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1 – 10 of over 8000Purpose: To consider the extent to which the legal recognition of non-binary gender has the potential to disrupt the gender binary.Methodology/Approach: This chapter will employ…
Abstract
Purpose: To consider the extent to which the legal recognition of non-binary gender has the potential to disrupt the gender binary.
Methodology/Approach: This chapter will employ case study as method, focusing on recent changes to Australian law and policy, which introduce a third gender category. I rely on the work of queer theorists on normativity and recognition as a theoretical framework and on the work of social scientists on transgender people as evidence.
Findings: This chapter finds that while there is much to be celebrated about increasing alternatives to the dominant categories of male and female, the legal recognition of non-binary gender may in fact serve to conceptually purge the dominant gender categories of non-conforming elements while simultaneously masking the ways in which institutions of regulatory power continue to demand conformity with normative standards of gender.
Research Limitations: Since few non-binary individuals in Australia have adopted the X marker the implications laid out in this paper are speculative. The experiences of non-binary individuals present an important avenue for further research.
Practical Implications: I recommend, as an alternative to further gender classifications, that we should seek to minimize the degree to which membership of a particular gender category is used to distribute rights and privileges.
Originality/Value of Paper: This chapter advances the literature on non-binary gender, contributes to existing queer and feminist analyses of the gender binary and extends work on normativity to legal recognition of alternative genders.
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C. L. Quinan and Dagmar Oosthoek
Over the past decade, legal recognition of trans, non-binary, and intersex individuals has occurred in a number of countries with diverse relationships to gender categorization…
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Over the past decade, legal recognition of trans, non-binary, and intersex individuals has occurred in a number of countries with diverse relationships to gender categorization and (settler) colonialism. This attention to trans and non-binary rights has translated into the addition of a third option for declaring gender: X. Heralded by some as a sign of progress and recognition of non-binary individuals by the state, the development of the X marker may also be interpreted as facilitating state regulation of gender-diverse individuals. Drawing on scholarship in trans studies and legal studies, this chapter critically examines the X marker as an intervention that works within and simultaneously resists state recognition of non-binary identities. By analyzing data gathered through semi-structured interviews with trans, non-binary, and genderqueer individuals who have obtained – or are in the process of electing – an X marker in legal documents, this chapter critically explores the tensions and complexities of the X and mobilizes the concept of opacity to demonstrate how individuals graft their own meanings onto this non-binary marker. While acknowledging the problematic use of identification documents as biopolitical instruments, this chapter asks if we can nonetheless use them as tools of resistance and radical self-determination to transgress the controlling power of the state.
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This study builds on existing research to explore how transgender and non-binary people navigate complex terrain when it comes to strained and ambiguous relationships with…
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This study builds on existing research to explore how transgender and non-binary people navigate complex terrain when it comes to strained and ambiguous relationships with families of origin. This chapter draws on 23 in-depth interviews with trans and non-binary adults (ages 19–41) to examine the ways that respondents navigated ambiguous and complex family relationships marked by mixed messages and contradictory behaviors from parents regarding their sexual and gender identities. I find that respondents engage in a range of strategies – correcting, conforming, and concealing – to bargain for belonging within families of origin through their work to preserve family ties. Beyond experiencing the emotional costs of ambiguous parental support, I find that some respondents also experience financial strain and inadequate housing, stemming from unstable, distressing relationships with their parents. This chapter demonstrates that ambiguous support from family and complex familial relationships may contribute to a cycle of precarity for trans and non-binary adults. Finally, I show that for respondents, connections to local queer and trans communities and supportive partnerships buffered the negative impacts of familial ambiguity. However, not all respondents had access to community support, intensifying their experiences of marginalization. This chapter contributes to the literature working to destabilize the support versus rejection binary used to characterize LGBTQ experiences and has implications for better understanding the pathways into poverty that trans and non-binary people experience.
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Gender-diverse people experience unique cultural and interpersonal stigma in mainstream society and sometimes within their own communities; they face allegations of inauthenticity…
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Gender-diverse people experience unique cultural and interpersonal stigma in mainstream society and sometimes within their own communities; they face allegations of inauthenticity based on their nonconformity to either cisnormative or transnormative gender regimes. Based on 21 in-depth life history interviews, we unveil the intricate interactional process of negotiating identity and authenticity in the biographical work of gender-diverse individuals. In this study, gender-diverse people engaged in a “gender audit” with their gender-diverse interviewer. Gender audits yield verbal performances of gender with oneself and others. Ambiguity was “accounted for” or “embraced and created” in their biographical work to organize their life stories and undermine binary essentialism – a discourse that was “discursively constraining.” Gender audits took place in participants' day-to-day lives, either through self-audits, questioning from others, or both. In the final analysis, we assert that we all engage in gender auditing. Gender audits are intersubjective sites of domination, subordination, resistance, and social change. Gender diversity, then, can be viewed as a product of gender in flux.
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Marcia Texler Segal and Vasilikie Demos
Purpose/approach: This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.Research implications: The chapters in this volume present original research…
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Purpose/approach: This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.
Research implications: The chapters in this volume present original research employing empirical and textual methods illustrating the complex responses and policy challenges posed by contemporary understandings and misunderstandings of the nature of gender. Various forms of gender panic and responses to it within individuals, institutions, national states, and the world society are explored.
Practical and social implications: Research demonstrates that gender panic can lead to potentially harmful reactions and fruitless policies that reinforce rather than dismantle the gender binary, thereby, impacting vulnerable members of societies.
Value of the chapter: The chapter and the volume are intended to illustrate the nature of current gender panics and related policies and to encourage further scholarship with the goal of promoting greater understanding as well as developing constructive solutions to issues raised.
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Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This…
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Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This trend reflects the reality that younger generations are increasingly identifying with more fluid and nonbinary gender and sexual identities and are progressively expressing those identities in a more flexible and changing manner (Herman et al., 2022; Wilson & Meyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly then, those individuals are also more visible at work, including in workplaces with employer-mandated dress codes. Indeed, in 2020 the US Supreme Court decided a case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who was fired because her employer, a funeral home, required her to conform to its gender-binary dress policy and wear clothing mandatory for people assigned male at birth, rather than appropriate for her female gender identity ( Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).
However, as the description of Aimee Stephens's own experience illustrates, often these employer appearance codes are based on a binary and fixed conception of gender and gender identity and expression at odds with the increasing number of workers who do not identify within those rigid parameters. Moreover, even when an employee, like Aimee Stephens herself, could have fit within her employer's dress code, the improper application of that policy to her, or employer concerns about customer or co-worker discomfort with an employee's appearance under the policy may mean that a worker's identity and expression may still conflict with a workplace appearance code. For gender nonbinary or nonconforming individuals, these complications are magnified.
This chapter explores the practical problems and barriers that employer dress codes have on employees whose gender identity and/or presentation move beyond the traditional male/female binary. Using insights from queer theory, gender expansive employees serve to interrogate fundamental assumptions behind workplace dress policies and the formal and informal ways in which these policies are policed. The chapter will explore that discordance, examine possible employer resolutions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those responses.
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This paper aims to challenge the cisnormative and binary assumptions that underpin the management and gender scholarship. Introducing and contextualising the contributions that…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to challenge the cisnormative and binary assumptions that underpin the management and gender scholarship. Introducing and contextualising the contributions that comprise this special issue, this paper critically reflects on some of the principal developments in management research on trans* and intersex people in the workplace and anticipates what future scholarship in this area might entail.
Design/methodology/approach
A critical approach is adopted to interrogate the prevailing cisnormative and binary approach adopted by management and gender scholars.
Findings
The key finding is the persistence of cisnormativity and normative gender and sex binarism in academic knowledge production and in society more widely, which appear to have hindered how management and gender scholars have routinely failed to conceptualise and foreground the array of diverse genders and sexes.
Originality/value
This paper foregrounds the workplace experiences of trans* and intersex people, which have been neglected by management researchers. By positioning intersexuality as an important topic of management research, this paper breaks the silence that has enwrapped intersex issues in gender and management scholarship. There are still unanswered questions and issues that demand future research from academics who are interested in addressing cisnormativity in the workplace and problematising the sex and gender binaries that sustain it.
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The current study examines the strategies that nonbinary people use to communicate their gender identities across contexts, including an exploration of how they modify their gender…
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The current study examines the strategies that nonbinary people use to communicate their gender identities across contexts, including an exploration of how they modify their gender presentations in response to situations perceived as risky or unsafe. Data were drawn from interviews with 19 nonbinary people, and a modified grounded theory approach was used to identify prevalent or recurring elements in the data. Nonbinary people struggled to communicate their genders to others and felt constrained by the knowledge that others would inevitably interpret their gender presentations within the context of a strict binary. Moreover, they often felt pressure to enact normative, binary presentations in order to feel safer or less visibly gender-nonconforming, particularly in contexts in which social norms were experienced as heightened, such as when engaging with institutions or navigating public spaces such as restrooms or transit systems. This study contributes to the limited literature on nonbinary identities and highlights how dominant transnormative narratives constrain presentation and communication.
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In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread…
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In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread anti-trans policies at various societal levels, legislations and regulations are being pushed to limit or eliminate transgender athletes from competing in all levels of sports. However, little scholarship has considered the implications of the presence of nonbinary athletes, those who identify outside the spectrum of man and woman, beyond the conversation of a ‘third gender’ category in sport. In this chapter, I seek to examine how nonbinary athletes embody disobedience by challenging the binary categorization of sex-gender within professional sports. I explore the racialized embodiment of sex and gender in professional women's sports, specifically WNBA player Layshia Clarendon. I explore how disobedience is employed to incite resistance against the narrow sex-gender categories that are forced upon athletes. Finally, I argue that embodied disobedience provides a key pathway for nonbinary athletes to undermine the regulatory nature of sex-gender categorization in sport. Particularly, nonbinary athletes may seek medical and social forms of gender affirmation, while simultaneously embodying disobedience by continuing to actively participate in professional sports categories in which they may not neatly fit.
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Purpose: In this chapter, I critically examine how federal regulation and guidance impact gender policing and transgender inclusion within educational institutions.Approach: I…
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Purpose: In this chapter, I critically examine how federal regulation and guidance impact gender policing and transgender inclusion within educational institutions.
Approach: I utilize feminist critical discourse analysis to examine the “Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students” and its underlying assumptions related to transgender inclusion and gender policing in institutions of education.
Findings: While the federal regulations and guidance currently in place protect some transgender individuals, they also re-stigmatize some transgender individuals by policing the acceptable ways of being transgender and reinforcing the gender binary.
Social Implications: I suggest other areas within the educational institution to address in order to achieve transgender inclusion.
Value of Paper: This chapter critically examines the logistics and effects of federal regulation on gender and transgender inclusion.
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