Teaching Transgender

Abstract

The recent visibility of transgender lives demonstrates the dawning of a new period in the potential to include transgender topics in sociology courses. The focus on transgender individuals, communities, and inclusive initiatives are gaining momentum on many public and private college and university campuses, awakening old and new curiosities, igniting student activists and advocates everywhere. Such developments provide an important opportunity for instructors who are motivated to create trans-friendly syllabi, courses, and classrooms. In this article, we briefly explore how transgender people have been used to teach sociological concepts and provide strategies to positively integrate transgender communities into the classroom. Ultimately, we intend this article to show new and more sensitive ways to include transgender experiences into a wide range of sociological courses.

Avenue T: using film asentréein teaching about transgender

“…Recent curricular efforts that focus on transgender content independent from sexual orientation have been reported (see Abbott 2009;Drabinski 2011;Preston 2011) and, according to the instructors facilitating or teaching these classes, have been reported as successful. Instructors have described the need to clarify terminology as it relates to transgenderism (Wentling et al 2008) and the imperative for students to demonstrate a professional respect for gender identities that might deviate from their own (Reis 2004). In addition, lecturers and tutors have reported anecdotal evidence (e.g.…”

“…Clearly, there are a number of activities and discussions that instructors can incorporate into their classes that expand the experience of learning about transgender-identifying persons. However, instructors from a variety of disciplines suggest that many students enter a segment of a class devoted to gender identities without a grounded understanding in how gender identities are different from sexual identities (Case et al 2009;Reis 2004;Walters and Sylaska 2012;Wentling et al 2008). It seems pedagogically sound, then, to consider some entrée into this content that provides a basic vocabulary for persons to use, and a scaffold for learners to envision, as they work to dimensionalise the differences among non-dominate gender and sexual orientation identities.…”

“…This is an especially strong development given the fact individuals who report gender atypicality, or who do or may identify as transgender, report feeling ignored for most of their educational experience (Case, Stewart, and Tittsworth 2009;D'Augelli, Grossman, and Starks 2006;Kennedy and Hellen 2010) and often were subjected to negative or hostile primary and secondary school environments where they were likely to be harassed, bullied, or threatened (McGuire et al 2010;Webley 2011). Instructors from a variety of disciplines, including art (Dittman and Meecham 2006), history (Reis 2004), literature (Abbott 2009), psychology (Case et al 2009), sociology (Berkowitz, Manohar, and Tinkler 2010;Wentling et al 2008), and sexuality/gender (Drabinski 2011;Preston 2011), have incorporated transgender-related content into curricula. That is, in these classes, transgender-related course material is not included as a sidebar to content relating to sexual orientation but, rather, is included into a course structure as a separate topic of legitimate inquiry (Case et al 2009;McCarthy 2003).…”

“…Class discussions of gender terms are common and are, arguably, necessary given the frequent confabulation about minority gender identities and minority sexual orientation identities (Airton 2009;Reis 2004;Wentling et al 2008). Other examples include the dimensional representations of gender atypicality in film (Reis 2004), and asking students to engage in a low-risk but gender atypical/gender non-conforming activity and then to reflect on the experience (Preston 2011).…”

Health Disparities in Nonreligious and Religious Older Adults in the United States: A Descriptive Epidemiology of 16 Common Chronic Conditions

“…First, as with any current data set called "nationally representative," several key demographic groups (especially in relation to health) are not captured explicitly Westbrook & Saperstein 2015). For example, people transitioning between sexes, intersex, transgender of any type, gender nonbinary, same sex attracted, bisexual, asexual, and nonsexual people are often not represented in such surveys and they are not in the data set used for this report (see, for example, Ivankovich et al 2013;Wentling et al 2008;Westbrook & Saperestein 2015). Although people with these characteristics may be included in the total participant pool (Westbrook & Saperstein 2015), we cannot comment meaningfully on their experiences at present using this dataset.…”