“It’s Hard Out Here for a Unicorn”: Transmasculine and Nonbinary Escorts, Embodiment, and Inequalities in Cisgendered Workplaces

Abstract

In this article, I draw from in-depth interviews with 34 transmasculine and nonbinary escorts who were assigned female at birth (AFAB) to explore the complicated relationship between gender, race, sexuality, embodiment, and workplace inequalities in what I have called cisgendered workplaces. Cissexism, transmisogyny, and racism are embedded in workspaces, brothels, agencies, and the websites escorts use for advertising, and clients operate based on cisgender principles. These analyses demonstrate how cisgender privilege operates in and buttresses cisgendered workplaces, in ways that disadvantage trans and nonbinary people. I show how shifting trans embodiments and spaces of transition in workplaces adversely affect transmasculine and nonbinary escorts’ wages and workplace experiences, but also disrupt cisgendered workplaces and challenge cisgender hegemony. Adopting the analytical frame of spaces of transition reveals critical insights into the role that embodiment (not just identity) plays in workplace inequalities.

What happens when gender accountability is reduced? The experiences of non-binary and genderfluid people during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This period of fewer external assessments was simultaneously a break from the relentlessness of external assessments and productive of non-binary subjectivities. Reduced accountability produced opportunities for introspection and experimentation, creating "spaces of transition" (Jones 2020;Snorton 2011) or "identity incubators" (Shapiro 2007). These spaces of transition are more than the conventional understanding of physical transitioning but rather also "modes of anti-gender essentialist self-fashioning that occur in the everyday" and "a place where particular mapping on the body come under scrutiny as to implode" (Snorton 2011, 3).…”

“…Gender accountability often forecloses fluidity between binary categories by the "symbolic and material removal of fluid possibilities from sexual and gender experience and categorization" (Sumerau, Mathers, and Moon 2020). Transgender and non-binary people are disproportionately impacted by accountability to gender conformity and binary understandings of gender, including transnormative expectations that transgender people will transition into binary gender identities (shuster 2017;Vidal-Ortiz 2009;Garrison 2018;Johnson 2016;Nordmarken 2014;Jones 2020;Johnson 2016). Non-binary people may experience a consistent fluidity in their gender subjectivities (Bradford and Syed 2019) and thus may feel "not trans enough" (Garrison 2018).…”

“…There are also consequences for a lack of adherence to binary gender categories. Binary expectations affect the inclusion of non-binary people in job markets and housing (Jones 2023;Greene 2019), although occasionally gender-fluid presentations fit into work culture and advantage racially dominant workers (Alfrey and Twine 2017). Additionally, within institutions, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, gender is categorized and tracked in a way that conforms to binary logic, a form of administrative violence toward transgender and non-binary people (Spade 2015;Keyes 2018).…”

What Happens when Gender Accountability is Reduced? The Experiences of Nonbinary and Genderfluid People During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Gender accountability often forecloses fluidity between binary categories by the “symbolic and material removal of fluid possibilities from sexual and gender experience and categorization” (Sumerau, Mathers, and Moon 2020). Transgender and nonbinary people are disproportionately affected by accountability to gender conformity and binary understandings of gender, including transnormative expectations that transgender people will transition into binary gender identities (Garrison 2018; Johnson 2016; Jones 2023b; Nordmarken 2014; shuster 2017; Vidal-Ortiz 2009). Nonbinary people may experience a consistent fluidity in their gender subjectivities (Bradford and Syed 2019) and thus may feel “not trans enough” (Garrison 2018).…”

Race, Gender, and Violence

“…Further suggesting the minimal attention given to violence against women and nonbinary people of color, there has been in the last decade only one article in Gender & Society on formerly incarcerated Black women (Gurusami 2017), one on Islamophobia (Alimahomed-Wilson 2020), two on the racialized experiences of transgender and nonbinary people of color in the United States (Jones 2020; Robinson 2020), and four on femicide or gender-based violence in the Global South (García-Del Moral 2020; Jakobsen 2014; Rao 2015; Roychowdhury 2015). While attention to the Global South is important, it must be distinguished from and not used to justify the absence of discussions on the marginalization of women of color in the Global North.…”