Combating anti-transgender misinformation: A sociological approach

Anti-transgender misinformation has become a defining feature of political discourse across the Anglosphere, driving a surge in harmful legislation and public attitudes. Learning from the change-making work of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, this commentary argues that misinformation targeting transgender people must be understood not simply as false information spreading unchecked, but as a socially embedded phenomenon rooted in disrupted processes of collective sense-making. Drawing on media system dependency theory and the concept of pervasive ambiguity about gender, we articulate a sociological model of misinformation effects in which disinformation serves as an interpretive resource amid social upheaval. We call for a shift away from dominant psychological and technocratic approaches, focused on individual cognition and fact-correction, and toward sociological frameworks attentive to the cultural, affective, and epistemic dimensions of misinformation belief. If misinformation stabilizes disrupted worldviews, the solution lies not in better facts, but in better ways of making meaning.