Bodily Autonomy and Rationality in Anti-Trans Legislation and Policing in Georgia, U.S.A.

East Tower 

Bodily autonomy is a critical right, though one being negotiated in the United States with the Dobbs opinion. Rationality is a foundational principle of American governance, society, and citizenship, threaded throughout different spheres of jurisprudence both explicitly and implicitly. Children in particular have attenuated rights in the United States landscape and are not allowed full bodily autonomy in relationship to themselves; parents and the state can make legally binding determinations for minor's physical forms. Questions of bodily autonomy often revolve around parental authority, unless such decisions would harm the child (Hill 2015; Mazor 2021; Ryan 2024). Determination of harm is a process built around specific rationalities associated with normative ideas of human desire, standards of living, and identity. I argue that a particular strain of anti-trans legislation which denies gender affirming care to minors, such as SB 140 and SB 141 (2024) in Georgia, depends on specific ideas of rationality and harm, which deny full bodily autonomy and ownership of minors' bodies for both trans youth and their parents. In this normativizing approach to the human body, one's gender identity becomes a sign of rationality and reflects a right of the state and society at large to make determinations and ownership claims over trans bodily forms, particularly youth. These laws find echoes in how trans people understand their bodies, not as objects over which they can maintain full ownership, but as some thing determined, influenced, and even owned by outside forces as well, whether cultural, social, or legal. This research is based on 3 years of ethnographic field work with trans communities in Atlanta, Georgia, and the close monitoring of the Georgia General Assembly legislative sessions between 2022-2024. This intervention offers a new perspective on anti-trans legislation, its relationship to social gender hegemonies, and questions of bodily autonomy for minoritized popu