Transgressing social ‘norms’: Understanding transphobia and hostility against gender-diverse communities

Violence, discrimination, and the oppression of transgender people has gained academic interest across the social sciences. Whilst there is a wealth of literature which engages with hate crime more broadly from a theoretical and conceptual perspective (Walters, 2011; Wang, 2022), theorising the oppression of transgender people has developed more slowly within hate crime studies. Hate studies often focus on extreme manifestations of hate, overshadowing the everyday nature of different forms of discrimination and victimisation. Resultantly, academic research that informs policy and practice may overlook the experiences of many transgender people. This chapter therefore has two primary goals. Firstly, it critically engages inter-disciplinary perspectives on the oppression of transgender communities. Adopting an inter-disciplinary perspective allows for a more nuanced, holistic perspective on the social construction of transgender identities, and therefore encourages a more critical engagement with social structures which facilitate and exacerbate hierarchies of power. Secondly, this chapter challenges dominant narratives within hate studies that prioritise experiences of physical violence and offers a conceptualisation of ‘micro-crime’ victimisation, which forms part of a continuum of victimisation (Colliver, 2021). In doing so, this chapter draws upon empirical data collected with transgender communities regarding their experiences of transphobia, discrimination, and hatred.