Thursday, October 22 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Fromm Hall — 115 - Berman Conference Room
by TJ Billard, Northwestern University, Author (2023) Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere.
Presented by the Davies Forum
Anti-trans misinformation has become a powerful force in contemporary politics, but its influence cannot be explained simply by the circulation of “bad facts" or failures of individual reasoning. In this talk, I examine why misinformation about transgender people has proven so compelling and politically consequential. Drawing on a multi-method research program underlying my in-progress book, Cisinformed, I argue that rapid changes in the social organization of gender can generate uncertainty about familiar categories, institutions, and forms of authority, creating conditions in which misinformation offers seemingly coherent explanations for social change. At the same time, contemporary digital and hybrid media environments allow these explanations to circulate across journalism, social media, advocacy organizations, and political institutions, transforming diffuse anxieties into shared political narratives. Understanding anti-trans misinformation therefore requires examining not only what people believe, but the technological and social conditions that make particular ways of understanding gender available, persuasive, and politically actionable.
Please join us on Thursday, October 22nd, 2026
4:35 - 6:20 pm, Fromm Hall, Berman Room