Queerly situated? Exploring negotiations of trans queer subjectivities at work and within community spaces in the UK

Abstract

While traditional perspectives on transgender from some strands of feminism and within medical/psychoanalytical discourse have argued that transgender people conform to and reproduce gender stereotypes, queer theory has celebrated transgender as a site that highlights the social and cultural construction of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and, moreover, as a symbol of transgressive gender possibility. Both of these readings ignore the complexities of lived trans experiences and identifications. By evaluating a queer reading of trans through recent empirical research into transgender identities, I suggest that while trans identifications certainly queer binary models of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, such transgressions are materially, culturally, socially and spatially contingent. The article draws on empirical research to explore the ways in which access to queer subjectivities is constrained by, and negotiated alongside, the locales of the workplace and community spaces.

Mientras las perspectivas tradicionales de algunas corrientes de feminismo y dentro del discurso médico/psicoanalítico sobre transgénero han argumentado que las personas transgenéricas conforman y reproducen un estereotipo, la teoría queer ha celebrado el transgénero como un lugar que remarca la construcción social y cultural del ‘sexo’ y del ‘género’ y, además, como un símbolo de la posibilidad transgresora del género. Ambas lecturas ignoran las complejidades de las experiencias e identificaciones trans vividas. Por medio de una evaluación de una lectura queer de lo trans a través de una investigación empírica reciente de las identidades transgenéricas, sugiero que, mientras las identificaciones trans ciertamente queerifican los modelos binarios de ‘sexo’ y ‘género’, tales transgresiones son material, cultural, social y espacialmente contingentes. El artículo se basa en investigación empírica para explorar las formas en que el acceso a las subjetividades queer es restringido por, y a la vez negociado con, los escenarios de los espacios del lugar de trabajo y de la comunidad.

Keywords:

• community spaces
• gender diversity
• transgender
• queer
• work

Keywords:

• espacios de la comunidad
• diversidad de género
• transgénero
• queer
• trabajo

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kath Browne and Catherine Nash for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks too to Robyn Longhurst for her thoughtful review of the article – and for her enthusiasm and support for this themed section. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful and detailed comments.

Notes

 1. I use the term ‘trans’ in this article to include a diversity of diverse gender identifications (though see points above). The term ‘transsexual’ is used to refer specifically to research participants who self-identified as such or in relation to critical commentary that foregrounds the experiences of people who identify as such.

 2. Though I recognise that, as with ‘public’ and ‘private’, ‘internal’ and ‘external’ are complexly situated and often overlap.

 3. Here I am not suggesting that these are the only sites through which such articulations arise. For example, families and intimate networks also work to constrain and regulate gendered subjectivities (see Hines 2006b).

 4. In Bodies that Matter, Butler (1993) revises her ideas to address the ways in which drag can also serve to reinforce normative understandings of gender and sexuality; an argument which is further debated by Bell et al. (1994) in relation to the various ways in which drag may be read.

 5. I am not suggesting that the writers cited here speak for all radical feminists, or represent a radical feminist position on transgender per se. Nor do I wish to so straightforwardly polarise ‘radical feminism’ and ‘queer’. See Garber (2001) and Crawley and Broad (2008) for their readings of the connections between radical feminism and queer. They are useful examples of the complexities of the relationships here.

 6. For an intersectional analysis of transgender, see also Hines (2010).

 7. ‘Dogging’ describes prearranged meetings in car parks for sex.

 8. ‘BDSM’ is an acronym derived from the terms bondage and dominance, dominance and submission.

 9. This was completed in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at The University of Leeds, funded by the ESRC research project ‘Care, Values and the Future of Welfare’ (CAVA).

10. The essay ‘On the depoliticisation of intersectionality talk: Conceptualising multiple oppressions in critical sexuality studies’ by Erel et al. is a notable exception, as is Haritaworn's work more broadly (see, for example, Haritaworn 2007, 2008).