THE HEGEMONY OF TRANSITION AND TRANSGENDER COUNTERNARRATIVES IN CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOKS

As a result of the post-gay marriage backlash, the United States has shifted its gaze to transgender children. This shift has led to increased misunderstanding, gross overgeneralizations, and an expectation that all non-cisgender children follow the same path. We call this the hegemony of transition: the belief that (among other things) all gender creative children wish to fully transition from one dichotomous gender to another and that all children can and will “pass.” This dominant narrative is present in most transgender children’s picture books, as problematized by young gender creative people in our research study. However, there is a recent shift to include transgender counternarratives in picture books, contesting the hegemony of transition. These stories portray gender creative, gender expansive, genderqueer, etc. children who do not identify as cis or trans. These books do not conform to the rigid expectations of some of the trans storylines that have come before.