Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Transgender Bodies and U.S. State Surveillance After 9/11

The US government put many new surveillance and security measures in place in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Most had little to do directly with trans concerns, although one advisory from the US Department of Homeland Security noted that male terrorists might try to disguise themselves as women-particularly Islamic jihadists donning burkas that disguised their body contours. In many ways, transgender studies provides an ideal point of entry for thinking through state surveillance of gendered bodies. Two major forms of surveillance operate relative to trans people in medical and psychiatric institutions. The first is the monitoring of individuals in terms of their ability to conform to a particular medicalized understanding of transgender identity and performance. But more salient to the author’s argument is the second component, which is the notion that primary purpose of medical transition is to rid oneself of any vestiges of non-normative gender: to withstand and evade any surveillance that would reveal one’s trans status.