Bathrooms, Boundaries, and Emotional Burdens: Cisgendering Interactions Through the Interpretation of Transgender Experience

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This article builds upon emerging studies of bi+ and trans populations to explore the importance of expanding studies of religion and nonreligion beyond an almost entirely cisgender and monosexual focus. Specifically, we utilize the largest qualitative sample of bi+ trans people (n = 249) in sociology to date to explore the ways people in both these populations experience religion. We find that while some bi+ trans people note exceptional positive experiences in religious contexts, they almost entirely experience religion as a source of damnation and trauma. Our analysis speaks to sociologies of (1) gender and (non)religion, (2) sexualities and (non)religion, and (3) (non)religious bi+ and/or trans experience. Our conclusion outlines implications for developing bi+ and trans inclusive studies of religion and nonreligion.

Section: Definitions and Termssupporting

confidence: 80%

Learning from the Religious Experiences of Bi+ Trans People

Sumerau

Mathers

Lampe

2018

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“…More recently, emerging scholars have problematized such patterns within literatures. Whereas prior scholarship typically sought to understand transgender (Schilt and Lagos ) and intersex (Davis ) experiences through static‐binary models, frameworks, and theories, more recent scholarship critiques the systematic devaluation of transgender experience through the structural (Westbrook and Schilt ), ideological (Sumerau, Cragun, and Mathers ), and interpersonal (Mathers ) enforcement of cisnormativity. Further, such studies incorporate some transgender (Sumerau and Cragun ) and intersex (Davis ) experience, and demonstrate that transgender people face significant health (Miller and Grollman ), religious and nonreligious (Cragun and Sumerau ), educational (Nowakowski, Sumerau, and Mathers ), and workplace (Schilt ) marginalization due to societal patterns of cisnormativity that posit noncisgender (regardless of identification on the gender spectrum) people as deficient, unnatural, unexpected, and even dangerous (Schilt and Westbrook ).…”

Section: A Fluid Standpointmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreclosing Fluidity at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Normativities

Sumerau

Mathers

Moon

2019

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Binary gender and sexuality are socially constructed, but they structure thought at such a deep level that even those critical of sexism and homophobia can unwittingly reproduce them, with consequences felt most profoundly by those whose gender/sexual identity defy binary logic. This article outlines a generic pattern in the reproduction of inequality we call foreclosing fluidity, the symbolic or material removal of fluid possibilities from sexual and gender experience and categorization. Based on 115 responses from people who are both sexually and gender fluid and a reading of existing sociologies of gender and sexualities from a fluid standpoint, we demonstrate how lesbian/gay/straight, cisgender, and transgender women and men—regardless of intentions—may foreclose fluidity by mobilizing cisnormative, transnormative, heteronormative, and/or homonormative beliefs and practices. Examining patterns of foreclosing fluidity may provide insight into (1) the further incorporation of fluid people and standpoints into symbolic interactionism, and (2) the reproduction and persistence of sexual and gender inequalities.

“…Taking into consideration the continued strength of gender binaries in contemporary Western societies, transgender people's use of gender markers, and their awareness of the consequences of gender accountabilities, I consider four interrelated strategies for displaying gender in relation to gender subjectivities that emerged from data analysis, which show both the agency and the conditionings of displaying gender. These were “blending in,” “masking,” “naturalizing,” and “subverting.” These strategies are closely associated with conditioned “choices” of being or not being perceived as transgender people in the eyes of others and thus also associated with different politicized transgender narratives (Mathers ; McQueen ).…”

Section: Everyday Strategies Of Displayng Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because we still live in an extremely binary society.Social contexts of interaction are thus essential to understand how people perform conditioned displays of gender (Connell ; Darwin ; Davidmann ; Pfeffer ; Schilt and Westbrook ; Westbrook and Schilt ). Generally, spaces and times considered to be unsafe are those public spaces and times strongly associated with the upholding of gender binaries, cis and heteronormativies, and a lack of understanding and knowledge of transgender and gender diversity issues (Darwin ; Mathers ; Schilt and Westbrook ; Westbrook and Schilt ). “Unsafe” spaces and times, often felt as posing a risk to one's sense of security, lead several transgender people to recreate gender displays that make their transgender stories invisible to others, while simultaneously putting onto the front stage their masculine or feminine expressions.…”

Section: Contextualizing Gender Displaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Displaying Gender: Transgender People's Strategies in Everyday Life

Marques

2019

Drawing upon data from in‐depth interviews with transgender people in Portugal and in the United Kingdom, this article critically reflects upon different ways through which transgender people recreate their gender displays, particularly in terms of gender embodiment and aesthetics, in order to navigate their everyday lives. I focus on four strategies of articulating gender displays with one's own gender subjectivities: “blending in,” “masking,” “naturalizing,” and “subverting.” These strategies are not exclusive of one another. They are used differently throughout the participants' own lives in accordance to the social contexts they were in.