Joanna Wuest discusses her book, Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement. How did LGBTQ+ civil rights leaders address moral, medical, and legal obstacles to change the way American society views them and their communities? While society has come a long way in accepting and understanding Queer people, there is a renewed backlash that threatens these hard-won rights focused on school children and trans people. While the focus is new the fear, rhetoric, and social activism leveled against minority communities remains shockingly familiar. To understand the current moment, Professor Wuest walks us through the history of LGBTQ+ civil rights and how science has shaped that struggle.
Joanna Wuest is an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She is the author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2023), and is currently writing a book on “dark money” and religious liberty legal organizations. Her popular writing on LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, and economic inequality has appeared in The Nation, Boston Review, Dissent.