The enactment of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, has given fresh impetus to concerns about the impediments the transgender community continues to face in fully enjoying and exercising its constitutional rights, despite the Supreme Court’s decision in National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) vs. Union of India,Footnote1 which gave legal recognition to non-binary gender identities. The legal developments in India have not taken place in isolation; since the turn of the 21st century, the right to gender self-identification has become a contested issue across many jurisdictions.Footnote2 However, legal advances have not necessarily translated into social acceptance for the transgender community. Dr Joanna Jamel’s book, Transphobic Hate Crime, promises to be a primer that moves beyond the legal and focuses on the socio-historical status of non-binary people (p. xi). The book opens with a vital claim, that of being the first text dedicated ‘solely’ to the study of transphobic hate crime,with particular reference to the Anglo-American and European context (pp. xi–xv). To make her analysis comprehensive, the author examines the responses of not just lawmakers and law-enforcers to transphobic hate crimes but also the factors that give rise to the exclusion of, and violence against, gender non-conforming people. Despite the forthright admission of her limited frame of reference, the author attempts to address carping criticism of the ‘whiteness’ of research on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sexual characteristics (SOGIESC) (p. xi). To this end, she endeavours to deconstruct the fallacious belief of the homogeneity of the transgender community, emphasising the advantages of adopting an intersectional approach to scholarship on the various axes of identity (p. xv). In this review, I assess if the book manages to accomplish its ambitious goal of providing a ‘holistic perspective’ on the rights of trans individuals (p. xi).