ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I provide the context of the ‘bathroom problem’ derived from trans scholars to launch into the analytic constellation underpinning this book deriving from the possibilities of the heterotopia as well as an extension into a trans-informed epistemology, critical trans-ing. Heterotopias are spaces that operate against and within real spaces to invert, clarify, and illuminate the relations that occur in, around, and outside of them; I overlay gender embodiment and gender relations on this framework to propose a case for gender expansiveness and gender complexity. Critical trans-ing extends the framework of the heterotopia to a trans-informed analysis of school spaces that leads to trans-affirming practice foregrounding the complexity of trans embodiment and gender diversity. Beyond thinking through Foucaultian disciplinary space as it constructs the conditions for the subject that examines for conditional agency through gender subjectivation, I consider the limits to recognizability or what is at stake in the securing of recognition for trans and gender-diverse subjects through spatialization in schools. Bey's conceptualization of para-ontology sets up a framework to operate as a cis-white researcher applying trans-ing analysis. This chapter sets the theoretical terrain for the analysis of media, policy, and empirical data in the rest of the book.
