models and transgender memoirs and transgender documentaries? Of course.
But for the past few years, there has been a jarring contrast between the wide range of institutions that are moving toward
transgender acceptance, albeit at varying speedsHollywood, corporate America, virtually every major medical
association, the Democratic partyand the stubbornly divided field of public opinion.
Most Americans oppose transgender bathroom laws according to the Public Religion Research Institute but 53 percent is apparently not a strong
enough majority to pass nationwide protections. And the size of the opposition to transgender rights is alarming given the asymmetrical nature of
the evidence.
As it stands, roughly half of Americans stand with the side of medical science, history, civil and human rights groups, sexual assault and domestic
violence organizations, and small businesses.
But a substantial 39 percent stand on the side of the completely unsubstantiated myth that transgender protections open the door for sexual
predators. The debatean imperfect descriptor for an argument this lopsidedshould be over. But its not.
As the Trump administration has demonstrated, many of the protections that transgender people currently enjoy can be
wiped out with a signature or two: the transgender student guidance is gone, Hillary Clintons 2010 passport policy is theoretically
at the whim of the State Department, and the long-rumored religious freedom executive order could still wipe away LGBT protections.
We are already seeing the ripple effects of the Trump administration backing down from important transgender
court battles, like Wisconsin rolling back health care for transgender state employees and the University of Arkansas
system doing the same without fearing reprisal from the federal government.
Most significantly , Gavin Grimms Supreme Court case was sent back down to the Fourth Circuit because Attorney General
Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded the Obama administrations guidance letter on transgender
students.
If vulnerability is indeed the flip side of visibility, as Melissa Gira Grant wrote, then transgender people must be pretty visible right about now.
Transgender people have never been more visible and they have never had this much to lose. Theyre losing it already.
Why hasnt transgender visibility been more of a shield against these attacks? Why, for instance, isnt there more outrage over the transgender
student guidance being suddenly rescinded?
To answer those questions, we would have to abandon the idea that theres some overarching blueprint for all civil rights
movements that follows a predictable path from the streets onto our television sets and into the law books . We would have to stop
using visibility as an indicator of progress.
The struggle for transgender rights, like any human rights struggle, is unique . And it is particularly challenging.
Extensions - examples disprove pessimism
Examples disprove pessimism and prove that contingent Court action can make a difference
McKanders 17
Id. at 494. This Court's decision to extend principles of equality to African-American school children, however, was met
with fear and discomfort because Brown was a step towards changing the existing social order. See generally Cooper v. Aaron,
358 U.S. 1 (1958). Opponents of progress and inclusivity expressed unfounded fears that integration would endanger White children because
African Americans were perceived as criminals, thought to carry contagious diseases, and stigmatized as people with low morals. Amicus Curiae
Brief of the Attorney General of Florida at 21, Brown v. Bd. Of Ed., 347 U.S. 483 (1954), 1954 WL 45715. Despite these unfounded fears, the
Court took bold and necessary steps towards dismantling racial hierarchy.
People who harbored unfounded fears resorted to outright defiance of the law set forth in Brown. For example, in
Arkansas, a plan to desegregate schools, devised by the Little Rock School Board, was met with resistance from other state agencies who
wanted to maintain racially segregated schools. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 8. The state went so far as to pass a constitutional
amendment declaring Brown unconstitutional and requiring the state to oppose integration . Id. at 8-9. The state's
amendment contravened Brown's order that racial segregation in public schools should be eradicated with "all deliberate speed." Id. at 7.
Consistent with state law, the governor of Arkansas ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent African-American students from entering the
all-White Central High School. Id. at 9. In response, however, President Eisenhower followed this Court's holding in Brown, and
dispatched federal troops to escort the African-American students to school, ensuring that they would be admitted.
Id. at 16.
In 1958, this Court reviewed the circumstances surrounding the Arkansas integration case. Affirming the principles of equality reiterated only a
few years before in Brown, this Court held that "[t]he constitutional rights of [African-American school children] are not to be sacrificed or
yielded to the violence and disorder, which have followed the actions of the Governor and Legislature." Id. Even in the face of violence,
opposition, and state action, this Court remained true to the principles of equality afforded to school children.
Similarly, another case decided by this Court involved resistance to the principles of equality clearly mandated by Brown. See Griffin v. Cty. Sch.
Bd. of Prince Edward Cty., 377 U.S. 218 (1964). The Prince Edward County school district in Virginia fervently resisted integration, which
prompted the Virginia lawmakers to pass legislation ordering the closure of all public schools. Id. at 222. As a result, private foundations
provided funding for White children to attend private schools, while Black children went entirely without formal education for four years. Id. In
1961, Black students sued the school board for refusing to operate free public schools in compliance with Brown and in violation of the Equal
Protection Clause. Id. at 220-21. This Court ultimately held that Prince Edward County's practices denied Black student's equal protection under
the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 230-32.
These cases demonstrate both the great lengths to which local and state governments went to resist integration and
this Court's role in upholding principles of equality despite the public resistance. Brown helped to dismantle the
unjust social order not only in public schools, but also in society at large. After Brown and with the passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, African Americans were no longer required to use separate public water fountains , restrooms , or lunch
counters. Indeed, this Court's jurisprudence over the past seventy-five years has continued to extended equality to all
Americans. See, e.g., Loving , 388 U.S. at 12; Oncale, 523 U.S. at 75; Obergefell, 135 S. Ct. at 2584. This Court has played and
continues to play a fundamental role in protecting equality for everyone in the face of public fear and discomfort in
dismantling the existing social order.
Our author and examples disagree with pessimisms premise. Not all progress narratives have proven to be a
failure.
McKanders 17
I. THIS COURT PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN UPHOLDING EQUALITY FOR ALL AMERICANS IN THE FACE
OF PUBLIC FEAR AND DISCOMFORT WITH CHANGE .
Opponents of progress and inclusivity have often capitalized on public fear and discomfort caused by efforts to dismantle
social structures that exclude individuals who do not conform to existing social norms . This fear and discomfort has resulted
in oppressive laws and acts of terror against African Americans that arose during the Civil War. For more than half a century, freed slaves were
treated differently than their White counterparts solely based on the color of their skin. States created laws that permitted African
Americans to remain second-class citizens within society, mandating separate schools , drinking fountains , restrooms ,
and even lunch counters for Black people. This Court intervened in Brown v. Board of Education,** dismantling the separate-
but-equal public school system, which led to the breakdown of the legalized racial caste system. The Court's
decision paved the way for decades of progress and moved society in the direction of equality for all Americans.
Extensions Roll-back Disad
Extend that Spades Kritik is wrong and causes Roll-back. The impact is suffering for trans- populations
but also racial populations that lack privilege.
Rollback is net worse and degree does matter.

Bandsuch 9
Mark R. Bandsuch - Assistant Professor of Business Law, College of Business Administration, Loyola Marymount University;
Article: Ten Troubles with Title VII and Trait Discrimination Plus One Simple Solution (A Totality of the Circumstances
Framework) - Capital University Law Review - Summer, 2009 #CutWithKirby - lawrev; allrev
Thiscurrent context and abbreviated history are a reminder of the prominent role that the quest for equal rights has played
in the formation of this country and
of its underlying values, as well as a reminder of the horrors this country has also
perpetrated when it has failed to fully live out those values . The collective civic memory must never forget the crucial
role that anti-discrimination law and business have played and should continue to play in ensuring that these past
injustices will never be repeated in any way, shape or form; and even more so, in helping to propel our future society along a
higher moral trajectory that assiduously safeguards equality.
Spades regressivism *also* result in these additional forms of suffering.
Levi & Shay 12

Jennifer Levi and Giovanna Shay. Jennifer Levi is the director of the Transgender Rights Project of GLAD (Gay and Lesbian
Advocates and Defenders). Jennifer has participated in successful efforts to pass transgender-inclusive antidiscrimination laws
throughout New England. Giovanna Shay is a co-chair of the Corrections Committee of the American Bar Association Criminal
Justice Section. She has participated in institutional change litigation involving prisons, as well as efforts to enforce the Prison
Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and amend the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Both serve on the faculty of Western New
England University School of Law. - The dangers of reform - Source: The Women's Review of Books. 29.4 (July-August
2012): p30. Info Trac database #CutWithKirby -
In his recent book, Normal Life, Dean Spade, a law professor at Seattle University School of Law and noted transgender activist, criticizes several law-reform
movements, including those to improve prison conditions , win marriage equality for same-sex couples, and ensure that hate
crimes and antidiscrimination laws include trans gender people. Spade finds fault with LGBTQ rights organizations' efforts to win
mainstream acceptance, arguing that instead of pursuing an equality agenda, they should focus on changing "the distribution of life chances," by
"demand[ing] radical redistribution of wealth and an end to poverty." Spade's critique has the most force in the context in which it originated--calling for an end
to what David Garland first described as mass incarceration, the system many refer to as the "prison industrial complex." It is less persuasive when applied to the
realm of free-world LGBTQ rights.
(Also note: that the 2AC card cited: employment discrimination against multiple identity groups, less access to
health care, medical issues for trans- prisoners, and prison conditions for all identity groups. This card adds the loss
of marriage equality and more hate crimes versus trans- populatons.)
Extensions Aff re-shapes Law, Education = a pre-requisite
**The Aff re-shapes the Law inverting the premise of their Kritik
Klein 17
matter- March #CutWithKirby - Modified for language that may offend - http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/16-273_bsac_aba.pdf
Just as the Court has underscored the importance of diversity and inclusion within the schoolhouse, so too has it observed that the benefits of
diversity and inclusion in schools do not end when a student's formal education does. Rather, the lessons learned at a
formative age play a critical role in students' ability to succeed as they navigate adulthood. Specifically, the Court has observed that
"student body diversity ... better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society." Fisher, 136 S. Ct. at 2210 (quoting Grut-ter,
539 U.S. at 330). "These benefits are not theoretical but real, as major American businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's
increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and view-points." Grutter, 539
U.S. at 330; see also id. at 331 (emphasizing importance of diversity at military academies and of a diverse officer corps).
Of particular interest to the American Bar Association, the benefits of diversity and inclusion in education are apparent in the context of the legal
profession. Lawyers serve as zealous advocates for a wide variety of clients. Policies that promote inclusion, rather than exclusion,
in educationfrom the elementary level through law schoolensure that the legal profession is open to all and improve the
ability of lawyers to understand and serve the interests of those with different experiences. See Grutt&r, 539 U.S. at 332
("[L]aw schools 'cannot be effective in isolation from the individuals and institutions with which the law interacts.'" (quoting Sweatt v. Painter,
339 U.S. 629, 634 (1950))). Similarly, inclusive policies can help students belonging to otherwise marginalized groups set their academic sights
higher, thus improving the flow through the educational pipeline to the legal profession. See Rhode & Ricca, Diversity in the Legal Profession:
Perspectives from Managing Partners & General Counsel, 83 Ford-ham L. Rev. 2483,2492-2493 (2015) (noting that increasing intake of diverse
groups of students in law school improves diversity in the legal profession).
Diversity among members of the legal profession improves the ability of the profession to serve its clients. A bar that draws from a broad cross-
section of the community "is the richer for the diversity of background and experience of its participants. It is the poorer, in terms of evaluating
what is at stake and the impact of its judgments, if its members ... are all cast from the same mold." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Supreme
Court: A Place for Women, 32 Sw. U. L. Rev. 189, 190 (2003); see also ABA Presidential Initiative Comm'n on Diversity, Diversity in the Legal
Profession: The Next Steps 5 (2010) ("[Al diverse legal profession is more just, productive and intelligent because diversity, both cognitive and
cultural, often leads to better questions, analyses, solutions, and processes.").
The same holds true for the judiciary ; an inclusive bench both signals to younger lawyers (and would-be lawyers) that the profession is
open to all and improves the ability of all judges to better understand litigants whose experiences may not mirror their own. See, e.g., Chen, The
Judiciary, Diversity, & Justice for All, 91 Calif. L. Rev. 1109, 1117 (2003); Weinberg & Nielsen, Examining Empathy: Discrimination,
Experience, & Judicial Decisionmaking, 85 S. Cal. L. Rev. 313, 347-348 (2012). Indeed, several members of this Court have commented on the
value that the diverse backgrounds of its Justices have brought to the Court's decisions. Writing about her former colleague Justice Marshall,
Justice O'Connor said that
Although all of us come to the court with our own personal histories and experiences, Justice Marshall brought a special perspective.... Justice
Marshall imparted not only his legal acumen but also his life experiences, constantly pushing and prodding us to respond not only to the
persuasiveness of legal argument but also to the power of moral truth.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Thurgood Marshall: The Influence of a Raconteur, 44 Stan. L. Rev. 1217, 1217 (1992). Similarly, during his
confirmation hearings, Justice Alito noted that his experiences as the son of immigrants have helped to shape how he understands cases in which
plaintiffs allege discrimination based on their ethnic background, religion, gender, or disability. See Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of
Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to Be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th
Cong. 475 (2006).
The path from inclusive school policies leads to a visibly (more clearly) open and effective justice system. Students
whose identities are embraced (supported) at school are more likely to succeed there and to move on to higher education, see
supra pp. 14-15, and those who see respect modeled are more likely to act with respect themselves . When these people
join the bar (or the bench), they then are better equipped to see past stereotypes and to understand how clients' experiences shape their
legal needs.
The Harm Caused By Excluding Transgender Students In Educational Programs Runs Counter To Decades Of This Court's
Jurisprudence On The Role Of Public Schools In Society
The lessons for this case from this Court's decades of equality jurisprudence are clear: Excluding transgender students from the full
scope of the school community harms both those students and their classmates by undercutting the mission of the school
system and by hindering students as they enter the workforce. The harm to transgender students is discussed in more detail above, see supra pp.
12-16, but it bears repeating that exclusion and division of those students from other members of the student body impair their education in
terms of their academic achievement, educational aspirations, and sense of safety at school. Indeed, that exclusion harms the entire school
community as well. Rather than reaping the benefits of diversity and inclusion, students are deprived of the full expression of their peers'
points of view and of the
opportunity to break down stereotypes. And, counter to the mission of schools as a critical force
in teaching tolerance, understanding, and respect, the public differential treatment of certain students based on gender
stereotyping can serve to reinforce prejudices inconsistent with our Nation's commitment to equality.
The Aff can re-shape the Law defeating the premise of the pessimism K
Klein 17
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content/uploads/2017/03/16-273_bsac_aba.pdf
The need for empathic representation is particularly strong in the trans gender community, as many transgender people
have experienced discrimination and, in turn, expect hostility from the legal system (and even from their lawyers). See
Transgender Law Ctr., Tips for Lawyers Working with Transgender Clients & Coworkers (201(5) (noting that transgender clients "are not
fundamentally different from non-transgender clients" but that their experiences with discrimination possibly leading to "war[iness]
about opening up to a lawyer"can be a key barrier to effective representation, even where the representation is not about
the client's transgender status); National Ctr. for Lesbian Rights, Tips for Legal Advocates Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, &
Transgender Clients (2013) ("Of-ten, LGBT people will assume that a lawyer's office is unfriendly to LGBT people until he or she receives a
clear indication otherwise."). But by fostering understanding and respect for transgender and gender-nonconforming people
from an early age, schools can ensure that the legal system is better prepared to handle (for) the needs of these clients
both through the inclusion of more transgender people in law schools and the broader profession and through the fostering of a
bar better able to see past stereotypes.
CONCLUSION
The judgment of the court of appeals should be affirmed.
A-to Aff = Focus on Trans- Alone this boosts other modes of
Oppression
The perm solves it doesnt solely focus on trans- injustice
Premise is flawed focus on trans- injustice does spillover to broader modes of acceptance.
OBrien 17
et al; Alice OBrien is The General Counsel at National Education Association. The author holds a J.D. from The Georgetown
University Law Center and a B.A. from Yale. Amicus Brief - Gloucester County School Board, Petitioner, v. G.G., by his next
friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm, Respondent. On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit - BRIEF FOR THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION; AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-
CIO; NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS; AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE,
COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES, AFL-CIO; SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION; AND
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT -
Available at SCOUTS blog along with all amicus briefs on this matter- March modified for language that may offend
#CutWithKirby - http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/16-_273_bsac_national_education_association.pdf
It is well established that allowing discrimination against one group infects anti-discrimination efforts against
others.4 Educators understand this intuitive-ly: their classrooms cannot embrace diversity, tolerance, and mutual respect in some ways, but deny
it in others and still obtain the benefits of inclusive classrooms. Students who see their transgender peers being treated as "less than"
justifiably fear that they too will one day be treated as "less than." The reverse is also true : several of the educators
interviewed for this brief shared that once their school began adopting LGBT-inclusive policies, students with other minority
identities , such as those with a disability, non-white ethnicity, or an atypical home life, felt safer and more accepted
at school.
In short, respecting and acknowledging the rights of transgender students promotes inclusive classrooms, which in turn promotes
students' awareness of group differences and acceptance of people out-side their own background. See Reid, supra at 12. This is
not only a benefit to the students themselves, but also to our nation. We are after all raising citizens who must be comfortable in a
pluralistic society. Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403, 478 U.S. at 681.
A-to Epistemology 1st
Epistemology 1st is impossible to resolve weve obviously indicted the basis of their K as well. Default to
whose option is best at successfully changing the world.
Epistemology 1st is wrong making it an a priori question is counter-productive to its own objectives
Chandler 10
(David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster
Global Society, Vol. 24, No. 2, April, 2010 http://www.davidchandler.org/pdf/journal_articles/Global%20Society%20-
%20Chandler%20response.pdf)
In the special issue, Nicholas Kiersey and Doerthe Rosenow take direct issue with my work and they are by no means unrepresentative of Foucauldian IR in their
stress on the need to defend the critical application of Foucault to the operations of global liberalism or global governance.2 I would like to defend myself and
attempts to develop a critical
at the same time question both sides of this critical equation and go so far as to suggest that, from this starting point,
approach to IR tend inevitably to end in apologia. The danger of this approach is that of turning methodology
into a dogmatic a priori approach which takes its object or subject matter at face value and therefore develops a critique which
does not go beyond surface appearances. While Foucauldians in IR clearly reflect on their methodological tools for deconstructing traditional
meta-theories and concepts they seem much less reflective about the inevitability with which they reproduce dominant
narratives of the operation of power and politics in todays global world. This approach may be popular in the discipline of IR but
does little to assist in our understanding or even our application of the methodology or insights of Foucault and, in fact,
risks closing avenues of critique rather than opening them. I want to illustrate this in the context of the understanding of the relationship
between power and politics in this form of Foucauldian IR.

Trans-Pessimism Kritik - HSS 2017

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Trans- Pessimism Kritik

The 1NC evidence has already defeated the perm:

Bathroom policy alone is woefully insufficient to solve for trans- oppression

I would love, just for a moment,

Levi & Shay 12

Rollback is net worse and degree does matter.

Spades regressivism also result in these additional forms of suffering.

Levi & Shay 12

The perm solves it doesnt solely focus on trans- injustice

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