Producing Trans Economicus: Deploying Market Logic in the Fight for Trans Rights
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article analyzes how market logic is deployed to secure trans rights under neoliberalism in Canada and the U.S. I argue that by embodying the ‘ideal’ neoliberal subject, productive trans persons are granted access to state institutions and social services, including transition-related medical care. This is achieved through the accumulation of what Foucault (2008) calls “human capital” and appealing to market logic (cost-benefit analysis). While doing so may afford certain trans people – namely white, affluent, and able-bodied – increased access to services and material success, it ultimately reinforces neoliberal logic, further obscuring and exacerbating social and economic inequalities. I argue that trans persons who achieve material success are upheld as ‘proof’ that neoliberalism functions as a meritocracy, shifting the burden of social and economic responsibility away from the state and onto the individual. Resume Cet article fait l’analyse critique de la defense des droits des personnes transgenre au Canada et aux Etats-Unis sous des politiques neoliberales. Mon argument est que les personnes transgenres performantes ont acces aux institutions et aux services publics, y compris les soins medicaux lies a la transition, si elles incarnent « l’ideal » neoliberal. Cet ideal est atteint a travers l’accumulation de « capital humain » comme le definit Foucault (2008) et de l’interet selon la logique du marche (analyses couts-avantages). Bien que cette politique offre l’acces aux services et le succes materiel a certains transgenres — pour la plupart des blancs, riches et sans handicap — en fin de compte, la logique neoliberale est confortee, et les inegalites sociales et economiques obscurcies et exacerbees. Les personnes transgenres ayant reussi materiellement sont presentees comme etant la « preuve » que le neoliberalisme est un systeme qui offre l’egalite des chances. Le poids des responsabilites sociales et economiques est transfere a l’individu, privant de leurs droits les membres les plus marginalises de la communaute transgenre. Mots cles: Droits des transgenres ; politique sociale neoliberale ; logique du marche ; capital humain
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".