ABSTRACT
Given the extraordinary diversity of cross-gender practices, identities, and beliefs about gender within gender nonconforming communities in the United States, the clear emergence of the "transgender umbrella" as a central, unifying framework is remarkable. Notions of individual agency, of choice, and even of free expression effectively became the constitutive other of civil rights discourse. An analysis of the work that identity is asked to do in the transgender rights movement should be placed within the larger context of the civil rights tradition in the United States. The absence of legislative definitions of gender or sex in most nondiscrimination laws arrogated the task of defining those terms to the courts. Within the legislative arena, however, the definitions of sex, gender, or gender identity are more likely to free gender from its naturalized and depoliticized foundations. The "transgender umbrella" is usually defined both in broad analytic strokes and in reference to particular constituencies and practices.
