‘Which part of the day is (wo)man o’clock?’: Desires, urges and possibilities of (un)becoming

Abstract

Drawing on Butler’s and Deleuze and Guattari’s theorising of (un)becoming, we study how male to female crossdressers enact the many fantasies of the crossdresser persona through gendered market objects and rituals to undo gender norms in a body that is at times considered ‘lawful’ and at others ‘unlawful’. We highlight how fantasies participate in the processes of unbecoming and becoming to disrupt the existing gendered boundaries/subjectivities and create new possibilities of being. The market objects, including the mundane and the excess, are operating in the becoming/unbecoming, facilitating temporal gender transformations, while at the same time creating identity residues that persist between the many gendered bodily experiences (male, female or hybrid) permeating time and space. In particular, we highlight how these identity residues can be experienced as pleasurable or risky if not managed carefully, contributing to an enhanced understanding of the affective state of in-between gender and how it intersects with gendered market objects and rituals.

“Generally, I live a lie”: Transgender consumer experiences and responses to symbolic violence

“…This often involves the careful selection of gendered market objects that enable trans consumers to present a gender identity that is socially acceptable to others but that also encompasses (sometimes hidden) elements that met their own preferred gender identity. Drawing on Cheded and Liu (2022, 80), this is indicative of that “duality of the normative subjectivities and the abject all inhabiting the same body.” Seregina (2019) also draws on the notion of duality in terms of performing the other and performing the everyday self. However, our focus on transgender offers an important point of distinction to this prior work.…”

“…When living at home, his mother removed any typically male undergarments from his wardrobe, and now he rebels by owning a collection which cannot be seen outwardly but makes him feel happy and confident. For Lucas, the boxers are “deliberate identity residues” (Cheded & Liu, 2022, 76) that enable hidden indulgence in his male identity, particularly on occasions when a more visible presentation could create interpersonal tensions. These acts of rebellion might be considered as attempts to incorporate self‐care practices into daily life (Hutton, 2016) that foster empowerment in face of persistent symbolic violence.…”

“…However, our focus on transgender offers an important point of distinction to this prior work. Unlike consumers who play with gender in spaces of fantasy (Cheded & Liu, 2022;Seregina, 2019), our participants are forced into a duality of gender performance in times and spaces where they do not have the freedom to express their preferred gender identity. They seek to minimize the distance between fantasy and reality, but this needs to be negotiated to align with temporal and spatial boundaries of interactions.…”

From Crisis to Advocacy: Tracing the Emergence and Evolution of the LGBTQIA+ Consumer Market

“…Our analysis (Figure 4) reveals that, in Phase 3, the literature attempts to address the conflation of LGBTQIA+ identities into the two main categories of gay and lesbian by investigating the needs of a wider set of LGBTQIA+ individuals (e.g., transgender, Duncan-Shepherd and Hamilton 2022; queer, Pirani and Daskalopoulou 2022). This important shift reflects strategic efforts to better understand and meet LGBTQIA+ consumers’ needs and contribute to their well-being (Cheded and Liu 2022; Hadjisolomou 2021). The advocacy role of organizations is quite evident, as is their contribution to providing LGBTQIA+ consumers with a better life, stimulating the engagement of policy makers and other institutional actors (Parshakov et al 2022).…”

Reclaiming the witch: Processes and heroic outcomes of consumer mythopoesis

“…Finding the 'proper' witch identity, however, involves unbecoming (Cheded and Liu, 2022) the old self and testing one's identification with different witch identities, through both embodied experience and reflexivity. Bernard, for example, navigated the ambiguity of the myth by comparing the myth's different meanings to his own incarnation process.…”