Cisgender Identity Amid Figured Worlds: Toward a Close Encounter of Being a (Masque) Uline in MPSPC’s Male Dominated Course

Abstract

Education takes on direction and meaning as we try to figure out who we are. So, where do we begin on our new paths to achieving our goals of educating ourselves while maintaining our identities in a school setting? Individual interviews and observations were done throughout the paper to learn how students [personally] identified as “cisgender” male students perceive the Bontoc campus atmosphere at the ROTC UNIT-MPSPC and how that climate in the Criminology Department shapes their experiences. By employing a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach that considers the ways in which sexuality, gender, class, and other identity markers intersect, this study adapted Queer Theory, Gee's (2005) analytic guidelines, and Holland, et al. Figured World Identity (FWI) category that draws particularly from exploring three Bachelor of Science in Criminology male students' constructions of being cisgender that shaped their criminology careers. Rather than viewing identity through a singular lens, the term identity displays how manifold characteristics of one’s identity comes together to form one’s complete (gender) identity, conveying concurrently the mechanisms and the whole.