Intersections Of Gender Identity Research Articles

Intersectionality as a theoretical-analytical tool to study health inequalities in the AmericasA interseccionalidade como ferramenta teórico-analítica para estudo das desigualdades em saúde nas Américas

Analyze inequalities in self-perceived health among population groups located at the intersections of gender identity, ethnicity, and education level in countries of the Americas, classified by income level. Panel data from the World Values Survey were used for the period 1990-2022. The study sample included 58 790 people between 16 and 65 years of age from 14 countries in the Americas. The dependent variable was poor self-perceived health, and the independent variables were gender, education level, and ethnicity. A multi-categorical variable with 12 strata was created for the intercategorical intersectionality analysis. An analysis of individual heterogeneity and diagnostic accuracy was performed using five logistic regression models, adjusted by age and by survey wave. A clear and persistent intersectional gradient for poor self-perceived health was observed in all country disaggregations by income. Compared to the category with the most advantage (men of majority ethnicity and higher education), the other groups had increased risk of poor health, with the highest risk among women of minority ethnicity and in Indigenous peoples with less than secondary education (three to four times higher). In addition, women had a higher risk of poor health than men in each pair of intersectional strata. The intersectional analysis demonstrated a persistent social gradient of self-perceived ill health in the Americas.

A Critical Dialogue About Emergent Research on TikTok-Based Information Practices around Femme/Feminine and Gender Diverse Youth

Each new emergent technology within the larger landscape of information and communication technologies (ICTs) innovation is met with a combination of awe and paranoia, imagining the advances as simultaneously being liberating and threatening user privacy. While it is easy to hold both concepts as true within most ICT-based contexts, what is overlooked are the inherent presumptions of who uses ICTs and how such practices define social perceptions of any ICT's particular value. TikTok is currently one of the most discussed ICTs. Given a popular imagining of TikTok as having an algorithmic that is hyper-adaptive to any user, the theorizing and studying how one might use the platform in cross-group information practices remains chronically underexplored. Further, given the application's abundance of youth users, such practices become discursively marked as dangerous and inherently negative. Such presumptions belie the actual practices of this particular subset of users. For example, the linguistic practices of queer-identified youth popularized tagging practices microblogging sites like Tumblr (Oakley, 2016) and femme/female teenagers utilize platforms such as YouTube to explore complex narratives around self-esteem related to topics ranging from eating disorders to transitioning (Holmes, 2017; Tortajada et al., 2021). Important in these studies is the inherent counter-discursive practices wielded by femme/feminine and gender diverse youth whose occupation of the online spaces affords them an ability to explore topics in affirmative and communally protective ways. This proposed panel builds on this understanding by highlighting the work of two scholars studying TikTok while simultaneously framing their work in a more extensive consideration of scholarship on the intersections of gender identity, information practices, and ICTs. SIG convenor Dr. Travis Wagner will moderate the panel and contextualize the emergence of TikTok within a more extensive history of ICTs and identify how gender-based identity making in such spaces is imagined to date. This setup will then introduce the research of two doctoral students studying the information practices of gender-diverse youth within ICTs like TikTok. First, Dan Delmonaco will discuss their research on healthcare provider use of TikTok to create and share sexual and reproductive health information amongst gender diverse youth populations. Second, Valerie Lookingbill will explore sociocultural factors shaping users' interactions with stigmatized mental health information on social media platforms. She will specifically examine how femme/female youth navigate TikTok to discuss non-suicidal self-injury in response to algorithmic exclusion. Cognizant that the exploration of counter discursive uses of TikTok cannot ignore the more significant issues of privacy, data ethics, and the intersectional components of identity as shaped by technology, the panel will conclude with a response to the presentations by Dr. Miriam Sweeney. Her work explores identity-making across the landscape of data and technology and centers the role of interface design in identity-making. Sweeney will respond to the themes between Delmonaco and Lookingbill's work and offer insight into broader trends on the horizon of ICT-based information practices research and how it might inform LIS pedagogy and questions of inclusive ICT design.

Socioeconomic status and eating disorder prevalence: at the intersections of gender identity, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity.

Longstanding biases have fostered the erroneous notion that only those of higher socioeconomic status (SES) experience eating disorders (EDs); however, EDs present across all SES strata. Considering the dearth of ED research among those of lower SES, this study examined (1) the overall association between SES and ED prevalence, and (2) ED prevalence in the context of four relevant social identities (i.e. SES, gender identity, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity) from an intersectional perspective, as unique combinations of multiple social identities may differentially influence risk. A sample of 120 891 undergraduate/graduate students from the Healthy Minds Study self-reported family SES with a single-item question, gender identity, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity, and were screened for ED risk. Participants of lower SES had 1.27 (95% CI 1.25-1.30) times greater prevalence of a positive ED screen than those of higher SES. Substantial heterogeneity was observed across the four social identities beyond the association with SES. For example, positive ED screens were particularly common among lower SES, Latinx, sexual minority cisgender men and women, with 52% of bisexual men and 52% of lesbian women of Latinx ethnicity and lower SES screening positive. Although positive ED screens were more common among undergraduate/graduate students of lower SES, the particularly high ED risk reported by certain groups of lower SES with multiple minority identities reinforces the importance of investigating multi-layered constructs of identity when identifying groups at disproportionate risk.

Mental Health Disparities at the Intersections of Gender Identity, Race, and Ethnicity.

Purpose: Very little research has examined mental health among transgender people of color using population-based data. The objective of this study was to use large-scale data to examine mental health disparities at the intersections of gender identity, race, and ethnicity. Methods: Data for this study came from transgender (n = 4024) and cisgender (n = 935,793) adults aged 18 years and older in the 2014-2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. We estimated and compared frequent mental distress and lifetime depression diagnoses using multivariable logistic regression models. Regression results are presented as adjusted odds ratios (AORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and compared with cisgender White adults, transgender White adults (AOR = 1.81; 95% CI = 1.49-2.21), transgender American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) adults (AOR = 8.06; 95% CI = 2.03-32.00), and transgender adults of other/multiple races and ethnicities (AOR = 3.15; 95% CI = 1.78-5.59) had higher odds of exhibiting frequent mental distress. Transgender White adults (AOR = 2.07; 95% CI = 1.75-2.46), transgender AIAN adults (AOR = 3.61; 95% CI = 1.06-12.32), and transgender adults of other/multiple races and ethnicities (AOR = 2.37; 95% CI = 1.41-4.01) had higher odds of reporting a lifetime depression diagnosis compared with White cisgender adults. Conclusion: This study serves as a reminder that LGBT health should be analyzed through an intersectional lens as some individuals with multiple marginalized identities may have worse health as a result of double discrimination. Public health practitioners and health care providers should be mindful of the diversity within the transgender population in their work.

To Survive on This Shore

Abstract For over five years, photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled throughout the United States creating To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults. Seeking subjects whose lived experiences exist at the complex intersections of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic class, and geographic location, they documented the life stories of this important but largely underrepresented group of older adults. The resulting photographs and interviews provide a nuanced view into the struggles and joys of growing older as a transgender person and offer a poignant reflection on what it means to live authentically despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

Re-Reading Lawrence/Leticia/Latisha King: The Time of Genders and Sexualities

In the current paper, the author offers a philosophically informed history of the present to address the evolving intersections of gender identity and sexuality within the K-12 student body. The author returns to the case of Lawrence/Leticia/Latisha King, a murdered middle schooler, to unpack the evolving frames that have been developed since King’s murder in 2008. To do this, the author addresses the ways King’s name and clothing choices were used to frame King’s life and death in diverse ways at school. Schools, of course, are a space and time where youth come into presence and where decades of research have documented the less than ideal climate of schools for LGBTQ + students. King’s school experiences represent a challenge to the typical narrative of victimization that often frames LGBTQ + issues in education. The author argues engaging King’s life contributes to the need to address the everyday agentive practices of youth, particularly queer youth of color, in educational scholarship. As the author argues, King’s school experiences represent a challenge to the frame of victimization providing a key inflection point for understanding twenty-first century students.

Intersecciones de identidad de género, personas trans, migración, trabajo sexual y su relación con la trata de seres humanos

El presente artículo aborda la relevancia de considerar las intersecciones de identidad de género, personas trans, migración, trabajo sexual y su relación con la trata de seres humanos, a través de la experiencia de trabajo de campo realizado entre 2015 y 2018 con el Sindicato chileno de trabajadoras sexuales Trans “Amanda Jofré Cerda”.
 Se pretende visibilizar este fenómeno poco abordado, a partir de los hallazgos evidenciados en el trabajo de campo. Su desarrollo teórico expone las dicotomías del marco normativo chileno, la ausencia del enfoque de derechos humanos, la crítica Constitución, que no representa la protección de los mismos, y la necesidad de las personas trans de asociarse en espacios comunes desde la perspectiva de la asociatividad, vinculada al fenómeno de la trata de seres humanos. El artículo también examina la invisibilización de las víctimas transexuales, destacando la interseccionalidad como un enfoque aplicado al abordaje de problemáticas sociales vinculadas con los derechos humanos, y visibilizando a las víctimas de trata trans, cuyo delito se oculta al tratarse de personas que, históricamente, no han sido reconocidas como una identidad de género dentro de las culturas y países patriarcales de América del Sur.
 El escrito finaliza con una serie de conclusiones contemporáneas que subrayan las necesidades de las víctimas de trata trans, las cuales exhiben una fuerte relación entre la interseccionalidad, las relaciones de poder y la vulneración de derechos a la que se encuentran expuestas.

School safety experiences of high school youth across sexual orientation and gender identity

School safety is considered a public health crisis with severe consequences on students' physical and emotional wellbeing. Although previous research highlights the disparities regarding safety in schools for LGBQ and transgender students, few studies examine the nuances between sexual orientation and gender identity. This study (N = 11,986) uses the 2015 Healthy Kids Colorado Study to examine differential experiences of school safety when looking at the various intersections of gender identity and sexual orientation. Logistic regression results indicate that school safety feeling safe at school), bullying, and skipping school due to feeling unsafe are shared experiences, especially among LGBQ and transgender youth, and that these experiences are differentially based on the intersection of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sedition, Sexuality, Gender, and Gender Identity in South Asia

While there is a consensus that we are in a period of heightened official foreclosure of critical speech in South Asia, it would be wrong to presume that this historical period is exceptional in this regard. This special issue of SAMAJ takes up the ways in which laws against sedition and other laws controlling speech in South Asia are being used by the governments there with increasing frequency—against activists, lawyers and journalists. The issue is an examination of the uses of judicial and extrajudicial means to silence dissent throughout South Asia, and with an eye toward the historical precedents of particular contemporary instantiations of foreclosing and repressing critical speech. Here, we put these attempts at foreclosing criticism of the state in dialogue with the rise of new forms of public discourse and debate on gender and sexuality in South Asia, in order to pose a series of questions. What do questions of sexuality and gender identity have to do with revolutionary politics, with questions of class and political economy? Where are the spaces for radical critique constituted when there seems to be more space for different forms of gender and sexuality politics, sociality, and critique, and when the stakes of dissent seem to be climbing ever higher? Does it mean something in particular to have a queer feminist analysis, or to be queer or trans, in such times? Amongst these articles, the short answer to the last question is yes, but these meanings are multiple, and the grounds on which the politics of sexuality and gender rest are highly contested. Drawing on the longstanding history of feminist engagements with—and reliance on—the notion of dissent, and on work that interrogates the intersections of gender identity, sexuality and national belonging, this collection seeks to examine dissent, nationalism, and the politics of gender and sexuality within the frame of contemporary South Asia.

To Survive on This Shore Selections from the South

Representations of older transgender people are nearly absent from American culture and those that do exist are often one-dimensional. For more than five years, Dugan and Fabbre traveled throughout the United States creating To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults, which culminated in a fine art exhibition and book about the lives of older transgender Americans. Here, portraits and interview excerpts with participants from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., are shared in order to highlight the ways in which transgender people are aging in the South. Participants’ experiences reflect the complex intersections of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and geographic place and point toward a diversity of lived experience and perspectives on aging.

Navigating identity: Experiences of binary and non-binary transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) adults

ABSTRACTBackground: Emerging research and colloquial dialogues increasingly point to an uptick in non-binary gender identity endorsement, however research has failed to parallel this increase. For example, existing literature often conflates gender identity with sexual orientation, lumping TGNC people under the LGBTQ umbrella, thus rendering the “T” silent in the process. Further, extant research adheres to a binary (i.e., dichotomous male/female) conceptualization of gender, thus excluding individuals who identify as genderqueer, gender non-conforming, or otherwise non-binary as well as those who do not identify with the construct of gender at all (e.g., agender).Method: This qualitative investigation utilized individual interviews with 15 TGNC adults. Data analysis employed two data-driven phases, first identifying themes consistent across the 15 transcripts to identify nuances in TGNC identity formation often missed by theory-driven models and second, establishing similarities and differences between binary and non-binary narratives.Results: Results indicated that various helpful and challenging factors played a stronger role than chronology, physical transition, or activism across all participants which contrasts findings in extant literature. Further, while binary and non-binary narratives were similar in many regards, several noteworthy distinctions emerged. For example, the concepts of “passing or blending”, intersections of gender identity with sexual orientation, and navigating identity presentation and disclosure were described differently for binary and non-binary participants.Conclusions: Historically, the “T” in “LGBTQ” has often been rendered silent. These results indicate that non-binary narratives have been rendered doubly silent. Given the increasing preponderance of non-binary identifications and the unique needs and experiences of non-binary participants, it is crucial that professional and lay communities alike begin to take two steps moving forward: 1) explicitly acknowledge the existence of non-binary TGNC identities and 2) work to achieve fluency regarding the unique needs and experiences of this population.

Top or Bottom? Varsity youth talk about gay sexuality in a Stepping Stones Workshop: Implications for sexual health

This paper discusses the constructs of sexuality amongst a group of LGBTI university students during a Stepping Stones workshop aimed at exploring their engagement with sexual and reproductive health rights issues as it affects them. These constructs include notions of binary identities of being gay, such as being a ‘top’ versus being a ‘bottom’, that are then applied to sexual practices and behaviour that have serious implications for sexual health and bodily integrity. We discuss the intersections of gender identity, sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights, arguing that such constructs are not only limiting in their demarcations of sexual boundaries in relationships and for intimacy but also that attempts to engage sexual health promotion must take into account the intersecting identities of gender and sexuality that are tied to sexual behaviour.

Prevalence of Past-Year Sexual Assault Victimization Among Undergraduate Students: Exploring Differences by and Intersections of Gender Identity, Sexual Identity, and Race/Ethnicity.

A critical step in developing sexual assault prevention and treatment is identifying groups at high risk for sexual assault. We explored the independent and interaction effects of sexual identity, gender identity, and race/ethnicity on past-year sexual assault among college students. From 2011 to 2013, 71,421 undergraduate students from 120 US post-secondary education institutions completed cross-sectional surveys. We fit multilevel logistic regression models to examine differences in past-year sexual assault. Compared to cisgender (i.e., non-transgender) men, cisgender women (adjusted odds ratios [AOR] = 2.47; 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.29, 2.68) and transgender people (AOR = 3.93; 95% CI 2.68, 5.76) had higher odds of sexual assault. Among cisgender people, gays/lesbians had higher odds of sexual assault than heterosexuals for men (AOR = 3.50; 95% CI 2.81, 4.35) but not for women (AOR = 1.13; 95% CI 0.87, 1.46). People unsure of their sexual identity had higher odds of sexual assault than heterosexuals, but effects were larger among cisgender men (AOR = 2.92; 95% CI 2.10, 4.08) than cisgender women (AOR = 1.68; 95% CI 1.40, 2.02). Bisexuals had higher odds of sexual assault than heterosexuals with similar magnitude among cisgender men (AOR = 3.19; 95% CI 2.37, 4.27) and women (AOR = 2.31; 95% CI 2.05, 2.60). Among transgender people, Blacks had higher odds of sexual assault than Whites (AOR = 8.26; 95% CI 1.09, 62.82). Predicted probabilities of sexual assault ranged from 2.6 (API cisgender men) to 57.7% (Black transgender people). Epidemiologic research and interventions should consider intersections of gender identity, sexual identity, and race/ethnicity to better tailor sexual assault prevention and treatment for college students.

She's always a woman: Butch lesbian trans women in the lesbian community

ABSTRACTWhile the visibility and acceptance of trans women have grown globally in recent years, this progress has primarily been within a traditional, heteronormative narrative. But a growing number of trans women identify as butch lesbians and challenge this heteronormative narrative. The existence of butch trans women has created a debate on where they fit within queer and lesbian communities and how their gender performance fits within traditional butch/femme understandings of lesbian or queer relationships. This article seeks to explore the intersections of gender identity and sexual orientation that butch trans women experience when they engage with lesbian and trans communities.

The Big Switch

SUMMARY A British male cross-dresser confronts the split in his personality between a male persona who desires women and a female persona who desires men. Intersections of gender identity, sexual orientation, and community politics complicate the author's self-understanding despite the clarity of his multiple desires.