This article examines what happens when an employee makes the transition from one recognized gender category to another and remains in the same job. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transmen and transwomen in Texas and California, we illustrate how a new social gender identity is interactionally achieved in these open workplace transitions. While transgender people often are represented as purposefully adopting hyperfeminine or masculine gender identities post-transition, we find that our respondents strive to craft alternative femininities and masculinities. However, regardless of their personal gender ideologies, their men and women co-workers often enlist their transitioning colleague into gender rituals designed to repatriate them into a rigid gender binary. This enlistment limits the political possibilities of making gender trouble in the workplace, as transgender people have little leeway for resistance if they wish to maintain job security and friendly workplace relationships.

This article brings together two case studies that examine how nontransgender people, "gender normals," interact with transgender people to highlight the connections between doing gender and heteronormativity. By contrasting public and private interactions that range from nonsexual to sexualized to sexual, the authors show how gender and sexuality are inextricably tied together. The authors demonstrate that the criteria for membership in a gender category are significantly different in social versus (hetero)sexual circumstances. While gender is presumed to reflect biological sex in all social interactions, the importance of doing gender in a way that represents the shape of one's genitals is heightened in sexual and sexualized situations. Responses to perceived failures to fulfill gender criteria in sexual and sexualized relationships are themselves gendered; men and women select different targets for and utilize gendered tactics to accomplish the policing of supposedly natural gender boundaries and to repair breaches to heteronormativity.

We use the workplace experiences of transsexuals -individuals who change their gender typically with hormone therapy and surgery -to provide new insights into the longstanding question of what role gender places in shaping workplace outcomes. Using an original survey of a sample of male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals, we document their earnings and employment experiences of transsexuals before and after their gender transitions. We find that while transsexuals have the same human capital after their transitions, their workplace experiences often change radically. For many male-to-female transsexuals, becoming a woman brings a loss of authority and pay, and often harassment and termination. On the other hand, for many female-to-male transsexuals, becoming a man brings increases in workplace respect, authority, and, in some cases, earnings. These findings challenge the omitted variables explanations for the gender pay gap and illustrate the often hidden and subtle processes that produce gender inequality in workplace outcomes.

The field of transgender studies has grown exponentially in sociology over the last decade. In this review, we track the development of this field through a critical overview of the sociological scholarship from the last 50 years. We identify two major paradigms that have characterized this research: a focus on gender deviance (1960s–1990s) and a focus on gender difference (1990s–present). We then examine three major areas of study that represent the current state of the field: research that explores the diversity of transgender people's identities and social locations, research that examines transgender people's experiences within institutional and organizational contexts, and research that presents quantitative approaches to transgender people's identities and experiences. We conclude with an agenda for future areas of inquiry.

This article explores “determining gender,” the umbrella term for social practices of placing others in gender categories. We draw on three case studies showcasing moments of conflict over who counts as a man and who counts as a woman: public debates over the expansion of transgender employment rights, policies determining eligibility of transgender people for competitive sports, and proposals to remove the genital surgery requirement for a change of sex marker on birth certificates. We show that criteria for determining gender differ across social spaces. Gender-integrated spaces are more likely to use identity-based criteria, while gender-segregated spaces, like the sexual spaces we have previously examined (Schilt and Westbrook 2009), are more likely to use biology-based criteria. In addition, because of beliefs that women are inherently vulnerable and men are dangerous, “men’s” and “women’s” spaces are not policed equally—making access to women’s spaces central to debates over transgender rights.