Critical Approaches to Trans Care and Trans Justice

Developed by Karla J. Strand, DPhil, MLIS
Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian
University of Wisconsin
November 2022

This bibliography is number 103c in the series “Bibliographies in Gender and Women’s Studies,” published by the University of Wisconsin System Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian. Many thanks to India-Bleu Niehoff for her assistance with this guide.

This bibliography is in progress.

Introduction

Hil Malatino’s book Trans Care examines how systemic failures in matters of trans care and trans justice, widespread transphobia, and trans exclusion have caused trans communities to form their own processes of distributing care labor, shaping trans lives. Malatino pushes back against the widespread cisheterocentric structures that dominate the US, and many other countries across the world, and urges readers toward considering different modes of imagining care labor and care ethics. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, this call feels more urgent than ever as access to reproductive care, gender-affirming care, the right to privacy, and the rights of trans parents and trans youth meet renewed attacks. This bibliography encourages us to view the current systems of Trans Care and Trans Justice through a critical lens, and encourages radical thinking to imagine a future where trans folx not only survive, but flourish. We include resources that propose systemic changes to traditional care ethics, examine ways that trans communities have found ways to “sustain hope” by creating their own care standards, reflect on the ways that care and justice intersect and inform each other, and consider the possibility that new ways of looking at our current standards of care ethics and delineations of care labor are in order, and that what’s in place could use an overhaul.