Expanding Gender and Expanding the Law: Toward a Social and Legal Conceptualization of Gender that is More Inclusive of Transgender People

In Part I, the article first describes the many different ways in which one can be transgender. Many transgender women and men defy gender stereotypes. Part I next suggests a non-linear view of gender. Often, when we get past the binary gender system, the notion that there are only two genders, female and male, we do so by seeing gender as a spectrum or line running from female to male. In Part II, the article argues that the sex-gender distinction is not part of the new conceptualization of gender, the gender galaxy. In Part III, after a brief overview of transgender law, the article shows how much of current law and policy is, at best, inclusive and protective of only a portion of the transgender communities