Gender Nonconforming Research Articles

… Trans … Forming … M/othering …

Finding inspiration in embodied life writing methodologies, the essay explores the fraught slow intimacies of mothering a trans child, now a young adult. The essay engages an experiential familial, in the sense of ‘family’ relations, but in seeking to process the uneasy forms of m/othering through trans allyship, the paper turns to a range of intellectual repertoires, both old familiars and newer strangers, hoping to shape ways of responding that re-home family gender troubles within wider communities of scholarly and creative thought, and reading. Wanting comfort in ideas, the author grapples and drifts, trying deliberately to open her heartmind to unbecoming methods and messy, queerying adjacencies that elude polarities, even push me aside, and admit to never completely representing the subject. Alongside conflicted negations/negotiations of mastery, then, the essay tries muted moves into intimate geographies of mutter, martyr, mater, matter, meta, all in a lived struggle ‘to look for a way out of the usual traps and impasses of binary formulations’ (Halberstam, 2011: 2) in search of deliberately fugitive, blurred intimations that place m/othering in difficult, witnessing relation with a transmasculine life lived at assertive gender variance.

Childhood Gender Nonconformity and Parental Maltreatment as Mediators of Sexual Orientation Disparities in Childhood Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties.

The mechanisms underlying sexual orientation differences in psychopathology originating in childhood remain understudied since sexual orientation does not directly manifest in childhood. This study tested whether childhood gender nonconformity and parental maltreatment before age 6years 9months partly explained sexual orientation disparities in the developmental trajectories of emotional and behavioral difficulties from age 6years 9months to 11years 8months. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children was used (2182 boys and 2422 girls, Mage = 15.5, 90% White). After controlling for early life factors, non-heterosexual boys and girls displayed significantly greater emotional and behavioral difficulties than their heterosexual counterparts at all three ages. There was a sex difference in the mediating effects. For girls, sexual orientation disparities in childhood emotional and behavioral difficulties were partially explained by childhood gender nonconformity. For boys, sexual orientation disparities in childhood emotional and behavioral difficulties were partially explained by a path through greater childhood gender nonconformity, leading to increased risk of being the targets of parental maltreatment. Childhood gender nonconformity, parental maltreatment, and other early life factors only partially explain sexual orientation disparities in childhood emotional and behavioral difficulties. The mediating effects of childhood gender nonconformity and parental maltreatment on the association between sexual orientation and childhood emotional and behavioral difficulties differ between the sexes.

Introduction: the appeal of the Amazons

The fearless ancient Amazons have been seen as forebears and prototypes by lesbians, feminists, and transgender men. In this introduction, I will explore why the Greek legends of the Amazons lend themselves to such interpretation. Ancient Greek literature details how the Amazons challenged patriarchy, lived without men, and defeated their male enemies, thus setting a precedent that would later be emulated by feminists and lesbians. Though the Amazons are clearly designated as women they are also identified with men in ancient Greek lore; in ancient Greek vase painting, they wear masculine outfits and engage in masculine habits, including fighting and hunting. Thus I will examine the Amazons’ gender transgression in ancient Greek contexts in order to understand how and why these myths set the stage for the adoption of the Amazons as role models by later generations of gender nonconformists. I will also briefly examine the history behind those myths, a history which is just as important to lesbian and other queer communities as the myths which it spawned. Finally, I will weave my analysis of the ancient Greek ideology of Amazons with innovative, new research on the reception of the Amazons found in the six other articles that make up this special edition. These essays explore the powerful place of Amazons and Amazon-like women in the imaginaries of peoples ranging from the ancient Romans to modern lesbian feminists, and the importance of historical and legendary warrior women who defied patriarchy and colonialism in locales ranging from the West to Africa to India.

Trans Times: Que(e)rying Normative Logics of Temporality, Gender, and Sexuality in Virginia Woolf's <em>Orlando</em>

Prefiguring contemporary inquiries into queer and trans temporality, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography explores temporal politics of sexual and gendered identity amidst socio-historical developments in modernism. In her critique of prevailing nineteenth-century presumptions about human experience and related biologically determined, chronologically structured lifetimes, Woolf creates an untimely, gender-variant character resistant to normative order. To conceptualize Orlando’s non-normative temporality and gender identifications, this article draws from the threefold framework developed in Fisher, Phillips, and Katri’s (2017) research on trans temporalities: ‘the construction, deconstruction, and resistant reconstruction of trans subjects’. Spanning from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, Orlando’s queer reality serves as dual resistance to norms of both time and gender; a confluence of constructed male past and deconstructed present as trans woman substantiates the gender variance and future reconstructions of the trans self within what this article introduces as a continuum. In consideration of modernist interactions with time and genderqueer life along with current theorizations of queer and trans temporalities, this article seeks to argue how the trans self modeled by Woolf emerges as asynchronous and ever-evolving. This article then offers, in the vein of Orlando’s transgender subjectivity, an exemplification of the potential to resist and subvert hetero- and chrononormativity in introducing alternative modes of lived reality that endorse unscheduled lifetimes and divergent relations to time, gender, and sexuality.

Caring for the Older Transgender Adults: Social, Nursing, and Medical Challenges.

Aging is a challenging process for people with gender nonconformity. Indeed, the older transgender population faces several disparities in accessing and using health care and social support services. Furthermore, the clinical management of gender transition in later life is empirical since clear research evidence is lacking. This paper aimed to present the problems encountered by older transgender adults in their access to social support and health care and to propose insightful solutions to address them both from a social and medical/nursing perspective. Trans elders face profound disparities in health and social care due to factors associated with limited accessibility to health services, social restrictions, administrative failures, and physical vulnerabilities. The medical treatment of older transgender adults also needs a careful approach to achieve satisfying gender affirmation without clinically significant risks. The potential induction of hormone-sensitive malignancies and the provocation of major adverse vascular events are the main concerns. Gender transition in older adults without a prior history of following gender-affirming therapy is challenging due to biological factors related to advanced age. Caring for elderly trans people unfolds at multiple levels. International organizations and governmental bodies should address the underprivileged status of elderly transgender people by creating and implementing inclusive policies. Safe and respectful clinical and residential environments and the formation of clearer medical guidelines could meet the unique needs of older trans adults. Care providers must advocate for their patients and be equipped to provide safe and effective services.

Home as survival: Seeing Queer archival lives

As a teenager in the eighties, French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz scoured flea markets for amateur photographs. In 2013, he assembled a book titled The Invisibles comprised of snapshots depicting queer lives. He included a pair of Kodachrome images, which replicate a near-identical domestic scene in the 1960s: two aging women in their bourgeois home sit at a table, embracing as they look at the camera. Taking as a point of departure these personal photographs, this article focuses on two documentaries that queer postwar domesticity: Lifshitz’s The Invisibles (2011) and Magnus Gertten’s Nelly and Nadine (2022). In his film, Lifshitz not only includes postwar snapshots and home movies, but also reinvents the amateur dispositif. He interviews queer aging men and women inside their homes, challenging social exclusion and stigma based on gender nonconformity and aging. In Nelly and Nadine, a sexagenarian named Sylvie retrieves home movies from her attic that uncover a lesbian love story between her grandmother Nelly and a fellow survivor of Ravensbrück named Nadine. Decades later, the centrality of the domestic space and the amateur archive in these two documentaries offers a lesson in seeing the home as survival and unlearning the master narratives of the postwar era.

"My Dear Children": Gender Variance, Parenthood, and Deborah Sampson's Post-Revolutionary Work

Abstract: Departing from the lively scholarly conversation around Deborah Sampson's gender and sexual nonconformity during the period of their enlistment, this article asks the reader to consider the important role that parenting played in Sampson's later life. Such a consideration reveals the complex gendered negotiations, especially regarding biological reproduction, that Sampson attempted both as the subject of Herman Mann's work and a chronicler of their own experience. Attending to later texts, such as an Addrss [sic] Delivered with Applause (1802) and Sampson's own diary of 1802–3 broadens the possibilities for how we can think about historical gender-nonconforming subjects and the difficulties they might have experienced in representing parenthood in public-facing documents in early America. The article argues that Sampson leveraged their gender nonconformity to provide financially for their family in ways typically foreclosed to gender-conforming middle-class women.

Pretty Young Gentleman: Margery Pinchwife's Queer Embodiment in The Country Wife

Abstract: Margery Pinchwife's cross-dressed appearance at the New Exchange in the third act of The Country Wife serves as a crucial turning point for the play's titular character, exposing her to queer pleasures and possibilities. By considering her within the context of the career and reputation of Elizabeth Boutell, who originated the role in 1675, and the ways in which breeches roles were constructed on the Restoration stage, Wycherley's naïve heroine proves to be a model of genderqueer embodiment, even as she is used as a pawn in the games of male homosociality that drive many queer readings of the play. A careful examination of the gender collages that Margery produces over the course of the play highlights her genderqueer potential, running counter to the commonly held view of her as little more than the silly, sheltered wife of a jealous and abusive husband. Rather, Margery stretches the boundaries of gender-sexuality despite the patriarchal hierarchies that try to contain her, illustrating the potential agency granted by gender non-conformity.

Religion and Intimacy

Michel Foucault has famously argued that, since the counter-Reformation, the modern West has been preoccupied with extracting truth from sex, above all, the truth about power and the human subject. Africa has long been waging its own battles over the politics of gender, sexuality, personhood, and power, a conflict in which religion has played a pivotal role, abetting and sometimes challenging established modes of governance. In recent times, this relationship has become ever more agonistic. In many parts of the continent, religious authorities have mounted puritanical crusades against nonconforming gender and sexual practices. But faith has also been mobilized to offer refuge to the persecuted. How might these issues of identity, exile, and redemption speak to more general transformations in the nature of religious life in the current moment, in Africa and beyond?

Gender, race, and life writing in the ethnography of Ruth Landes in Bahia

American anthropologist Ruth Landes (1908-1991) conducted ethnographic fieldwork in candomblé centers, terreiros, in Salvador, Bahia, in 1938-1939. In her book City of Women (1947) and journal articles she recorded her observations on matrifocality and gender variance and portrayed Afro-Brazilian culture as dynamic and innovative. This article examines how Landes’s theory of culture, methods of fieldwork, and personal writing style went against the grain of the approaches taken by leading scholars at the time who treated Afro-Brazilian culture in terms of race-based psychological characteristics and “African survivals” and harshly critiqued her work.

Making Gender Crises: State Newspapers and the Regulation of Gender Nonconformity in China

Abstract Media coverage about transgender and gender nonconforming people both maintains and influences normative ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality. However, how state propaganda apparatus reifies these ideas through media and contributes to gender regulations remains underexplored, especially for state-dominated media systems. To bridge this gap, this article examines the media framing of gender nonconformity in China through a content analysis of 154 state-run newspaper articles from 1980 to 2021. Our analysis reveals that state newspapers introduce gender nonconformity into the purview of governance through two processes: 1) By pushing medicalized and socialization explanations for gender nonconformity, state newspapers consolidated two categories of gender nonconformity—intersex/transgender people and gender nonconforming youth. 2) State newspapers have developed two “gender crisis” frames that positioned the management of gender nonconformity at the heart of state governance and national development. Through this, gender nonconformity becomes legible for state institutions in criminal justice, medicine, marriage, education, and media. The findings contribute to the literature on media maintenance of the sex/gender/sexuality system by demonstrating the productive power of state-run media in shaping knowledge, discourse, and the regulation of gender nonconformity.

Polish adaptation of the Gender Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire for Adolescents and Adults (GIDYQ-AA-PL)

Introduction and objective: The aim of the study was to develop a tool to measure the level of gender dysphoria in adolescents and adults, as well as to assess its psychometric properties. Materials and methods: The study attempted a Polish adaptation of the questionnaire to assess dysphoria and gender identification in adolescents and adults (Gender Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire for Adolescents and Adults, GIDYQ-AA). It involved 1,780 respondents aged 11 to 73 years, diverse in terms of sex assigned at birth and gender identity. The questionnaire used in the adaptation study consisted of three parts: statistical data, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the GIDYQ-AA questionnaire translated into Polish. Results: The analysis showed that the structure of the tool is single-factor. Items 4 and 13 of the original tool were removed from the Polish version due to poor correlation with the scale and low factor loadings of these items. The structure equivalence analysis showed that developing general standards could lead to flattening of conclusions from individual measurements. It was decided to create norms taking into account sex and age. The obtained tool has a reliability of 0.97 CR and good validity measured as the correlation coefficient between the level of dysphoria and the level of anxiety, depression and irritability. Conclusions: The adaptation and analysis gave rise to a 25-item tool with high reliability and validity. Unlike the original tool, in-depth statistical analyses allowed for the creation of detailed dysphoria norms for age and sex assigned at birth. The presented questionnaire is a valuable contribution to the system of Polish standards for diagnosing people struggling with gender nonconformity.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Sexual Orientation: Moderation by Childhood Gender Nonconformity and Early-Life Adversity

Existing evidence indicates genetic and non-genetic influences on sexual orientation; however, the possibility of gene-environment interplay has not been previously formally tested despite theories indicating this. Using a Finnish twin cohort, this study investigated whether childhood gender nonconformity and early-life adversities independently moderated individual differences in sexual orientation and childhood gender nonconformity, the relationship between them, and the etiological bases of the proposed moderation effects. Sexual orientation, childhood gender nonconformity, and early-life adversities were assessed using standard questionnaires. Structural equation twin model fitting was carried out using OpenMx. Childhood gender nonconformity was significantly associated with reduced phenotypic variance in sexual orientation (β = − 0.14, 95% CI − 0.27, − 0.01). A breakdown of the underlying influences of this moderation effect showed that this was mostly due to moderation of individual-specific environmental influences which significantly decreased as childhood gender nonconformity increased (βE = − 0.38; 95% CI − 0.52, − 0.001) while additive genetic influences were not significantly moderated (βA = 0.05; 95% CI − 0.30, 0.27). We also observed that the relationship between sexual orientation and childhood gender nonconformity was stronger at higher levels of childhood gender nonconformity (β = 0.10, 95% CI 0.05, 0.14); however, significance of the underlying genetic and environmental influences on this relationship could not be established in this sample. The findings indicate that beyond a correlation of their genetic and individual-specific environmental influences, childhood gender nonconformity is further significantly associated with reduced individual-specific influences on sexual orientation.

Assessing Admiration for Women Who Do “Men’s Work”

Abstract Drawing on interviews and focus groups from Conakry, the capital city of the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, this article examines how people talk about women working in male-dominated skilled trades alongside women’s accounts of their work experiences in those sectors. We find that the idea of women doing gender atypical work, whom we call “crossovers,” evokes widespread admiration. They are unanimously described as brave and virtuous, contrasted with women who rely on money from relationships with men. However, this celebration falters in the workplace, where crossovers often experience paternalism and harassment. Building on theories of both gender beliefs and femininities, we attribute this discrepancy to the differential threats to the gender order that are posed by accommodating crossovers at work versus speaking positively about them. Working together requires men to confront actual women’s unexpected capabilities, while rhetorically celebrating crossovers may in fact reify stereotypes about most women and fail to fundamentally undermine men’s authority. Crossovers can serve as sources of inspiration for an alternative gender order, but we find that professed admiration for “exceptional” groups of women has both limitations and risks. We conclude by suggesting that the subversive potential of admiration for gender atypical behavior must be empirically examined, rather than assumed, with attention to why such women are seen as admirable as well as how this admiration is borne out in social interactions.

Reading Border through Desire: Queer Indigenous Theory, Nordic Settler Colonialism, and Trans Aesthetics

Abstract This article examines the Swedish fantasy-horror-romance film Gräns (Border, dir. Ali Abbasi, 2018) through queer Indigenous thought and the notion of trans aesthetics, exploring how the film may sensitize its viewers to seeing and feeling with gender variance, queer desire, and the trauma of settler colonialism. Drawing on Eve Tuck's call for desire-based research, the article asks what is at stake in queer, trans, and decolonial readings of films that are not necessarily identifiable as such at the surface level. Border centers on a love story between two gender-fluid trolls who pass as human and whose kin have been subjected to genocide, dislocation, and mutilation, but the film's reception largely misses the connection to the treatment of Indigenous Sámi people and transgender people within Nordic settler states. The article argues that Border's ecstatic depiction of gender-fluid desires, bodies, and sex, alongside its examination of the psychic consequences of settler colonial violence, make it a thus far unique film in the Nordic context — even though this examination happens through the distancing effect of trolls as metaphorical Natives. The main characters embody wrongness in the settler nation-state, in heteronormative society, and ultimately in the delimiting category of the human, but the film imagines rightness in nature as a queer, gender-fluid space where all creatures can just be. Through employing notions of trans aesthetics, the (non)sovereign erotic, refusal, and haunting, the article proposes desire-based readings of cinema that envision ways of feeling and existing beyond humancentric, settler, binary notions of gender and sexuality.

Gender nonconformity and rejection sensitivity among sexual minority youth: Examining rejection as an underlying mechanism and differences by sex and age.

Gender nonconformity and rejection sensitivity among sexual minority youth: Examining rejection as an underlying mechanism and differences by sex and age.

Supplemental Material for Gender Nonconformity and Rejection Sensitivity Among Sexual Minority Youth: Examining Rejection as an Underlying Mechanism and Differences by Sex and Age

Supplemental Material for Gender Nonconformity and Rejection Sensitivity Among Sexual Minority Youth: Examining Rejection as an Underlying Mechanism and Differences by Sex and Age

The Interplay of Strength and Content of Women's Gender Identity, Ambivalent Sexism Targeted at Men, and Attitudes Toward Gender Role Subtypes.

In this on-line study of adult women (N = 145), we performed a series of moderation analyses, including women's self-reported gender in-group identification as moderator, their traditional/progressive identity contents as predictors, ambivalent sexism targeted at men and attitudes toward male and female conforming and non-conforming gender roles as outcome variables. We found that both traditional and progressive identity contents were significant predictors of benevolent sexism but did not predict hostile sexism toward men. Moreover, traditional identity contents predicted more negative evaluations of both male and female gender non-conforming roles, while progressive identity contents predicted more positive evaluations of both male and female gender non-conforming roles. The results have also indicated that the less a woman identifies with her gender in-group while having highly traditional identity contents, the lower she evaluates gender non-conforming roles of other women. The present study adds to the existing research on the links between women's gender identity and perceptions of the opposite sex, as well as their evaluations of various gender roles of men and women.

The gender variance scale: developing and piloting a new tool for measuring gender diversity in survey research

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the development and testing of a new composite scale for measuring gender diversity, for use in survey research and statistical analysis: the Gender Variance Scale (GVS). The GVS measures gender diversity on a spectrum and can be used across both cisgender and trans populations to identify experiences of gender beyond a basic male/female sex binary. The GVS was piloted with a sample of 1,776 adolescents and young people ages 14–24 years, in the context of a broader study exploring the relationships between gender variance, young people’s experiences and wellbeing. Analysis of data indicated that the GVS contained both face and construct validity and reliability in the context of the pilot study. In addition, the data revealed some interesting associations between the GVS and other demographic features of the sample of youth surveyed; for example, higher levels of gender variance were associated with being lesbian, gay or bisexual and having a disability. The findings of this study may be of interest for building a stronger empirical understanding of gender diversity and its intersections with other aspects of identity.

Above the heteronormative narrative: looking up the place of Disney’s villains

Abstract The article proposes a re-examination of the role and position of the so-called “Disney villains” within the narrative framework of animated films and popular culture as a whole. In the first part, the historical evolution in the representation of these villains will be explored according to the practice of “queer coding,” which involves attributing stereotypically queer traits to them without explicitly stating their gender and sexual identity. It will be observed how their non-conforming gender and sexuality, used to mark their moral deviance, challenge and defy dominant gender and narrative norms. It is precisely through their queer performance and camp aesthetic that “evil stepmothers,” “sissy-villains,” and “drag-queen-like” sea witches can emancipate themselves from their traditional roles as antagonists (narrative level) and as social outcasts (discursive level) to seize the spotlight through the screen (manifest surface). This study combines tools of Greimasian text analysis, including the canonical narrative schema and the generative trajectory of meaning, with Lotman’s theory and notion of “semiosphere,” to investigate the centrality and criticality of these “quillains” within the heteronormative narrative framework and the broader cultural context. To capture (or being captured by) the queer aspect of these characters and their stories, the invitation is to look at their visage not as a coded symbol of an underlying identity and truth, but as an image that exceeds any defined meaning thanks to its iconic power.