Queer Gender Identity Research Articles

The bilingual styles of young Puerto Rican adolescents online

Abstract This article examines the language mixing practices of Puerto Rican adolescents in various social media platforms through a framework of code-mixing and socioindexicality. Over a twelve-week period, I collected samples of online text messages from six island bilinguals of an elite community of practice (CofP) and studied the way their unique socializations in private schools and bilingual universities contributed to the ways they made sense of languages, their social meaning potentials, and uses across online interactions. Against the meaningful backdrop of colonial-dynamics of Spanish and English in Puerto Rico, the paper examines how ideologies of “nationalism” and “race” get reproduced or challenged through bilingual practice, and English takes up an equally important role for the construction of social identities in the interactions of youth. Additionally, the study discusses bilingual styles that have been enregistered as social styles specific to technological mediums of communication and youth registers, Puerto Rican netspeak, as well as emerging social styles that indicate queer gender identity, or non-binary practices. In this sense, I offer a description of the island bilingual that is dynamic, strategic, and metapragmatically conscious of the purist ideologies of Spanish in Puerto Rico, as well as the indexical potentials of appropriating variable gender forms in Spanish, bilingual language practices, and netspeak registers towards the negotiation of identities in technological interaction. The way bilinguals relate to the languages at their disposal can provide a window to impending questions on the perceived coloniality of English, potential changes in language ideologies and uses, and whether and how language policies may shift to meet current demographic attitudes and language uses of contemporary Puerto Ricans.

“A Checkbox on a Character Sheet”

Gender representation is an oft-discussed topic in game studies literature, but “gender representation” tends to mean “female representation”. Many discussions of gender in game studies lack the nuance of queer gender identities that lay beyond a binary notion of gender. This literature review seeks to analyze the state of nonbinary gender representation in video games, looking at both characters and avatar creation screens, to find scholarship about queer gender identities, as well as games that are gender-inclusive. Ultimately, the video game industry has a long way to go to break beyond the binary of gender stereotypesthat it has become known for.

Trans*versal Afterlives of Comedy: The Queer Arab Plays of Raphaël Amahl Khouri

Abstract This article explores No Matter Where I Go and She He Me, two plays by Raphaël Amahl Khouri, a contemporary queer and trans playwright of Arab and German heritage. After charting the histories of comedy and Arab theatre, it examines the dialogue of the two plays with Greco-Roman, Arab and German avant-garde theatre through Abraham Weil’s notion of trans*versality, a queer reformulation of Félix Guattari’s concept. It proposes that Khouri’s plays enact trans*versality thematically, by depicting characters of various gender identities and sexual orientations, and aesthetically, in their eclectic deployment of dramatic conventions from various cultural traditions. It is argued that Khouri’s comedies outgrow a Eurocentric understanding of what constitutes ‘theatre’, while they also shed light on the specific intersection of trans and queer gender identities, sexual orientations and Arab identities in a world that is keen to erase or ignore these anti-normative subject positions.

Medieval and Trans Ways of Being

Medieval and Trans Ways of Being

Revealing the queer-spectrum in STEM through robust demographic data collection in undergraduate engineering and computer science courses at four institutions.

Queer identities are often ignored in diversity initiatives, yet there is a growing body of research that describes notable heterosexist and gender-normative expectations in STEM that lead to unsupportive and discriminatory environments and to the lower persistence of queer individuals. Research on the experiences of queer-spectrum individuals is limited by current demographic practices. In surveys that are queer-inclusive there is no consensus on best practices, and individuals with queer genders and queer sexual, romantic, and related orientations are often lumped together in a general category (e.g. LGBTQ+). We developed two queer-inclusive demographics questions and administered them as part of a larger study in undergraduate engineering and computer science classes (n = 3698), to determine which of three survey types for gender (conventional, queered, open-ended) provided the most robust data and compared responses to national data to determine if students with queer genders and/or queer sexual, romantic, and related orientations were underrepresented in engineering and computer science programs. The gender survey with queer-identity options provided the most robust data, as measured by higher response rates and relatively high rates of disclosing queer identities. The conventional survey (male, female, other) had significantly fewer students disclose queer identities, and the open-ended survey had a significantly higher non-response rate. Allowing for multiple responses on the survey was important: 78% of those with queer gender identities and 9% of those with queer sexual, romantic and related orientations selected multiple identities within the same survey question. Queer students in our study were underrepresented relative to national data. Students who disclosed queer gender identities were 7/100ths of the expected number, and those with queer orientations were under-represented by one-quarter. Further work developing a research-based queered demographics instrument is needed for larger-scale changes in demographics practices, which will help others identify and address barriers that queer-spectrum individuals face in STEM.

Transphobic tropes in contemporary young adult novels about queer gender

This article identifies the dominant modes of discourse and critiques the problematic tropes and conventions at work in a selection of contemporary young adult fiction novels about young people with queer gender identities. Beginning with the role of young adult fiction, the importance of resisting models of binary gender, the trope of coming out and the convention of the hero’s journey, this article then analyses transphobic tropes: how the narrative lens of pathos functions in these texts to reduce the queer to a state of victimization, invisibility, mental illness, otherness, isolation and not belonging. This article uses the phrase ‘queer genders’ and the term ‘trans*’ to encompass transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid and other gender non-conforming identities. ‘Trans’ without the asterisk is the shortened form of ‘transgender’.

‘Difference Is the One Thing That We Have in Common’

Television production is championing diversity in representation with record numbers compared to previous years. Netflix’s Sense8 is definitely amongst the highest scoring shows as concerns intersectional representation. Such remarkable representation was worth the 2016 GLAAD Outstanding Drama Series award, a prize granted to the most diverse television shows. However, this applause is geared solely to numerical representations while current academic discussion focuses more on the concept of fair representations. Not only is being represented of importance, but how one is represented. The present paper employs photovoice and photo elicitation to investigate how Sense8 fans articulate what constitutes a fair representation of queer gender identities within the show. The present research addresses two gaps in the literature. First, a methodological one: the employment of creative visual methodologies to transcend the limitations of the most common methods used for audience research —interviews and focus groups. Secondly, this study follows the contemporary conversation around fair representation by addressing what is now a gap in the existing literature on queer television: what is fair representation from an audience perspective? The results of this study show how audiences’ perspectives on fair representation differ from those formulated in public and academic debates.

You Gotta Kick Ass a Little Harder Than That

This qualitative research explores the complex and dynamic ways in which eight hospital security men engage in hegemonic masculine practices that subordinate the gender identities of security women and marginalized men. These intensive, in-depth interviews reveal that alpha male status is accomplished through routine demonstrations of physicality and dominance over mental health patients and subordinated guards who present a feminine or queer gender identity. Security officers who resist the established codes of masculine conduct are excluded from social circles, and culturally devalued by their hypermasculine peers and superiors. Overall, this research calls for the revision of hospital security recruitment and training initiatives that privilege military background and skills, and invites scholars to give voice to the gendered voices of security women, gay men, and nursing staff.

Trans Men: Embodiments, Identities, and Sexualities

This article examines the experiences of 25 persons who were assigned female status at birth but do not wish to live as women and take on a masculine or queer gender identity. We employ the concept of “gendered embodiment” and introduce the concept of “sexualized embodiment” to highlight what is involved in this process. We ask how experiencing a masculine gender identity is reflexively tied to a trans man's sexuality and the ways in which these two embodiments are tightly, moderately, or loosely coupled. For example, a tight coupling appeared when trans men began to use testosterone and obtained surgery such as breast removal; a moderate coupling was found where gender validation was sought from a sexual partner (with this being related to sexual preference identities as well as the interpretation of vaginal penetration); the loosest coupling of the gender‐sexuality embodiments was linked to the liberality of the locale and whether “queer” identities could be easily adopted. In sum, our research demonstrates the link between gender and sexuality as a result of the body work trans men do and the historical and geographical situations in which they find themselves.