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Toward a richer rhetoric of agency: shaping the identity category transgender in public discourse

ABSTRACT This essay critically considers the rhetoric of agency—the attribution of varying levels of agency to a person or persons as a premise in an argument—focusing in particular on arguments for human rights that depend on attributions of low agency. For example, many have advanced the idea that LGBTQ people deserve legal protection because they do not choose to be that way. However, scholars have argued that relying solely on this kind of argument may not be the best way to advance human rights. Examining public rhetoric surrounding the identity category transgender, I ask, what might alternatives to low-agency human rights arguments look like? I analyze the pejorative attribution of agency in six anti-trans petitions, some formulaic low-agency rejoinders, and an alternative option drawn from transgender memoirs. The option chronicled here is to move beyond etiology (causes), focus on the agency involved in enacting identity category membership and redeem that agency by giving it a positive character. Three positive characterizations are offered: conviction, authenticity, and transcendence.