My dysphoria blues: Or why I cannot write an autoethnography

Abstract

In this essay, I would like to ask if we are concerned with writing about difference or writing differently. I attempt to present an account of my ongoing experience of dysphoria and consider how I write about that experience. I reveal how my writing has no epiphany, is repetitive and in its characterless depiction of others is a two-dimensional, monologue that fails the conventions of an evocative autoethnographic account. My writing is 'bad writing' but what should become of it? Does a concern with style, whether or not over content, based on taste preclude some stories and different ways of writing? Should I be excluded from academe and silenced, or can room be found for a tasteless account like mine? I end my essay by provocatively owning the label of bad writing.

Practices of freedom and the disruption of binary genders: Thinkingwithtrans

“…Of course it is worth noting that the majority of authors in the field who have researched and written about TGNC people are not themselves TGNC people. This suggests that in an embodied way they are not writing with trans, but about trans, and hence perhaps that their accounts might be less relevant to TGNC people's lives (O'Shea, 2019). Further to that, as organizational researchers mostly working within organizations, our intelligibility is framed by binary institutional structures about gender.…”

Working at gender? An autoethnography

“…There is a growing body of work in management and related areas that concentrates on the experience of trans folk at work (Connell, 2010;Knights & Thanem, 2011;Muhr & Sullivan, 2013;Schilt, 2006;Schilt & Connell, 2007) and in society generally (O'Shea, 2018 and2019a). I however wish to consider our transgender 'work' in broader terms as the effort directed towards a specific project of having a liveable life (Scheman, 1997.…”

“…My autoethnography lies towards an evocative style (O'Shea, 2018 and 2019a) and, as a form of writing differently (Gilmore, Harding, Helin, & Pullen, 2019), attempts to convince not by weight of academic evidence but by asking readers to emotionally experience my life. I identify my work here as ‘writing differently’ not because of my writing style, stylistically my work is laboured (O'Shea, 2019a) but because of my position: I write not as an academic talking about unemployment but as someone who is unemployed and where unemployment may be an effect of societal discrimination against that minority. I make no bold claims to objectivity and do not insist that my experiences can be generalised to gender and work in terms of facts and commonly shared experience and knowledge.…”

One flew over the duck pond: Autoethnography, academic identity, and language

“…Forber-Pratt presents herself as an academic novice, but toward the end of her story she identifies as a person of color and with a disability. Others are more open and bold: Saoirse Caitlin O’Shea (2019) writes about somatic experience of managing dysphoria, James McDonald (2013) reflects on shifting identities and “coming out” in field work, and Denise Faifua (2010) presents herself as an “outsider-within,” a stranger in the corridors of white male-dominated academia.…”

“…While setting high standards for writing and expression, autoethnography also helps reflect on academic practices such as writing that are too often presented as cognitive and rational activities, but are experienced by writers as embodied, physical, emotional, sensuous, and related to their identities (Essén and Winterstorm Värlander, 2012; Kiriakos and Tienari, 2018). Turning the tables, autoethnography enables O’Shea (2019) to embrace “bad writing” and to challenge academic conventions also in this way. In terms of writing, then, autoethnographies have a dual function.…”