Trans*versing the DMZ: a non-binary autoethnographic exploration of gender and masculinity

Abstract

Using an abductive, critical-poststructuralist autoethnographic approach, I consider the ways in which masculine of centre, non-binary/genderqueer trans* identities transverse the poles of socializing binary gender systems, structures, and norms which inform higher education. In this paper, I assert that non-binary genderqueer identities are products of a particular sense-ing about gender that is reproduced and enforced in US higher education. Non-binary genderqueer identities defiantly take up space within a demilitarized zone that vacates the continuum of gender and instantiates binary genders. In particular, this autoethnography employs promiscuous and high-density theoretical analysis to determine the possibilities of resolving the breakdown presented by non-binary/genderqueer masculinities through a transmasculine critical epistemology.     

Sexua-romanticised pathways of transmasculine college students in the USA

Abstract

Much of the expanding literature positions trans college students as an overly homogenous population, lacking agency and wrought with hardship and tragedy. Drawn from a broader study on transmasculine college students’ conceptualisations of masculinity, this paper draws attention to the multiplicity of transmasculine voices navigating sexuality and romantic relationships. This navigation is embroiled in their negotiations with masculinity, dominance and cissexism, as they chart affirming sexualities and relationships. Participants’ unique and nuanced articulations are suggestive of the gender liberatory possibilities that derive from trans youth’s perspectives.     

A thousand words are worth a picture: a snapshot of trans* postsecondary educators in higher education

Abstract

Trans* is becoming a buzzword and trans* celebrities have become increasingly visible. On college campuses, trans* students have also become more visible and advocacy for them continues to be extremely important. To support these claims, some literature has emerged regarding trans* college students’ identity development and experiences on campuses, including their perceptions of campus climate. However, higher education scholars and professionals know virtually nothing about the lived experiences of trans* educators working in colleges and universities. Extending on the importance of scholarship regarding trans* college students, trans* educators’ experiences are important because these educators are in positions of influence as mentors, advisors, and role-models to students and colleagues, and perhaps knowing their journey and how they can better be supported will allow their contributions on campuses to become more visible. Additionally, these educators are in positions of power in the university and encourage all people invested in higher education environments to advocate for increased notions of gender and inclusion in their offices, departments, units and the university as a whole. Through the use of portraiture methodology, with semi-structured interviews and a participant-observation as methods the purpose of this study was to help make more visible the lives and experiences of trans* postsecondary educators, while expanding notions of gender in higher education.     

An exploration of trans* kinship as a strategy for student success

Abstract

Although the notion of queer kinship has been well discussed within literature on queer individuals, it has not been used as a lens to make sense of how trans* college students successfully navigate rigidly gender dichotomous collegiate environments. Using interview data from the National Study of LGBTQ Student Success, this study explores the narratives of 18 trans* students concerning their experiences of success in college and the role of queer kinship in supporting their success. Analysis documented three domains of kinship (i.e. material, virtual, and affective), which promoted students’ success.     

Learning crafts as practices of masculinity. Finnish male trainee teachers' reflections and experiences

Craft education in Finland has long gendered traditions that effect the present situation. The aim of this paper is to analyse the processes of learning the interlinking of crafts and gender. The analysis concentrates on male trainee teachers' experiences of craft education in comprehensive schools in Finland. Data were collected through memory work and autobiographical writing. The analysis revealed how the boys had linked the term ‘technical crafts’ with masculinity, (1) as part of their upbringing at home surrounded by the gender order of their childhood families; (2) following the school model that technical crafts are a masculine sphere for boys; and (3) the importance and pressures of the boys' peer culture. Through learning crafts, the boys were learning the masculinities of their local ‘communities of practices’. The prospective teachers' reflections revealed the importance of studying gender issues in teacher education.     

Young working-class men do not read: or do they? Challenging the dominant discourse of reading

ABSTRACT

In the majority of the research on boys’ and young men’s relation to reading, it is argued that boys and young men read too little, read poorly and in all the wrong ways. However, few studies focus on how boys and young men read the texts they do encounter. In particular, there is a lack of research on young men of working-class background, whose relationship to reading is stressed as particularly problematic in many studies. In this article, we approach the reader histories of three young working-class men from a life story perspective, on the basis of a broad definition of text and reading, to capture how reading and texts are used in their identity construction. Our analysis shows that the young men engage in reading in different ways, from listening to audio books and reading aloud to watching films. We argue that our approach makes it possible to re-envision working-class men as readers who, among other things, use reading to construct softer masculinities, thus challenging the dominant narrative of working-class masculinity and working-class men’s relationship to reading and texts.     

New trans* visibilities: working the limits and possibilities of gender at school

Abstract

In many contexts, there has been a rapid increase in the visibility of trans* lives in the public sphere. Much educational research has focused on how to make life better for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper moves sideways from this concern to explore how public discourses around trans* lives and the individual labour of bodies are changing the shape of gender in schools and society. Ireland offers an insightful site for this inquiry because, following the Gender Recognition Act (2015) and the Marriage Equality Act (2015), trans* lives have become more visible in the public sphere and there has been a heightened concern for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper draws on an analysis of how trans* people are represented in the media as well as in a selection of accounts from the primary school community of a trans* child. Framed by debates about gender intelligibility, normativity and transgression, the paper elucidates how, as trans* visibility increases, the disciplinary terms of gender are reproduced with ambivalent effects. It argues against individualised and simplistic approaches to trans* identities in schools and raises questions about new gender possibilities in schooling contexts.     

Having the balls,having it all? Sport and constructions of undergraduate laddishness

This article investigates the role of sport in framing and communicating hegemonic masculinity among male undergraduates within one British university. The data were collected through questionnaires and one‐to‐one interviews with 24 male students who were asked to consider their relationship with laddish masculinities. The evidence indicates that sport was important in framing hegemonic masculinities within this milieu. While participants recognised the importance of sport in constructing masculinity, they were also critical of sportsmen’s ‘laddish’ practices and attempted to distance themselves from these behaviours. Nevertheless, they remained complicit to the more general attributes of hegemonic masculinity – particularly notions of strength and independence. The article discusses the implications of this finding for how researchers might conceptualise hegemonic masculinity, and offers a suggestion on how they might harness these attributes to challenge the more negative practices associated with manhood.     

Gender Identity in a Second Language: The Use of First Person Pronouns by Male Learners of Japanese

This is a qualitative sociocultural study examining how five advanced-level learners of Japanese from the United States use gendered first person pronouns to negotiate their identities. Japanese does not have a ubiquitous pronoun such as English I. Instead, the language contains forms that are marked for formality and gender, including watashi (formal/feminine), ore (informal/masculine) and boku (neutral/boyish). We collected recordings of the learners speaking with four different native-speaker interlocutors (female friend, male friend, female stranger, male stranger) and conducted retrospective interviews. The analysis shows that these learners were actively involved in choosing pronouns that indexed their identities as men, although these masculine identities were not always ratified by their Japanese interlocutors. One reason for this was that the male identities expressed by the learners were at times closer to American than to Japanese masculinities. Learners also used pronouns as a resource to index their identities as proficient speakers of Japanese.     

Tomboys and girly-girls: embodied femininities in primary schools

This paper is about how 9–11-year-old children, particularly girls, co-construct tomboy and girly-girl identities as oppositional positions. The paper sits within a theoretical framework in which I understand individual and collective masculinities and femininities as ways of ‘doing man/woman’ or ‘doing boy/girl’ that are constructed within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice. Empirical data come from a one-year study of tomboy identities within two London primary schools. The paper explores the contrasting identities of tomboy and girly-girl, how they are constructed by the children, and how this changes as they approach puberty. The findings suggest that the oppositional construction of these identities makes it harder for girls to take up more flexible femininities, though it is possible to switch between tomboy and girly-girl identities at different times and places.     

High Impact of [Whiteness] on Trans* Students in Postsecondary Education

This article asserts whiteness as an ideology that reaches beyond race/racism to shape and reproduce other interlocking oppressive systems. In higher education, this notion of whiteness permeates commonly celebrated “high impact practices” (HIPs) to undermine the success of trans* students in US postsecondary education. Through an intersectional approach, we illustrate how HIPs lead to jeopardizing trans* students’ success in higher education and advance a different approach that we have coined “trickle up high impact practices” (TUHIPs). TUHIPs prioritize the needs of those students who are most vulnerable and incorporate an acknowledgement of the oppressive contexts within which students with multiple minoritized identities must navigate higher education. We discuss the implications of this approach and offer five recommendations to move higher education institutions toward policies, practices, and systems that support the college success of trans* students.     

White Western male teachers constructing academic identities in Japanese higher education

In research on gender and teaching in higher education, the experiences of male teachers as men, and of whiteness in a non-majority-white context have received little attention. As one step towards addressing this gap in the literature, this paper analyses interview accounts of white Western men working as English language teachers in Japanese higher education. The paper demonstrates, first, ways in which disembodied academic identities are constructed by erasing the men's racialised gender and sexuality. Second, it shows how favourable images of white Western male teachers are produced through a series of negative contrasts based on gender and race. Third, it suggests that men's homosocial networks may serve to facilitate male predominance in the Japanese university system. The analysis contributes to current understandings about the construction of white Western masculinities in academic institutions, in international education, and in English language teaching as a globalised industry.     

Men and Masculinities in Europe

gender, masculinities, and masculinity construction have been remaining a focus for research. In this article it will explain the understanding of gender and doing gender; display different types of masculinities; illustrate the masculinity construction in the area of bodies, sports and health; and discuss the reasons, challenges and ways to face the masculinities and gender inequality.     

Community support programme: support for Chinese trans* students experiencing genderism

Abstract

Previous research on school experiences has often focused on lesbian and gay students. Far fewer studies have examined trans* students’ experiences, especially with respect to community support. And none of this work has addressed relevant issues in an East Asian Chinese cultural context, where transgender equality has been a hotly debated issue in recent years, and prejudice towards members of this ‘invisible’ population still persists. This paper highlights the school experiences of trans* students based on a literature review of international, regional and Hong Kong publications. A case study analysis of one Hong Kong community support programme is used as an example to highlight the important role that this kind of work can play in filling a gap left by the formal education sector. Findings suggest that, given the influence of genderism and deficiencies of in school environments, community support services provided by non-government organisations can play a significant role not only in raising public awareness, but also in filling education and service gaps for sexual and gender minority students.     

Hallway Fears and High School Friendships: The complications of young men (re)negotiating heterosexualized identities

Drawing on a larger ethnographic study of four high school young men, this paper foregrounds high school male–male friendships as a context for examining how heterosexism and homophobia operate to limit and delimit the ways masculinities are constructed. I begin this article by first highlighting an inconsistency between recent school initiatives aimed at “helping boys” improve literacy scores and emerging safe school initiatives that recognize and support a diversity of gender identities in Canadian schools. I move from this point to illustrate how compulsory heterosexuality emerges when high school young men attempt to develop male–male friendships. The final section describes the fear and homophobia that restrict and confine relationships among high school young men. In the light of the complex ways masculinities are negotiated among and between young men invested in friendship practices that transgress a dominant normative masculinity, the article concludes with a call to develop and ensure safe spaces exist for all students.     

Irish medical student culture and the performance of masculinity,c.1880–1930

In recent years, there have been valuable studies of medical education that have highlighted the importance of shared educational activities and the changing image of the student. Less attention has been paid to how masculine ideals were passed on to students and how educational and extra-curricular spheres became sites for the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity. Taking Irish medical schools as a case study and drawing on the student press, doctors’ memoirs and novels, this article will illustrate how rites of passage in medical education and social activities such as pranks and rugby became imbued with masculine tropes. In this way, the transformation of student to practitioner was often symbolised as the transformation of boy to man. The cultivation of the image of the medical student as a predominantly male individual became an important force in segregating men and women students and helped to preserve Irish medicine as a largely masculine sphere.     

Reinforcing hegemonic masculinities through sexual harassment: issues of identity,power and popularity in secondary schools

This paper, based on the perspectives of young men, explores the relationship between dominant constructions of masculinities and the sexual harassment of young women in Australian secondary schools, within a feminist poststructuralist theoretical framework. Of particular importance in this process are the ways in which sexual harassment is integral to the construction of hegemonic heterosexual masculine identities; the importance of popularity, acceptance and young men's fears within male peer group cultures; and the utilization of sexual harassment as a means through which to maintain and regulate hierarchical power relationships, not just in relation to gender, but how it intersects with other sites of power such as ‘race’ and class. It is highlighted that sexual harassment is considered a legitimate and expected means through which to express and reconfirm the public and private positions of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ within a heterosexualized, racialized and classed gender order.     

‘They won't take you as a man,as a real man’ why men can't teach young children in foundation phase

This article focuses on how male and female primary school teachers’ account of the suitability of male teachers in early years or Foundation Phase (FP) of schooling. We draw from an in-depth qualitative interview-based study to examine how ideals around hegemonic masculinity have effects for the characterization of FP within traditional feminine qualities such as nurturing and caring for children. These qualities contrasted with hegemonic masculinity and fuelled the disassociation between men and teaching young children. We found that whilst men had the responsibility to provide financially for children, their involvement in childcare duties was linked to low-status work gendering the construction of carework as women’s work. The shame and embarrassment associated with teaching young children were an important mechanism to police and regulate hegemonic masculinity. Analysing how male and female primary school teachers construct hegemonic forms of masculinity provides insights into the reproduction of FP as a feminised profession as well as the construction and maintenance of counter feminist masculine ideals. Addressing forms of masculinity that are premised on male domination is vital in South Africa, especially as the need to alter masculinities and deepen gender equality has barely touched this phase of schooling.     

“It’s like Taking Your Man Card Away”: Male Victims’ Narratives of Male-to-Male Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is a serious organizational problem. Despite the burgeoning of research over the past 30 years, there has been less attention provided to male victim voices. The current study qualitatively explores the experiences of two male victims of sexual harassment who were harassed by male perpetrators. The study explores the interplay of uncertainties, threats, and negotiation of masculine, heterosexual identities. We also highlight the differences and similarities between the men’s communication practices during what we call the build up, the realization, and others’ responses to the men’s narratives. Theoretical implications are offered for hegemonic masculinity and liminality in relation to the experiences of male victims.