Policing of Trans Bodies

The concept of policing trans bodies involves all the ways in which social institutions, governments, and individuals attempt to control, regulate, criminalize, and punish human behavior and expression that fail to conform to ahistorical, essentialist definitions of sex and gender. This has emerged from colonial processes; how policing happens with trans bodies now has been shaped by how this was manifested in the past, particularly how police in contemporary times interact with trans people of color. Ultimately, this means we cannot make the argument that more progressive forms of policing have ushered in a new way of policing trans bodies. As described in the following sections, trans bodies are now subject to even more criminalization and brutality from every part of criminal processing systems, including wider government systems.