Jamison Green
"In a lively and accessible style, Davis questions the administrative and social practices of labeling individuals sex or gender solely in correspondence with the binary categories of female or male. He challenges the validity of sex-identifying documents and sex-segregated facilities or institutionseven competitive sportsas solutions to privacy, safety, or equality. This is a thought-provoking and highly relevant subject, perfect for todays political and cultural debates."
BUST.com
"Davis constantly challenges the value of forcing people to adhere to a binary, successfully arguing that the problems far outweigh the benefits."
Quartz.com
"Davis argues that current precedent that restricts discriminating against people on the basis of gender could be used to challenge laws or practices that discriminate against people perceived as falling outside the gender binary. More broadly, we can all work toward a change in perspective. Demanding that people conform to stereotypes of masculinity or femininity does everybody harm. So instead of trying to fit more people into societys preexisting categories, we might try rethinking whether we need those categories at all."
Susan Stryker
"Whyand whenis it important to say whether somebody is a man or a woman? Those are the provocative questions Heath Fogg Davis poses in this informative exploration of gender markers . . . But even more provocative are the questions of how we determine what counts as & man and & woman in the first place, and why we imagine there can be only two genders. This is a great book for students and specialists alike who are interested in the profound transformation of gender we are all experiencing in the early twenty-first century."
Times Literary Supplement
"We will soon be reading books that are truly new, indeed revolutionary, in arguing that the future of gender will be the end of gender binaries altogether.How can future writers debate & essential sex differences when there are more than two sexes, or when some women and men who choose to become the other, and when some people want to be both or neither? Heath Fogg Daviss Beyond Trans: Does gender matter?, one of the first among many that I am sure are in the pipeline, invites readers to question why we care so much about labels and categories on drivers licences, passports and bathroom doors, and in sports and schools."
Joshua Gamson
"Both clear-eyed and eye-opening, Beyond Transchallenges all of usgender-nonconforming and cisgender, trans and gender-conforming, individuals and organizationsto ask ourselves why and how we are using sex classifications, what harm they might be doing, and just how theyre even defining & sex. A provocative and compelling book."
Popmatters.com
"Reading Beyond Transis like having ones window shades thrown open after arising from a long night of sleep: the sunlight burns the eyes, but it awakens them . . .Beyond Transfeatures accessible, clear prose and direct argumentation. Anyone with an interest in trans rights and the public application of gender theory would benefit from Davis book.Beyond Transis as much a call to remediate the harm done to trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals as it is a plea for good reasoning."
Christian Century
"Readers may not agree with all of Davis's conclusions, but his method of discerning rational relationships provides a helpful way to create conversations about whether a particular instance of sex segregation is legitimate or problematic. It encourages us to become far more reflective about when and why we believe sex needs to be marked and managed."
Foreword Reviews
"Arefreshingly intersectional perspective on sex identity. . .takes a perhaps seemingly singular topic and makes it approachable through passionate and relevant analysis of modern issues. Davis time and again shows the importance of understanding transgender rights as a matter of all rights, and does so in a challenging, memorable, and accessible way."
Plentitude Magazine
"Davis's book is the quintessential transgender issue primer."
Reason Magazine
"[R]efreshing.Davis situates the struggle for transgender dignity and rights squarely within the larger framework of personal freedom and privacy concerns, and shows how removing institutional barriers to living beyond the gender binary can help everyone live fuller, freer lives."
Los Angeles Review of Books
"Daviss solution-orientedBeyond Transis a necessary voice in current debates about the administration of sex and transgender identity. From the infamous bathroom bills to cis citizens objection to financing the medical expenses of trans military personnel (the specter of which Donald Trump backhandedly invoked during his transgender ban tweets), to womens colleges determining that sex-segregation and defining the boundaries of womanhood were necessary to a feminist project of education, Daviss book offers applicable solutions and applies the knowledge gained from the positionality of trans, intersex, and non-binary viewpoints."
Paisley Currah
"In this important and original book, Davis argues that most bureaucracies should get out of the business of administering sex by classifying people as Female or Male. Drawing on a number of case studies, including identity documents, bathroom bills, college admissions, and sex-testing for athletes, Davis shows most policies for sex classification are not rationally related to legitimate government interests. Drawing on a range of literatures and methods, including critical race scholarship, feminist theory, auto-ethnography, and doctrinal legal analysis, Beyond Trans is applied political theory at its best."
BuzzFeed News
"In another major book about our current gender moment,Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? Heath Fogg Davis, a professor of political science at Temple University and a transgender man, makes the argument that the modern trans rights movement shouldn't be so heavily invested in integrating trans and gender-nonconforming people into our existing gendered institutions. Instead, Davis suggests, we should use the so-called & transgender tipping point to explode our bureaucratic definitions of gender altogether."
