Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2022

Abstract

This essay, in honor of Paula Ettelbrick’s vast contributions to family law, examines a new site of conflict - the legal treatment of transgender children and youth - for which Ettelbrick’s work, alongside Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s seminal essay, How to Bring Your Kids up Gay (1991) are fundamental. We apply what we believe to be Ettelbrick’s emphasis on having legal structures recognize the reality and lives of queer people – what we call “family law realism” – to the current social and legal struggles that are unfortunately being fought upon the bodies of transgender identified children and youth. We recommend that current advocates and lawmakers follow Ettelbrick’s exemplary model of seeking to ground law in lived realities, in service of Ettelbrick’s prescient goals for liberation of queer individuals and families.

Comments

How to Bring Your Kids Up Queer, 55 FAMILY LAW QUARTERLY (2022) (with N. Ben-Asher).

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