Punishing gender-affirming care
Social media and U.S. anti-trans politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12918436 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Darius Scott (0000-0003-4439-6564, McGill University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 144-152 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Communication Culture and Critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1753-9137 • E-ISSN: 1753-9129 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ccc/tcaf054 |
| OpenAlex | W7119906952 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
Political communication relies heavily on digital platforms that reward hostile content with greater audience engagement. Following Executive Orders 14168 and 14187 in January 2025, the Trump administration orchestrated a rapid, multi-agency dismantling of institutional support for gender-affirming care. This article argues that these orders functioned simultaneously as administrative mandates and as social media content designed to discipline institutional infrastructure through an antagonistic “gender ideology” framing. The study traces how the directives became entangled with platform dynamics to consolidate affective publics around punitive state action. Following the orders, Trump mentions escalated from 0.9% to 80.2% of high-engagement transgender discourse, while the “gender ideology” frame became predominant, displacing neutral language. Rather than targeting individuals directly, the orders transformed bureaucratic retrenchment into an iterative social media spectacle. This study demonstrates how state authority leverages platform dynamics to mobilize publics around institutional punishment, framing digital populism as an enduring element of American governance
Bureaucracy · Framing (construction · Politics · Populism · Publics · Punitive damages · Retrenchment · Social media · State (computer science · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media
Affective Publics
Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter
Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8
The Affordances of Social Media Platforms
Discipline and Punish
Normal Life
Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections
Super‐amplifiers! The role of Twitter extended party networks in political elections
Out of Time
Chosen Name Use Is Linked to Reduced Depressive Symptoms, Suicidal Ideation, and Suicidal Behavior Among Transgender Youth
Unpacking “Gender Ideology” and the Global Right’s Antigender Countermovement
Association of Updating Identification Documents with Suicidal Ideation and Attempts among Transgender and Nonbinary Youth
Transgender
Transing Trump’s moral crusade against transgender people
Cruel capitalism
Comprehensive Transgender Healthcare
Hungary as a precarious context for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Interviews with transgender people
Rethinking affective publics as media rituals through temporality, performativity and liminality
Gender Affirmation Research Is Not Gender Ideology Extremism, It Is Science
Managing uncertainty
Special Issue
Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement
Showing They Care (Or Don't)
The Politics of Twitter
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |