‘There’s stuff that comes with being an unexpected guest’: experiences of trans* academics with microaggressions

Abstract

Historically, minority stress theory focused on the experiences of ‘sexual minorities;’ this study extends minority stress theory to understand the unique stressors that trans* individuals face in academic workplaces. Using interview data from 10 trans* college and university faculty, I fill a noted gap in the literature and examined the unique stressors that these faculty faced within the academy. In this study, microaggressions, a kind of minoritized stress, included: (mis)recognition, including misgendering and mispronouning, being an impossible person, and tokenization. Additionally, trans* faculty reported strategies to resist these stressors. These findings suggest that trans* academics navigate hostile academic work environments and experience minoritized stress deriving from their minoritized gender identities. Implications for research indicate that addressing the personal and professional consequences of minoritized stressors is an important step in understanding how microaggressions affect trans* academics. Implications for practice include the need for rethinking cisnormative assumptions within academe.

Keywords:

• Transgender
• higher education
• faculty
• microaggression
• minority stress theory

Notes

1. I use trans* here to signal a broad and inclusive array of identities including trans, FTM, MTF, genderqueer, agender, bigender, gender non-conforming, and a variety of other terms individuals use to describe their gender identities. The asterisk serves as a symbol to open up the term trans* or transgender (Tompkins, 2014). Further, it is not my intention to enact a transmisogynistic turn that often occurs within trans* communities.

2. Ze and hir are gender-creative pronouns that conjugate similarly to they/them, she/her, and/or he/him.

3. Transmisogyny is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny and described the unique forms of oppression facing trans* women (Serano, 2007).

4. Oppression of people whose sex/gender identity or expression does not match dominant norms within society.

5. Heterosexism is the idea that the only normal sexual orientation is heterosexual.

6. I use the punctuation (mis)recognition because this situates the simultaneity of being recognized as something participants are not, while not having their gender related truths recognized and affirmed.