Trans*ing the Economic Lens

The way we study gender frames it in the way the researchers implicitly see it, and without challenging that framework we will continue to uphold this conceptualization of genderconceptualization of gender: inflexible, binary, fixed, biological. As scientists with perhaps too much sway in policy, law, and government, what economists research and how we research it matters. Transing economics is more than increasing the number of trans economists or the number of pieces written about trans people. Transing economicsTransing economics requires resetting what we think of as the default and, instead, recognizing the vast ways in which identities defy binaries and shift over months, years, and generations. Most importantly, a transed economics has to be celebratory of trans people and research, not just tolerant and not just using right pronouns. There isn’t one right lens of gender to use—there are plenty of people even within the TGD community that have very different lenses, all valuable in their own right. Instead, question whatever lens you’re using, listen to TGD voices, and do the work of unlearning the gendered way in which you operate in the world and, as a result, the gendered way in which you do research.