GLR May-June 2026

concepts do you feel are still underexplored? SS: As many of my readers know, my doctoral training is actu ally in history of religion. I think religious issues need a lot more attention in trans studies—not necessarily in how trans issues are dealt with in contemporary faith communities (though of course that’s an important topic), but rather the ways that reli gious studies offers tools for thinking about the same ontologi cal and epistemological questions, the same questions about truth and reality that increasingly impinge upon trans discourse. Anti-gender ideology has roots in religious belief, including the seemingly secular “gender critical” framework that traces its genealogy to the post-Catholic goddess theologies of Mary Daly and Janice Raymond. Ideas about gender identity—discussions of which that even use the term “gender” I can now trace back into the 1840s—are closely linked to Christian ideas about the soul in this early pe riod. I can situate those ideas in the context of epistemological quandaries rooted in the fairly recent emergence in post-En lightenment democratic republics of a secular and scientific public sphere that consigned religious truth to a private and sub jective inner experience. Besides religion studies, I think we need more historical scholarship in general, particularly for the periods before the contemporary sex-gender paradigm became dominant. I think really understanding the strangeness of the past can actually help us imagine the future in a better way. We need more critical attention to how current ideas about gender identity, and the sex-gender relationship, have vulnerabilities that have allowed our enemies to attack us. EE: A recent Inside Higher Ed report found that more than 9,000 academic jobs were cut in 2025, reflecting the worsening attacks on higher education. What advice do you have to young trans scholars (or any scholars, really) who are unsure about their future? SS: My dispiriting advice is that trans people entering the pro fession now and seeking to do trans studies in the academy should prepare themselves for radically diminished opportuni

ties and increasingly impossible working conditions. As I’m an swering these questions, the state of Kansas has just announced that it is rescinding amended drivers’ licenses and birth certifi cates for trans people and offering cash bounties to vigilante cit izens reporting people suspected of using sex-segregated public accommodations. The University of Kansas has a pretty robust trans studies focus in its gender studies program. How do you teach or study in an environment like that? How secure can your job be, how safe are you on the streets? Unfortunately, I’m not seeing any signs that this sort of repression will be lessening soon. I think trans studies are being significantly diminished as part of a broader deinstitutionalization of women’s studies and gender and sexuality studies, along with race and ethnic studies, amid the anti-woke and anti-DEI moral panic. We need to be building alternative networks for learning and teaching—free dom schools, home schooling, summer institutes, and advanced degree programs that are online and/or based outside the U.S., that make use not just of emerging scholars with few prospects but also more senior people who have lost jobs due to program cuts or who have needed to flee their homes due to persecution. We need to be securing our cultural resources—like maybe hav ing more community-based DIY archives and libraries on the down-low. EE: Finally, now that the new edition is complete, what projects are you working on that you would like readers to know about? SS: Honestly I’m keeping an eye on the exit routes here in the U.S. as the political situation deteriorates and working to help build connections between people who need to leave and places where they can go and things they can do. I have a number of family members and friends who’ve already become expats, and I feel my center of gravity shifting, though there are many things that keep me in place in the U.S. for now. I have another book coming out in August, a trade book called Changing Gender , which I describe as an “autotheoreti cal intellectual history of the ‘gender’ concept.” I’ll probably

take a little break from writing for a beat or two after I finish up the marketing and publicity push for Changing Gender —that’ll be three books in three years for me, with Transgender History 3.0andmy essay collection When Monsters Speak .Beyondmy life as a writer, I’m involved in hyperlocal political activism in San Francisco—neighborhood organiz ing, rapid response networks, that sort of thing— and staying busy administering a grant that supports trans studies scholarship that engages with and in forms public discourse. I’m a producer on a documentary film in progress about trans icon Sandy Stone, and I’m en joying my very low-responsibility affiliation with Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, which gives me a nice intellectual community (and library privileges!) now that I’m retired from being a full-time professor. I’ve appreciated having more time to do creative work and to travel. And I’ve been thrilled to become a grandparent and spend time regularly with the objectively cutest two-year old in human history.

72ndSt.

A summer sublet. 72nd St. Three stories up. An ancient railroad flat, filled with listing bookcases, stifling heat, uneven linoleum, grimy plants, a cat.

Days were clerical—any job I could get— typing business envelopes, answering phones. Nights were The Fire House—a T-shirt drenched in sweat, dancing at 3 a.m. to the Rolling Stones. The City was that shadowy bench in a park, a mattress on the floor without a sheet. The rasp of another man’s face against mine in the dark, the radio whispering “Angie, don’t you weep…” J OHN H ARRIS

TheG & LR

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