Transgender*: The Rhetorical Landscape of a Term
The following is a peer-reviewed paper originally published in Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society. The article was co-authored by the TransAdvocate Editor, Cristan Williams and Dr. Rawson of the College of the Holy Cross. K.J. Rawson, Cristan Williams, 2014 The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It circulates widely—in the media, in academia, and in the titles of organizations, archives, and resource centers—to the extent that one could argue that it is currently the most common term describing people who do not neatly align with their birth-assigned gender. Yet when we scratch just below the surface, the emergences and deployments of the term are rife with complexity and even controversy. We have written this article, a collaboration between an academic and a non-academic, to intervene in the transgender coinage narrative and to more closely attend to the ways that
The Source Summary reproduces the first 150 words of the source article unless a Collective editor has explicitly locked a replacement.
Why this article may matter
Community significance
“Transgender*: The Rhetorical Landscape of a Term” may matter to community readers because it preserves a first-person or testimonial account connected to transgender identity and history, while also engaging media, rhetoric, and discourse. Such accounts can document how an issue was understood and experienced from within the period or community being discussed.
Historical significance
The article may have historical value because it explicitly interprets or preserves material concerning transgender identity and history. Published in 2014 by Transadvocate.com, it can be read both for the history it describes and as evidence of how media, rhetoric, and discourse was framed at that moment.
Policy significance
The article’s strongest policy connection is family law and child welfare and housing and social services. It links that institutional frame to transgender identity and history and media, rhetoric, and discourse, making it potentially useful for tracing how an argument moves from description or history into law, regulation, administration, or public practice.
Ranked themes and framings
Rank 1 is the dominant inferred theme or framing. Parent labels identify broader theme families; the relationship key beneath the diagram explains the line styles used for hierarchy, same-family relationships, overlap, and separate-but-related themes.
Themes
- 1Transgender identity and historyTheme family: Identity, culture, and community100%
- 2Media, rhetoric, and discourseTheme family: Knowledge, history, and communication72%
- 3History, archives, and memoryTheme family: Knowledge, history, and communication40%
- 4Community and organizingTheme family: Identity, culture, and community29%
- 5Healthcare and medicineTheme family: Institutions, law, and public life19%
- 6Culture, identity, and representationTheme family: Identity, culture, and community19%
Academic framing
- 1100%
- 266%
- 346%
- 427%
Policy framing
- 1100%
- 2100%
Editorial function
Source topics
- Overlapping themes
- Separate but related themes
- Related theme in the same family
These classifications are inferred from article text and source metadata and remain directly editable. Relationship labels express corpus-analysis judgments, not immutable facts.
How “Transgender identity and history” appears across the Collective corpus
This article appeared 1 year(s) after the theme’s highest annual presence in the registered corpus in 2013.
Relative presence by year
Peak year indexed to 100Presence by member publication
Frequently co-occurring concepts
- Community and organizing531
- Law and civil rights468
- Culture, identity, and representation320
- Education and youth308
- Media, rhetoric, and discourse260
- Healthcare and medicine248
- Violence, safety, and dehumanization238
- History, archives, and memory216
- Public policy and governance206
- Feminism and gender politics198
Academic framings in this topic
Policy framings in this topic
- Public accommodations and facilities177
- Civil rights and anti-discrimination173
- Criminal justice and public safety131
- Elections and democratic governance100
- Research ethics and data governance78
- Labor and employment policy52
- Administrative classification and identity documents39
- Housing and social services38
Values measure relative presence in the registered Collective corpus, not public search interest or public opinion.
Documented circulation and reception
No broad reception evidence has been documented yet; this may reflect unconfigured or incomplete indexes rather than an absence of circulation. These observations describe circulation and reuse; they do not assign cultural worth or evaluate the communities, arguments, or people discussed.
Evidence by channel
Independent counts; bars are not additiveNo channel totals are available yet.
Coverage of the evidence search
Shows what has actually been checkedNo individual references have been stored yet. This can mean that source-held pingbacks have not been imported, provider access is not configured, or available indexes do not expose this work in a machine-readable form.
Counts describe documented circulation and reception in the sources currently available to the Collective. They are not a score of quality, merit, popularity, or social value, and provider totals can overlap.
Author profiles and related researchers
Related authors in the Collective corpus
Cristan Williams
Connected through 2 citation links between registered publications. Shares registered themes including Transgender identity and history, Community and organizing, Education and youth.
Guest
Connected through 1 citation link between registered publications. Shares registered themes including Transgender identity and history, Community and organizing, Education and youth.
Rani Baker
Connected through 1 citation link between registered publications. Shares registered themes including Transgender identity and history, Community and organizing, Education and youth.
Kelley Winters
Connected through 1 citation link between registered publications. Shares registered themes including Transgender identity and history, Community and organizing, Education and youth.
Admin
Shares registered themes including Transgender identity and history, Community and organizing, Education and youth.
Marian
Shares registered themes including Transgender identity and history, Community and organizing, Education and youth.
Related authors are calculated from co-authorship, shared themes and framings, and citation relationships in the registered corpus. This does not imply a personal or institutional association.
Continue through the Collective
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