Trans

In January 2017, the cover of National Geographic declared a “gender revolution.” Embodying this revolution are “80 young people” from around the world, interviewed by reporters “for a future-facing perspective on gender” (Goldberg 2017, 9). Seven of these young people adorn the cover, expressions defiant, their various identities signposted: intersex nonbinary, transgender male and female, bi-gender, androgynous, male. At the literal center of what this issue describes as “the shifting landscape of gender” is Eli—at age twelve, the youngest and most childlike in appearance of the cover models—a self-identified trans male who stands on a podium, towering over his cohort. The trans child, as produced by National Geographic, is a symbolic figurehead for the gender revolution—but one, as the issue goes on to illustrate, who struggles within persistently oppressive and often violent global gender regimes.