{"id":118768,"date":"2018-09-27T14:04:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T18:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=118768"},"modified":"2018-09-28T10:53:16","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T14:53:16","slug":"award-winning-paper-examines-notions-of-authenticity-in-trans-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/09\/27\/award-winning-paper-examines-notions-of-authenticity-in-trans-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Hagel honored for work on notions of authenticity in trans children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transgender children are often unwaveringly sure about their gender identities. The adults around them rely on such expressed certainty to determine whether these children are \u201creally\u201d trans.<\/p>\n

But if a trans kid isn\u2019t so certain, does that make their identity any less authentic?<\/p>\n

A paper examining notions of authenticity in trans children has won its author, a member of the Bates politics faculty, an annual award from the American Political Science Association.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A lecturer in politics and a Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow, Hagel was honored for her article \u201cAlternative Authenticities: Thinking Transgender Without Essence,\u201d which appeared in the journal Theory & Event<\/em> in July 2017.<\/p>\n

The paper received the APSA\u2019s Susan Okin\u2013Iris Young Award for Best Paper in Feminist Theory.<\/p>\n

As Hagel explains in her article, two things often stand out when trans kids talk about their identities. For one, they frame gender in a very binary way \u2014 female or male. And they express strong certainty about their essential selves: \u201cI know I\u2019m a girl, I\u2019ve always been a girl, and I know this because I like wearing dresses\u201d or \u201cI like the color pink.\u201d<\/p>\n

They show a force of conviction that the American Psychiatric Association, in its clinical definition of gender dysphoria, famously characterizes as \u201cconsistent, persistent, and insistent.\u201d Because these are medically disseminated standards, adults are more likely to accept children\u2019s gender identities when they seem stable and posed with firm conviction.<\/p>\n

\u201cUncertainty about who one really is may be the most honest feeling one can have about oneself.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While such acceptance certainly represents progress, it is also, as Hagel suggests, trading one set of constraints for a somewhat looser set, reinforcing a way of thinking based on the sharply binary view of gender and the value of firm convictions that are read as authentic.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a greater understanding of transgender youth makes their lives much easier,\u201d she says, \u201cbut there are unintended consequences and lingering questions that really motivated me to write the article.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Politics lecturer Nina Hagel’s paper examining notions of authenticity in trans children was honored by the American Political Science Association. (Photograph courtesy Nina Hagel)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhile I agree with a lot of the political aims, I wondered whether this discourse might have unanticipated costs \u2014 whether it might regulate not only other transgender kids, but also transgender adults, and even non-transgender adults who assume a slightly different relationship to their gender.\u201d<\/p>\n

So a key objective of the article is to propose a broader understanding of authenticity incorporating qualities that might, at first, seem antithetical to it, such as uncertainty, changeability, or plurality. As Hagel writes, \u201cuncertainty about who one really is may be the most honest feeling one can have about oneself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn gender discourse today, our terms are shifting, our understanding of gender is shifting,\u201d she says. If your identity has evolved, \u201cit doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that your prior self was false, or that ideas of truth and falsity have to map onto ideas of certainty or fixity in gender.\u201c<\/p>\n

In short, \u201cI offer a counter-discourse that gives children the space to explore who they are without having to pin it down really early, but also without having to dismiss those claims as being part of a \u2018phase.\u2019 But most importantly, I argue for not subjecting children to coerced gender presentations.\u201d<\/p>\n

“In our everyday life, and across a wide range of contexts, we make unconscious and automatic judgments about who and what is authentic.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With degrees from Berkeley and Johns Hopkins, Hagel joined Bates in 2016. A whiteboard in her office is covered with chapter descriptions for a book project that will examine how claims to authenticity are used to motivate political projects. An interest central to Hagel\u2019s research and teaching, this scrutiny of authenticity is rooted in her own story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Nina Hagel (left) takes notes during a faculty panel in 2017 that offered analysis of the inauguration of President Donald Trump. At center and right are politics professors Stephen Engel and John Baughman. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAs someone who is Filipina and multiracial, discourses of authenticity were part of what I grew up with,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople often wanted to know where I came from, who I really<\/em> was. I realized that in our everyday life, and across a wide range of contexts, we make unconscious and automatic judgments about who and what is authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transgender discourse is a context in which authenticity claims figure heavily. But that discourse significantly \u201cdeparts from the suspicions toward authenticity that you get in, say, queer discourses or postmodern discourses in the 1980s and \u201990s,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

“We oftentimes are talking about different things when we talk about authenticity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cGender here seems much more fixed and stable rather than open to instability and play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in day-to-day conversation, \u201cauthenticity has a wide range of meanings,\u201d Hagel says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of those densely coded concepts that has tremendous force in politics \u2014 even though we fundamentally disagree on what it is. So my book project started with a realization that we oftentimes are talking about different things when we talk about authenticity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means original, true to yourself, but also ideas like \u2018unique\u2019 or \u2018exemplary,\u2019\u201d she continues. \u201cAlmost always, when we hear \u2018authentic,\u2019 it\u2019s a positive \u2014 you should be authentic, you should be true to yourself. But what that self is, and what being true to that self means, is really up for grabs.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always nice to win an award for your work. But it\u2019s especially gratifying when the award itself represents someone who inspired that work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled to have won an award named after two of my favorite feminist philosophers,\u201d she says. (The late Susan Moller Okin made a transformative argument for the centrality of gender issues in political philosophy. Iris Marion Young was a political theorist whose wide-ranging contributions touched on structural injustice, the politics of difference, and other concepts.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI teach works by both Okin and Young. They\u2019re two of the first feminists I encountered in graduate school. Their work has opened so many doors for me \u2014 doors I didn\u2019t even know were doors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If a transgender child seems unsure of their gender identity, is that identity any less authentic? Nina Hagel explains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":118815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11011,11009],"tags":[9744],"class_list":["post-118768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-awards","category-the-college","tag-transgender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118768"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118856,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118768\/revisions\/118856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}