‘I Can Construct It in My Own Way’: A Critical Qualitative Examination of Gender Self-Categorisation Processes

Abstract

Gender self-categorisation is used to communicate a gender group membership in daily life and is recognised across research as an important facet of an individual’s identity. However, understandings of the psychological processes associated with gender self-categorisation have, historically, been restricted by binary, cisgender assumptions. This study qualitatively examined the processes associated with gender self-categorisation in a sample of transgender (binary and nonbinary, n = 15) individuals alongside a negative case analysis of one cisgender woman. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to construct a map of components which interacted to inform participants’ gender self-categorisation. Participants reported that their self-categorisation was reciprocally informed by their internal sense of gendered self, their gendered attributes and by other people’s perceptions. Further, participants’ knowledge and understanding of gender in the world more broadly provided context for this reciprocal process. The process of gender self-categorisation mapped in this study has important implications for researchers regarding theory and methods, for educators and parents regarding how children might be taught about gender and for clinicians regarding how to talk with clients about gender outside of a diagnostic framework.