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This is a terrifying time to be LGBTQ in America. In the first 2023 legislative session alone, Republican lawmakers introduced more than 100 new bills specifically targeting transgender youth. This is part of a coordinated, multi‐state attack on transgender Americans about which there is open and very public acknowledgement. If you look, you'll see medical and psychiatric governing boards, major human rights organizations, policymakers, researchers like myself, and parent activists scrambling to speak back in what has become an impossible rhetorical landscape. The single most powerful move conservative lawmakers have made is to place transgender Americans and our advocates on an endless hamster wheel of response to a seemingly never ending series of aggressions. Part of how homo‐ and cis‐sexism function is to set the contours of public debate. This is a reflection on being a sociologist in the midst of these ongoing cultural conversations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual trajectories of Japanese sociology and Japan itself are poised at a watershed moment in their shared history. In recent years, Japanese sociology has enlarged its international presence in unprecedented fashion and the Tokyo Olympics have positioned the global spotlight on the entire nation of Japan, making it an opportune moment to reflect on the future of Japanese sociology in connection to Japanese society by way of internationalization. This article draws on the author's reflections on the latest 92nd Japan Sociological Society Annual Conference in the context of recent socio‐structural and intellectual transformations in counterpart sociological cultures in Anglo‐America. Drawing on three theorizations of disciplinary development by Abbott, Connell, and Burawoy, this article articulates two dimensions (socio‐structural and intellectual) with which to examine (i) what Japanese sociology can contribute to improve the internationalization decolonization, and pluralization of global sociology; and (ii) what global sociology can do to advance Japanese sociology's public contribution to improving and preserving LGBTQ minorities' societal well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]