Theory | Trans Reads

Bois and grrrls meet their daddies and mommies on gender playgrounds: Gendered age play in the les-bi-trans-queer BDSM communities

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

Based on a qualitative empirical study of les-bi-trans-queer BDSM in the USA and Europe, this article discusses sexual practices that explore the significance of age, gender and sexuality and their simultaneous workings to produce desires, embodiments, identities, intimacies and kinships that transgress and partially transform heteronormative social concepts. Queer ‘age play’ and ‘intergenerational play’ practices…

Biography Critique Essay History Humanities Journal/Diary Law/Legal Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Coming Out of the Shadows and the Closet: Visibility Schemas Among Undocuqueer Immigrants

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

Centering the experiences of 31 undocuqueer immigrants, this study seeks to understand the ways that undocuqueer immigrants negotiate the boundaries of social performance by revealing or concealing their gender, sexuality, and immigration status. Findings of this study reveal how, in order to avoid the constant threat of rejection (both legal and social), undocuqueer immigrants engage…

Art Critique Essay History Humanities Journal/Diary Nonfiction Social Sciences Theater/Play Theory

En/Activist Drag: Kings Reflect on Queerness, Queens, and Questionable Masculinities

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

In recent years, media attention to drag performers has increased transforming the once-hidden leisure activity of gay men and lesbians into a publicly recognized phenomenon. Many of these representations of drag have fallen short in offering reflective illustrations of the connections among gender identity, performance, misogyny, patriarchy, and activism. In response, we find ourselves studying…

Critique Essay History Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Everyday Decolonization: Living a Decolonizing Queer Politics

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

This article is a joint exploration of what decolonization looks like in everyday interactions within our partnerships, families, and friendships on unceded Coast Salish territories. Stories from the authors—two cisgender queer women, one of whom is Indigenous and one of whom is a White settler—highlight intimate practices of allyship and decolonization that are often made…

Critique Essay Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

This essay examines the stereotype that transgender people are “deceivers” and the stereotype’s role in promoting and excusing transphobic violence. The stereotype derives from a contrast between gender presentation (appearance) and sexed body (concealed reality). Because gender presentation represents genital status, Bettcher argues, people who “misalign” the two are viewed as deceivers. The author shows…

Anthology Essay History Law/Legal Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader (Litwin Books Series on Gender and Sexuality in Informaiton S)

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

In Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader, Keilty and Dean put the field of Information Studies into critical conversation with studies of gender, sexuality, race, and technology. In classic and original essays, renowned scholars from a range of disciplines think through a broad array of information and technology philosophies and practices. Conceiving of “information” in…

Art Essay History Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Cruising Utopia, The Then and There of Queer Futurity

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

Cruising Utopia arrived in 2009 to insist that queerness must be reimagined as a futurity-bound phenomenon, an insistence on the potentiality of another world that would crack open the pragmatic present. Part manifesto, part love-letter to the past and the future, José Esteban Muñoz argued that the here and now were not enough and issued…

Critique Essay History Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

From the stage to the clinic: changing transgender identities in post-war Japan

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

This paper looks at the transformation of male-to-female transgender identities in Japan since the Second World War. The development of print media aimed at a transgender readership is outlined, as is the development of bars, clubs and sex venues where transgendered men sought both partners and commercial opportunities. The origin of various transgender ‘folk categories’…

Critique Essay Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Gender As a Question of Historical Analysis

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

This article examines the historically and culturally specific valence of ‘gender’ as currently deployed in the field of gender and women’s history. It draws broadly on the scholarship on gender since the 1980s, while focusing particularly on the case of the British North American colonies and the early United States republic. The essay argues against…

Biography Critique Essay History Humanities Law/Legal Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

GLB + T?: Gender/Sexuality Movements and Transgender Collective Identity (De)Constructions

By tr | June 14, 2022 by tr

In the United States during the 1990s, there emerged a new form of collective political organizing and action around transgender identity. In this essay, the author depicts the dynamics of transgender activism during the mid-1990s based on original research in the form of a postmodern ethnography of transgender activism. Using data from field research, interviews,…