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' GENDERISM:
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GENDERISM:
TRANSGENDER STUDENTS, BINARY SYSTEMS
AND HIGHER EDUCATION
By

Brent Laurence Bilodeau

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Educational Administration

2007

ABSTRACT

GENDERISM:
TRANSGENDER STUDENTS, BINARY SYSTEMS AND HIGHER EDUCATION

By

Brent Laurence Bilodeau

The goal of this study was to make visible the practical issues and unseen power
structures of binary gender systems on campus through the experiences of transgender
students. My primary research question was: What could the experiences of trans gender
students reveal about the nature of genderism and its characteristics in higher education?
During the 2005-2006 academic year, ten transgender students from two large
Midwestern universities chose to volunteer for the study. Participants were white,
graduate and undergraduate students, with ages from 18 to 50. In terms of gender
identity, they used a broad range of self identifying terms: transsexual, tranny boy,
genderqueer or androgynous, M to S (male to something else), two-spirit, third gender
and still deﬁning (gender identity was still not known). I conducted semi-structured
interviews with the participants and used the constant comparative method and grounded
theory to interpret data. The study’s emerging themes were generally informed by
postmodern feminist, queer theory, and critical postmodern perspectives.

As enacted at the two universities, genderism emerged as a social system of
structural inequality with an underlying assumption that there are two, and only two
genders. This binary system had four primary characteristics: (1) There was a forced

social labeling process that sorts and categorizes all individuals into male or female

identities, often at an institutionalized level. (2) There was social accountability for
conforming to binary gender norms with related punishments. Individuals who failed to
conform were viewed as deviant and/or having a disorder. (3) Marginalization was
enacted through an overt and covert privileging of binary systems. (4) Binary systems
promoted invisibility of gender non-conforming identities and isolation of transgender

persons, making transgender identities inaccessible.

C0pyright by
BRENT LAURENCE BILODEAU
2007

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

My dissertation was supported by a research award ﬁom the National Association

of Student Personnel Administrators GLBT Knowledge Community and the Ofﬁce of the

Vice President for Student Affairs at Michigan State University. In addition, I gratefully

acknowledge the following:

My dissertation Committee:

Kristen Renn, Jayne Schuiteman, Steve Weiland, Matthew Wawrzynski, whose
perspectives and feedback were invaluable. Dr. Renn’s encouragement,
mentoring, ﬁ'iendship, and belief in my scholarship have had a signiﬁcant impact

on this work and my career.

Supportive Colleagues, Friends, and Family:

The staff of the Ofﬁce of Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Concerns:
Kendra Kearney, Kasey Lance, Tiffany Lane, and Lisa Lees

Dr. Marti Ruel, who provided countless hours of feedback on this study, helped
me think “outside the box” and renewed my agency though “Be, Act, Have.”
Dawn Zeligman and the members of my doctoral program cohort

The men of my spiritual community: Clarence, Bruce, Jim, Mike, Sean

Friends and colleagues who provided signiﬁcant encouragement: William Bathie,
Dr. Pat Enos, Maggie Chen Hernandez,Melissa McDaniels, Pam McFadden,

Rodney Patterson, Dr. Tom Rios, and Venice Smith

0 My parents and family: Lou and Larry Bilodeau, Michele and Greg Boudreaux,
Andrea and Craig Powers. I am grateful their unwavering support and passion for

higher education.
Transgender Students and Comqu Members:
0 The ten transgender students who participated in this research and the many
others who helped me ﬁnd willing participants.
0 Lisa Lees, who broke new ground for many.
0 MSU Students Jordon Furrow, T.J. Jourian, Caiden Marcus, and Cameron Venier,
who in 2003, not only encouraged me to do this study, but told me I had no choice

in the matter.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1
FRAMING THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS ..................................................................... l
Naming Terms: Gender Identity and Transgender .................................................. 2
Trans gender Identities and Higher Education Literature ........................................ 3
Rationale for this Study ........................................................................................... 5
Overview of the Study ............................................................................................. 6
Postmodern Feminist Perspectives .............................................................. 6
Queer Theory ............................................................................................... 8
Critical Postmodern Perspectives ................................................................ 9
Towards a Synthesis of Theory and Practice ............................................ 12
Overview of the Dissertation ................................................................................ 13
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE ............................................................................................ 15
Transgender Identities: Historical Perspectives .................................................... 15
Reinforcing the Binary: Western Medicine and Human Socialization ................. 19
Medical and Psychiatric Perspectives on Gender Identity .................................... 20
Youth and Student Development Perspectives on Gender Identity ...................... 24
Higher Education and Feminist Scholarship ......................................................... 27
Postmodern Feminist Perspectives on Gender Identity ......................................... 28
Queer Theory ......................................................................................................... 31
Critical Postmodern Perspectives .......................................................................... 34
Cisgender and the Critical Postmodern Framework ................................. 38
Literature Review Summary ................................................................................. 39
CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................... 40
Research Context: Postmodern, Queer and Critical Postmodern Traditions ........ 40
Methodology ......................................................................................................... 41
Research Methods ................................................................................................. 42
Individual Interviews ............................................................................................. 43
Positioning of Researcher in Relationship to Subjects .......................................... 44
Authenticity, Trustworthiness, Credibility ............................................................ 45
Data and Analysis .................................................................................................. 46
Proﬁles of Participants .......................................................................................... 48
Study Limitations .................................................................................................. 69
Summary ............................................................................................................... 70

vii

CHAPTER 4

GENDERISM, SOCIAL LABELING AND GENDER ACCOUNTABILITY ............... 71
A Male or Female Social Labeling Process .......................................................... 73
Binary Labeling Negates F luidity ............................................................. 75
Summary: Male or Female Social Labeling .............................................. 79
Social Accountability for Conforming to Binary Gender Norms ......................... 80
Passing and Social Accountability ............................................................ 81
Social Accountability, Academic and Classroom Contexts ...................... 84
Campus Employment and Social Accountability ...................................... 88
Campus Facilities and Social Accountability ............................................ 92
Residence Halls ............................................................................. 92
Athletic Facilities, Locker Rooms and Public Restrooms ............ 99
Chapter Summary ................................................................................................ 104
CHAPTER 5
BINARY GENDER SYSTEMS ARE PRIVILEGED AND INVISIBILITY AND
ISOLATION OF TRANSGENDER PERSONS ............................................................. 106
Binary Gender Systems are Privileged ................................................................ 106
Privileging Binary Identities in the Classroom ....................................... 106
Privileging Binary Identities in LBGT Communities ............................. 110
Tranny Boys, Male Privilege and Marginalization ................................. 116
Privilege and Career Aspirations ............................................................. 118
Summary: Binary Systems are Privileged ............................................... 120
Genderism Promoted Invisibility and Isolation of Transgender Persons ............ 121
Invisibility and Identity Inaccessibility ................................................... 122
Invisibility, Identity Inaccessibility and
Emotional Health Consequences .................................................... 126
Summary: Invisibility, Isolation, Inaccessibility ..................................... 128
Conclusion: A Framework for Understanding Genderism ..................... 129
CHAPTER 6
IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY, PRACTICE, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR
RESEARCH .................................................................................................................... 132
Postmodern Feminist Perspectives and Genderism ............................................ 132
Queer Theory and Genderism ............................................................................. 134
Critical Postmodern Perspectives and Genderism .............................................. 138
Towards a Synthesis of Theory and Practice ...................................................... 141
Creating Accommodating Facilities .................................................................... 142
Restrooms and Locker rooms .................................................................. 142
Residence Halls ....................................................................................... 143
The Need for Training and Education related to Transgender Identities ............ 146
Curriculum Infusion and Education ........................................................ 146
Education Related to Career Development Concerns ............................. 147
Training and Education on Employment Issues ...................................... 148

viii

Education in LBGT Communities and Student Organizations ............... 148

Creating Supportive Institutional Policies ........................................................... 150
Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 1 52
APPENDICIES ............................................................................................................... 156
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 166

ix

Chapter One: Framing the Research Questions

Johnny Rogers, a transsexual, female to male undergraduate student, described
the ﬁrst time he requested a faculty member to refer to him by his new name, and to drop
the use of “Carol”:

“1 was too timid to say anything when you took attendance last week,” I

stammered, “but I’d like to go by a different name than the one on the class list.”

God, what would he say? I felt as though I were about to step off a cliff. I wasn’t

just changing my name; I was taking the ﬁrst step toward living and moving in

the world as a whole person, instead of keeping a chunk of myself buried and

covering the remainder with a protective facade. I’d been an out lesbian during

my ﬁrst year on campus, but now, in my second year, I was about to transition to

living life as a male. (Rogers, 2000, p. 13)

A growing body of literature has emerged that addresses the needs and concerns
of lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender (LBGT) college students (e.g., Kraig, 2002;
Sanlo, Rankin, & Schoenberg, 2002; Wall & Evans, 2000). While these contributions
have been signiﬁcant, only a small portion of this LBGT scholarship speciﬁcally
addresses transgender students. Most often, the literature is dominated by sexual
orientation issues and lesbian, bisexual, or gay identities. Political correctness drives
much of the scholarship to use lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender in the research
title, with content that ultimately ignores or marginalizes transgender concerns. When
transgender identities are the focus, they are oﬁen framed in the context of being one-
quarter of an LBGT identity politic, instead of being presented as part of an intersecting

continuum of sexual orientation and gender identity, or worse, simply unnamed. This

study served to make visible the experiences of a college population that has been largely
ignored: transgender students. In particular, this dissertation focuses on an examination of
the ways in which transgender students interface with and experience socially constructed
gender systems on campus. As an introduction to this study, transgender and related
terminology are deﬁned, a rationale and overview of this study is provided, and guiding
theoretical perspectives are reviewed.

Naming Terms: Gender Identity and T ransgender

The term gender identity has been used to describe an individual’s internal sense
of maleness or masculinity and femaleness or femininity. This may include an
understanding of self as a woman or man, or a self-concept in between or outside
traditional notions of gender construction (Elkins & King, 1996; O’Keefe & Fox, 1997;
Wilchins, 1997, 2002). The vast majority of individuals in the United States, whose
biological sex assignment at birth matches their gender identity, are referred to as men or
women. For the purposes of this study, these individuals are referred to as Cisgender
men or women. The word Cisgender originates from transgender inclusive communities
that wished to challenge the idea that transgender is "abnormal," and instead reﬂects the
view that there is a broad range of gender experience, rather than one "normal" one
(Green, 2002).

The term transgender has been used as an umbrella term for a broad range of
gender non-conforming identities, including individuals whose biological sex assignment
and societal expectations for gender expression are in conﬂict with the individual’s
gender identity (Bomstein, 1994; Brown & Rounsley, 1996; F einberg, 1997, 1998;

Wilchins, 1997, 2002). A sample of terms describing transgender identities includes

transsexuals, transvestites, male and female impersonators, drag kings and queens, male
to female or M T F , female to male or F T M, cross-dressers, and gender benders (persons
who overtly challenge gender norms for cultural and political reasons) (Bornstein, 1994:
Caliﬁa, 1997; Feinberg, 1997, 1998; Wilchins, 1997; 2002). Transgender persons may
identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual or asexual (Bornstein, 1994;
Carter, 2000; Elkins & King, 1996). While there are a number of distinctions between
sexual orientation and gender identity, scholars suggest some overlapping of these
identities as well (Carter, 2000; Wilchins, 1997).

A number of authors note a rapidly expanding language used to describe the
transgender experience, including phrases like gender variant, genderqueer, gender non-
conforming, boydyke, translesbian, and ambiguously gendered (Bornstein, 1998;
Feinberg, 1996; Burgess, 1999; Wilchins, 1997). For the purpose of this study, the term
transgender serves primarily as an inclusive term for individuals who transgress societal
expectations for gender expression, constructing their identities and describing their
experience through the terminology outlined above.

T ransgender Identities and Higher Education Literature

Higher education literature focusing on gender issues and gender identity
primarily addresses an examination of Cisgender, binary, male or female contexts (e. g.,
Bellas & Toutkoushian, 1999; Ropers-Huilman, 2000; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004),
with a marked absence of gender identity being conceptualized as more ﬂuid or having a
transgender component. It is important to recognize the signiﬁcance of this scholarship,
as it addresses inequality and oppression, and most importantly, has named the

marginalized status of Cisgender women in higher education. Yet, this literature

privileges binary constructions of gender, often ignoring the realities of biological sex
variance (i.e., intersexed persons) or varying expressions of gender identity (i.e.,
transgender persons or gender non-conforming identities). This scholarship, also deﬁned
as a traditional feminist perspective (Donovan, 2000), identiﬁes systemic power
differentials in static, binary ways. Cisgender men are agents of sexist oppression and
Cisgender women are targets of it. Individuals who blur, shift, or change gender identity
are not accounted for in these traditional explanations of gender and power. Further,
Wilchins (2002) suggests that static male or female categories create a binary social
system that results in the oppression of transgender persons, which she termed genderism.
Wilchins (2002) described genderism and its related power structure:
Gender is primarily a system of symbols and meanings—and rules, privileges,
and punishments pertaining to their use——for power and sexuality: masculinity
and femininity, strength and vulnerability, action and passivity, dominance and
weakness. It’s because gender is not just a system of laws and practices, but also a
way of thinking and seeing that it has taken so long to come to the fore as a
political issue. Yet, unlike the struggles against homophobia, racism, and sexism,
the struggle against genderism will not only be about gaining rights for an
oppressed class of men and women. It will be about gaining equality for all men
and women. And paradoxically, it will be about the rights of some of us not be
men or women. (p. 14)
Wilchins (2002) suggests that a gendered culture exists in society and higher
education that assumes gender identity and biological sex assignment to be the same

thing. To be female in gender identity means “female” must be biological sex. Biological

sex assignment ﬁxes gender identity as static and unchangeable. The action of this binary
gendered culture labels Cisgender men and women as normative, and trans gender
individuals as deviant. Genderism creates norms for conforming to Cisgender identities
through systems of rewards and punishments. While populations of transgender identiﬁed
students are increasingly visible on college campuses, little research has explored their
concerns, and no studies have addressed the impact of systemic genderism.
Rationale for this Study

For the ﬁrst time, scholarship is addressing issues for transgender college
students. A groundbreaking 2005 special issue of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues
in Education focused exclusively on transgender youth, with four articles speciﬁcally
addressing research on college students. These studies provided signiﬁcant insight into
dimensions of transgender student lives that previously had been unexamined. This
scholarship addressed transgender student perceptions of campus climate (McKinney,
2005), identity development processes (Bilodeau, 2005), and outlined suggestions for
making campus environments more supportive of this population (Beemyn, 2005;
Beemyn, Dominque, Pettitt, Smith, 2005). These studies shared common themes of
transgender student invisibility, marginalization, and harassment in a broad range of
higher education contexts. Yet, this research lacked a perspective for examining how
identity development and campus climate impact transgender students in a social systems
context. Positing a transgender college student research agenda and developing strategies
for improving higher education practice must account for the operation of systemic

gender oppression. As long as genderism and the operation of binary gender systems

remain invisible in higher education, a critical perspective necessary to inform research

and practice is missing.

Overview of the Study

The goal of this study was to make the practical issues and unseen power
structures of binary gender systems on campus visible through the experiences and
identity processes of transgender students. The core research question follows: What
could the experiences of trangender students reveal about the nature of genderism and its
characteristics in a higher education context? In spring, 2005, ten transgender students
from two large Midwestern universities volunteered to participate in the study. They used
a broad range of terms to self identify: transexual, tranny boy, genderqueer or
androgynous, and still deﬁning (gender identity was still not known). Participants were a
mix of graduate and undergraduate students and were diverse by age, ranging from 22 to
50. Semi—structured interviews were conducted with each of the participants. Using the
constant comparative method and grounded theory, I learned ways that transgender
students experienced the environment of their campuses and the impact of genderism.
This study’s emerging themes were generally informed by postmodern feminist, queer
theory, and critical postmodern perspectives on gender. 1 selected these perspectives
because they share a concern for deconstructing essentialized identities and related
norms. A summary of each theoretical lens follows.
Postmodern Feminist Perspectives

A postmodern perspective has inﬂuenced a number of feminist scholars to take

issue with binary notions of the operation of gender dynamics (e. g., Bomstein, 1994;

Butler, 1990; Feinberg, 1993, 1996; Halberstam, 1998). This framework seeks to
undermine socially constructed norms surrounding the language and deﬁnitions related to
gender, as well as challenging beliefs about gender identity as “ﬁxed and stable” (Butler,
1990, p.13). Most signiﬁcantly, a postmodern perspective seeks to undermine socially
constructed norms surrounding the meanings of these deﬁnitions (Butler, 1990). As
applied to this study of gender identity, postmodernism undermines the idea that gender
identity and gender expression are all inextricably tied to male or female biological sex
assignment at birth. According to Butler (1990, 1993, 2004), feminists rejected the idea
that biology is destiny, but then developed an account of patriarchal culture that assumed
masculine and feminine genders would inevitably be built, by culture, upon Cisgender
male and female bodies, making the same destiny just as inescapable. This ﬁ'amework
allows no room for choice, ﬂuidity, difference or resistance. Butler preferred “those
historical and anthropological positions that understand gender as a relation among
socially constituted subjects in speciﬁable contexts” (1990 p. 26).

In other words, rather than being a ﬁxed attribute in a person, gender should be
seen as a ﬂuid variable that shifts and changes in different contexts and at different times.
Butler (1993) argued that sex (male, female) is seen to cause gender (masculine,
feminine) which is seen to cause desire (towards the other gender). This process is seen
as a kind of continuum. Butler’s (1993) approach, inspired in part by Foucault, is
basically to smash the supposed links between these, so that gender and desire are
ﬂexible, free—ﬂoating and not caused by other stable factors. Butler (1990, 2004)
suggested that certain cultural conﬁgurations of gender have seized a hegemonic hold

(i.e., they have come to seem natural in our culture as it presently is) but, she suggests, it

does not have to be that way. Rather than proposing some utopian vision, with no idea of
how we might get to such a state, Butler (1990) called for subversive action in the
present: “gender trouble,” (p. 8) the mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation
of genders, and therefore identity. Butler (1990) argued that all humans are social actors
who put on a gender performance, whether traditional or not, and so it is not a question of
whether to do a gender performance, but what form that performance will take. By
choosing to be different about it, individuals may work to change gender norms and the
binary understanding of masculinity and femininity (Butler, 2004).

While Butler’s work is considered highly inﬂuential in a range of academic
spheres, other scholars, such as Martha Nussbaum (1999), take issue with Butler’s
scholarship. Nussbaum asserts that Butler uses professional jargon to make her work
appear novel, despite the similar scholarship that came before it. Secondly, she suggests
that Butler's work lacks a pragmatic basis in reality. Butler does not position her
scholarship in a way that informs or is in turn informed by broader socio-cultural
considerations, such a rape, heterosexism in the workforce, or women’s health issues.
Queer Theory

Queer theory emerged from gay/lesbian studies' attention to the social
construction of categories of normative and deviant sexual behavior (Walters, 2005). But
while gay/lesbian studies, as the name implied, focused largely on questions of
homosexuality, queer theory expands its realm of investigation (Whittle, 2005). Queer
theory looks at, and studies, and has a political critique of, anything that falls into
normative and deviant categories, particularly sexual activities and identities (Braurnann,

1996). The word queer, as it appears in the dictionary, has a primary meaning of "odd,"

"peculiar," "out of the ordinary" (Merriam- Webster ’s Collegiate Dictionary, 2004, p.
326).

Queer theory concerns itself with any and all forms of sexuality that are queer in
this sense--and then, by extension, with the normative behaviors and identities that
deﬁne what is queer (by being their binary opposites) (Whittle, 2005). Thus, queer theory
expands the scope of its analysis to all kinds of behaviors, including those which are
gender-bending as well as those which involve queer non-normative forms of sexuality.
Queer theory insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to
sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social
constructs, sets of signiﬁers that create certain types of social meaning (Braumann, 1996;
Walters, 2005).

Queer theory follows feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies in rejecting the idea
that sexuality is an essentialist category, something determined by biology or judged by
eternal standards of morality and truth (Butler, 1990). For queer theorists, sexuality is a
complex array of social codes and forces, forms of individual activity and institutional
power, which interact to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any
particular moment, and which then operate under the rubric of what is "natural,"
"essential," "biological," or "god-given" (Seidman, 1996, p. 25).

Critical Postmodern Perspectives

A critical postmodern lens adds the dimension of self-liberation of the oppressed
to the gender discourse (Allen, 1999). Critical postmodernism has been described as
having a primary focus on the concept of human agency and the process of engaging in

an emancipatory struggle in opposition to institutionalized and systemic oppression

(Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000). From the critical postmodern perspective, the goal is to
empower those who occupy the margins of gender identity, the transgendered. Revealing
their voices, lives, and ways society operates to maintain oppressive, binary gender
systems, becomes a primary concern (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000; McLaren, 1993). In a
critical postmodern framework, understanding binary gender systems, as well as the ways
transgender persons may collude with them create a foundation for examining
alternatives for emancipation and self determination (Allen, 1999).

Critical postrnodemists concern themselves with issues of marginalization and
empowerment. A critical postmodern goal is to help individuals and groups understand
how society and psyche have structured pe0ples lives in such a way that they might
organize around self-determination (Hall, 1999). Only through such awareness is social
and psychological emancipation possible. Kellner (1989) pointed out in discussion of
society and psyche that ideology plays a signiﬁcant role in human oppression. Sexism,
for example, has been the root of much of the feminist critique of women’s oppression,
and genderism is at the core of oppression of transgender persons. While some social
theorists and practitioners focus on speciﬁc ideologies, others note the interwoven nature
of all oppression. hooks (1984) asserted:

Individuals who ﬁght for the eradication of sexism without supporting struggles
to end racism or classism'undermine their own efforts. Individuals who ﬁght for
the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are
helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression. While they

may initiate successful reforms, their efforts will not lead to revolutionary change.

10

Their ambivalent relationship to oppression in general is a contradiction that must

be resolved or they will daily undermine their own work. (p. 39)

hooks highlights some of the overlapping assumptions critical postrnodernists and
feminists share, and she names the major aim project of critical postmodernism—to
confront oppression by uncovering cultural and ideological constraints that, in turn, assist
groups in the process of self-deterrnination. hooks (1984) maintained that people can
become accomplices in their own oppression. Nationally recognized transgender author
and activist, Kate Bomstein (1994) expanded on this concept by discussing that success
in the early transgender movement, meant “passing” as the “opposite” gender. To be
undetected, to ﬁt in, blend in, and ultimately, to deny transgender identity also were
articulated as primary goals by United States medical and therapeutic communities. And,
Bomstein described her own experience as a transsexual, transitioning from male to
female identity in a way that reinforces the gender binary and discounts trans people.
Said Bomstein (1994),

When, for example I lived my life by saying I was a man or a woman, I was

tacitly supporting all the rules of the gender system that deﬁnes those two

identities. I supported those rules in order to belong, or rather not to be an

outsider, a non-belonger. (p. 94)
Reﬂecting Bornstein’s description of her experience supporting binary gender systems,
this study will examine ways transgender students may collude with similar systems
operating in higher education contexts.

In summary, postmodern feminist, queer theory, and critical postmodern

perspectives all share a concern for challenging binary, essentialist notions of male or

11

female identities, as well as heterosexuality. Instead, they posit identity, gender, and
sexuality in ways that emphasize shifting boundaries, arnbivalences, and social
constructions that change depending on historical and cultural context (Gamson, 2000).
Through these perspectives, when individuals express gender in a manner that
transgresses social norms, shifting, changing, blurring, or negating gender, they
undermine and subvert binary male or female identities (Butler, 1990; Halberstarn, 1998).
The critical postmodern perspective adds the dimension of exarrrining systemic
oppression for clues as to how this may be dismantled to aid in the empowerment of
transgender persons.

Towards a Synthesis of Theory and Practice

A challenge for this study was to utilize these perspectives in ways that address
essentialized norms about gender, as well as inform action oriented change. I asked
myself a number of critical questions. How can I make sense of the complex lives of
transgender students in ways that both unmasks genderism in higher education (if it
indeed exists) and aids transgender student self-organization and empowerment? At a
deep level, it was a priority for me to both inform theory and practice. The growing
numbers of transgender students on college campuses demand it.

It is important to recognize that the college transgender identity movement is
relatively recent, with campus resource centers, student organizations and higher
education in general beginning transgender inclusion practices only within the last ten
years (Bilodeau, 2005). Campuses are beginning to examine the implications of a greater

presence of gender non-conforming students, as well as their related support needs. In

12

addition, women’s studies programs and lesbian and gay studies have been challenged to
consider transgender inclusion and gender constructions less visible in literature.
Most recently, the gender identity movement has grown to address university
policy. By spring, 2007, over sixty United States universities have added gender
identity as a protected classiﬁcation in their anti-discrimination policies. As a member of
the National Consortium of LBGT Campus Resource Directors in Higher Education, and
as a Director of a campus LBGT Resource Center, I participate in a national electronic
listserv whose participants increasingly address questions about policy related to gender
identity. How will student housing be affected? What kinds of bathroom facilities are
offered? What are expectations of campus medical and emotional health services for
students who are in gender transition? What are implications for student records and
career services? How can faculty create transgender inclusive classroom environments?
While these are only a sample of the pragmatic questions, at a deeper level, the
transgender movement calls into question the carefully crafted, often invisible culture of
genderism in post secondary education.
Overview of the Dissertation
The examination of genderism in this study begins with a literature review in

chapter two. An overview of Cisgender and transgender identities are presented from
socio-historical, western medical and psychiatric, human and student development, and
feminist postmodern, queer, and critical postmodern lenses. Chapter three lays out the
research process from the perspective of the three theoretical lenses described here and
related methodology for the overall study. Based on themes that emerged from the

research, chapters four and ﬁve describe a deﬁnition of genderism and its related

13

operating characteristics. Fundamentally, genderism reinforces a binary gender culture.
At the campus data collection sites of this study, only two, Cisgender identities were
accepted as normative. Transgender students experienced a social labeling process used
to categorize all individuals into male or female identities; social accountability for
conforming to binary gender norms with requisite punishments; privileging of Cisgender
identities; and invisibility of gender non-conforming identities and isolation of
transgender persons, making transgender identities inaccessible. The aforementioned
characteristics of genderism most often appeared to impact transgender student lives in
the following contexts: (admission, interactions with faculty, peers in class, academic
advising, scholarship opportunities), employment (employment while a student, future
career aspirations), campus LBGT communities and student organizations (degrees of
acceptance), and campus facilities (residence halls, athletic facilities, locker rooms,
bathrooms). Finally, chapter six describes the implications that genderism has for the

future of theory and practice in higher education.

14

Chapter Two: Review of Literature

As this study’s goal is to make the practical issues and unseen power structures of
gender on college campuses visible through the experience and identity processes of
transgender students, a number of intersecting bodies of literature should be given
consideration. I begin this literature review with a historical overview of transgender
identities ﬁom global and cross-cultural perspectives, with particular attention to the
social construction and positioning of these identities within the United States. Next,
scholarship regarding the complexities of human biology and gender socialization
processes are discussed, followed by an examination of literature related to western
medical and psychiatric perspectives on transgender identities. Medical and psychiatric
models clearly reinforce binary gender norrnativity and their social maintenance in
American culture, as well as constructions of gender in higher education and student
development literature. Evolving and contradictory scholarship from feminist and post-
modern perspectives regarding gender identity and transgender persons is examined in a
comparative context. Queer theory is compared and contrasted with feminist and
postmodern perspectives. Finally, literature regarding the use of critical postmodern
perspectives in organizational and higher education settings is presented.

T ransgender Identities: Historical Perspectives

A number of scholars have agreed that transgender behavior has an extensive

historical and global tradition (e.g., Besnier, 1993; Feinberg, 1996; Herdt, 1993;

Ringrose, 1993). F einberg (1 996) documented several instances in Western European

15

history where gender variance and transgression existed, including Joan of Arc, Amelia
Earhart, and Rebecca’s Daughters (cross dressing Welsh resistance ﬁghters). Historically,
in many Native American tribes and a number of non-Western societies, transgender
identities occupied culturally deﬁned and supported roles (Ryan & Futterrnan, 1998).
Native American cultures adopted rituals allowing children to choose what gender roles
they preferred. Children, who selected not-men or not-women identities, often varying
from biological sex, often were given special status (Brown, 1997; Crow, Wright, &
Brown, 1997; Feinberg 1996). While the literature is scant, modern multicultural
perspectives include Besnier’s (1993) analysis of transgender identities in Polynesian
cultures, Johnson’s (1997) ethnography of the blending of sexual orientation and gender
identities in the Southern Philippines, and the evolution of Native American Two Spirit
identities (Brown, 1997). Clare’s (1999) autobiographical work addressed transgender
persons in relation to the intersections of socioeconomic class issues and disabilities. In
the majority of modern Western societies, transgender persons are highly stigmatized,
often to a greater degree than lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men. (Ryan & F utterrnan,
1998). Other authors noted that in the United States, homosexual or bisexual hate crimes
often are based on the individual expressing gender in a way that varies from culturally
deﬁned norms of masculinity or femininity (Blrunenfeld, 1992; Pharr, 1997; Reitz, 1995,
Wilchins, 2004).

While not all transgender persons identify with LBGT communities, transgender
identities have historically occupied a range of positions within non-heterosexual cultures
in the United States (F einberg, 1996; Feinberg, 1997; Wilchins, 2004). And, it is

important to note, that transgender persons experienced stigrnatization and

16

marginalization within LBGT community contexts, as well. Wilchins (2004) described
parallel historical contributions of transgender persons and their within-community
oppression: “by common agreement, the modern gay rights movement began at the
Stonewall Inn, when Third-World drag queens and transpeople of color rioted against the
NYPD police during one of the cops’ routine routs of gay bars” (p. 14). At the same time,
Wilchins and others note the role of transgender individuals being erased from many
contemporary descriptions of the Stonewall incident to become what is commonly termed
a lesbian and gay riot (Caliﬁa, 1997; Wichins, 2004). What accounts for this erasure?

A number of scholars suggest that early gay male and lesbian activists were under
attack by cultural conservatives who accused them of being effeminate men or mannish
women (Caliﬁa, 1997; Feinberg, 1996; Wilchins, 2004). Such attacks have been
described as gender-baiting and played directly on American’s fears of a breakdown in
traditional gender roles and the binary gender system (Caliﬁa, 1997; Wilchins, 2004). If a
primary goal of the gay rights movement was to appeal to mainstream United States
culture, as was most often articulated by its male leadership, there was no room for
gender variant behavior (Duberman, 1994). No Sissies, bull-dykes, or tanspeople allowed.
Thus, male advocates of gay rights movement of the 1970s and 19803 stressed both
homosexual and gender cultural normativity by saying, “We’re just like straight people,
we just sleep with the same sex” (Wilchins, 2004, p. 17). This philosophical thread of the
gay rights movement remains to this day, and is articulated by regional and national
advocacy organizations claiming to be transgender inclusive, most notably the Human
Rights Campaign. Noted feminist scholar Marilyn Frye (1983) described this strategy as

“phallocratic” (p. 132) in its focus on the construction of an assimilationist gay rights

17

agenda and colluding with heterosexual male patriarchy to maintain power and oppress
women.

Frye and other authors cite that a similar gender-baiting strategy was used to
attack early feminist organizations regarding lesbian inclusion, playing on the threat of
“mannish woman” (Califia, 1997; Frye, 1983). The Radicalesbians, a New York group,
prepared the ﬁrst major statement of lesbian feminist theory, The Woman Identiﬁed
Woman, published in Notes from the Third Year, in 1971. The term lesbian, the authors
assert, is indeed a scare word designed to keep assertive, independent women in their
place. “Lesbian is a label invented by Man to throw at any woman who dares to be his
equal, who dares to challenge his prerogatives (including that of all women as part of the
exchange medium among men), who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs”
(Radicalesbians, p. 82). As the Radicalesbians point out, an independent woman cannot
be a “real woman, she must be a dyke” (pg. 82). Lesbian identities, in the context of male
patriarchal systems, are not constructed around sexual orientation, but on variance ﬁom
male dictated gender norms for women.

Other scholars extended notions of gender oppression further, describing the
historical erasure of transgender people of color ﬁom Stonewall accounts as an
expression of binary gender systems conspiring with racism and genderism, reinforcing
white supremacy and male domination (Bornstein, 1994; Feinberg, 1996, 1997; Wilchins,
1997, 2002). In this system, transgender identities are rendered invisible, despite
existence of identities termed third gender existing in many cultures (Besnier, 1994;
Bolin, 1993; Brown, 1997). Within Native American traditions, the identity of Two-Spirit

individuals have been negated in the context of white, European dual gender systems

18

(Brown, 1997). This systematic negation of all gender expression outside of binary, as
well as the implications of maintenance of racism, is deﬁned by Wilchins (2004) as a
function of power (2004). She elaborates,

At this point, it should come as no surprise that binaries are all about power, a

form of doing politics through language. Binaries create the smallest possible

hierarchy of one thing over another. They are not really about two things, but

only one. (p.43)
The maintenance of binary gender systems and their ultimately oppressive impact on
transgender persons is ﬁrrther replicated in literature describing the development of
western medicine and gender socialization.

Reinforcing the Binary: Western Medicine and Human Socialization

How much of gender identity, an individual’s sense of maleness, femaleness, a
blend of, or neither, is rooted biologically? How much is socially constructed? Literature
supports that these questions are complex and not yet clearly determined (Bornstein,
1994; Brown & Rounsley, 1996; Feinberg, 1996, 1998; Wilchins, 1997, 2002). However,
related scholarship identiﬁes the western medical model as having signiﬁcant effects on
ideology regarding gender identity development in the United States. Numerous authors
related that, for centuries, western studies of human anatomy have been labeled according
to biological sex characteristics—male and female reproductive organs, chromosomes,
hormone levels/types, and secondary sex characteristics, such as the distribution of facial
and body hair (Elkins & King, 1996; O’Keefe & Fox, 1997; Wilchins, 1997, 2002). In
western cultures, medical models provide a template for a clear binary distinction

between two genders, without a concept of gender variance (Caliﬁa, 1997; Feinberg,

l9

1998; Herdt, 1993). Yet, modern research documents the realities of biological variation,
of blurring and blending of biological sex characteristics (Wilchins, 1997, 2002). The
existence of intersexed persons, individuals who are born with variations of male and
female sex characteristics, provide one such example.

Literature regarding human socialization and gender identity suggests adherence
to the binary pattern established by the medical model. From birth moment (and often
beforehand), biological sex assignment determines human socialization practices, such as
gender speciﬁc pink or blue blankets and dolls or trucks (Bornstein, 1994; Carter, 2000;
F einberg, 1998). The concept of a cycle of socialization that reinforces binary
constructions of gender is further illustrated as a system of rewards and punishments for
gender-conforrning behavior (Harrow, 1989). These socialization activities include
birthing, early childhood and parental relationships, the impact of institutions such as
schools and religious organizations, adult workplace experiences, community and
regional norms, and policy and legislation (Harrow, 1989). Thus, from birth to death,
gender binary systems are reinforced and institutionalized. Transgender scholar and
activist Pat Caliﬁa (1997) posed a provocative, related question, “Who would you be if
you had never been punished for gender-inappropriate behavior?” (p. 3).

Medical and Psychiatric Perspectives on Gender Identity

The maintenance of dual gender systems in the United States is further reinforced
by medical and psychiatric perspectives. This scholarship is dominated by themes of
transgender identities as forms of mental illness, deviance, and disorder. Medical and
psychiatric literature focuses primarily on a binary construction of transgender identity,

with an emphasis on correcting gender deviance through reassignment to the appropriate

20

gender. A section on Gender Identity Disorder (GID) appeared for the ﬁrst time in the
American Psychiatric Association’s 1980 publication, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, 3’“ Edition (DSM-111). GID was described as an incongruence
between biological sex assignment and gender identity. Three different types of GID
diagnoses were discussed: transsexualism, non-transsexualism type, and not otherwise
speciﬁed (American Psychiatric Association, 1980). In DSM III, the treatments described
varied from psychotherapy to sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Three more editions of
DSM have appeared since 1980.

The current edition, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-I V-T R), continued the use of the GID classiﬁcation,
but expands diagnosis standards introduced in DSM-III. In DSM-IV- TR, there are four
major criteria which must be present to make a diagnosis. There must be evidence of a
strong and persistent cross-gender identiﬁcation, described as the desire to be, or the
insistence that one is of the other sex (Criteria A). This cross- gender identiﬁcation must
not merely be a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex. There
also must be evidence of persistent discomfort about one’s assigned sex or a sense of
inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex (Criteria B). The diagnosis is not made if
the individual has a concurrent physical intersex condition (Criteria C). To make the
diagnosis, there must be evidence of clinically signiﬁcant distress or impairment in
social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (Criteria D). In the case of
transexuality, individuals are further categorized under primary transsexualism (emerging
in early childhood) or secondary transsexualism (emerging during or after puberty)

(American Psychiatric Association, 2000). GID is used primarily to diagnose issues

21

related to transsexual identities, while another classiﬁcation, Gender Identity Disorder
Not Otherwise Speciﬁed (GIDNOS), applies to conditions such as intersex anatomy or
cross-dressing behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). DSM-I V-T R is
complimented by the ﬁfth edition of the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for Gender
Identity Disorders that outlines a treatment framework including therapeutic and medical
guidelines, as well as standards for ongoing evaluation of patients who are undergoing
sex reassignment surgery (Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association,
1988). While various researchers, as well as members of the transgender community,
regard these medical and psychiatric approaches as invaluable for addressing the needs of
gender variant individuals (Burgess, 1999), others disagree.

A number of scholars have been highly critical of DSM-I V-T R and the Harry
Benjamin Standards of Care, citing their pathologizing nature (e. g., Bomstein, 1994;
Carter, 2000; Mallon, 1999). In order to access sex reassignment surgery, an individual
essentially must be documented as having a mental illness (Carter, 2000). Literature
consistently identiﬁed a growing outrage regarding the GID diagnosis in transgender
communities (e. g., Caliﬁa, 1997; Carter, 2000; Wilchins, 2004). A transsexual protester
at an American Psychological Association meeting said, “Transsexuality is not a disease.
I am not crazy. It is who I am” (Olezewski, 1993, p. 13). Pressure to remove gender
identity disorders from DSM- VI-TR has been compared to the 1973 removal of
homosexuality as a mental illness classiﬁcation (Mallon, 1999). Pauline Parks, a
transgender activist, argues that every psychiatrist who diagnosis GID in a patient, merely
by virtue of the individual’s transgender identity, is complicit in the manipulation and

control of transgender people and their bodies. In diagnosing someone with an illness that

22

the person does not have, the psychiatrist engages in behavior that is not only unethical,
but constitutes medical malpractice (Cooper, 1999).

Other researchers suggested that the introduction of GID into the DSM, with its
emphasis on conformity to United States social constructions of masculinity and
femininity, have been inappropriately and harmfully used with lesbian, bisexual, and gay
populations (Cooper, 1999; Mallon, 1999). These authors asserted that diagnosis of
childhood GID, beginning in DSM 111, came as the result of a United States Government
study on gender variant boys that took place in the 19705. This research found that very
few “feminine” boys would go on to become transsexuals, but that a high percentage of
them (one half to two thirds) would become homosexuals (Cooper, 1999; Mallon, 1999).
Pazos (1999) cited the work of Moberly (1983) and Zucker (1990) as two of numerous
examples of the way GID is being used to harmfully attempt to “cure” homosexuality,
particularly in adolescents.

Other scholars suggested that medical and psychiatric professions collude with
genderist systems in the United States to reinforce binary constructions of gender
(Bornstein, 1994; Caliﬁa, 1997; Wilchins, 2004). Treatment and therapeutic approaches,
such as sex reassignment surgery, are designed to assist individuals in moving from one
sex to another, to become either male or female. Medical and psychiatric perspectives
greatly marginalize individuals such as genderqueers, androgynous persons, gender-
benders, transsexuals who do not desire surgery, and the expanding gender variant
identities embraced by today’s youth who fall outside of dual gender systems (Wilchins,
2002). When asked to describe personal gender identity, Triston, a participant in a study

of transgender college students, said,

23

I’d use the word ‘transgender’. I’d also use ‘non-operational female to male.’ I’d
also use the word ‘genderqueer’ . .. I’ve tried with my identity not to reinforce the
binary system, and options have been limited to the trans community by focusing
so much on transsexualism. The only option is, if you’re male, to become female,
or vice-versa. Transgender youth have felt that the binary gender system is not
for them. . .Transsexualism isn’t necessary to break gender boundaries. We want
to increase the number of genders. (Bilodeau, 2005, p. 4)
Youth and Student Development Perspectives on Gender Identity
Not surprisingly, human development literature regarding youth is primarily
concerned with individuals whose biological sex assignment at birth matches gender
identity. As an example, it is widely cited that by ages 3 or 4 a child develops a “natural”
sense of gender assignment as male or female (e. g., Green, 1971, 1974; Meyer-Bahlburg,
1985; Money, 1973; Kohlburg, 1966). This literature is devoid of child transgender
identity processes, which instead appear most often in scholarship related to GID. In
recent years, an increasing number of studies of transgender people have been published
(e.g., Denny, 1998; Devor, 1997; Lev, 2004; Rubin, 2003), yet little of this scholarship
explores how youth come to identify as transgender, or propose a healthy, non-
pathologized model of transgender identity development. A signiﬁcant exception is
Mallon’s (1999) book, Social Services with Transgendered Youth that primarily focused
on adolescent populations. In particular, the text addressed problematic issues of DSM-
I V-TR and broadened constructions of youth gender variance outside the binary. Mallon
(1999) asserted that it is not appropriate for social service practitioners to utilize

traditional development models taught in most human behavior and social environment

24

traditions, citing Erikson (1950), Marica (1980), Offer (1980), and Offer, Ostrov, and
Howard (1980), because these theorists posit concepts of gender role identiﬁcation in
Cisgender, biologically based constructions. Though scant, literature regarding the impact
of social stigrnatization and oppression on transgender adolescents and young college-
aged adults indicates high risks of suicide and depression, dropping out of school,
homelessness, verbal harassment and physical assault, as well as unemployment
(Bilodeau, 2003; Mallon, 1999; Renn & Bilodeau, 2002; Ryan & Futterrnan, 1998).
While still marginal, student development literature is emerging that addresses

the needs and concerns of transgender college students. This literature has included the
call for increased services for transgender students in the higher education LBGT
Resource Center movement (Lees, 1998), giving voice to the personal narratives of
transgender students through the text Out and About on Campus (Howard & Stevens,
2000), and advocating for inclusive student development practices regarding gender
variant students (Carter, 2000). As mentioned in chapter one, the 2005 special issue of
the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in Education contained four articles speciﬁcally
addressing research on transgender college students. In a 2002 study of LBGT student
leaders, Renn and Bilodeau (2002) noted that transgender student experiences appeared
to follow a developmental pattern posited by Anthony D’Augelli (1994), which he
originally designed for addressing issues of sexual orientation. A follow-up study by
Bilodeau (2005) appeared to conﬁrm that transgender students may experience gender
identity processes in the context of the D’Augelli (1994) model.

Reﬂecting a human development perspective, D’Augelli (1994) contended that

identity development occurs in a context—the simulateous development of a person’s

25

self-concepts, relationships with family, connections to peer groups, and community.
This perspective has been termed lifespan as it views sexual and affectional feelings as
being variable over a lifetime. D’Augelli (1994) used the phrase “developmental
plasticity” (p. 320) to suggest that human functioning is responsive to both biological
factors and environmental circumstances. In addition, D’Augelli (1994) suggested that
sexual orientation may be very ﬂuid at certain times in the life span and more ﬁxed at

others.

In applying D’Augelli’s framework to issues of gender identity and transgender
students, Bilodeau (2005) adapted the model which is described as follows. Process 1,
exiting a traditionally gendered identity, involves recognizing that one is gender variant,
attaching a label to this identity, and affirming oneself as transgender through Coming out
to others. Process 2, developing a personal transgender identity, entails achieving the
stability that comes from knowing oneself in relation to other transgender people and
challenging internalized transphobia. Process 3, developing a transgender social identity,
focuses on creating a support network of people who know and accept that one is gender
variant. Process 4, becoming a transgender oﬁfspring, consists of coming out as
transgender to family members and reevaluating relationships that may be disrupted by
the disclosure. Process 5, developing a transgender intimacy status, involves the creation
of intimate physical and emotional relationships. Finally, Process 6, entering a
transgender community, involves making a commitment to political and social action

through challenging transphobia and genderism.

26

Higher Education and Feminist Scholarship
While student development literature holds promise for transgender inclusion,

higher education scholarship, broadly constructed, generally follows dual gender
traditions. This literature examines structural gender inequality and includes examples
such as discrepancies based on faculty salaries, patriarchal tenure systems, the
marginalization of student female voices in the classroom, female and male students
being tracked into majors and careers on the basis of gender, and challenges within
intercollegiate athletics (e.g., Ropers-Huilman, 2000; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2003; Wolf-
Wendel, 2003). These structures are supported by a binary, patriarchal, and gendered
culture of higher education, with prescribed dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression
(women as targets of oppression, men as agents of oppression). As an example, Ward and
Wolf-Wendel (2003) described studies comparing Cisgender men’s and women’s faculty
experiences in the contexts of being professionals, partners, and parents:

The literature suggests that while men and women as professionals, partners and

parents struggle with the task of achieving a balance between work and family life,

the challenge for women is greater than for men, given the simple logistics of the

biological clock, the tenure clock, the physical demands of pregnancy and

childbirth, the gendered expectations of family obligations, and the ongoing

disparity with which women take on the “second shift” through maintenance of

of children and home. (p. 236)

Perspectives of Ward and Wolf-Wendel (2003), as well as the majority of higher
education gender studies, are rooted in a feminist examination of socially assigned power

and identity relations between male and female identities (e. g., Gilligan,1977; hooks,

27

1984; Lloyd, 1987; Macintosh, 1977; MacKinnon, 1987; Pateman, 1988; Young, 1987).
This feminist work made signiﬁcant contributions to understanding gender through
unmasking sexism in identity development theory, giving women’s experience voice and
visibility across race and class, and naming the operation of male privilege. Yet, these
constructions are primarily based on the assumption of gender operating in a binary, male
or female manner. Wilchins (2002) commented on the bias of binary based gender
theory:
Gender is like a lens through which we’ve not yet learned to see. Or more
accurately, like glasses worn from childhood, it’s like a lens through which we’ve
always seen and can’t remember how the world looked before. And this lens is
strictly bifocal. It strangely shows us only black and white in a Technicolor world
so that, as this book’s narratives clearly illustrate, there may certainly be more
than two genders, but two genders is all we’ve named, all we know, all we’ll see.
And as basic as gender is personhood; changing that will take a more radical
political upheaval than we’ve yet seen from any recent human rights movement.
(p. 13)
Postmodern Feminist Perspectives on Gender Identity
Binary feminist perspectives were challenged by a feminist postmodern ideology
that took issue with the essentialized, dual nature of gender construction (e.g., Burke,
1996; Butler, 1990, 1993, 2004; Creed, 1995; Halberstam, 1998). Judith Butler (1990)
rejected essentialist feminist perspectives on gender because they because they did not
leave any room for variation, or for alternative inﬂuences on different people in different

situations. Butler concluded that gender is not a core aspect of identity but rather a

28

performance, how people behave at different times. Gender (masculinity and femininity)
is an achievement rather than a biological factor. To illustrate this point Butler refers to
the Aretha Franklin song, You make me feel like a natural woman. In this song, Franklin
can sing, "You make me feel like a woman" without this being presumed as necessarily
obvious. In other words, a woman does not necessarily feel feminine all the time, any
more than a man feels masculine (Butler, 1990). Butler suggested that we think of gender
as ﬂee-ﬂoating and ﬂuid rather than ﬁxed:

When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of

sex, gender itself becomes a free-ﬂoating artiﬁce, with the consequence that man

and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and
woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one. (p6)

Butler (1990) advocated “gender trouble” (p8) as a way of challenging traditional
notions of gender identities. Butler's main metaphor for this is drag. By dressing as a
member of the opposite sex, drag artists are subverting ideas of gender norms,
challenging the "constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing
as the foundational illusions of identity" (Butler, 1990, p. 148).

Butler argued that the way we perceive gender roles lies at the very root of the
inequality of multiple forms of gender expression. Her argument is that if we deconstruct
the way society views gender roles, this might lead to changes in political culture and so
improve the lot of those most oppressed by the binary gender system: women, and
transgender persons. In other words, if there were no longer conventional roles for binary
gender constructions, it would not be unusual for a Cisgender woman or a genderqueer

person to be in positions of power at work or for a Cisgender man to stay at home and

29

look after children. Gradually, the patriarchal, genderist society which exists would
change to become a truly equal one:

If identities were no longer ﬁxed as the premises of a political syllogism, and

politics no longer understood as a set of practices derived from the alleged

interests that belong to a set of ready-made subjects, a new conﬁguration of

politics would surely emerge from the ruins of the old. (Butler, 1990, p.149)
While Butler’s work is considered a foundational bridge from postmodern perspectives to
queer theory by many scholars, not all academics attribute such signiﬁcance to Butler’s
work.

In her article The Professor of Parody, Martha Nussbaum (1999) attacks the
writings of Judith Butler primarily on two levels. She asserts that Judith Butler uses
obscure language to make her work appear unique, despite prior scholarship reﬂecting
similar themes. She also suggests that Butler's work lacks practical application to the
lived experience. Her ﬁrst type of attack concerns Butler's use of language. Nussbaum
(1999) complains, "A ﬁrrther problem lies in Butler's casual mode of allusion" (p. 44).
She suggests that Butler relies heavily on technical terminology and concepts without
ever clearly deﬁning them. Butler takes for granted the idea that people know what she is
talking about and that her use of paradigmatic language makes her argument acceptable.
As Nussbamn (1999) says, "the imagined reader poses few questions, requests no
arguments and no clear deﬁnitions of terms" (p. 45). Nussbaum (1999) describes the
work of several scholars (including Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin) who

presented the same ideas as Butler does, but earlier. From Nussbaum’s (1999)

30

perspective, Butler is not advancing new ideas so much as she is re-hashing old
perspectives with new jargon.

The real danger of Butler's work, Nussbaum (1999) continues, is its distance from
lived experience. She writes, "The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is
the loss of a sense of public commitment... Hungry women are not fed by this, battered
women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not ﬁnd justice in it, gays and lesbians do
not achieve legal protections through it" (p. 44). According to Nussbaum (1999), Butler
removes scholarship from a relevant socio-context. Though Butler reﬂects on how her
gender and sexual orientation have inﬂuenced her thought, she is detached from
positioning her ideas in a broader, pragmatic, social context. Utlirnately, Nussbaum
(1999) suggests that this causes Butler’s work to fail to be culturally signiﬁcant.
Regardless of these criticisms, many consider Butler’s work to be foundational to the
development of queer theory.

Queer Theory

Much of Judith Butler’s (1990) and Michael Focault’s (1979, 1980) scholarship
has been cited as having a signiﬁcant impact on the development of queer theory. Queer
theory challenges static, essentialist notions of homosexuality and heterosexuality within
the mainstream discourse or as Chauncey (1994) termed it, the “binary sexual regime” (p.
54). Instead, queer theory posits an understanding of sexuality that focuses on shifting
boundaries, ambivalences, and social constructions that change depending on historical
and cultural context (Braumann, 1996; Whittle, 2005). According to Walters (2005),"To
queer is to render ‘normal’ sexuality as strange and unsettled, to challenge

heterosexuality as a naturalized social-sexual norm and promote the notion of ‘non-

31

straightness,’ challenging the hegemony of ‘straight’ ideology (p. 7). This emphasis on
non-straightness (and non-cisgendemess) gives queer theory its assimilationist, anti-
essentialist lens, “for when one considers the realms of fantasy, the unconscious,
repression, and denial, much that is ostensibly considered ‘heterosexual’ easily falls
within the realm of queer” (Morton, 2001 , p. 209). While thoroughly disruptive of
mainstream constructions of sex and gender “truth regimes” (Garber, 2005, p. 57), queer
theory also challenges standard gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender politics (Altman,
1996; Lance & Tanesini, 2005). From Butler’s (1990) perspective, these terms are
rendered meaningless when stripped of the institutional systems that support them.
Alexander Doty's (1997) notion of “queer reception” (p. 25) in Making Things
Perfectly Queer, is another way in which standard categories are challenged. Doty (1997)
separated “reception” from “identity” and stressed the way a spectator may derive “queer
pleasure” by deviating from standard categories in viewing ﬁlm and television (p. 26).
According to Doty (1997), straight-identiﬁed women spectators might experience “queer
pleasure” (p. 27) at the sexual tension generated between Geena Davis and Susan
Sarandon in Thelma and Louise; straight-identiﬁed men might enjoy the exaggerated
homoeroticism of Stallone's Rambo. In summary, queer theory literally turns
heterosexual and Cisgender normativity inside out, rendering these constructions deviant.
T ransgender Perspectives: from Feminist Postmodern and Queer to Critical Postmodern
This shift towards a postmodern feminist, queer construction of gender parallels
the evolution of what Caliﬁa (1997) described as two waves of literature, written from
the perspectives of transgender identiﬁed authors. The ﬁrst wave represented a generation

of writers who provided autobiographical testimony about the beneﬁts of medically-

32

mediated transsexual reassignment surgery. These pioneering works include: Christine
Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography (Jorgensen, 1967), Jan Morris’s (1974)
Conundrum: An Extraordinary Narrative of T ransexualism and Emergence: A
Transexual Autobiography, a lesser known life story of female to male (FTM)
transsexual Mario Martino (1977). Caliﬁa (1997) noted that these early autobiographies
are all dedicated to the doctors and sex researchers who ﬁrst advocated that sex
reassignment be used as a treatment for gender identity disorder. This literature supports
the idea that trangenderism’s goal is to transition from one gender identity to another,
seamlessly blending in and ultimately negating transgender identity in order to pass as the
new man or woman.

As described by Caliﬁa (1997), the second wave of transgender autobiography
and scholarship began a shift away from solidarity with the binary constructions of
transexualism and the medical community with Rene Richard’s (1983) narrative and
scholarship by English F TM transgender activist, Mark Rees (1986). F einberg’s highly
acclaimed novel, Stone-Butch Blues (1993) and her historical text, T ransgender
Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1996), addressed ways
gender variant and transgender identities intersect with gay and lesbian identities, as well
as provide multiple contexts for constructions of gender identities across cultures. The
scholarship of Riki Anne Wilchins (1997, 2002, 2004) and Kate Bomstein (1994, 1998),
take on a distinctive postmodern tone, with both authors critically analyzing oppressive
gender binary systems in historical, institutional, and political contexts.

Literature reﬂects a trend away from identity and social constructions reinforcing

a binary gender system, taking issue with and subverting traditional cultural norms of

33

male or female (e.g., Burke, 1996; Butler, 1990, 1993, 2004; Creed, 1995; Halberstam,
1998). Bomstein (1994) suggested that gender is essentially a binary class system in
which one class will always try to oppress the other. Most radically, Bomstein (1994)
argued that there will never be true gender freedom and equality until all social gender
categories are eliminated. In Sexual Politics, one of the earliest feminist marrifestos, Kate
Millett (1970) discussed the ﬁ'ustrations of analyzing patriarchy, because there is no
alternative social construct to which it might be compared. Patriarchy is the norm. The
binary gender system is so pervasive, so taken for granted, and, in the last 20 years, so
analyzed that as Wilchins (2002) offered, scholars “can’t envision any alternative” (p.13).
The movement of transgender authors (e. g., Bomstein, 1994; Caliﬁa, 1997; F einberg,
1996, 1998; Wilchins, 2002, 2004) to liberate transgender voices, challenging
constructions of binary gender categories, as well as articulating a vision of social
change, represents a shift from the postmodern and queer to the critical postmodern.
Critical Postmodern Perspectives

Numerous scholars describe the critical postmodern tradition as being rooted in a
synthesis of critical theory and postmodern thought (e.g., Best & Kelner, 2001; Boje,
2001a; Feldman, 1999; Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000). Critical theory emerged in the
19203 from the German Frankfurt tradition of scholarship surrounding issues of human
emancipation, with a goal of understanding the oppressive nature of society in order to
enact individual and social change (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000). Its aim is to create
conditions so that those oppressed may liberate themselves (Best & Kelner, 2001; Boj e,
2001a). The attempt to understand society in this manner means that critical theorists

dismiss positivist notions of knowledge and science (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000). As an

34

alternative, critical theory presents knowledge as being socially and historically
determined and a consequence of power. The social and historical construction and
interlocking nature of power, its oppressive inﬂuence, and liberating empowerment in
social and historical contexts are central to critical theory (Boje, 2001a). Critical theory’s
ultimate aim is research which leads to the creation of social structures which enhance
empowerment and democracy (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000). Yet, like Butler’s (1993)
criticism of feminist ideology, critical theory does not offer a level of analysis that
questions issues related to social categorical identities, such as woman or man.

Alternatively, post modern scholarship takes issue with socially constructed
identity norms, as well as rejecting critical theory’s idea that, through reason, it is
possible to achieve agreement about the nature of truth or oppression (Eugene, 2002;
Hall, 1999). In scholarship deﬁning postmodern terminology, Gitlin (1989) noted,
“Postmodernism is completely indifferent to issues of consistency and continuity. . .It
neither embraces nor criticizes, but beholds the world blankly, with a knowingness that
dissolves feeling and commitment into irony” (p. 52). Instead of focusing on the struggle
of groups or individuals to overcome oppression, postmodernism seeks to deconstruct the
socially constructed nature of what is meant by “groups,” “individuals,” and
“oppression,” through multiple perspective analysis (Grace, 1997). Most signiﬁcantly,
postmodernism seeks to undermine socially constructed norms surrounding the meanings
of these deﬁnitions (Butler, 1990). Postmodernism challenges the ideas and beliefs about
ﬁxed and stable identities.

A number of scholars and theorists present a synthesis of critical theory and

postmodern discourse to frame what Henry Giroux (1992) termed “critical

35

postmodernism” (p. 7). Critical postmodernism “takes into account both the
macropolitical level of the organization and the micropolitical level of different and
contradictory manifestations of oppression as a means of analyzing global relations of
oppression” (McLaren, 1993, p. 119). Of signiﬁcant concern to the critical postmodern
perspective are the ways in which language, culture, and power interact to shape the
social experience (Giroux, 1994; Tierney, 1993). For critical postrnodemists, a core focus
is the concept of human agency and the process of engaging in an emancipatory struggle
in opposition to institutionalized and systemic oppression (Feldman, 1999).

Critical postmodern perspectives have been utilized by scholars in analyses of
business and industry, as well as higher education. Boje (1993, 1995, 2001c) has studied
major corporations such as Disney, Nike, and Las Vegas casinos from a critical
postmodern theoretical framework. Boje (2001c) summarizes,

Beyond the virtual corporate core of the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon, are

720,000 (mostly) women working in some 730 sweatshop factories in pre-

Tayloristic work conditions. Beneath the postmodern architecture and ‘Happy

Kingdom’ of Disney, is the mechanistic assembly lines, the Tayloristic story

production machine, and the women of Haiti, and now China that make the

garment and toys Disney sells in theme parks and Disney stores. Postmodern
casino resorts fashion a Paris, an Egyptian Pyramid, or a Venice more real than

the real, and use Circus acts, street carnival, and the rides and exhibits of a

Disney, as well as the mechanistic of McDonaldization to attract entire families to

participate in gambling and sex addiction. In short, the postmodern has its dark

36

side and is in strange hybridity with both modern factory, and pre-modern

sweatshop and the carnivalesque. (p. 8)
Critical postmodern theory has been used to analyze these corporations from multiple
perspectives. Ways organizations are able to sustain a curtain of invisibility over a
voiceless workforce, as well as maintain positions of prominence economically and in
popular culture are primary issues for exploration (Boj e, 1995). More signiﬁcantly,
critical postmodernism offers an emancipatory alternative. According to Boje (2001c), a
critical postmodern project can move society beyond exploitation, racism, sexism, and
abuse by refrarning and restoring organization theory away from its patriarchal language

9

in order to reafﬁrm social justice, equality, democracy, and the “wonders of multiplicity’
(p. 9).

Tierney (1993, 1994) is noted for his inﬂuential application of critical
postmodernism to explore multicultural issues in higher education articulating a process
he referred to as “building communities of difference” (p. 3). Tierney asserted that a
postmodern conception of difference affords individuals the possibility not only of
understanding other people’s lives, but also of coming to terms with how they are
situated within society, how their speciﬁc identities are framed and shaped by society,
and roles they play in the contexts of privilege, oppression, and related cultural systems.
Further, he suggested that critical theory’s advocacy for empowerment and the
development of voice be fused with the postmodern notion of difference. Tierney (1993)
presented twelve proposals calling for the transformation of higher education, in which
norms are challenged and difference becomes an organizing concept. Proposals are

ﬁ'amed with critical theory’s emphasis on struggle and the postmodern belief in the

37

power of the norm. The critical postmodern framework has also been applied to college-
based service learning initiatives (Hayes & Cuban, 2001), as well as nursing curriculum
(Hall, 1999). While Rhoads (1994) used critical postmodern theory in his study of the
experiences of gay men in higher education, it has not yet been used to examine
transgender student identities in collegiate contexts. Yet, the critical postmodern tradition
may be seen as inﬂuencing the emergence of a new term related to the transgender
experience: Cisgender.

Cisgender and the Critical Postmodern Framework.

Cisgender is emerging as a term to describe individual who are non-transgender
and is used throughout this disseration, thus warranting attention in the literature review.
One of the ﬁrst recorded uses of Cisgender was in the alt. transgendered usenet group in
May of 1994 by Dana Leland Defosse (Green, 2006). In April of 1996, Carl Buijs, a
transsexual man from the Netherlands said in a usenet posting "As for the origin; 1 just
made it up” (F austo-Sterling, 2000, p. 54). Green (2006) suggests that the term logically
stems from Latin preﬁxes, in which cis (on the same side) is the opposite of trans (on the
opposite side).

Transgender communities increasingly prefer Cisgender to biological, or genetic
male or female because of what these words imply (Rombad 2004). As an example, using
the term biological female or genetic female to describe Cisgender women suggests that
transgender women also not biologically female; since there is debate over whether
transsexuality has a genetic or biological cause, some individuals may argue that
transgender women are also biologically female. Thus, as an application of the critical

postmodern ﬁ‘amework, the terms Cisgender and transgender disrupt the traditional

38

gender paradigm that gender identity follows normally from a particular sex, rendering
transgender identities abnormal (Rombad, 2004).
Literature Review Summary

A review of literature regarding gender identity and transgender persons reveals
themes of an essentialized nature of gender based on a binary, two-gender, biologically
based ﬁ'amework. This framework permeates much of western medical, psychiatric, and
human development literature. To deviate ﬁom this binary gender system is viewed as
“disorder,” “malady,” and “deviant.” While some feminist scholarship reinforces binary
constructions of gender, post-modem feminist perspectives, the work of Judith Butler
(1990), challenges categorical notions of “male” or “female,” suggesting that much of
gender is performance in socially constructed contexts. Instead, gender is viewed as a
continuum of multiple expressions. The use of postmodern, queer, and critical
postmodern lenses may aid to further deconstruct and subvert binary gender systems, as
well as give voice to a generation of transgender students previously marginalized in

higher education scholarship.

39

Chapter Three: Research Methodology

The goal of this study was to make the practical issues and unseen power
structures of binary gender systems on campus visible through the experiences and
identity processes of transgender students. I used semi structured individual interviews,
the constant comparative method and the generation of grounded theory to explore this
study’s core research question: What could the experiences of transgender students reveal
about the nature of genderism and its characteristics in a higher education context?
Chapter three describes the theoretical traditions related to the research question;
positions my identity in relationship to the study; and provides an overview of
participants, procedure and data analysis, and study limitations.

Research Context: Postmodern, Queer and Critical Postmodern Traditions

The study sought to understand ways transgender students experience binary
gender systems in a broad and complex range of campus cultures, environments and
interpersonal contexts. Given this focus, a research methodology reﬂecting postmodern,
queer, and critical postmodern perspectives was selected. As applied to research, these
perspectives share an emphasis on understanding how structural power operates in

relationship to socially constructed identity groups that have been marginalized in society

I (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000; Olsen, 2000). While data are just emerging about
transgender student populations, they clearly represent a group that has been
disenfranchised in United States culture (Bilodeau, 2005). Further, research methodology
reﬂecting postmodern, queer, and critical postmodern perspectives all seek to recognize

that the identity processes and experiences of research subjects occur in wide ranging and

40

complex socially constructed contexts ((Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000; Olsen, 2000). It
was important that the methodology I employed would account for these complexities.

From postmodern feminist, queer and critical postmodern research perspectives, a
number of issues related to role of the researcher warrant examination. The scholar’s
identity, relationship to research and subjects, points of privilege, and operating
assumptions are viewed as being intimately connected to the social “fabric” of the
research process (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000; Olsen, 2000). These factors must be
named and accounted for in the research methodology.

Methodology

As my research question focused on how genderism and binary gender systems
impacted transgender students in complex campus cultures, a qualitative methodology
focusing on individual interviews was selected. The interpretive framework for this study
utilized the constant comparative method, as well as the generation of grounded theory
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Strauss and Corbin (1994) would describe the use of grounded
theory as methodology appropriate for this study, particularly given its exploratory
nature. Postmodern, queer and critical postmodern research lenses require that students’
experiences be examined in a number of socially constructed contexts. Individual
interviews explored their lives in relationship to the broader gender dynamics occurring
in classrooms, student organizations, residential settings, campus events, and other
relevant settings. Interview questions were designed in an open-ended way to account for

these complexities.

41

Research Methods

Transgender identiﬁed students exist in small numbers on most campuses, if at
all. I hoped to have a minimum of ten students participate in the study. I preferred to
focus on one data collection site and decided that a large public research institution would
best ﬁt this goal. Knowing that campus LBGT resource centers are often important places
of connection for transgender students, I chose to solicit center directors to request
assistance and support in conducting the study on their campuses. The LBGT campus
resource director ﬁ'om the large public research institution that I preferred for my study,
agreed to assist. For this study’s purposes, I will refer to this institution as University A.
In initial discussions I had with the director, he described the campus transgender student
population as comprising approximately 15 to 20 individuals, and thought there would be
a strong interest in my study. He forwarded an electronic announcement (see Appendix
C) about my study and request for participants to LBGT campus list servs and
transgender student organizations. However, only four transgender students volunteered
to participate. Though these individuals were very enthusiastic about the study, and
shared information about it with their transgender peers, I did not receive any additional
responses.

My home institution was the only other large public research institution in the
state. I was aware that there was a campus transgender population of 8 to 10 students and
decided to solicit participation from this group. I recognized that there were potentially
problematic elements, as some of these students were individuals who I had relationships
with in the context of their participation in campus LBGT student groups. However, none

of the students were ones with whom I had an employee or supervisory relationship. Nor

42

did I serve in any form of an evaluative role. I solicited participation in the study by
sharing an announcement message to campus LBGT student electronic list servs and to
email accounts of transgender student organizations. Six students volunteered to
participate. For the purposes of this study, I will refer to the institution that these students
attend and where I am employed as University B.

Individual Interviews

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants at each of the
institutions. Given the personal and conﬁdential nature of the interviews, I invited
participants to select the location where they might be the most comfortable being audio
taped and speaking with me. At University A, I met with most of the students in a quiet
comer of a very large campus food court. I met one individual at the ofﬁce of a student
organization. Overall, students at University B preferred to meet with me at my ofﬁce.
With two participants, I shared a meal in a quiet restaurant off campus and the interview
followed.

Participant interviews lasted ﬁom ninety minutes to four hours and subjects self-
selected pseudonyms for anonymity. I asked open-ended questions that were clustered
around two primary questions, “How supportive has your university been of your
transgender identity?” and “If I were to ask you to describe the gender system at this
college, how would you describe it?” (see protocol in Appendix D). Interviews lasted
from ninety minutes to four hours. I was pleased and surprised by the eagerness of the
students to participate in the study. Over the six weeks that I conducted these interviews,
I learned that, for a number of the participants, I was the ﬁrst person who had ever given

them a formal opportunity to reﬂect on their experiences as a transgender college

43

students. Four participants independently contacted me post the initial interview and said
they enjoyed the experience, had continued to think about the questions, and were eager
to talk further. After the interview phase was completed, I had the audio tapes transcribed
by a professional service. While I believed that my relationship to interview subjects as
well the protocols described above all fell within appropriate research guidelines,
qualitative scholarship also calls for a thorough positioning the researcher in relationship
to the study.
Positioning of Researcher in Relationship to Subjects

I identify as a 44 year old, white, middle class, gay, Cisgender male, who serves
as the director of a campus lesbian, bisexual gay and transgender (LBGT) resource center
at a large, Midwestern university. Though I have had prior experience working with
transgender students and conducting research about related identity development
processes, this was the ﬁrst time that I had worked speciﬁcally on binary gender system
issues, either as a practitioner or a scholar.

Yet, as I reﬂected on my personal experience, the impact of binary gender
systems was not completely inaccessible to me. My personal experience with oppression
based on sexual orientation was that it was based in part on my gay identity, but also on
societal gender expectations. My being gay, to be physically and emotionally attracted to
men, was often socially perceived to being effeminate, non-male, and in fact labeled me
female. Thus, I violated social gender norms.

Despite my limited experience with binary system oppression, I also was aware of
ways that I had colluded with it. I speciﬁcally remember work done early in my career

with transsexually identiﬁed faculty and staff who were transitioning from male to female

genders. In my efforts to provide support to these individuals, I also operated fi'om a
philosophical framework that sprang from an erroneous myth that the goal of all
transgender persons was to make a linear transition to the gender opposite biological sex
assignment. I am grateful that I later developed an alternative perspective, today viewing
gender as non-dualistic. Yet, I still wondered how my many years of socialization in a
binary gender system would impact my perspectives in relationship to the study. Going
into the research process, I remember being curious about what transgender students
would reveal about gender systems that my Cisgender place of privilege might mask and
render invisible. Issues related to positioning my relationship to the study were further
addressed by attention to authenticity, trustworthiness and credibility.
Authenticity, T rustworthiness, Credibility

Given the qualitative framework guiding this study, data analysis needed to
account for the factors of authenticity, credibility, and trustworthiness. In this context,
authenticity may be described as the overall lens for interpreting data. Lincoln and Guba
(2000) suggest “authenticity criteria,” named this because, “. . .we believed them to be
hallmarks of authentic, trustworthy, rigors, or “valid” constructivist or phenomenological
inquiry” (p. 180). Lincoln and Guba (2000), discuss three types of authenticity criteria:
fairness, ontological and educative, and catalytic and tactical. These approaches share the
idea that all participant, interviewer, and stakeholder (invested outsiders) “views,
perspectives, claims, concerns, and voices should be apparent in the text” (p. 181). Thus,
establishing authenticity may be informed by qualitative methods related to

trustworthiness and credibility (Cresswell, 2003).

45

Trustworthiness involves the awarding of credibility only when constructions of
reality are plausible to those who constructed them. Even then, there may be
disagreement as the researcher may see the effects of oppression in the constructions of
those who are researched; effects that those who are researched may not see (Olsen,
2000). Credibility of the researcher may also be established through identifying
colleagues to check data analysis procedures (Creswell, 2003; Schwandt, 2001). My
accounting for issues of credibility and trustworthiness in this study follows.

All participants were given the opportunity to review their personal transcripts
and an eight page executive summary of study ﬁndings. They also had the option to meet
personally with me to discuss feedback, or by telephone or email. One participant ﬁ'om
each of the two institutions volunteered to do so. I was concerned about how my identity
as a Cisgender male might inﬂuence my data coding and analysis. To check my coding
against that of a transgender identiﬁed individual, I recruited a transgender colleague
familiar with qualitative research and binary gender system issues, to code two transcripts
and provide a written response. I also recruited a transgender identiﬁed student at
University B who was not involved in the project to code two transcripts from interviews
at the University A and provide written responses. These volunteers all independently
agreed with my major codes, and had some slight suggestions for modiﬁcation, which I
incorporated.

Data and Analysis

The data for this study consisted of transcripts, ﬁeld notes from the individual

interviews, and information gathered though trustworthiness checks. I designed a coding

scheme based on the Strauss and Corbin (1994) procedures. In addition, Miles &

46

Huberrrran (1994) provided a description of strategies for organizing interview data and
“tactics for generating meaning” that I utilized during data collection, coding, and
analysis stages of this study. As grounded theory relies on both the perspectives of the
researcher and participants, I found the framework ideal for a study that focused on
understanding the ways participants engaged in meaning-making around binary gender
systems.

Regarding analysis procedures, I hand coded the transcripts based on individuals
interviews. The initial coding framework clustered data broadly around themes related to
the students experience of binary gender systems on campus and the impact of these on
their student experience. I used this initial framework to develop second level codes
based on emerging themes related to: academic experiences (admission, interactions with
faculty, peers in class, academic advising, scholarship opportunities), employment
(employment while a student, future career aspirations), campus LBGT communities and
student organizations (degrees of acceptance), and campus facilities (residence halls,
athletic facilities, locker rooms, bathrooms). These second level codes were used to
inform third level coding, this scheme being used to examine themes related to
genderism, its deﬁnition and characteristics. These codes focused on ways students
experienced the dynamics of Cisgender privilege and transgender oppression (often in the
context of the second level coding framework).

As the research study unfolded, I applied an inductive analysis of data from all
study sources. This analysis formed the baseline for the executive summaries shared
during the trustworthiness and member check phases of the study. I then compared the

themes generated through grounded theory and constant comparative analysis to the core

47

research questions. From the coding processes, the following primary themes emerged as
descriptors of genderism: (1) There was a forced social labeling process that sorts and
categorizes all individuals into male or female identities, often at an institutionalized
level; (2) There was social accountability for conforming to binary gender norms with
related rewards and punishments; (3) Marginalization was enacted through an overt and
covert privileging of binary systems; (4) Binary systems promoted invisibility of gender
non-conforming identities and isolation of transgender persons, making transgender
identities inaccessible. While I expand on these codes and themes in chapters four and
ﬁve, proﬁles of the student participants who gave voice to these themes follow.
Proﬁles of Participants

A total of ten students participated, four from University A and six from
University B. When asked to self identify by gender identity, three individuals described
themselves with the word transsexual, three used the phrase tranny boy, one identiﬁed as
genderqueer or androgynous, one used the terms m to 5 (male to something else), two-
spirit or third gender to self identify and still defining was the phrase used by two other
participants. The three individuals who identiﬁed as transsexual all had undergone
varying degrees of sex reassignment surgery. Each had legally changed their names and
gender documents such as birth certiﬁcates and drivers licenses. Regarding the students
who used the phrase tranny boy to identify, all were biologically female, yet were living
full time as men. None of the tranny boys had undergone sex reassignment surgery or
sought to legally change their names or gender designations, but anticipated doing so in
the future. The student who self-labeled with the terms genderqueer identiﬁed gender as

neither "man" or "woman," but instead described self as blurring and blending of gender

48

expression, and sometimes alternating between multiple forms of gender expression. The
participant who used M to S (male to something else), two-spirit or third gender to
identify did not consider self to be a man or a woman, yet expressed gender in ways that
was in some respects male and in others female. This individual ultimately described the
concept of gender as a spectrum in which there were many forms of expression beyond a
simplistic binary construction. The students who used the phrase still deﬁning to identify
were biologically female and currently used male names and pronouns to identify. Yet,
these individuals were unsure whether they had arrived at their ﬁnal gender identities, or
if they ever would. All participants self selected pseudonyms for anonymity. A more
detailed overview of each participant follows:

Transsmal

Debbie:

Debbie was a white, M-F, transsexual woman, who was 50 years old, and a
second year law student. She transitioned from male to female gender assignment prior to
attending University A. At the University, she had joined the LBGT law school
organization, Outlaws where she described being voted, “not only the most popular girl
in law school, but the most visible person in the entire university,” ultimately being given
the “media darling award.” Wendy worked with Diondre, another student at University A
to help found the “Transaction” group. She also participated in the campus LBGT Office
Speaker’s Bureau and served as the keynote speaker at the university’s Transgender Day
of Remembrance event. Debbie describes herself as being “very, very out; very public.”

In articulating how she came to understand her transgender identity, Debbie

discussed feeling she knew she was a woman from the time she was a child. She said,

49

“The ﬁrst part of this story is just very typical. As a young child, you just know you’re a
girl, and so you wish to be a girl, and you go to bed at night and pray that when you wake
up in the morning it will all be ﬁxed, and all of that.” Debbie discussed privately cross
dressing through her teen years. She said that most transgender people cross dress
throughout their lives, but this ended for her at age sixteen or seventeen. Said Debbie,
“From that time, it never entered my mind again. I just lived my life as a normal boy.”
She did, however, describe herself as “more feminine” than her male peers, but not in
ways that were far outside of the expected range of gender behavior. She said, “I got
some teasing, but it wasn’t horriﬁc.” Debbie dropped out of high school, spent four years
in the Navy, married, had three kids and then, “somewhere in my middle thirties it all
started coming back to me. I don’t understand where it went or why it came back
(laughter) and I still don’t. I just know it did.” Debbie described doing “typical”
transgender behavior at this point. She crossed dressed secretly, feeling ashamed and
afraid of disclosure. What she describes as “rather unique” about her transgender
experience is that she transitioned from male to female identities twice.

During the ﬁrst transition, Debbie left two jobs. In her ﬁrst position, she served as
vice president of ﬁnance for a medical distribution company. Staff at the company
suspected that she cross-dressed after work and hired a private detective to monitor her.
Debbie was subsequently ﬁred. In the second job, she was the chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer of a
small public company. When she informed the company leadership that she intended to
transition, Debbie described their response as, “well, you better transition someplace

else.” She chose to quit this job, underwent gender transition, started hormones, and

50

began living full time as a woman. She gained employment again in a new position, post
transition, but then a personal crisis occurred. Said Debbie,

And then the woman I was with, this has been a ﬁve year period, decided that she

really wanted to be with a man, so she left. And I just was devastated and thought,

okay, you know, this is now two women that I’ve loved that have left because of
this gender. Maybe I can just not do this anymore. So I went back to being a boy,
and cut my hair, stopped the hormones. You know, did all of that stuff. And that
was a tough time and I was unsuccessful winning her back, which, in retrospect,
is a good thing. She was smart enough to know that I couldn’t just do that.

Debbie decided to begin hormones for a second time, and again began living full
time as a woman. At that time she was the chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer of a software company
which was subsequently sold, leaving Debbie with some money and an opportunity for a
career change. She reﬂected, “And I thought, you know what, I really want to do
something with my life that will be for the betterment of the LBGT community. And I
thought Law School as the thing to do. . .so that brings me here.”

Diondre:

Diondre was a white, 45 year old, FTM, transsexual man, who had been a Ph.D.
student in architecture, but was not currently enrolled at University A. At the time of the
interview, he was considering alternative doctoral programs and was interested in
becoming a consultant on transgender issues. He transitioned ﬁ'om female to male gender
assignment while attending University A. Diondre was highly involved in campus
activism and organizing. He co-founded a campus group called “transaction” with

Debbie, with a goal of creating space speciﬁcally targeting support and advocacy around

51

transsexual concerns. Diondre was also very active in the campus Graduate Employees
Union. In this organization, he played an instrumental role in pressuring the university to
adopt a graduate teaching assistant heath care package inclusive of gender reassignment
surgery.

In describing his experience of coming to understand his gender identity, Diondre
talked about growing up in Boston in an environment that was LBGT inclusive. For
many years, he identiﬁed as lesbian. Reﬂected Diondre, “I was 43 and I had tried
everything. Really hard. I had tried being a lesbian, and I was clearly, in many ways,
happy with being a lesbian. And yet, I was clearly dysfunctional.” Diondre talked about
being in his early 40’s and having a signiﬁcant emotional “crash.” Said Diondre,

And there were multiple problems there. I mean, the assumption is that you can

somehow function without your (gender) identity. That identity is somehow a

choice and it’s not terribly core. So you can’t do without it and if you postpone it,

you postpone everything. And that’s what happened in my crash. I realized I had

postponed everything. . .when I crashed I couldn’t ﬁgure out what was going on, I

couldn’t even do the things I loved. I couldn’t garden. I couldn’t canoe. I couldn’t

hike. I couldn’t bike. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t do my work.

When Diondre chose to transition, he talked with about the advantages he had as a
function of his age, race, and social class. Regarding age, at 43 years old, he believed he
was seen as having greater social credibility to deﬁne his transsexual identity, well
developed self-agency skills, and family support. In contrast, he described his concerns
about transgender individuals in their late teens or twenties. Because of their youth, they

are often inappropriately socially labeled as confused, or too hasty in identifying as

52

transsexual. Diondre reﬂected on this and the intersections of race and class with his
transgender identity, saying,

I did this all at age 43, 44, 45. Ihad—the reason I was able to access

physical (medical) services is because I’m lucky, and my family supported me in

transition, and I’m privileged. I come from a white, upper middle class family that

had money to put together to help me do this. And. I had 43 years of experience
behind me in dealing with things, and negotiating things, and getting this to
happen. And it was enormously hard for me as a person, as an adult who had
credibility. And I think to myself, how is somebody who is twenty is supposed to
do this?

Diondre’s experience fueled a passion for transgender activism, and in particular,
his desire to see more transsexual youth have much easier access to resources to support a
transition.

Wendy:

Wendy was a white, MTF, transsexual woman, who was 46 years old and recently
completed an undergraduate degree in engineering ﬁ'om University B. She began her
college education at University B in the late 1970s and stopped taking courses due to
personal and emotional health concerns, many related to her transsexual identity. She
eventually returned to complete her education in the mid-19905, while working ﬁrll time
at the university in a custodial position. During this period, she underwent gender
transition, co-founded University B’s ﬁrst transgender support group, and worked on
transgender inclusion issues with University B’s Lesbian and Gay Faculty and Staff

Association.

53

When Wendy described how it was that she came to understand her transsexual
identity, she reﬂected on having a sense of herself as female from a young age. As an
eight year old, she remembered she preferred to play with girls instead of “the rough and
tumble play” of boys. She said, “I just seemed to ﬁt better with other girls. And
furthermore, the feelings they talked about were feelings that I had seen within myself.”
Wendy discussed beginning to cross dress at ages eight and nine, reﬂecting, “. . .it was
something that just felt right. It made me feel good to wear these clothes because it gave
me an internal sense of comfort that this is who I am and this is something I can do.”

Wendy also described as being raised in the 1960s, at a time when she remembered
gender and sex role standards much more rigid than today’s.

As a child, she quickly learned that she was socially expected to act and behave as
male. Yet, by the time she was 18, she described reaching clarity of her gender identity as
female. Social expectations conﬂicted with her gender identity to create a secret life,
where she cross-dressed in private. When she talked about her experiences as a student in
K—12 school systems and college she said, “. . .I was consciously conscious of what the
(gender) expectations were so I could be sure to accommodate those. It was a difﬁcult
time, because in one sense I was devoting a lot of energy maintaining two identities.” As
a youth, she also had a strong sense that she risked physical violence for failing to
conform to gender expectations. She described her late teens as a time when She had the
ﬁrst “deep crisis” about her gender identity and felt “deeply frustrated, sad and
depressed.”

In 1980, she enrolled as a student at University B. While her experiences at the

university will be explored in depth in chapters four and ﬁve of this study, she described

54

arriving at college “in a bad state.” This, in addition to the extreme gender rigidity and
gender “policing” in the university environment, the constancy of having to hide and
repress her gender identity, and feeling disappointed with her academic experiences
caused her to make what she described as,

...a terrible mistake. I decided to kill my emotions. And to do that I ended up

being extremely reclusive for many years. As I say, often to be with people is to

be gendered and to not be around them is to be whatever the hell you want. And I

did that. And it was very deeply destructive for me.

Though She cut herself off emotionally and limited contact with others, a positive
force in her life was meeting her life partner. She met Clara at when she was 19 and they
are still together today. Despite the happiness she experienced with Clara, Wendy
characterized this time in her life as very negative and unhealthy. Over the next 13 years,
she worked full time in “underemployed” jobs and took courses at the university. Yet, she
made little academic progress, feeling adrift. At 32, she entered a stage of life reﬂection,
and decided that she wanted change. Wendy challenged self notions of being weak
academically and an underachiever, particularly in science and math. She took rigorous
courses and performed exceptionally well. She linked her change in academic experience
to her decision about gender transition saying,

That even though it took me a while to have the courage to do this (excel

academically), I did it. I’m speaking about the student part and it also inﬂuenced

my (gender) transition. My feeling is that transition is an end process to a decision

that people make about their lives, about what their lives are, about who they want

55

to be in their life. . .but the subtext is that all of this is up to you to be the person

you’re gonna be.

While she felt a new sense of agency regarding academics and gender transition,
there was also conﬂict. Regarding gender transition, she felt as if she had the potential to
lose a great deal saying, “I assumed that by doing this (transition), I would have lost my
relationship, that I would be ﬁred, that I would be out in the streets. . .I think I noticed
that, at the time, that you had about an 87% chance of being ﬁred and a 98% chance of
being divorced.” Wendy vacillated between feeling a strong commitment to gender
transition, regardless of the consequences, and experiencing extreme fear and dread,
including feeling suicidal. Regarding her ﬁnal decision to proceed with transition, she
said, “I mean, screw this; it’s my God damn life. Screw them (society). It’s their problem,
not mine. . ...I’m going to see this though, whatever. And I did.”

Wendy described a long, thoughtful and “methodical” process of gender
transition. To get support for resolving depression, she sought therapy, but initially had
difﬁculty identifying a competent clinician. She also described taking two to three years
to talk through transition issues through with her partner, “I loved this person so deeply, I
needed to spend a lot to time so that she could get through the shock, get through the
dismay, get through all of that and start to look at things in terms of what she needed and
what we needed.”

At the time of her transition, Wendy was working full time at University B and
continued her education. Though the college’s environment still, as Wendy described,
greatly stigmatized transgender individuals, she found new resources on campus. Wendy

described receiving a high degree of support from staff at the campus LBGT resource

56

center, who assisted in interfacing with her employer regarding her gender transition.
After graduating, she took a job in technology management at a community college.
Wendy continued to support LBGT issues at university B through involvement in the
formation of the carnpus’s new LBGT Alumni Association.

T runny Boy

Asher:

Asher was a white, 21 year old, F-M tranny boy who was a junior majoring
psychology at University B. Said Asher,“I use these words (tranny boy) because I feel
like I’m a pre-adolescent boy.” He was living ﬁrll time as male in most spheres of life on
campus, but was not yet out to his parents and family. At University B, Asher served as
the panel discussion program coordinator for the Queer Student Alliance, and was a
founding member of the Alpha Males, the campus male to female transgender support
and advocacy organization. He was employed in a laboratory on campus and had
recently been hired as a resident assistant for the upcoming academic year.

When asked to describe how he came to understand his “tranny boy” identity,
Asher talked about having awareness of being different from other girls as a young child.
He said, “I guess my ﬁrst memory was always me wrestling with the boys on my
block. . .It was like you always saw the girls sitting around going, “oh, don’t do that.” As
an elementary school student, he consistently remembered feeling more comfortable
playing the male role in activities like “playing house.” Asher said, “I always wanted to
be the Dad.” He also described being physically stronger than girls in his elementary

school classes and was ﬁ'ustrated with the lack of athletic competition they offered.

57

Throughout elementary and middle school, he consistently requested to participate in
boy’s gym classes, which was always denied.

In high school, Asher came out as lesbian during his freshman year, but felt that
something was missing. Asher reﬂected, “And you know, I dated people and nothing ever
clicked. . .even like in my lesbian stage. . .I was really uncomfortable. I didn’t feel
correct.” He also remembered being mistaken for a boy at times, “which was kind of ﬁrn.
Like I enjoyed it. . .Even when I’d be with my girlfriend. It was like, ‘whoa they thought I
was a boy. That’s so cool.”’ Yet, despite the male centric experiences of his childhood
and adolescence, Asher did not fully connect to the idea that his gender identity was
male. Further, though Asher’s parents divorced due to his mothers’s FTM transsexual
transition, he did not connect his mother’s experience to his own. Asher felt a degree of
personal connection to genderqueer and androgynous identities, in contrast to what he
saw as an either/or identity in this FTM parent. He said in reﬂection, “like my mother is
post-op, so she’s now a he and my father, I always thought it had to be one or the other.”

Asher identiﬁed a number of experiences at University B that were instrumental
in deﬁning his gender identity. During his freshman year, he fell “madly in love with
someone” who was learning about transgender identities for the ﬁrst time. This partner
shared with him that she had been powerfully moved by seeing an LBGT panel of
students visit one of her classes. Asher reﬂected on the conversation,

I said (to her), ‘You’re queer and it’s a queer panel. You couldn’t have learned

that much.’ She’s like, ‘I never knew what transgender was’. . .she basically said

blatantly to my face, ‘it’s you. You’re a trans. You just don’t realize it yet.’

58

His girlﬁiend’s feedback had a signiﬁcant impact on Asher. He used the following
summer to reﬂect on his life experience and gender, and realized that his partner was
right. Asher returned the following year feeling determined to make connections to other
transgender students, and became acquainted with Triston and Razi. His association with
other transgender students was critical in helping him to name and explore his male
identity.

Asher felt conﬂicted about the degree gender reassignment surgery he would
undertake, or if he will ever do so. He said,

Well, my future is mixed. Because I would love to go through everything. I’d love

to have, you know, top surgery, and maybe bottom surgery, and I’d love to take

testosterone, but unfortunately, I can’t take testosterone. I’ve gone through two
kidneys through the years already. And to throw off my body with any more
hormones could only lead to more complications, and I don’t think they want to
put me back on the donor list for a third time.

Though Asher felt that he could pass socially as male through his dress, short hair,
and manner, he still worried about his risks for harassment, and whether some form of
gender reassignment surgery was inevitable. Said Asher,

Like there’s some days when I’m passing (as male) really well, and I’m like hey, I

can just live like this. That would be okay. Then there are other days when I’m

not passing really well, and I’m like. . .the sooner I can get that surgery, the better

I’ll pass (as male) and won’t have to worry about it.

Regardless of the internal conﬂict Asher had about his ability to pass, he made a decision

to start living full time as male on campus. At the beginning of the 2004-2005 academic

59

year, he began using a new name, and referred to himself with male pronouns. Of this
choice, Asher said,

And this year I took a big step and came back to campus like a whole new person,

and I’ve only heard positive things. . .Like I feel more comfortable and more

conﬁdent, and although I was really outgoing before, like now I’m outgoing and
even more comfortable with myself. I’m more approachable as well.
Razi:

Razi was a white, 21 year old, FTM tranny boy who was a communications junior
at University B. He used the term tranny boy to self identify because, in his own words,
“I’m getting ready to start testosterone and I’m having surgery. So it’s kind of like I’m a
boy waiting to go through puberty. But I’m also not sure if once I transition, I’ll go by
trans guy or keep the tranny boy identity.” At University B, Razi had been involved in
residence hall LBGT support organizations, the Queer Student Alliance, and the Alpha
Males. When Razi reﬂected on how he came to understand his gender identity, he said,
“Well, when I was younger, I never really wanted to act in the way my mom thought I
should, cuz she wanted me to be a girl.” Razi talked about preferring sports activities
with boys, rejecting her mother’s desire for him to play with Barbie dolls. Most
signiﬁcantly, Razi consistently talked about the impact of growing up in a small,
Midwestern town.

In this environment, he felt completely cutoff from any role models or cultural
cues that could have helped him to name his gender identity. Transgender identities were
never talked about in his school, by his peers, in his family or hometown. Regarding the

inaccessibility of his identity, Razi said, “I think its because I didn’t have the vocabulary

60

for it.” By the time he was in high school, Razi said he started to feel that, “oh, maybe I
am queer.” He talked about feeling attracted to other woman, but never felt fully
comfortable identifying as lesbian. Razi also talked about the impact his parents had on
his gender expression. He said that his clothing and hairstyle choices were closely
monitored, “Like my parents pretty much had to approve all my clothes. . .I mean they
were pretty traditional women and girls clothes. And, I still had really long hair, and then
they (her parents) would make me perm it, and it was awful.”

When Razi began his ﬁrst year at University B, he was still uncomfortable with
his lesbian identity. During his ﬁeshman year, he attended one of the residence hall
LBGT support groups, which was recognizing the Transgender Day of Remembrance. A
transgender student discussion panel was a focus of the meeting. The panelists led an
activity where participants were asked to describe a time that they transgressed gender
roles. As Razi shared, he found himself identifying with the life experiences of the
transgender panelists. During the remainder of the year, Razi pursued developing
ﬁiendships with these students. By fall of his sophomore year, Razi was identifying as a
tranny boy, with ﬁrll intention to transition.

Tristan:
Triston was a white, 23 year old, FTM tranny boy who was a senior in
international relations at University B. Said Triston on how be identiﬁed,
I mean, my most common way I describe myself (is) as a tranny boy or, you
know, as a trans guy. You know I say I’m transgender, but that’s pretty
medicalized or you know, kind of ﬁ'eakish, so once I get on a level that pe0ple

understand or that mean I say that I’m a tranny boy or a trans guy.

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On campus, Triston experienced a wide range of LBGT related involvement, which
included serving as the President of one of the campus LBGT Residence Hall support
groups, assuming the chairperson’s role in the Queer Student Alliance, and helping to co-
found the Alpha Males.

Regarding his sexual orientation, Triston ﬁrst identiﬁed his attraction to women at
age 14, when he developed a crush on soccer player Lisa Manedez. He remembered
writing an entry in his journal which said, “I really wasn’t gay, but that I felt so strongly
about queer issues that I was thinking that I was attracted to women as a way of
identifying as a queer ally, or some bullshit like that.” By his senior year, Triston had
come out to his parents, but never identiﬁed as lesbian. He said, “There’s just something
about that word that wasn’t me. It made me cringe.” Though he always felt only attracted
to women, he said that at the time, the words that best described him were “bi, dyke,
whatever, until halfway through my sophomore year (of college)”

In college, he identiﬁed three incidents that were most signiﬁcant in helping him
to identify his transgender identity. In the ﬁrst instance, Triston was with a group of
ﬁiends with whom he attended a transgender education workshop. Triston said,

I was in a van with a bunch of people and I think we had just gone to a training

and we were talking and one of my friends, I was talking about my gender or

something and she was like, “well do you identify as transgender?” She was just
being totally cool about it and I was like, “No, oh my God, no.” And she was like,

“Why not?” I just had some real fast answer, but then I was like, “I don’t know

why.” And it was kind of like, “Why did I give that fast answer like I thought

there was a problem with it?” You know, so it made me think.

62

While the conference marked the beginning of Triston questioning his gender
identity, reading Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues created more internal conﬂict.
Reﬂected Triston,

But when I was reading it at the time, I was thinking about this as a trans man.

This was a transgender guy. And so I was reading and I was like, “I’m not this,

I’m just reading this book to be educated.” And I got about half way through the

book and there were all these violent things happening to this person. And it was

really hard to read. . .I got to the part where, like the person had been taken in by
the cops and was just beating the crap out of him, it was like the person was
getting raped and I couldn’t. . .I stopped reading the book and threw it across the
room...it freaked me out. I was like, “why does this bother me so much? It isn’t
me, what’s going on?” So I was still pushing it away.

Triston described the culmination of these experiences as an incident when he and
his best ﬁiend Alex, who was also Tranny Boy identiﬁed, came out to each other for the
ﬁrst time. Said Triston:

We were watching Boy’s Don’t Cry (a ﬁlm that chronicles the murder of F TM
youth, Brandon Tina) at a Rainbow meeting (an LBGT student group) my
sophomore year, and everybody was kind of laughing during the movie at like
when Brandon like packed his pants and stuff like that. We (Alex and Triston)
were really bothered by that and we stuck around afterwards, just the two of us,
and we just cried and then he came out to me and said, “I’m Brandon,” who is the

main character, and then I was like, “Me too.”

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During the remainder of his junior year, Triston continued to use female pronouns
and his birth name. While he occasionally wondered if he might be more genderqueer
identiﬁed, he eventually became clear that he was an FTM male, tranny boy. At the time
of this interview, just after graduation, he had shifted to male pronouns and new name.
Gendergueer
Danielle:

Danielle was a white, 18 years old, ﬁrst year, education and German major at
University B. She identiﬁes as genderqueer or androgynous. Danielle said, “I usually go
by ‘she’, but if you call me ‘he’, I don’t mind.” On campus, she was living on a female
ﬂoor in a residence hall, and was involved in a number of LBGT and progressive, leftist
student organizations. When Danielle described how she came to understand her identity,
she talked about experiencing a degree of male identiﬁcation from a young age, but also
continued to claim female identity and gender role. She discussed middle-school as the
time in life when she began to understand her sexual orientation. By her ﬁrst year of
college, she was deﬁning as genderqueer, reﬂecting the ways she experienced identity
existing in combinations of both her sexual orientation and gender ﬂuidity. Reﬂected
Danielle,

...well in 8th grade I realized that I had feelings for girls, although I didn’t know

what being homosexual was or whatever. So in the 9th grade, I sort of came out to

myself and some ﬁiends as bi. And then it sort of progressed into lesbian and then
into just genderqueer. So it sort of went along those lines. But basically I guess
what that means for me is that I have the mix of both genders; I’m neither overly

masculine, nor overly feminine. I can enjoy the fem scene (activities highly

associated with female gender role) and march with the Queer Alliance (a campus

student organization which she saw as having a “male” business style), as well as

knitting and quilting.
M to S {male to something elsez, T wo-Sgirit, Third Gender
Damien:

Damien was a white, 50 year old, Ph.D. student in social work at University A.
Damien does not use any gender labels to identify, though presents gender in ways that
would more often pass socially as male. Damien said, “You know, I’m not a man. I’m not
a woman. I’m Damien.” Damien came to University A at the age of 36 for an
undergraduate degree. He chose to continue his education by completing a Master’s and
is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the same institution. Damien was involved in
forming and participating in campus and community groups related to LBGT issues, and
was and an active member of the campus Task Force on LBGT Inclusion. When Damien
talked about his process of coming to understand his gender identity, he said,

When I was 19, I fell in love with a man, and didn’t really know what gay was.

And, I really didn’t know what transgender was. I knew a little bit about

transsexual because I had seen, I think, Christine Jorgensen’s name perhaps...But

I knew how I felt. . .I went into the psychiatrist and I said, “I have fallen in love

with a man and I need surgery.”...And this doctor convinced me that not only that

I wasn’t transsexual or transgender, but that I wasn’t gay.

The experience had a signiﬁcant and negative impact on Damien. He said, “So I
lived until I was thirty-three under the assumption that I was some weird different kind of

straight person...I just didn’t ﬁt that.” Damien began “trying to live as a gay man.” Yet,

65

he also said that at this time he was, “never ﬁtting in (with gay community) and never
understanding why I didn’t ﬁt in.” Regarding circumstances that led to a change in
perception about his gender identity, he talked about a ﬁiendship with a student who was
lesbian and genderqueer that caused him to begin to think differently about gender. He
also participated in the campus LBGT Task Force, where he met other individuals who
were transgender. As he participated in this group, he began to realize that be identiﬁed
with the experience of the transgender members. During this time, he also developed a
signiﬁcant relationship with a heterosexual man, whom he loved, which also caused him
to reﬂect on his gender identity. He wondered if this attraction was also about his gender.
He said,
And then, when I started trying to really get it, there were about two weeks when
I tried to put myself into another box and try to say, “well, you know, maybe I’m
a woman in a man’s body.” Well, maybe that was true when I was nineteen, but I
can’t really tell now. I think maybe it was. Maybe surgery would have been the
right option at that time. But now, I really—you know, now I’m 50 years old. I’ve
developed my whole life, my communication style, how I relate to people. And its
really different if people don’t know how to relate to me. And a lot of people
think I’m gay, and a lot of people just think I’m strange. But I go like, “This is me
and just how I relate to people.” So now it’s like that (surgery) just does not

interest me.

66

Still Defining
Charlie:

Charlie was a white, 22 year old, junior majoring in kinesiology at University B.
He had identiﬁed as F-M transgender over the last 12 months, but was currently
questioning the identity. Charlie was considering genderqueer or androgynous identities
as alternatives, but was ultimately, “still deﬁning.” When Charlie reﬂected on the
process of coming to understand his gender identity, he described being raised on a farm
in a family that had a “gender neutral outlook.” He remembered not being pushed
towards any “gender appropriate” types of toys or related activities. He also remembered
independently gravitating towards behavior deemed socially appropriate for boys.

Charlie talked his identity in relationship to having a physical condition called
primary emonoria, which causes a delay in normal adolescent development. Speciﬁcally,
Charlie said he did not begin “developing” as a woman until age 19, when he started
taking hormones under a physician’s care. Prior to that time, he said that he had more of a
“boys” body, and was often mistaken for being male. He said, “a big part of my
development has been accepting that I can’t always have a boyish body.”

As a transfer student to University B, Charlie initially identiﬁed as lesbian, but as
he made connections to the campus transgender community, felt a high degree of
identiﬁcation with the MT F, tranny boy identity. He chose a male name, came out to his
family as “transgender” and requested that he be referred to by male pronouns. After
approximately a year of this new identity, Charlie became aware that he was not fully
comfortable. While unsure of the factors leading to his lack of clarity, he was sure that,

“I’m just not comfortable with either pronoun. . .Right now, I’m leaning a bit more

67

towards she than he, but I still don’t know for sure.” He was ﬁrrther frustrated by social
standards that would not allow him to be in an undeﬁned places regarding gender. Said
Charlie, “It’s hard because pronouns really deﬁne who you are and I can’t just walk
around every ﬁve months and be like, ‘call me this, call me that, call me this.’ Eventually
it helps to have something consistent.”

Nick:

Nick was a white, 22 year old political science senior at University A. Unclear
about his gender identity, Nick said, “I’m still searching, so I’d say I identify as lesbian,
but I also identify as transgender and use male pronouns. It’s kind of in the middle-ish.”
Nick presented as male at the time of the interview, and by his appearance, could
probably easily socially pass as male in most situations. He had a stocky build, wore
loose ﬁtting jeans, 3 men’s button down shirt, with short hair tucked under a baseball cap.
When Nick talked about coming to understand his gender identity, he described a
childhood and adolescence in which he alternated between feeling strong connections to
male and female identities. From a young child through 8th grade, he distinctly felt more
male identiﬁed. He remembered being angry about experiencing breast development as
an early adolescent, feeling that it was an assault on his maleness. Then, beginning in 9th
grade, he talked about feeling strongly female, and began dressing, acting, and behaving
in ways that were “very femme. I even shopped at the Buckle.” As a senior in high school
he began to come out, ﬁrst as bisexual, then as lesbian.

His ﬁrst two years of college were at another public university, during this time,
he attended a regional LBGT conference that had a number of sessions on transgender

identity. It was at these sessions that he made a connection to a deeper understanding of

68

both his gender, and the complexity of his experience, claiming trans gender identity for
the ﬁrst time. While still sorting out, still deﬁning his gender identity, he was unsure if he
would ever arrive fully at a singularly deﬁned male or female identity.

Study Limitations

The transferability of the study is limited in several ways that are worth noting.
These include the impact of the identity of the researcher, racial ethnic identities of the
participants and the nature of qualitative research. Due to my identity as an LBGT
resource center director at University B, I had some degree of prior relationship with each
of the participants from that campus. While I worked to assure these participants that
their involvement in the study was purely voluntary, I could not help but wonder if my
role at the institution created additional pressure to participate. In addition, the University
B data may have been biased in a way that I did not expect. Because of the prior
relationship, these students may have begun the interview process feeling more
comfortable and at case than the University A students who were meeting me for the ﬁrst
time at a campus food court. However, I did note from the transcripts that the data from
both institutions were equally rich. Further, the lengthiest interview conducted, spanning
four hours, was with a University A student.

All of the participants who chose to participate in this study were of white,
western European decent. Examining the impact of binary gender systems across
diversity of race and ethnicity was not possible. Given that outreach to participants
occurred through public list servs and contacts with transgender campus organizations,
the implication is that “out” transgender individuals may have been more likely to

participate. The realities of multiple oppression issues for transgender students of color

69

may have made participation too great a personal risk. However, it is important to note
that at both institutions, participants informed me that, with one or two exceptions, I was
interviewing the entire “out” trans gender student populations.

Though qualitative research is not generalizable in ways reﬂected by quantitative
studies, the generation of grounded theory is greatly enhanced through multiple voices.
This study’s focus on 10 participants is merely a partial, beginning lens for such work.
While these participants gave voice to signiﬁcant themes about the impact of binary
gender systems on the two campuses, they are certame not representative of all
transgender student voices. In spite of these limitations, the study holds promise for
illuminating the experience of transgender students on other campuses.

Summary

This study examined ways that transgender students experience binary gender
systems in a broad and complex range of campus cultures, environments and
interpersonal contexts. To support this goal, the research process was purposefully
framed by postmodern, queer, and critical postmodern perspectives. The data for this
study consisted of transcripts, ﬁeld notes from the individual interviews, and information
gathered though trustworthiness checks. Based on emerging themes, chapters four and
ﬁve, a deﬁnition and characteristics of genderism are presented. These chapters also
discuss the impact of genderism in the following areas: academics, employment and

career aspirations, LBGT student organizations and communities and campus facilities.

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Chapter Four: Genderism, Social Labeling and Gender Accountability

Based on themes that emerged in this study, chapter four provides an overview of
genderism and its four primary characteristics. This is followed by an in-depth discussion
of two foundational aspects of genderism: social labeling and gender accountability. As
enacted at Universities A and B, genderism may be deﬁned as the belief or assumption
that there are two, and only two genders. As suggested by Lev (2005), genderism
inextricably links biological sex assignment (man or woman) to appropriate gender
identity (male or female), gender expression (masculine or feminine behavior), and
sexual orientation (men attracted to women or women attracted to men). All gender
identity and expression is essentialized as one of two options. Genderism is supported
socially by a binary gender system characterized by explicit and implicit rules, rewards
and punishments for conforming to either male or female identities. At its core,
genderism asserts that biological sex assignment predetermines gender identity destiny
(Lees 2005). Of the power of biological sex assignment, Foucault (1990) said,

The notion of sex made it possible to group together, in an artiﬁcial unity,

anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations and pleasures. . .a

causal principle, an omnipresent meaning, a secret to be discovered everywhere:

sex was thus able to function as a unique signiﬁer and a universal signiﬁed. (p 43)
Thus, at the two universities, sex assignment as “M” or “F” became a “signiﬁer,”
reinforcing two gender identities as static, immutable, unchangeable and existing without
ﬂuidity. These binary based identities operated in dualistic, oppositional ways. Examples
ﬁom popular culture included terminology, such as “opposite sex,” or books like Gray’s

(2000), Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

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As an overview of the concept of genderism and the operation of binary gender
systems operating at universities A and B, it could be said that norms in college
environments created standards and accountability for being seen as male or female.
Reﬂecting on the dual gendered nature of his university, Diondre said, “There’s a desire
from an institutional and sort of systemic level not to allow the possibility of anything
other than absolute male, absolute female, and never the twain shall cross over or meet.”
Triston described the power of binary gender systems in society and on campus:

Everything is depending on the gender binary. Like think, there is no way you can

exist outside the gender binary. You know like radical queers could talk about

how they don’t live in binary, but that’s bullshit. That’s like saying that we don’t
live in a capitalist society. You know, we do, that’s the reality, so this school is
very much on the gender binary.
As Triston suggests above, genderism at Universities A and B, was maintained by a
system of power and oppression that was, in terms used by diversity educator Rodney
Patterson (2005), “systemic and systematic.”

Genderism was systemic in that it permeated all aspects of college life and
systematic because it was institutionalized through implicit and explicit laws, rules and
policies. This power and oppression system had four major characteristics. (1) There was
a forced social labeling process that sorts and categorizes all individuals into male or
female identities, often at an institutionalized level. (2) There was social accountability
for conforming to binary gender norms with related punishments. Individuals who failed
to conform were viewed as deviant and/or having a disorder. (3) Marginalization was

enacted through an overt and covert privileging of binary systems. (4) Binary systems

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promoted invisibility of gender non-conforming identities and isolation of transgender
persons, making transgender identities inaccessible. The reminder of this chapter utilizes
the experiences of students at the two universities to illustrate genderism’s ﬁrst two
characteristics.
A Male or Female Social Labeling Process

Regarding genderism’s ﬁrst characteristic, participants reported experiencing a
male or female gender assignment process, often on a daily basis. At each university, a
dual gender system created social expectations that individuals ﬁt into prescribed norms
for gender expression as either “male” or “female.” The binary gendered culture of the
university created “absolutes” as Diondre related, for the social construction of two
gender categories. Social labeling often occurred without the consent of participants.
Damien, who did not claim any gender label, described the operation of binary systems
through the student newspaper assigning him to a gender:

The best example was when I was proﬁled in the school newspaper. . .And the

heading for my section said, “Opts out of surgery.” It was just so weird for me.

It totally implied that I was supposed to become a transsexual woman, but

“opted out.” No, I didn’t opt out of surgery. Surgery was never an option, was

never considered. It was like just so weird to see this.
Students in the study, who expressed gender outside these norms, often the tranny boy,
and genderqueer participants, described an almost daily occurrence of individuals
inquiring about their gender identities. They were asked regularly, “Are you a boy or a
girl?” Razi said, “It’s like they had to know, like it was really disturbing that I didn’t ﬁt

the category.” Charlie reported a similar process of being stopped by students on the

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street with similar gender inquiries. Charlie said, “People have a hard time when they
can’t either label someone’s gender or if they don’t know what to call them, what
pronouns to go by--I think it just makes people uneasy.” Charlie was still in a process of
self-naming his gender identity, not having clearly arrived at male, female, or alternative
labels to name his experience. He described how problematic this was for peers,
And everyone keeps asking me, like every two weeks I have these people asking
me, “How are you identifying?” “We just want to make sure that we’re making
you comfortable.” I’m like, “just stop asking. Just call me whatever you want.”
When reﬂecting on these interactions, Charlie believed the desire his peers
expressed to help him to be “comfortable” was, in truth, a mask for their own discomfort
and their need to label him. When Asher described his experience of expressing gender
identity as male in a residence hall, but being assigned to live on a female ﬂoor, he
named a process of collective denial of his identity, “to them (female residents), I had to
be a girl. There was no other option. No matter how many times I corrected them, I had
to be ‘she.”’ A similar labeling incident was described by Daneille, who as genderqueer
identiﬁed, often presented gender outside binary norms. She related,
I was about to leave the Regan (residence hall) Cafeteria today after dinner. A girl
standing right in front of me dropped a glass. There was the usual scene, kids
snickering. One of the students decided to make some smart comments like, “Uh,
oh, you’re in trouble now! I’ll have to eat your ﬁrst born.” The girl and I started
walking away from the ‘scene of the crime’ by this time. The student kept ripping
new cracks. As I was almost to the caf door, he shouted “I know you’re a girl!” I

was just sort of thrown of and mildly insulted when he shouted, “I know you’re a

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girl!” Obviously it was meant as an insult since it had nothing to do with me
dropping the glass, which I didn’t do. Everyone who knows me knows I’m
female, so it’s sorta like “wow, tell me something I don’t know,” but then it’s like
he’s trying to unmask me or uncover some embarrassing secret by revealing that I
am (gasp) a girl. I might be female (biologically), but I’m not a girl or a woman.
Beyond the aforementioned incidents of “male” or “female” social labeling
described by Charlie, Damien, Danneille and Razi, binary label systems operated to
obliterated connections to any other personal gender identity. Explained Diondre,
It’s not just a binary gendering. It’s not just a male/female gendering of the
institution and suddenly, do I fall in one or the other. It’s the fact of falling into
one category in some sense means there is no other category. That is deeply
troubling. And I mean, I would be deeply troubled if I fell into one or the other
categories also, because the institution has a ﬁrm position on who’s allowed in
what restroom. . .They don’t make it possible to be in one category or the other at
the same time, or in between. They don’t -— they just put up barriers. And so
(transgender) people are invisible and are isolated.
Binary Labeling Negates F luidity
Genderism not only assigned Diondre to a single category, “male,” with socially
deﬁned expectations and privileges (such as restroom use) but also negated the possibility
of any gender ﬂuidity. For Diondre, the genderist reality of having to move through life
as a static, ﬁxed, “F” or “M,” created serious barriers in his ability to access beneﬁts

related to health care and domestic partnership. Said Diondre,

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For example, I have an “M” on my driver’s license. . .So I can get my testosterone
without triggering exclusion stuff, but I have an “F” everywhere else. Social
Security. Passport. Birth certiﬁcate. If I say I’m an “M,” then I can’t access
same-sex domestic partner coverage under the college institutional rules. If I say
I’m an “F,” then I can get my same-sex domestic partner, but not the health care I
need. And so if] say I’m an “F,” I’m okayed for the same-sex domestic partner
coverage, but I’m committing insurance fraud. If I say I’m an “M,” then I’m
committing insurance ﬁ'aud again (regarding domestic partner beneﬁts). Insurance
fraud is a felony... So you can laugh about it, but it’s a felony. And so I cannot be
in a position of saying I am one thing or the other right now, because I would be
in insurance fraud. Technically one way or another... So when we ask where I
am, I’m caught in the institution in terms of gender. Transsexuals are in a terrible

place.

From Diondre’s perspective, managing identity in ways that expressed multiple gender

categories or ﬂuidity, meant risking legal sanction, regardless of the degree of personal

necessity.

The social prohibition of gender ﬂuidity also had consequences for Nick, whose

“still deﬁning” status signiﬁed that he did not clearly identity with either male or female

identities, or if he ever would. When Nick discussed his ﬁ'ustrations of never feeling like

he “ﬁt in” on campus, he named the genderist male or female social labeling process as

deeply problematic. Nick said,

You know, it’s very hard in this society when you’re like in the middle. . .And

also, just for me, I think it’d be really nice to be able to be quote/unquote

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“normal,” you know, and not have to be trapped in the middle and just kind of
know... For me it’s like I don’t know. Sometimes I’m a girl, sometimes I’m a
boy, sometimes I’m a lesbian. I mean, sometimes I’m a gay man. Like it’s all over
the place and I get really conﬁrsed. But I think it’s confusing because it’s so much
pressure. . .you can’t be fully a gay man and a gay woman at the same time. Like,
what the hell is that?
Beyond the ways in which transgender students experienced a social demand that they be
named and viewed as, “M” or “F”, negating gender ﬂuidity, Diondre described a binary
labeling process that worked to obliterate his entire prior experience as a woman. He
explained,
A very funny place for me now is because I’m transitioning, it’s not clear to me
that anybody thinks of me as having a place in a women’s group for example.
And this is very funny. I have a scholarship from the Center for Women’s
Research. . .And they ask people to speak. They have, you know, alumni speakers
at their various functions. And I know I’ll never be a speaker. I’ll never get asked
to be a speaker to women receiving this scholarship. There’s groups who are
about women in the institution, who talk about women’s issues in the institution.
And I suddenly feel like I have no authority to talk about those issues. When two
years ago, I would have been sought out to talk about those issues. It isn’t as
though my experience is that dramatically different. So now I could be sought out
for a transsexual View on the institution. But nobody seeks those people out.
There’s not a lot of calls for me to worry about -— but I still think about women’s

issues in the institution, and I have every bit as much experience about that as I

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ever did, and in fact, the way transsexuals are treated is often the way women are
treated. It’s like crap... And it’s about who has a real place at the table. So
there’s a funny way in which — in fact it’s a hideous way really, in which
transition drops me out of the areas in which -— that I’m vested in and have
expertise in, in institutional conversations.
From Diondre’s perspective, the scholarship program ultimately worked to deny that he
had ever been a woman, or had any understanding of women’s experiences. Beyond the
obliteration of past gender experiences, the institutionalized gender labeling process also
disconnected transgender students from their present identity.

As an example, self-identifying in the classroom was a signiﬁcant concern for
many of the study participants, often requiring that they “come out” as transgender to
every faculty member in every class, each semester. For the ﬁve students in the study
who presented gender in a deﬁned category different from birth assignment, and had not
yet pursued legal name or gender change, being authentic in class presented particular
challenges. At the beginning of each semester, Asher communicated with all faculty for
his courses via email, requesting that he be referred to by his chosen name and male
pronouns. Though Asher related that this approach was successful overall, the realities of
institutional procedures at University B created barriers to full legitimization of his
identity. Faculty often requested that Asher to use his birth name, Jessica Stevens, and
student ID number to self identify on classroom tests and quizzes. When Asher reﬂected
on this practice, he said that the reality was that “Asher doesn’t pay the bills. Jessica
does.” Ultimately, institutional policy required Asher to be enrolled at institution with the

label female and name Jessica, regardless of his identity.

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Similarly, Triston’s athletic scholarship forced him into a gender role that denied
any other identity. He was a member of the women’s athletic team and was required to
pass as female. To fully be “out” as male meant the risk of losing the scholarship, as well
as being removed from the team. Triston said,

It was hard. I mean you are in a women’s athletic arena, it’s women... I’m really

happy about that, like it’s really important for women to have their own space and

just focus to be speciﬁcally on women’s sports. But my experience was, well I

couldn’t be out, at least I wasn’t going to take the risk of being out because

gender identity not in the anti discrimination policy. . .so there was a fear of losing
my scholarship.
Thus, for both Asher and Triston, policy based social labeling as birth deﬁned, biological,
“M” or “F” categories resulted in degrees of personal invisibility.
Summary: Male or Female Social Labeling
To summarize, participants in this study experienced genderism working to
systematically assign them to one of two distinct gender categories, with clear and
boundaries, negating ﬂuidity, and often creating an institutionalized disconnection from
personal gender identity. Students described their gender identities as being regularly
questioned, and often socially assigned to one of two categories without their consent.
Examples included the school newspaper assigning Damien to a “female” transsexual
category who “opts out of surgery;” the women in Asher’s residence hall continuing to
label him with female pronouns, despite his request for them to do otherwise; and
Danielle having “I know you’re a girl!” yelled at her, as if her biological sex assignment

needed to be publicly identiﬁed. At another level, participants consistently described a

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gender labeling process that was a function of their peers’ discomfort with any degree of
gender variance, and a need for binary clarity. Taken to an extreme, gender variance was
met with “denial” as described by Asher regarding the reactions of the women on his
female ﬂoor community. In addition, the social labeling process resulted in signiﬁcant
pragmatic dilemmas, as evidenced through Diondre’s health insurance and domestic
partner beneﬁts. The institutional reality for Asher and Tristion, was that it had to be
Jessica who payed tuition bills, and Suzanne who played on the softball team. For the
participants in this study, binary social labeling was powerful, inﬂuencing every aspect
of their lives. Genderism’s second characteristic, accountability for conforming to binary
gender norms, examines social mechanisms which drive the labeling process.
Social Accountability for Conforming to Binary Gender Norms
As enacted at the two institutions, this second characteristic of genderism created
accountability through systems of punishments to enforce standards for conforming to
male or female identities. Study participants discussed the challenges and consequences
of failing to conform to binary gendered norms in a wide range of higher education
contexts. Most often, participants described issues related to social accountability and
binary gender identities in relationship to academic experiences, campus jobs and
facilities. Related themes that emerged included gender accountability in the classroom
and interactions with faculty and peers in class; pressures related to gender conformity
and campus employment in relationship to service positions, dormitory resident
assistants, and laboratory aide jobs; and the impact of gender accountability and campus
facilities as a function of binary gendered cultures particular to residence halls, locker-

rooms, athletics facilities and public bathrooms. All participants discussed the concept of

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passing and its relationship to the aforementioned campus contexts. Thus, passing serves
as a foundation for exploring social accountability.
Passing and Social Accountability

In this study, transgender students discussed the complexities of ways passing as
“male” or “female” at times afﬁrrned personal identity, yet was also utilized as a strategy
to avoid physical or emotional harassment. Most often, failure to pass was associated
with gender deviance and was met with a range of negative consequences including
verbal harassment, being ignored, tokenized, and fearing physical assault. For
participants in this study, the concept of passing as one of two, socially constructed and
normed genders carried multiple implications.

For Wendy, passing worked to have her gender identity ﬁt neatly into a
“convenient” category. She passed easily as a Cisgender female. Thus, being seen as a
woman at University B gave her a static identity, eliminating any other alternatives for
gender expression, and most signiﬁcantly, labeling her “normal,” Said Wendy,

So I’m in this weird situation of where people would perceive me as something

convenient, and within their world view, and understanding, and call me that

without ever understanding where the subtleties were, much less having any sort
of construct that would allow for other possible ways of being. For people who
have a strong need to assimilate and need borders; you’re either normal or you’re
not.

At a basic level, to be seen as “normal,” was to pass as the correct, socially
assigned gender. To pass, participants had to ﬁt the right gender category and express

gender within appropriate boundaries. The concept of passing was a critical component

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of how genderism supported social accountability systems at Universities A and B.
Passing carried a range of emotional meanings for study participants, for some it was
deeply validating, for others, it served to reinforce genderism. Triston reﬂected on the
personal afﬁrmation he experienced when passing,

It always felt so much better when I was called “he.” Like it really, really felt

right. You know like every time I would pass, I would be like, “Oh my God, this

is the coolest thing.” You know, “this is great.” I guess it wasn’t feeling really
natural to be called “she.” When you don’t know anything different. . .like when
you are just the way that you were assigned at birth, you know, and it doesn’t
necessarily feel all that weird, but it’s all you’ve ever known, but once you start to
experience something else, you have that comparison.

While some students were deeply afﬁrmed by passing, genderist pressure to
conform to norms also made passing a strategy to avoid harassment. When Wendy
reﬂected on the years she spent living as a male, she used the metaphor of a police oﬁicer
“being under deep cover.” Said Wendy,

I really resonate with the experience of, for instance, cops being under deep cover

because I totally know what that life is. You’re constantly thinking about saying

the right thing. You’re constantly watching yourself to make sure that you don’t
make a mistake and soon it becomes a second skin. But you’re always conscious
that this is not who you are. It’s very draining.
For participants who sought to express gender in a manner consistent with identity, fears
of emotional, physical, and verbal harassment were daunting. Triston, describing his risk

for sexual violence said,

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And you know, I’m female bodied and I’ve been raised as a woman, so what
comes of that is 20 years of trying to ﬁght body image issues and trying to ﬁght
being afraid of rape which still happens now. I mean, tranny boys are at huge risk
for rape if they are not passing.

Wendy described passing as having the ability to attend to a myriad of “unspoken
cues” with the requirement that gender expression be ﬁnely tuned to the most ordinary,
daily interactions. A mistake could result in genderism’s social sanctioning. As an
example, Nick described his gender being initially read by women as male, leading to
related social expectations, and then, shifting to him being seen as deviant.

Said Nick,

You know, the girls pick up a little bit more easily for whatever reason that I’m,

you know, that I’m male. But it’s usually like they treat me a certain way, like

“Oh, hey dude. Can you hand that to me?” or “Can you do this for me?” But it’s

then like I open my mouth and they hear that it’s like a more female voice. It’s

like they’re smiling and being nice, but the second I open my mouth I get like this
distorted “you’re a creep” look.
Thus, passing canied a wide range of meanings for study participants and ultimately
served to reinforce genderist social accountability. While validating for some
participants, others described failing to pass as resulting in potentially life threatening
consequences. Similarly, a theme that emerged in this study involved the intersections of

passing and social accountability in academic contexts.

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Social Accountability, Academic and Classroom Contexts

When Wendy was readmitted to University B to complete a ﬁnal class for her
degree, post transition from male to female identity, she described being treated like a
“freak” in her program advising ofﬁce:

The ofﬁce staff knew from my advisor of my situation, having revealed my

circumstances of my returning to school to ﬁnish this one class, and explaining

what happened because my records didn’t jive because I had a name change. . .that

I knew that the ofﬁce staff were looking at me. They all stopped what they were

doing. . .they tried to be unobtrusive, but I obviously could tell they had handled

my records and they wanted to look at the freak and you know you just gotta roll

with it. But it’s demeaning; there’s no dignity to this whole thing. It peaks human

curiosity, but for transgender college students it’s debasing. It’s just debasing.
Though Wendy had previously described herself passing easily as a woman, it appears
that the disclosed knowledge of her transsexual identity caused her to be labeled deviant.
Similarly, in classroom settings, disclosure of transgender identity and failing to conform
to social standards for gender expression often resulted in negative consequences.

As related earlier through Asher’s classroom experiences, transgender students in
this study often requested that all course faculty refer to them by their chosen names and
correct gender pronouns. Charlie talked about identity management in the classroom
becoming more complicated when he shifted ﬁ'om identifying solely as F-M transgender
to genderqueer. Said Charlie,

Well, last fall you know when I was coming out as trans, I just walked up to my

professors and I told them. I said, “Look my name is Anna on the roster, but I’m

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going by Charlie, if you’d please call me that. And I have transgender

identiﬁcation, so if you could please use a male pronoun that would be

appreciated.” And most of my professors were okay with that. I only had one
who continued to call me a woman, which was really weird because I wasn’t
passing as a woman at all at the time. Now, like I said a few days ago, as part of
summer school, I had a professor who he didn’t really ask about my identity and
he was just like, “Why do you go by ‘Charlie,’ a guy’s name?” I didn’t really
know how to respond to that because I didn’t want to say, “Well I was trans and
now I’m kind of genderqueer.” You know, I didn’t want to give him this big long
story and I guess I was more worried now about how people would take me being
genderqueer, so I just said, ‘I like the narne.’”

For Razi, self-identifying in the classroom was made more complex by his role at
University B as a resident assistant. He was assigned to a female ﬂoor and had to be
selectively open about his male identity. In all residence hall or classroom situations in
which his female residents might be present, he shortened his chosen name to a more
gender-ambiguous sounding “Raz,” and used female pronouns. His preference, however,
was to be out as male in class as much as possible. Razi described a number of situations
in which faculty members refused to call him by his chosen name or use male pronouns,
“It’s awful to get ‘she’d’, and I’m sitting there, clearly a guy.” Similar to Razi,
interactions with faculty also proved difﬁcult for Nick.

Though he regularly passed as male, Nick talked about a number of situations at

University A where his interaction with faculty changed when he was perceived to have a

85

higher pitched, female voice. He described faculty members responding to him with the

“You’re a freak” look. Nick felt that his gender identity could be a barrier to

his ability to participate in faculty lead research projects or internships, as well as

receiving letters of recommendation. Said Nick,
I was always one of those people that like, you know, tried to talk to the professor
after class and like that kind of thing. . .So, I mean, like this one professor that I
had, it was obvious he was trying to be nice to me but that he thought that I was
total freak. I mean like, it’s the same kind of things that I was talking about
before. Like I walk up to a teacher and they’ll be like, “Yes sir, how can I help
you?” And then the second I open my mouth and I’ll be like, “Well, I don’t
understand this problem” or something. And then they’ll look at me like, “Oh.”
And then after that they’re not as friendly any more. . .But it’s like I’ll meet a
teacher and I’m like, “Yeah, this is a really cool man. He has all these books out
and stuff.” But then when I talk to him, he acts like I’m a weirdo. It’s not gonna
make me feel interested in asking him if he needs an undergraduate, you know,
intern for his research or something. It’s gonna make me feel like, “Oh, I don’t
want to spend all summer with him if he’s gonna act like I’m a freak everyday.”
So, I feel like I’d be more involved if I wasn’t worrying as much about, you
know, what teachers thought about.
Like Nick, Wendy and Charlie discussed ways their lack of conformity to binary

gender norms were academically problematic at University B. Wendy talked about being

in class just after her M-F transition, “I know I stuck out because I hadn’t leamed—l

hadn’t had enough experience living full time as a woman to blend in... things were

86

really awkward in class for the ﬁrst few weeks; they knew that there was something
deeply different about me and it was a little weird.” In his academic department,
Charlie’s masculine gender expression was deemed acceptable, as long as he was seen as
a lesbian. Said Charlie,

Overall I would say my department—I don’t know if we’re liberal—but just to

generalize there’s a lot of lesbian identiﬁed people in physical education. You

know it’s the typical women in sport thing. People, when I’m passing as lesbian,
like right now, think it’s great. The guys are cool with me; the women are cool

with me because I’m just a butch woman. They’re okay with that. But as soon as I

say, “I’m a guy” it’s like, “whoa, no, you’re just a butch woman.” They don’t

really get it and I’ve had some harassment there.

Direct harassment and blatant insensitivity of faculty in class also was reported by
participants, often based on binary notions of normality and transgender persons being
seen as deviant. Razi described a number of negative experiences in classes. As one
example, he related,

A lot of professors make really shitty trans jokes. Like in one of my books, it gave

an example of this one guy who is sleeping with a woman. And then he ﬁnds out

that this woman’s a trans woman. And it’s supposed to be an example about like
deceiving. But it’s really shady. It’s like, you know, you’d be upset, too, if you
found out you’d actually been sleeping with a guy. The professor thought that that
was just hilarious.

In classroom settings, genderism’s second characteristic, social accountability to

binary gender norms, took a number of different forms. When transgender students failed

87

to pass in binary gender contexts, or if alternate gender experiences (such as Wendy’s)
became known, participants feared or risked discrirrrination and harassment. Similar
themes appeared in the context of campus employment.

Campus Employment and Social Accountability.

Study participants employed on campus faced complex challenges. Working full
time at University B was critical to Wendy’s economic stability while attending college.
As an adult in her early forties, Wendy had a number of highly employable skills,
particularly related to computer technology. Yet, the realities of social accountability and
its risks caused her to intentionally choose a low paying campus job. This was part of her
strategy for successfully transitioning from male to female identities. Wendy reﬂected,

...Once I decided that I had to transition, I purposefully stayed on a second shift

job in a campus medical facility. . .so that I would be out of the view of the public,

around a lot of unisex bathrooms, with my union seniority to make it hard for
them to ﬁre me. . .My prior job was in a much more public position, in a place that
was rather controversial, so if I would have transitioned there I know I would
have been transferred or possibly ﬁred... By being an underemployed nobody
bottom feeder, sweeping ﬂoors when no one else was around, I ﬁgured that was
the way to do it. And that was a good gamble.

Like Wendy, other participants confronted the risks and challenges of being out
about their identities in campus employment. Two participants were hired as resident
assistants (RAs) at University B, where RA ﬂoor assignments are made based on
biological sex. Razi spent two years working on a female designated ﬂoor and Asher just

had been hired to work in an all female environment. Asher described the RA selection

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process as being particularly problematic. On the application, he was forced to identify as
either “male” or “female.” Because he knew that RA ﬂoor and hall assignments were
made based on biological sex, he chose the “female” category, and identiﬁed self by his
birth name. When he arrived to participate in the ﬁrst phase of the selection process, he
wrote “Jessica” on his narnetag, expecting to have to go through the process as female
identiﬁed. He described the negative impact of the selection experience, saying, “That
was the lowest point because every time I looked down, it was a reafﬁrmation of, you
know, that University B doesn’t necessarily accept my true identity — like who I am.”
Both Asher and Razi discussed the complexities of managing identities with peers

on the ﬂoor, as well as supervisors. As stated earlier, Razi chose to refer to himself as
“Raz” and went by female pronouns in all situations where residents from his ﬂoor
community and hall staff were present. Said Razi, “every once in a while, if there are
visitors to the ﬂoor, I’d hear something like, ‘what’s a guy doing being an RA on the
girl’s ﬂoor?”’ At the same time, in settings where other hall staff or residents were
absent, close friends and select faculty and staff referred to Razi by his chosen name and
male gender pronouns. In contrast, Asher has decided to be open with his residence life
staff and plans to be “out” to his female ﬂoor residents as transgender. Designing a
strategy for being an effective staff member and managing his identity became a
signiﬁcant issue. Said Asher,

...I have sat down with the Hall Director and we had multiple serious discussions

about you know, “how are you going to present yourself when the women ﬁrst

show up?” You know, “I mean, are you going to have facial hair?” I’m like,

“No. I’m just going to look like I would every other day.” I don’t want to freak

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freshmen out that are going to be living on my ﬂoor. I’d like to foster a good

environment.” He (hall director) believes that I’ll be a great RA, that I’m a great

people person, and that I have a lot of skills that even some other returning RAs
don’t have. It’s just whether or not we can get the female students on my ﬂoor,
you know, to accept my trans identity, which is male. Which is interesting. Right
now, I’m working with all of the returning RAs as well as the new ones on this
issue.

Razi discussed his ﬁ'ustrations with working with a residence hall director who he
described as insensitive, tokenizing, and unable to understand his needs as a transgender
student. Systemic gender conformity to a female idenity appeared to be an expectation of
both Razi’s work role and was reﬂected by the behaviors of his supervisor. Said Razi,

Well, when I ﬁrst talked to her, I just was like, you know, “I’m trans. Just wanted

to let you know.” Then she’s like, “Okay.” And then she’s like, “What’s that

mean?” And so I had to do like a Trans 101. I’m like, okay, ﬁne. She’s new.

Maybe she doesn’t know anything... So I gave her Trans 101. Then she’s like,

“You know, you’re ﬁrst gay person I’ve ever talked to.” And I’m like, “Oh, my

God.” I was like, “This is not going to be good.” And then like later on, she wants

to do a safe space training (and LBGT awareness session for RA staff). And then

she’s like, “Can you work arranging all that for the staff?” I’m like, “That’s not
my job.” She’s like, “Well, you know them.” Like, I’m not going to argue. She

sends me emails that are like just for the female residents. And she’s like, “Hey,
ladies.” And I’m like, “I realize I live on the female ﬂoor, but you don’t have to

address me as female.” You can just be like, “Hello, how’s it going?” You don’t

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have to be, “Hey, ladies.” She still doesn’t get trans issues at all. . .Like She sent

out a really shitty email to all the female staffers, saying, you know, “I’m looking

for a baby sitter.” It’s so like, if you’re a female, you baby sit. I’m like, “You need
to be educated on so many issues.” And she’s just awful. Like she’s so ignorant
on so many issues.

Both Asher and Razi discussed ways that binary social accountability systems at
work caused them to feel forced to self-identify in ways that were inconsistent with their
identities. Razi said,

I think next year will be a lot better (not being an RA and living off campus).

‘Cause I won’t have this gender role assigned to me kind of thing. Like, I can go

my way for my gender as opposed to what Residence Life sees my gender as.
While Asher planned to become an RA in the upcoming academic year, he currently was
employed four days a week in a lab on campus, which presented a number of complex
and intersecting challenges. Said Asher,

...the guy that hired me goes to my family’s church. So if I’m going to tell him

(true gender identity), he’s going to tell my parents, and I’m not ready for that.

So I go to work and you know, they’re like yeah, you got your hair cut. That’s

cute, blah-blah-blah. So the deal with that is like at work I have to become what I

consider my alter ego. Which is Jessica. Like that’s a daily thing, especially when

I go to work. It’s like okay, I’m now Jessica. . .And then it becomes when I’m at

work, going to the bathroom. Because even in a baby blue pair of scrubs, I pass

relatively well (as male) and if I go into the women’s bathroom with my employer

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right there, I get women that look at me like, “What are you doing in here?” And I

can’t exactly go into the men’s room with my employer right there.

Regarding campus employment, social accountability appeared to create systemic
pressure to conform to binary gender constructions, often based on fears about safety or
being “outed” as transgender. The gendered cultures surrounding resident assistant jobs
and related hiring processes appeared particularly problematic. In these incidents, social
accountability to dual gender norms was so powerful, that it was practically articulated as
a job expectation. Similarly, study participants reported that binary cultures of gender
conformity were very strong in relationship to campus facilities.

Campus Facilities and Social Accountability

All participants in the study discussed the negative impact that campus facilities
(residence halls, athletic facilities, locker rooms and bathrooms) had on their lives. From
the perspective of transgender students, access to facilities was based on their ability to
meet social standards for passing as male or female, often resulting in extreme stress and
fear of harassment. Beyond visibly passing as the prescribed gender, transgender students
had to learn the gendered cultures of campus facilities and to match their personal
behavior accordingly.

Residence halls.

Beyond the residence hall employment issues described earlier, living in single
gender, male or female environments presented multiple challenges. At University A,
Debbie was invited by the prestigious student Legal Club to live in campus housing set
aside speciﬁcally for women. For Debbie, the idea of living in a female residence hall

evoked the possibility of a kind of gender legitimacy and experience that was not possible

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when she presented as male during her undergraduate years. Yet, she ultimately declined
the invitation. Said Debbie,

And to be honest with you, I did actually think about going to live in the Legal

Club just because it would be an experience that I have never had. I ultimately

couldn’t do it because I couldn’t bring myself to be sharing a bathroom with a

bunch of women. . .I just couldn’t do that. But part of me wanted to do that

because it would give me the opportunity to live a part of my life that I couldn’t
live back before and how ﬁrn it would be to live in an all girls dorm.

Like Debbie, Wendy made a decision to remove herself from the residential
environment. As a student at University B in the late 1970’s, Wendy lived on a male ﬂoor
during her ﬁrst year, at a time she presented as male. Here, she felt highly threatened by
an environment in which men who were perceived to be female-like or effeminate were
targets of harassment and violence. Wendy described the culture of the residence hall as
linking homophobia and genderism to reinforce a rigid, binary form of male gender
expression:

And frankly it was a frightening environment because it was a very homophobic

ﬂoor and there was a lot of implied violence that if you didn’t ﬁt, you would have

been ostracized. You may have vicious hazing-like pranks played upon you. Your
life would be made hell. So the male ﬂoor was a very threatening

environment. . .In the dorm, I heard comments that were distressing because I

could hear the violence behind the comments. The people that should have helped

to make a safe environment, the resident assistants, turned out to me to be the

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enforcers of the status quo. I remember them making “Don’t be such a fag” type

of comments.

Wendy described an overt, exaggerated male behavior that played out on her ﬂoor
community, often on a daily basis. Similarly, Danielle described a “hyper feminine”
environment on the ﬂoor in which lived. Here, women residents “proved” their
femaleness in ways that appeared to reﬂect biologically-based, Cisgender assumptions
about women, often linking gender identity and sexual orientation. This behavior was
visible most when the group gathered for ﬂoor meetings. Said Danielle,

Like every time a guy would walk down the halls and stuff, girls would start

whistling or ﬂirting or you know, “Come join us” or something like that. And

conversations always turned to the RA’s hot younger brother and stuff. . .and I’m

like sitting there in my shorts with like my unshaven legs and someone is like

“Eww, I haven’t shaved in two days, you know, that is so gross.” I’m like “Yeah,

I’m sure.” What is so unsanitary about leg hair anyhow? ...When we are in this

group, like everyone just becomes a lot more vocalized and you know hyper

feminine, but talking with girls on a one-to-one basis that deﬁnitely tones it down,
but I don’t know, maybe it’s that when they are in a group they have something to
prove.

Danielle described another example of ways residence hall culture reinforced
binary gendered and heterosexist assumptions about women through the example of a sex
toy party. As she identiﬁed as genderqueer and sexually oriented towards women,

Danielle felt awkward about attending the event. She reﬂected,

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There was a sex toy party in the basement of Regan (residence hall) and it was of

course it was for girls only and stuff. . .I got there before they closed the

doors. . .But I went to go and get a drink and then came back down and there was

this sign and stuff and there was all these girls checking to make sure it wasn’t

guys trying to get in or whatever. And it sort of felt, sort of awkward because I’m

not a traditionally gender woman, so yeah, but so that sort of felt weird I guess

because I’m coming from a different perspective going into a sex toy party where
everyone was talking about pleasing their men and stuff and you know.

(Laughing) Like what man?

Like Danielle, Asher experienced a variety of personal challenges when he chose
to express gender outside of social norms in the residence hall. For his sophomore year,
he decided to live on the same female ﬂoor as the previous year. The signiﬁcant change,
however, was that he decided to be open with all ﬂoor members about his male gender
identity. Being “out” required that Asher negotiate difﬁcult issues surrounding the
community’s reactions and pragrnatics of daily life on the ﬂoor. As he disclosed his
identity, women who returned to the ﬂoor from the previous year had difﬁculty adjusting
to his new name and, as discussed earlier, particularly resisted the concept that Asher was
male. Regarding the name change, he said, “A lot of them stuttered over my name, and
that’s no big deal.” Yet, regardless of how often Asher corrected them; women
consistently used a female pronoun in reference to him. He reﬂected,

When they’re talking to their families and ﬁiends, you know, they’re like, “Oh

yeah, Asher this, Asher that,” and trying to avoid those pronouns. A lot of times.

But a lot of times, too, it’s like, “Asher, she does this, and she does that. And

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she’s the president of Rainbow (an LBGT hall support organization) and I’m like,

“No, he ’s the president of Rainbow, and he does this.”

Asher was ﬁ'ustrated further by his roommate because she felt she had to hide Asher’s
male gender identity from her parents.

What caused the women on his ﬂoor to negate his identity, and continue to refer
to him as female? One perspective Asher offered was that it helped to ease fear, conﬂict,
tension, confusion and just made it more comfortable for them to label him female. In
addition, it appeared to him that they could not understand the concept of gender ﬂuidity,
making it even more difﬁcult to understand how his male identity could differ from
biological sex assignment. Reﬂected Asher,

I've gotten a response when I sat down and talked with a couple of people who
are returning students that lived on the ﬂoor with me last year, they were like,

“Well wait, you were a girl last year, but now you’re a guy?” Like, they don’t

quite grasp the concept of like any type of ﬂuidity. And so it’s like, “No, no, no.

Just wait a minute. Let’s step back a second and you now just said, you know,

you’re either a boy or a girl. And that’s not necessarily how it works.” And I've

had lots of discussions with lots of people on the ﬂoor. And I think the majority of
the time they are just kind of stuck with uses of pronouns. Like you know, it’s just
easier to say in a sense, you know, why would you say that oh, there’s a boy
living on the girl’s side? Perhaps at some level they internally know, “Oh, Asher
says he’s a boy, but it’s just going to be easier for me to manage this to just do

she, she, she, she, she.”

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Beyond name and pronoun use, Asher was faced with a wide range of social
accountability issues related to his male identity and life in a female ﬂoor community. As
one example, Asher was concerned about privacy issues and bathroom use, feeling that
the women’s community bathroom was off limits now that he was identifying as male.
He often would choose to go down three ﬂights of stairs to use a uni-sex restroom or wait
outside the ﬂoor bathroom until all others had left before showering. As Asher’s personal
frustration increased, he attended a ﬂoor community meeting where residents passed a
“No boys in the bathroom” policy. Asher went to the resident assistant with concerns,

When we set up the community standards we talked about, you know, “no boys in

the bathroom.” I talked about it with my RA. I was like, “Hey, what about me?”

And she’s like, “You know what? I’m going to edit those community standards.”

I said, “Oh, really?” ...and she’s like, “No boys in the bathroom except Asher.”

And I’m like, “Oh, thanks for having me totally stick out!” But she did it. She

wrote it up for everyone to see. But like, no one ever said anything, so like I don't

know if they just thought it was a joke or whatnot, but either way. Like when it
comes down to being on that ﬂoor and using the bathroom. I am good.
Asher described becoming comfortable with using the ﬂoor community bathroom with
the support of women residents. He said,

So it’s like, you know, I’ll just wait until everyone is out or, you know, out of the

bathroom and go in. So like people don’t think like, you know, “Some boy’s

coming into the bathroom.” And people started literally asking me, “You know,

why would you stand outside of the bathroom and wait ‘till everyone was out, and

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then go into the bathroom?” I’d say, “Well, because I don't want to make people
uncomfortable.” And they’re all like, “Oh, just go in. We don’t care.”
While Asher was informed by female residents that use of the restroom was acceptable, it
is possible that this was ultimately another way he continued to be labeled “female,”
rather than peers actually accepting his male identity.

In contrast to Asher’s decision to be out to all members of his ﬂoor community
about his identity, Charlie made a decision to be out selectively, and self disclosed based
on who he got to know intimately and with whom he felt comfortable. At the time he was
living in residence halls, Charlie identiﬁed as male but was living on a female ﬂoor.
Charlie described having to work through issues of his gender identity with suitemates,
but generally, felt support from his hall community:

At the time I was passing really well (as male) and my suite mate, who eventually

became my roommate the next semester; she was pretty sure I was a guy. She

didn’t understand why I lived there ‘till I had to explain that I’m a transgender;

I’m not really bio-male, thanks you know, it’s great I’m passing apparently. But

people on my ﬂoor, I lived in Laurence Hall where it’s mostly upperclassmen,

international students with people in their twenties not their teens, a little bit more

mature. People overall didn’t have much of a problem with it.

However, Charlie described an incident in which his passing as male was so
successful, that other men in the residence hall took issue with it:

There were a few instances in talking to the hall director, who I got to know really

well, his name is Bernie, guys would go up to him and say, “Why does this one

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guy get to live on the girls’ side. That’s not fair. We want to live on the girls’ side

too.” I’m like, “Oh it’s great that I’m passing but that just made it awkwar .”

Like Asher, Charlie felt that his RA was supportive overall, yet Charlie also
sensed her discomfort. Charlie said, “Yeah, I mean my RA sort of skipped pronouns
because she didn’t know really know how to explain it to everyone else on the ﬂoor.’

In summary, the binary gendered nature of residence halls created complex
challenges for transgender students. In all female or male environments, binary gender
norms appeared to reinforce exaggerated notions of masculinity or femininity, and related
heterosexual gender roles. In these settings, transgender identities were stigmatized,
negated or, in Asher’s case, systemically denied. Negotiating the pragmatic realities of
roommate and ﬂoor relationships, as well as community bathroom use, was often
difﬁcult. Further, the challenges transgender students experienced in residence halls
extended to other campus facilities.

Athletic facilities, locker rooms, and public restrooms.

In terms of athletic facilities and locker rooms, Diondre, Damien, and Nick all
talked about the frustrations of being unable to comfortably access the campus pool and
exercise facilities. Entry through either female or male locker rooms was required. For
them, campus recreation was off— limits. Commented Nick,

University A’s recreation buildings suck... I wanted to start like working-out, like

with weights and stuff. But they only have locker rooms, male locker rooms,

female locker rooms. So that makes it really hard to, ‘cause I talked to a staff
member about it and she’s like, “Oh, you can change in my ofﬁce.” But that just

makes me feel like a weirdo. I mean, it’s coming out of my tuition automatically

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for me to be able go and use the rec building. But it’s like I can’t use it and I’m
paying for it. Because I go there and I have to be male or female and really, really,
pass—like I need to be seen as guy in there. And that’s not possible. Like to get to
the pool, you have to go through one of the bathrooms, there are only two
entrances. And then, you know, with the weight lifting. It’s the same kind of
thing. I can go and weight lift. But like most people, I wanna go to the pool, and
rinse off, and like cool down after they weight lift. You know? But I have to go in
there and do my weight lifting, come sit in my car, get my sweat everywhere in
my car because I haven’t took a shower or gone in the pool. And everyone else
can be like, “Oh, I’m done. I’m gonna go in the pool for an hour.” You know, and
it’s like me I can’t, because you know, it’s just not possible. If I go in the female
locker, I’m sure people in there will freak out. You know, because people do.

All participants discussed the lack of uni-sex or gender-ﬂee restrooms as one of
the greatest barriers to managing life on campus. On a daily basis, transgender students
were, as Nick said, “Forced to choose between male and female bathrooms.” Restroom
choices were often driven by participant’s perceptions of their ability to pass as male or
female. When reﬂecting about whether or not she might choose to use a men’s bathroom,
Danielle said, “I don’t think I pass enough in order to do that.” Yet, she also remembers
an incident where using a woman’s restroom caused her to feel uncomfortable. The
Union at University B had a woman’s lounge, which was clearly a gender-speciﬁc space.
Going through the lounge was required to use the ﬁrst ﬂoor women’s restroom. Because
of Danille’s genderqueer identity, the female—speciﬁc nature of the space caused her to

feel uncomfortable. She said,

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I remember going in there once to use the bathroom and I felt really awkward
because you know because there were all women in the lounge. Like this is a
really, really, really, female place. . .so I was like, “Okay, walk in, just walk in
with some conﬁdence like I am supposed to be there.” And I always use female
bathrooms, but for whatever reason, it felt really weird walking into it. You’ve got
to go through the lounge which is you know one thing and then you got to get
into the bathrooms and stuff and then you got to get out.

Asher talked about the daily management of bathroom use, planning where he
would be on campus, what bathrooms he would be near, how safe he felt using them, and
the degree to which he felt that he passed enough to use male restrooms. Said Asher,

A lot of it on a day-to-day basis is okay. You know, I’m in this building and l

have to go to the bathroom, but this is not a building that I've been in the

bathrooms before, you know, to feel out their comfort level in a sense like, you
know, how are people going to respond to me walking into a bathroom, which

also has to do with, do I feel like I’m passing today? If I don’t talk, okay, will I

pass? Yeah. Okay. So passing is a big deal. Which leads into the bathrooms. You

know. I have to go to the bathroom now, can I hold it till I get to the fourth ﬂoor
where I know it’s where no one’s going to be? Or can I hold it till I get to the
basement if I’m on the fourth ﬂoor until, because you know, somebody showed
up and I’m not alone.

Diondre and Triston talked about learning the culture of men’s and women’s
restrooms in order to successfully pass. Diondre described learning to manage his identity

in women’s restrooms at a time when he self-labeled as a butch lesbian, prior to

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identifying as FTM transgender. In women’s restrooms, he learned to behave in ways that
helped him to be perceived as female. Said Diondre,
And I used to have problems walking into a women’s room. I used to do a lot of
work on taking the glasses off, I’d unzip my jacket. I would smile and make sure
to speak and be ﬁiendly. I would do all sorts of stuff to show that I was female.
And so I know how upset people can get about being — your being in the wrong
place. And I just don’t care to trigger all of that.
Alternatively, Triston talked about the dangers of failing to conform to gender
role expectations in men’s bathrooms. Said T riston,
But going in the men’s restroom is interesting and really scary. That’s where I
pick up the most about a piece of masculinity, in the men’s bathroom. You know
it’s like because men don’t look at each other. And I’ve made that mistake a
couple of times because I’m like a friendly person you know, and like if I washed
my hands someone would come up next to me and I’d be like, “What’s up?” And
then I was like, “Oh God, I shouldn’t be talking right now.” But I’ve never, I
haven’t had any like harassment yet in the bathroom, but it’s kind of like I know it
will happen eventually. But it’s like my heart is always beating. Like I’m sure for
my health long term, it’s really bad, it’s really bad for me because it’s such a
stressful thing to go into the bathroom and lock myself in the stall. And just
waiting for somebody to look over the top you know and then jump in and beat
me up.
Nick, who chose to use men’s restrooms, talked about occasionally being “stared

down” by Cisgender men in the facility. When asked to deﬁne the intent and meaning of

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the stare, Nick said, “Its like, ‘What the hell you doing in here?’ And, ‘You freak’... the
person realized, somehow realized like, ‘Oh. That’s not a boy’.” Having life experience
using both men’s and women’s restrooms, Nick reﬂected on how binary gender
socialization played out in bathrooms,

Like with the guys, it’s almost like they’re threatened, but they don’t feel

threatened. It’s more like their masculinity feels threatened. Like, “What is this

woman doing in the male bathroom?” Like that kind of thing. And then, with
girls, it’s the opposite. Like they feel how I would feel if I went into a male
bathroom and they knew that I was female. You know, it’s the same kind of thing.

Like they think it’s a male with penis walking into the female bathroom, and so

they’re like, you know, they feel threatened like, “Are you coming in here to rape

me or something?” You know, it’s that kind of like, “Oh!” And then sometimes

I’ll say this. I’ll be like, “No, I’m a girl.” And then, I’ll just say, “I’m going to the

bathroom.” But then it’s like they’re out there saying stuff under their breath like,

“Freak.”

The complexity here is worth noting. For different reasons, Nick’s presence in
restrooms was threatening to both men and women. To be seen as a woman attempting to
pass as a man in a men’s restroom threatens masculinity. Nick, as well as Triston,
interpret harassment and violence a possible consequence of transgressing male restroom
norms. In contrast, in the women’s restroom, Nick’s presence is equated with male
violence and rape. Not only do binary gender systems cause transgender students to be

seen as deviant, but in this context, they reinforce anti-woman violence.

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While all participants talked about pressures to pass as male or female in daily
life, nowhere in the study were these comments as pronounced as they were in
relationship to campus facility issues. Passing as the appropriate gender was not only a
requirement for being able to access the simple necessity of a restroom or residence hall,
but was also a strategy to protect self from stigrnatization and harassment. All
participants discussed negative consequences related to use of bathrooms or living in
residence halls where explicit and implicit codes upheld gender conformity. Fear and
apprehension about daily decisions regarding bathroom use was a signiﬁcant issue for
many participants.

Chapter Summary

Chapter four provided an overview of genderism and examined its ﬁrst two
characteristics: social labeling and gender accountability. This study presents genderism
as a system based on the idea of a seamless alignment of biological sex assignment,
internal sense of gender identity, and the social expression with one of two rigid gender
options. Further, binary gender systems operating at universities A and B appeared to
create accountability standards for being seen as either male or female. Conformity was
maintained by complex patterns of negative stigrnatization, which these students
experienced in many dimensions of their lives on campus. These areas included:
academic experiences (admission, interactions with faculty, peers in class, academic
advising, scholarship opportunities), employment (employment while a student, future
career aspirations), and campus facilities (residence halls, athletic facilities, locker
rooms, bathrooms). Thus, the culture of each of the universities created pressure for

transgender students to pass as male or female. While passing socially was, at times,

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affirming for some transgender students, it was also used as a strategy for avoiding
stigrnatization. If these students missed appropriate gender cues, the result could be
being labeled “freak” or risking more serious harassment. While transgender students in
this study discussed a myriad of issues related to passing, a theme that emerged in this
study was that all students were expected to pass.

AS examples, study participants discussed ways their personal identities were
marginalized by binary gender systems, yet also described ways their Cisgender peers
experienced social accountability. Razi described his hall director promoting both
genderism and sexism by only inviting women staff members to baby-sit. Similarly,
Danielle, Razi, Tristion, and Wendy discussed ways all students were negatively
impacted by a classroom culture and related curriculum which focused on binary gender
constructions. Wendy described genderist and homophobic systems of accountability in
her male residence hall community serving to regulate the behavior of all men. While the
perceptions, risks, and realities of gender stigrnatization impacted all students, gender
accountability systems also worked to reward and privilege binary gender constructions.
In chapter ﬁve, this idea of privileging binary gender systems, genderism’s third
characteristic, will be discussed in depth. The chapter will conclude with an examination

of genderism’ fourth characteristic: invisibility and isolation of transgender persons.

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Chapter Five:
Binary Gender Systems are Privileged and Invisibility and Isolation of
Transgender Persons

Genderism’s third and forth characteristics, as enacted at the two institutions,
focused on dual gender systems as the accepted, normative, unquestioned standard that
permeated all aspects of life on campus (characteristic three), ultimately leading to the
invisibility and inaccessibility of transgender student experiences (characteristic four).
This chapter leads with an overview of gender privilege with related examples from the
study, followed by an examination of the impact of genderism on transgender student
isolation, invisibility and disconnection.

Binary Gender Systems are Privileged

An application of the work of Macintosh of Macintosh (1978), may serve as a
foundation for exploring genderism’s third characteristic. Those who expressed gender
within binary norms were given social advantages over those who did not. The
privileging of dual gender systems were most often described by participants operating in
relation to academic settings, campus employment and career contexts, and within LBGT
and broader student organizations.
Privileging Binary Identities in the Classroom

Participants in this study consistently reported feeling ignored or marginalized in
class in favor of their Cisgender peers. While some individuals reported positive
experiences in class, participants most often described feeling tokenized. In some cases,
transgender students were relied on as educational resources for faculty and fellow

students. In this study, no faculty member was identiﬁed as having any expertise on

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transgender or gender identity issues. At best, professors were described as personally
supportive and willing to be educated by transgender students. An in-depth discussion of
the aforementioned constructions of gender privilege follows.

Asher consistently described situations in which he was ignored in favor of his
cicsgendered peers. He related,

In the email (to the professor) I wrote, “I feel really horrible when you look at me

and know that I have the answer, but choose someone else. Like when you make

direct eye contact with me, and make me feel like, ‘You have the answer. You can
answer this.’ But then choose someone else. You know, I feel both ﬁ'ustrated and
very put out because I feel like you know, I prepared for this class as well as the
next person, if not better. Why can’t my answers be recognized?” And then, the
following Monday the professor actually pulled me aside and said, “You know,

I’m really sorry that you felt put out and ﬁ'ustrated with the fact that I didn’t call

on you. . .I know that you prepare very well for class and I understand you and I

did do that. I did make eye contact with you and you know, call on someone else.

And I can understand why that would be frustrating.” And the excuse was “Well,

I’m old.” I was like, “Yes, but you can still be sensitive to other people.”

At the same institution, Razi talked about being in classroom situations where the
manner in which courses were taught privileged binary gender constructions, making his
transgender experience invisible, even when disclosing his identity to faculty. Said Razi,

I told the professor that I was trans, yet she continued to do a lot of “If you’re a

guy, stand. If you’re a girl, stay sitting down.” Like, if I stand up with all the

guys then, I’m saying I’m this Cisgender guy. And if I stay sitting-- It was just

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really bad. And she did this all the time. And I’d get into arguments with her.

And she didn’t get it.

Unlike Razi, Triston reported many faculty who were willing to support his male
identity in class, yet, he discussed ways he felt tokenized by faculty and peers. He often
felt cast as the “transperson” in class, being expected to provide expertise on all
transgender issues. For many faculty and student peers, Triston was the ﬁrst transgender
individual they had ever met. Triston said, “People were like ‘Whoa, what’s this person
going to say next?”’ He described a related incident, in which a student approached him
after class,

And she was like this real eccentric girl you know and she was like, “I really like

having you in class. I would like to talk to you about your experience of being

transgender. Can we make an appointment and we can hang out?” And I was like,

“Okay.” And then she was like, “and I have ADHD and so I’ll tell you about that,

because I don’t want to tokenize you and have you just tell me about your

oppression.” And I was just like, “Okay.” I mean that’s good and of course I want
to learn about other oppression, it was just really bizarre. It was like “Here is this
transperson; I want to talk to them.” You know, “This is my encyclopedia on
gender.” So I got a lot of that.

In these situations, Triston described transgender tokenization as a function of
privilege. He related that classroom dynamics deem Cisgender students, faculty and
course content as normative, negating responsibility for self education. Triston described

gender identity concerns as being seen as “other.” Triston commented further on the

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internal conﬂict and personal cost he experienced as a result of choosing to pursue
transgender related class projects to educate others,

Like you know whenever I wanted to do class projects, if I had leeway, I would

think this would be a really good time to write about trans issues because this

would be a good education piece. And so maybe I could have written about things
that weren’t my own issue and learn more, but sometimes I would go for the trans
piece so that I could educate others. And that was a challenge; you know it’s like
again being the teacher when you are supposed to be the student.

It is also important to note that other study participants did not identify
experiencing the teacher/ student role conﬂict Triston described. These individuals
welcomed the opportunity to support scholarship and education surrounding transgender
identities. Damien chose a dissertation topic that involved an exploration of the concept
of gender ﬂuidity, which he called “gender spectra” and Debbie hoped to use her
coursework to address a broad range of lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender (LBGT)
legal issues. Danielle utilized a class assignment to conduct qualitative interviews with
transgender high school students at the school from which she graduated. Her study
revealed the complexities of binary gender systems in secondary settings and gave
examples of transphobia occurring on the school’s forensics team. Danielle reported that
the class instructor was thrilled with the project, “I even saw the teacher sort of go
‘Whoa, that is something new.’ That was something that deﬁnitely caught her attention.”
Asher was recruited actively by faculty in his academic department to participate in a
brain study of transgender persons. Yet, as Triston said, when the transgender student is

the research subject or “becomes the teacher,” what are the consequences? To what

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degree to these activities support collusion with the dynamics of binary gender privilege?
By being the primary drivers of transgender education, research, and scholarship, do
these students allow Cisgender faculty and peers to disconnect ﬂom the realities that
genderism negatively impacts all members of university communities? These questions
warrant further examination through additional research. While much of this study frames
issues of transgender oppression in the context of Cisgender, heterosexual privilege,
participants also described dynamics of gender privilege within LBGT communities.
Privileging Binary Identities in LBGT Communities

Participants in this study consistently talked about a privileging of gay and lesbian
identities over all others within campus LBGT communities. For Charlie, who discussed
feeling disconnected from the multiple communities in which he had membership. This
was particularly challenging. Because his gender identity was in a still deﬁning process,
at times identifying as P TM transgender, at times female lesbian, and at others
genderqueer, issues of where and how to get support were challenging. He talked about
the lack of inclusion of LBGT student groups,

The LBGT groups were really more focused on you’re either gay or lesbian and

they gave up the B and the T. I either went to groups all year where they

consistently called me “he” and tried to make me feel comfortable as trans, or I

went to other groups where they consistently called me “she” even when I didn’t

want to be called that.

Through Charlie felt a strong sense of identiﬁcation with the lesbian groups on

campus, and often wanted to pass as lesbian, he alternatively felt as if his male

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transgender identity and lesbian identity could not exist in the same community sphere.
Said Charlie,

One thing I don’t think I’ll ever let go of is the lesbian identiﬁcation because I

really like that community and I feel like I ﬁt there. But the hard part is people

never see me as male when I’m identifying as lesbian. I know that’s confusing to
other people. And then that’s hard because like right now I want people to see me
that way but they’re still seeing me as trans.

Though Charlie was seeking an integrated space, a place where a genderqueer or
multiple forrrrs of gender expression could exist, campus student organizations did not
offer such an option. He felt welcomed and supported by the one student transgender
group on campus, the Alpha Males, which was inclusive of all forms of gender
expression, but focused particularly on FTM advocacy. Charlie ultimately made a
decision to leave the group. Said Charlie,

Honestly I don’t feel that there’s a group out there on this campus that I’m aware

of that’s accessible for genderqueer, gender-variant individuals. Like the Alpha

Males, I was initially involved in, but for me it became too focused on FTM

transgender. I could be wrong. Not that I wasn’t included in that group; I was

deﬁnitely. But I just felt like there was just sort of an unconscious pressure or
something for lack of a better term, to sort of go in that direction of identity. And

I don’t know that I agree with that, I really don’t. For me it just wasn’t open

enough to different sorts of genders I guess.

Regarding the lack of space for gender-variant individuals, Danielle had a similar

experience, “but as far as the genderqueer community, I’ve only ever met one other

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person who is identiﬁed as such.” As individuals who shared multiple group identities or
were androgynous in gender presentation, Nick and Danielle had difﬁculty ﬁnding
support.

Like Charlie, Danielle discussed feeling tokenized by campus LBGT groups,
“sometimes that ‘T’ is just tacked on to the standard ‘LBGT.’ When you know, even
when something is advertised as queer, like we had a queer history meeting and that was
just on ‘homosexual’.” Triston had similar impressions one of the major campus activist
groups, the Queer Student Alliance,

The alliance is never going to come out as being transphobic, you know

obviously. I mean it’s queer and they slap a T on and they have the you know the

tranny day and all that stuff, but really it was very clear culturally that it was very
much a lesbian and gay group.

Triston and Razi described speciﬁc incidents of having their identities
marginalized by LBGT organizations and communities. They most often reported being
labeled as lesbians or as lesbians doing drag. Both students had roles in an FTM drag
troupe, which performs in local LBGT nightclubs, often catering to student audiences.
Razi said,

The one hard thing was when I’m at a show, a lot people just assume I’m a

lesbian dressing up as a guy. Like they don’t really get that there’s like a variety

of genders, so I’m like “she’d” all the time at drag shows, and I really hate that. I

know that Triston experiences it too. And it’s just awful.

Triston contrasted the marginalization he experienced in LBGT student groups

with other non-LBGT organizations he found to be supportive. In non-LBGT groups,

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where binary gender systems were perceived to be normative, Triston described

experiencing more acceptance:
You know that anytime I come into queer spaces where people aren’t super
educated about my identity, I’m considered a lesbian. I walk into a space like
Communidad (a Chicano/ Latino student organization) and because I’m so much
more masculine than feminine, even if people are confused at ﬁrst, like it ﬁts.
Because spaces that aren’t queer are more traditionally oriented in gender roles,
so I really feel like I ﬁt in more as a traditional male. When I go into those spaces,
1 pass a lot more. And it’s like I rarely ever pass in queer spaces, it’s like,
“automatic lesbian.” I don’t ever pass in queer spaces and when people there call
me “he,” it’s because they understand that’s how I want to be called. So it’s like
I’m “queer” and I’m like “lesbian” every time I’m in a queer space. And like in
drag (performances), I’ve never been called “she” more than when I’m
performing. And it’s so ﬂustrating.
Similarly, Razi described feeling the most support for his identity outside of

student LBGT community contexts. Said Razi,
But I will say that if I hang out with like really privileged people, like straight,
white, traditionally gendered everything, like if they see me as a guy, that’s how
they see me, no questions asked. It’s like I feel as though if I tell someone
ﬂequently with that crowd of people—because they’re like, “You seem to
stereotypically be a guy, so you are a guy.” Because they’re so like in their own

little world that like, “You look like a guy so you have to be guy.”

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In LBGT community contexts, where he expected support for his trans gender
identity, Razi was disappointed. In particular, he described his ﬂustrations with a
transgender male community that reinforced traditional male roles. Razi said,

Like I’ve noticed—like because I’ve been hanging out with a lot of trans guys,
not even just like here at (University B)—that a lot of trans guys tend to want to
fulﬁll that male role. And I really don’t like that. Like they might like take up the
space in the room... Like those are two things I really try to be conscious of like
at all times. I see like a lot of (trans) guys like owning their girlﬁiends, which I
think is disgusting. Like, it’s really gross. And I really just don’t want to turn into
like this gross macho guy... And I think that’s really interesting and I think I
really want to not perpetuate sexism any more than what it already is. And I think
because I have this really cool opportunity to kind of create my male identity, that
I should do that and be comfortable with my feminine characteristics, and not
necessarily be this hyper masculine guy.

Regarding privilege systems in LBGT student organizations and communities,
Danielle, Charlie, Razi and Triston described ways the identities of gay men and lesbian
women were advantaged over all others. Transgender persons often were treated as if
they were non-existent. Or, in the case of Triston and Razi, their gender identities were
erased and they were seen and stereotyped as lesbians. Interestingly, these two students
felt more acceptance for their identities in non-LBGT community spheres, and Razi was
greatly disappointed by a culture that demanded hype-masculine behavior existing in the
trans male community at university A. Beyond these examples of direct privileging of

binary identities in LBGT corrrrnunities, Diondre discussed the role that these

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communities played in privileging sexual orientation issues over gender identity concerns
in educational contexts. He described the popular belief that in LBGT training, sexual
orientation should be covered ﬁrst, implying that it was the foundation of identity and
community. Said Diondre,

The one thing that I really learned is how wrong we were as a gay movement to
say that people had to understand gay issues ﬁrst before they could understand
transgender. And I see classes instructed like this today. We have to cover being
gay ﬁrst and then we’ll explain being trans. And actually, I think it should be the
other way around. And trans people will tell me this. Thirty years ago and twenty
years ago, whatever, I didn’t quite understand it. . .I didn’t quite get how profound
it was (transgender being placed in the second tier of educational training). But I
now see that there are many people who can understand. . .But when they come to
understand that somebody might actually be transsexual, that this could be a real
thing in the world, that the gap that that opens up in their minds, the possibilities
that that opens up in their minds, is so much bi gger and there is so much room for
more things to be possible. And it’s a gap that’s very unlike the gap that opens up
when people decide that lesbians or gays are possibilities.

Diondre’s perspective carries a signiﬁcant implication. Transgender identities created
room for more ﬂuid and multiple gender possibilities, undermining binary power systems
privileged both by society as well as gay and lesbian identities. Through their educational
initiatives, LBGT communities colluded with dominant culture to promote genderism.

In summary, within LBGT communities, transgender students experienced a privileging

of gay male and lesbian female identities in multiple contexts. Yet, even for those who

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sought support ﬂom non-LBGT community spheres, the force of privilege seemed
inescapable.
T ranny Boys, Male Privilege, and Marginalization

While Razi and Triston gained some support for their identities outside of LBGT
communities, they ultimately felt marginalized. While they experienced some acceptance,
they were also challenged to grapple with questions related to male privilege and their
identities. Though initially afﬁrming of his male identity, Triston became frustrated when
the men of Communidad wanted to “help” him learn how to be a man. Said Triston:

It’s interesting when men try to afﬁrm my identity. The way that they are like,

like there is this assumption that I want to learn how to be a guy. And I know

how, I’m my own guy. I am perfectly ﬁne with not being a traditionally gendered
guy. You know, that’s okay with me. But I’m proud of being trans, I mean it’s
hard, but I’m proud of being trans and I especially don’t need help with my
interactions with women. Like, I do not need to learn from traditionally gendered
guys about how to interact with women. You know, that’s not what I’m worried
about. So it’s kind of funny you know, they’ll be like “Dude, you need to do this.”

And I’m like “Okay.” You know like, “What are you talking about? I know how

to do this; I’m ﬁne with it.”

Though Triston initially described experiencing greater support from
Communidad than within LBGT communities, binary gender norms in this group
appeared to ultimately privilege traditional expectations for his behavior. Ongoing
encounters with the privileging of Cisgender identities motivated Triston and Razi to

develop strategies for challenging both genderism and sexism. Razi anticipated that as he

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passed as a male, after gender reassignment surgery, he would gain a degree of privilege
that would legitimize his perspective when conﬂonting Cisgender men. Said Razi,
Because, like I think that would be a lot of power in like a really radical sense.
Because, I guess I’ll have that male privilege. But I also have a really cool
opportunity to be like, “No,” and “Look at this,” kind of thing. And like, “This is
how it works.” And like, because I’ll be seen as a guy at that point—hopefully—
‘cause a lot guys really listen to other guys. Like if I’m passing, like, my
opinion’s valid and just awesome kind of thing. And so I think I have a really cool
opportunity to just sit there and just like educate guys, and like, “No. This is what
you’re doing and it’s really fucked up” kind of thing. And so I don’t want to be a
hyper masculine man because I wanna ﬁght sexism, no matter what my gender is.
While Triston shared Razi’s desire to challenge privilege in men’s communities,
he described his current identity as a tranny boy and concerns related to passing as
signiﬁcant barriers. Further, in a binary gendered culture, Triston believed his willingness
to challenge sexism invalidated his own male identity. Ironically, conﬂonting the
marginalization of women was a privilege Triston afﬁliated with Cisgender men. He
explained,
There is also this like consistent challenge of my male identity. . .how much harder
it is for tranny boys to be advocates for women and for feminist issues than it is
for traditionally gendered men. And you know, which is ironic because we
advocate for women all the time. A lot more than traditionally gendered guys do.
But it’s like if some guy is being a jerk. . .and I say, ”Well you know that’s really

screwed up” and then talk about women’s empowerment, then they are going to

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be challenging my actual identity as male. It’s making me look like a girl because

I care about women’s issues. Whereas, it’s like for men to challenge sexism might

have their masculinity questioned but. . .no one would ever look to them and say,

“well, you are not actually a guy.” Like your identity is wrong. . .and so it’s so

much harder for me and that happens all the time. I mean the majority of the time

I don’t pass. Well, I don’t know if I can say the majority of the time, but I don’t

pass as much as I would like to. So in those cases, I get treated like a woman and I

get treated like a lesbian.

While Razi appeared to believe that he had more agency than Triston regarding
the ability to challenge and subvert Cisgender privilege, the reality of its systemic
operation created complex personal dilemmas for both students. The picture that begins
to take shape, while deﬁned by different students in unique ways, is one in which the
dynamics and power of Cisgender privilege are inescapable. Beyond impacting
transgender student involvement within and outside LBGT communities, privilege
systems also appeared to inﬂuence ways trans gender students approached career
aspirations and campus employment.

Privilege and Career Aspirations

Themes related to Cisgender privilege and career was discussed by a number of
study participants. Debbie hypothesized that the many years of male socialization she
experienced ultimately may have been responsible for her choosing to pursue a business
and legal career, as well as related degrees,

I transitioned after they (her children) were born and before I went back for my

master’s (in business administration) and it’s funny because when I came back

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here for my J .D., which traditionally is a very male dominated ﬁeld as well, I
struggled between doing a J .D. or doing a psychology degree, you know, a social
sciences degree just because I was so drawn to that and to interaction with people:
although, law is very, very interactive, and it makes me wonder if 35 years’ worth
of male training didn’t help mold my decision even now between law and social
sciences, psychology or something. But clearly, clearly the gender role inﬂuenced
my decision to get an MBA.

The impact of binary gender privilege and the related oppression they had
experienced may have inﬂuenced six of the study’s participants to pursue LBGT related
professional work, or a desire to infuse it into their careers. Debbie wanted to use her
legal training to inﬂuence society to support individuals who had been marginalized by
their LBGT status. Asher desired to become a psychologist to support the development of
healthy LBGT communities. Like Asher, Triston had community enhancement goals, but,
as a social worker, planned to focus primarily on transgender support services. Damien
wanted to author a book on ways curriculum in college social work programs could be
infused with attention to transgender identities and related advocacy skills. As he
prepared for graduate study in higher education and student affairs, Razi hoped to work
in residence life in a role that allowed speciﬁc attention to multicultural and transgender
issues. Though Diondre had entered the university as a doctoral student in architecture,
he was not currently enrolled and wanted to explore the option of becoming a
professional consultant on transgender concerns and advocacy. Other students wondered
if the impact of Cisgender privilege and the related transgender oppression they

experienced at the university would be enacted also in their post-graduate careers.

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Danille’s campus experience caused her to be concerned about how her
genderqueer identity might inﬂuence her success as a teacher and her ability to access
career related support ﬂom LBGT community organizations. Refected Danille,

Actually, yeah, seeing the transphobia on campus--that’s where I started to get a
little wonied about being a teacher. . .And you know I’m less afraid of students
and administration, I’m more afraid of parents. But so, I’m sort of wondering how
that will work out. . ., and I wonder about GLSEN, which is the gay lesbian,
straight education network. But would I have a place in there? In other words, is
GLSEN trans-inclusive? Will it be like on campus where the “T” is just tacked on
to LBGT groups, but they aren’t really supportive at all?

Nick wonied that his negative experiences with faculty treating him “like I’m a
weirdo” and possibly preventing him from gaining research internships, could be
replicated when he pursued graduate work at (a private research university) and in his
future career. Ultimately, he wanted his graduate degree to prepare him to be a human
rights advocate at the United Nations. Nick said, “And then when I go to United Nations,
I’ll be working with like other politicians. Like how many politicians do you know that
would like treat somebody decently when they know they are a trans gender person?”
Danielle and Nick’s fear of job discrimination implied that employment would be given
to those who were not only talented, but to individuals who most effectively conformed
to workplace gender norms.

Summary: Binary Systems are Privileged
While genderism’s third characteristic, the privileging of binary gender systems

was evidenced in every sphere of transgender students lives, participants in this study

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particularly focused on the impact of Cisgender privilege in the following areas:
relationships with faculty/peers and classrooms contexts; within LBGT Communities and
campus wide student organizations; and in the contexts of planning for their future
careers. A number of participants struggled with issues surrounding their own identities
and privilege systems and whether they could receive it as a result of gender transition, or
if they would always be seen as transgender outsiders.

A theme that begins to emerge is that in their totality, binary gender systems
privilege Cisgender identities as a direct consequence of the oppression of transgender
students. While the examples are numerous, the tokenization of transgender students in
the classroom, with the expectation that they serve as classroom educators, research
subjects, and advocates provides one insight into the operation of this process. Similarly,
within LBGT communities, gender variance was utilized most often to support
stereotypes of gay and lesbian identities, such as the butch lesbian and the effeminate gay
men, negating the identities of transgender students. Gender privileging appears to
reinforce and afﬁrm rigid notions of LBGT identities, negating the possibility of ﬂuidity.
A ﬁnal theme that emerges is that, in addition to gender privileging, genderism’s other
two characteristics, binary gender labeling and social accountability may inﬂuence
characteristic four: Genderism leads to the invisibility and isolation of transgender
persons.

Genderism Promoted Invisibility and Isolation of T ransgender Persons

The fourth characteristic of genderism focused on the transgender student
experience of invisibility, isolation, and related emotional consequences. While this study

concerns itself primarily with the campus lives of transgender students, it is important to

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note that most participants described the phenomenon of invisibility, isolation, and
emotional consequences as occurring long before their arrival on campus. By implication,
genderist systems also operate outside the conﬁnes of universities A and B.
Invisibility and Identity Inaccessibility
Six participants described being unable to self identify as transgender prior to
being exposed to LBGT issues and peers on their campuses. They described ways that
binary gender systems rendered transgender identities invisible in United States society.
A number of participants shared the experience of being ﬂom home communities or life
experiences where the word “transgender” never was heard, and the identities literally
were non-existent. Razi said, “Growing up in the suburbs, there just wasn’t any language
for it.” Though Triston talked at length about being raised in a family where his parents
encouraged the deﬁance of traditional female gender roles, he also believed his parent’s
feminist convictions reinforced transgender invisibility. Reﬂected Triston,
I was a Tomboy as a kid and my parents were always really cool about that. . .it
didn’t mean that I wasn’t a girl, you know, they (his parents) were like, “girls can
be like active,” so there was never any forcing on their part for me to be different,
or for me to ﬁt with traditional gender roles for women. But that made it harder
for me to realize that I was trans, honestly. Because you know if I was told that a
woman could be anything, and I was like, ‘ﬁlvhatever I am, I am still a woman.”
As systemic genderism appeared to render transgender identities invisible and culturally
inaccessible, six participants entered college with an initial gay or lesbian self

identiﬁcation. Powerful encounters with peers and transgender inclusive organizations

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led them to understanding a new aspect of identity, as described by Damien, Razi, and
Nick.

When Damien began participating in his institution’s Transgender, Gay, Lesbian
Bisexual Task Force, he deﬁned himself as a “weird, different kind of gay man.” Yet, he
never felt that he connected with the campus gay community, “I thought that gay men
were supposed to meet other gay men, and ﬁnd someone they love, and have a
relationship, and get married, whatever, you know. But that just wasn’t happening.” The
Task Force’s emphasis on gender identity concerns, combined with an opportunity to
work with other transgender individuals caused Damien to view himself through an
alternative lens and life experience. Damien credited involvement with the Task Force as
having a signiﬁcant impact on his embracing a transgender identity. Razi described a
similar process of identity shift when he ﬁrst arrived at University B, initially identifying
as lesbian. Said Razi,

I just felt really weird. I still hate saying the word (lesbian) to this day. Like I

never felt comfortable identifying with that. Even when I became more

comfortable with my sexuality, like I still didn’t like the identity at all. It just
didn’t ﬁt me.
During his ﬁrst semester at college, Razi attended a meeting of one of the residence hall
LBGT support organizations. The group held a discussion that focused on gender identity
and was facilitated by two transgender students, one of whom was Triston.
Recalled Razi, “And then Alex and Triston were both there. And they kind of talked
about their experiences. And that kind of got me into thinking about like, ‘Well, maybe I

9”

am.

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Nick described a similar process of becoming aware of his transgender identity.
He talked about identifying as lesbian at the time he graduated ﬂom high school, yet
there was something about him that was “more than that... Like, I was. . .kind of different,
but I had never met another transgender person, so I didn’t know how I was different.” At
University C, where he attended school before transferring, Nick became involved in an
LBGT student organization and went to a regional queer college student conference with
the group. At the conference, Nick attended a presentation on gender identity. Reﬂected
Nick,

I was curious about the transgender subject. . .so I just went in there and they were

talking about it. I raised my hand and starting asking a few questions, and then

like, “Oh, do you do this or do you this?” Or whatever. And then I was just like,

“Oh, okay. I feel like that.” You know, so that started it for me. That was maybe

like three years ago. And so that’s how I pretty much came to the conclusion that

I must be like transgendered, you know.

As described by Damien, Razi, and Nick, genderism’s rendering of transgender
identities as invisible in childhood and adolescence appeared to set the stage for a
powerful self-awakening in college. Contact with transgender persons, often in the
context of LBGT inclusive organizations led to identity possibilities previously
inaccessible. Yet, in chapter four, a number of these same organizations were described
by participants as marginalizing and highly reinforcing of binary gender systems. Perhaps
this phenomenon reﬂects a reality of organizational life: Experience in human groups is
rarely entirely negative or positive, but instead a blending and blurring of afﬁrmation,

challenge, struggle, and at times, stigrnatization. While participation in inclusive

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organizations appeared to help a number of the study’s participants to transcend
genderisms’ force of identity inaccessibility and invisibility, invisibility was a times an
inescapable reality of students successfully passing as Cisgender. Wendy explained,
For some people who transition, they’re able to do it in such a way that when they
present themselves to certain key points in the process, the academic process, the
administrative process or just being in the community, they have transitioned and
they are invisible because (other) people don’t know they’re trans. Other people
cannot look at a person and know they are trans, so they are invisible that way.
Diondre described being at a conference, which had a transsexual F -M focus, and
suddenly becoming aware that he could not tell who in the room was transsexual and who
was Cisgender. While at one level, he was delighted by this awareness, at another, he felt
disturbed. If assimilation to a socially deﬁned, correct standard for gender expression
became the goal, negating transgender identity, then what were the consequences? As one
example, for F -M individuals who still needed gynecological care, accessing a traditional,
women’s focused clinic was not an option. Said Diondre,
A big rule for F -to-Ms, don’t make them go to the gynecology clinic for pelvic
exams. Now I actually am ﬁne doing this, but it is just — it was the rule that people
are just going to have to get past. Because they won’t go. F -to-Ms won’t go. And
it is life and death. It’s life and death. I mean, it just —- it’s not — if you’re taking
testosterone, it’s probably messing with your system. You know. It just — the
whole thing — that whole piece tells me that the whole — the support systems for

getting medical care are complicated.

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In this example, gynecology clinics being associated with women was so
stigrnatizing for transgender men, they were willing to choose serious health risks over
getting medical support. For transgender individuals, managing identity often meant
struggling with choices about being out or becoming invisible, often with signiﬁcant
consequences.

Invisibility, Identity Inaccessibility and Emotional Health Consequences

The costs of unsupportive academic departments, faculty members, and student
peers were described by participants as having consequences for academic success and
emotional health. The extreme personal stress of gender transition, combined with lack of
support from his department, caused Diondre to drop out of graduate school, though he
remained involved with campus-related activism. Razi described choosing to skip classes
because of transgender insensitive faculty members, often resulting in low grades. Wendy
said that the emotional depression she experienced as male student in the 19703 caused
her to extend her education over a 15 year period in ways that she described as “self
destructive.” Nick talked about experiencing depression related to his “still deﬁning”
gender identity status, “It makes it really hard because I feel like it’s almost stunting my
growth.” He related that his relationship with his counselor was the only thing on campus
that let him know that his feelings “were normal.” By implication, Nick moved through a
campus experience that systemically reinforced the concept of non-conformity to binary
gender identities as abnormal. Nick believed his depression issues would be signiﬁcantly
helped if he lived in a society and attended a university that did not require him to declare

one of two gender options and conform to it. Nick commented,

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If I was surrounded by people that didn’t feel like they had to ﬁt into certain
masculine and feminine roles, I wouldn’t feel confused about it, because I would
be okay. I think in that situation I probably wouldn’t have a sex change at all. I
probably wouldn’t even consider it. I’d be like I do certain things on a certain day.
Like, “Oh, I ’ll be male today.” And the next, “Oh, I’ll be female today.” But it’s
not really like that, where I can feel like that’s okay. If I didn’t have to deal with it
(a binary society), I don’t think I’d be so depressed all the time.

Similarly, Charlie described dealing with the motional weight of his “still
deﬁning” status, constantly having to justify or explain it, highlighting his desire for a
“simpler” way to identify, saying,

One thing I didn’t like, I guess, when I was identifying solely as transgender, not

even lesbian, was the fact that I always felt like I was walking around explaining

to people all day long. Like, “This is why I just walked in the men’s bathroom
because I identify this way. Can you call me this? Oh, by the way, my name is
this and not that.” It just—and maybe that’s why I veered away from that

(transgender, F-M) identiﬁcation. Maybe it’s just too much work for me. Maybe

it’s just mental and emotional work because I feel like I’m constantly having to

explain myself to people and it’s more comfortable for me to walk around not
having to tell you what my gender is and not having to tell you how I identify and

what my name is and what the pronouns are. It just seems like too much of a

hassle and it’s causing me one massive headache. I know it sounds silly because if

you’re really trans you’re going to go through all that trouble... But for me, I’m

just honestly sick of it. I just need a simpler identiﬁcation. Maybe just being a

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guy. I mean, not that being trans is complex or something, it’s just it’s been too

much for me. It became too much of my life and it got overwhelming. Every

single day I felt like I had to correct people or you know if I didn’t correct them

then I felt bad. There were too many emotions involved for me because I’m a

really emotional person to begin with.

For Charlie, erasure of transgender experience and assimilation to a male identity became
a more emotionally attractive and afﬁrming option.
Summary: Invisibility, Isolation, Inaccessibility.

A genderist system at Universities A and B, and broader society, promoted
conformity and assimilation to either male or female genders. Yet, at the same time, this
system created a culture of inaccessibility to transgender identity and experience.
Participants described a range of life barriers to gaining a self awareness of their
identities. Asher, Damien, Danielle, Debbie, Razi, and Wendy all discussed ways the
erasure of transgender identities from popular culture made the ability to self-identity and
name difficult. Signiﬁcant connections to visible transgender individuals at the university
became a means for many participants to self identify for the ﬁrst time. This culture of
identity inaccessibility was compounded by the reality that if one had never experienced
another gender emotionally or biologically, never seen or felt the possibility of gender as
a ﬂuid construct, the ability to access the identity would be very difﬁcult. Reﬂecting on
the process of coming to understand his identity, Diondre explained,

But I didn't get it. And so I know why people don’t get it. So now what I know is

how deeply you cannot know something. To know how hard it is to understand

the things that are not available to your own bodily experience. I do not know

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how anybody — I don’t even know how you (Brent, the interviewer) can be sitting
here having this interview, why you could care about it, and not be transgender
yourself. Because I think it is — a transgender experience is deeply inaccessible. A
transsexual experience I think is deeply inaccessible to people who don’t feel it.
And it’s even inaccessible to those of us who do.

To summarize, in a genderist culture, transgender identities are so highly
invisible and marginalized, that “accessing” them is profoundly difﬁcult. For some
participants, these difﬁculties led to signiﬁcant emotional health concerns, often
impacting their quality of life and success as students. For a number of participants who
had accessed transgender identity, the daily pressures of identity management created a
desire for them to be seen simply as cisgendered male or female.

Conclusion: A Framework for Understanding Genderism

In chapters four and ﬁve, the voices of transgender students provided a
framework for understanding ways genderism operated at Universities A and B. The two
institutions and broader society enacted an unspoken principle that there are, or should
be, two and only two genders. This principle impacted all dimensions of life for the both
transgender students and cisgender members of university communities. As described by
participants, genderism at Universities A and B was enacted through implicit and explicit
laws, rules, and policies. Further, genderism was maintained by four operating
characteristics: a social labeling process used to categorize all individuals into male or
female identities; social accountability for conforming to binary gender norms with

requisite rewards and punishments; privileging of cisgender identities; and invisibility of

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identities and isolation of transgender persons, making transgender identities
inaccessible.

The student descriptions in the preceding chapters imply that in the context of
genderism, social labeling served as a foundation, often based in a cisgender notion that
biology and gender identity are fused. Thus, all students at universities A and B were
socially assigned a binary category at birth and the enactment of one of two categories
became a social expectation. At some level, all individuals must be read and seen as male
or female every day, every moment, in every interaction. In this study, it appeared that
systems which reinforced students being seen as one of two binary identities were driven
by social accountability and the privileging of binary gender. These characteristics served
as the action of genderism. Students who failed to meet gender expectations experienced
wide ranging forms of stigrnatization, and faced ways their cisgender peers were
privileged and advantaged merely as a ﬁrnction of gender conformity. When transgender
students successfully passed as cisgender, the experience was often both afﬁrming and
troubling at the same time. Passing often meant that transgender identity was erased, thus
leading to genderism’s ﬁnal characteristic: invisibility and isolation of transgender
students. While the voices of the participants in this study discussed genderism
permeating every aspect of their lives, genderism on campus was most often discussed in
the following contexts: academic success, campus employment and career aspirations,
dynamics of LBGT communities and organizations, and campus facilities.

In chapter six, implications for theory and practice are discussed. Genderism is

described in the ways that it informs, and is informed by postmodern feminist, queer, and

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critical postmodern theoretical perspectives. The chapter also details pragmatic strategies

for challenging genderism on college campuses.

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Chapter Six: Implications for Theory, Practice, and Future Directions for Research

The goal of this study was to make the practical issues and unseen power
structures of binary gender systems on campus visible through the lives of transgender
students. This system, named as genderism, was described by study participants as
having signiﬁcant impact in their campus experiences related to academics, employment
and career aspirations, lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender (LBGT) organizations and
communities, and campus facilities. Further, beyond transgender students, genderism’s
inﬂuence was inescapable. It impacted all members of campus communities. As
presented in this study, genderism offers a core implication: Fluid gender identities,
operating in a non-categorical manner, undermine the very nature of the binary gender
model. The concept of undermining cultural norms is a notion shared by postmodern
feminist, queer, and critical postmodern perspectives. These lenses guided the study’s
research process and analysis of ﬁndings and themes. In this chapter, these perspectives
are applied to discussion surrounding implications for further study and recommendations
for improving the campus climate for transgender students.

Postmodern Feminist Perspectives and Genderism

Postmodern feminist scholars (Butler, 1990; Halberstam, 1998), suggest that
traditional feminist scholarship negates any concept of gender variance or ﬂuidity. And,
like genderism and its related binary systems, this scholarship assumed cisgender
identities to be ﬁxed. Though Butler’s work is contested by some academics (N essbaurn,
1999), her scholarship signiﬁcantly informs this study’s exploration of genderism.

Speciﬁcally, Butler (1990), called for subversive action, breaking ﬂee ﬂom

traditional gender constructions, and enacting gender in multiple forms. From Butler’s

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(1990) perspective, true gender liberation lies beyond binary identity constructions. The
postmodern feminist perspective challenges essentialized identities, calling for new
scholarship that reexarnines traditional constructions of male “privilege” and “women’s”
oppression.

The emergence of gender variant identities poses new questions. What happens to
binary gender, and its inherent power and oppression systems when transgender identities
are involved? Are the experiences of transsexual men and women similar to their
cisgender counter parts? For those who are androgynous, genderqueer, or don’t always
“pass” as male or female, what is their experience of gender privilege and oppression? In
this study, Triston and Razi shared conﬂicting perspectives regarding male privilege.
Triston believed that male privilege was inaccessible to him. Razi thought that male
privilege could give him the credibility necessary to challenge sexist behavior he saw in
bio and transgender men. When Wendy experienced sexism at the community college,
where she was currently employed, she was surprised by it. Said Wendy,

I’ve been in professional situations where my opinion has been devalued. I’ve

been talked over. I have had a certain amount of amazing sexist behavior in ﬂont

of me, but I am very certain to this day that it’s completely unconscious by these
people. It’s just amazing. I’ll be right in the row with them and they’d make all
these jokes that were just horrifying. At ﬁrst, I thought this disrespect was
because-I naturally assumed people thought I was trans. I thought they could tell.

I thought the word had gotten out at the place that I work, but I was later able to

ﬁnd out that this wasn’t true; that they just didn’t know that I was a transsexual

person. They were just being sexist. Kind of a weird space to be in. It is a real

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problem and one of the things that came as a surprise-and I’ve never really come

to grips with this, but one great surprise.

Emerging scholarship about genderism in higher education and society must take
into account these new and complex dynamics of privilege and oppression. For example,
could Wendy’s being “surprised” by sexism be in part due to her prior experience as a
“male” and her unconsciousness of male privilege? In contrast, both Triston and Razi,
raised as cisgender women, were very aware of sexism and its impact. And, they both
struggled with the meaning that male privilege could take on in their lives as they
transitioned to becoming men. A postmodern feminist ﬂamework would suggest that as
transgender students challenge norms regarding gender identity, implications for the
study of related power systems must be considered as well.

Queer Theory and Genderism

Queer theory is similar to the feminist postmodern perspective in a signiﬁcant
respect--it also challenges assumptions about essentialized categories. In addition, it gives
speciﬁc attention to categories operating within, outside of, and in opposition to lesbian,
bisexual, gay and transgender identities. Queer theory has a particular interest in the
construction of normative and deviant categories, primarily focusing on social activities
related to the constructions of sex and gender (Butler, 2005). Examinations of language
and the socio-cultural meaning of identifying as “non-straight” vs. “gay” are examples of
queer theoretical enterprises.

As applied to this study’s exploration of genderism, queer theory provides a unique
lens for addressing issues of categories and language, speciﬁcally, in regards to the terms

“deviance” and “norm.” At Universities A and B, not ﬁtting into one of two deﬁned

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gender categories was not just seen as deviant, but alien. A number of participants,
particularly the tranny boys and genderqueer students, reported encountering strangers
who gasped, “What is it?” or “What are you?” To not have a clear, binary-based gender
identity was to be outside of the human experience. In this study, issues of gender
categories, accountability, and consequences emerged as signiﬁcant themes in relation to
the enactment of genderism at the two institutions. Queer theory’s attention to categories
and language also caused me to reﬂect on my process of developing the research
protocols for this dissertation.

In the early conceptualization of this study, I posed what I thought was a fairly
simple question, “What is the standardized terminology for individuals who are not
transgender identiﬁed?” To my surprise, ﬁnding an answer was difﬁcult. Without access
to any prior studies on genderism, I sought the advice of other scholars and practitioners
who had expertise on LBGT identities and issues. The standard response was, “I never
thought about that.” My search for this language eventually led me to three terms:
“gender normative,” “traditionally gendered,” and “cisgender.” I had heard the ﬁrst term
used at a conference presentation and found it unacceptable. “Gender normative” implied
that transgender individuals are abnormal. Regarding the “traditionally gendered”
designation, a strongly feminist identiﬁed colleague indignantly reacted to the term,
saying, “My gender is anything but traditional!” I settled on “cisgender” primarily
because it was the term used by transgender communities to describe individuals whose
biological sex assignment matched gender identity. Yet, ﬂom the perspective of queer

theory, the inaccessibility of this terminology also was also evidence of genderism. So

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normalized were the cisgender identities of “male” or “female,” and so pathologized were
transgender categories, that alternative terms simply did not exist.

In comparison, social justice pedagogy regarding other diversity issues has a
distinct, though evolving language associated with it, such as “white vs. people of color.”
This terminology resulted ﬂom years of studying the social construction of racism. The
term “genderism” has only recently appeared in the literature and has not yet entered the
popular lexicon. Queer theory suggests that simplistic, binary categories and related
language reinforce the idea of structural inequality operating in simplistic, either/or
terms, thus creating genderism’s theoretical invisibility. In related examples of race and
ethnicity, binaries negate the complexity of oppression experienced by multiracial
individuals. Rarely are their experiences named or identiﬁed (Renn, 2004). In this
context, binary systems, broadly deﬁned, could be said to perpetuate both racism and
genderism. More speciﬁcally, queer theory suggests that the lack of language for
cisgender identities keeps genderism unnamed and invisible. In fact, it is this invisibility
that gives genderism its covert power.

This categorical invisibility and the erasure of transgender identities was a theme
that also played out in a place 1 least expected it—at the library. In the early phase of
conducting research for this study, I was intrigued by the way I observed gender
assignment enacted in the library stacks. Moving through the maze of shelves and stacks,
I anticipated the placement of texts related to my study clustered around two primary
themes: gender and lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender. The gender section was
signiﬁcant, with multiple rows of ﬂoor-to-ceiling texts. Yet, no books related to

transgender identities were placed there. The lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender

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collection also was substantial, ﬁlling a 50 foot, ﬂoor-to-ceiling section. Yet, within this
section, transgender-related texts ﬁlled only one quarter of just one area of just one shelf.
It would have been possible for me to checkout all transgender-related books in the
library and carry them home (which I did). This experience left me pondering a number
of issues and questions. Given the overlapping socio-historical nature of the relationship
between lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender communities, the placement of the texts
made some sense. Yet, the complete absence of transgender-related books ﬂom the
gender stacks seemed indicative of institutionalized genderism. Queer theories attention
to language, categories, and related invisibility within and external to LBGT communities
informed the following fact: At the library, gender ultimately appears to be the study of
“man” or “woman.”

Certainly, this study points to the lack of scholarship about transgender students
as evidence of genderism. Yet, at another level, a queer theoretical analysis implies that,
not only must there be an active research agenda, but scholars must be highly attuned to
ways their work may reinforce binary categories. What does the language of transgender
inclusive scholarship look like? While it may be too great a cultural leap for a higher
education journal article to be titled, “An Examination of Cisgender Women Faculty,” or
a description of a sample subjects to read, “David, a white, cisgender male, 47 years old,”
an anti-genderist research agenda demands that future scholars attend to these concerns.
Similar to queer theory, the critical postmodern perspective reveals that which was
categorically marginalized or invisible. Yet, this perspective adds the dimension of

human agency.

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Critical Postmodern Perspectives and Genderism

Critical postmodernism examines the roots of essentialized, categorical norming
and how these norms are enacted through systemic oppression. This perspective also
explores the human struggle opposing oppression. As applied to this study, critical
postmodernism is particularly concerned with ways transgender students enacted
identities in relationship to their struggle against campus gender norms. Concepts related
to norm and “norming” are explored in-depth by Foucault (1978), whose ideas had a
signiﬁcant impact on critical postmodern thought. He said that “normalization” lies at the
core of culture. One signiﬁcant way that normalization is accomplished is through the
“importance of the action of the norm” (Foucault, 1978. p. 144). The norm becomes the
prescribed code that all members must follow. From this perspective, all organizations
have similar qualities in that they constrain individual action: “prisons resemble factories,
schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons” (Foucault, 1979, p. 228).

In this study, “M’ or “F” norming was so culturally deep, that it could be traced to
the medical model described in chapter two. In this context, the medical model was
presented as the foundation on which the dual gender norms were built. To be
biologically female assumed female gender identity. In this study, biologically-based
“M” or “F” designations and related ideology were ﬁxed into the very the brick and
mortar of the two institutions. At Universities A and B, campus architecture fused with
binary gender socialization to create implicit, explicit, and often complex standards for
male or female behavior in bathrooms, locker rooms and residence halls. As one
example, Charlie, Danielle, Damien, Nick and Triston all talked about needing to learn

the gendered culture of restrooms in order to pass as the appropriate gender, with clear

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risks of harassment. Yet, in the context of bathrooms, Foucault’s (1978) idea of social
surveillance worked in multiple directions, creating a fear of rape, as Nick described, in
cisgender women if men were perceived to be in an “F” designated restroom. Thus,
these labels were used to enforce biologically-based norms, and in turn, ﬂom the critical
postmodern context, transgender terminology became equated with deviance.

While the label transgender is used to connote deviance ﬂom the norm, the
critical postmodern perspective (Grace, 1997; Boje, 2001c), asserted that the term has an
additional ﬁrnction. Transgender as a distinct category made it possible for non-bio
gendered persons to organize around a common identity. Without a sense of group
identity there cannot be a uniﬁed effort to legitimize transgender identities. It could be
argued that it is the socially constructed category transgender that creates the context for
non-cisgender individuals to resist and struggle to overthrow the gender binary system.
At universities A and B, this struggle began, as participants described, with the
transgender category as something they “discovered.”

In this study, the power of the identity label, transgender was reﬂected by the
experiences of Asher, Triston, Nick, and Razi, who had no prior encounters with
transgender terminology prior to attending college. The language of non-binary identities
did not exist in their schools, hometowns, or families. From a critical postmodern
perspective, without language there can be no category, and therefore no identity
(Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000). Study participants talked about discovering their gender
identities for the ﬁrst time. New awareness occurred through seeing transgender focused
classroom presentations, serving on university committees related to transgender

concerns, attending conference presentations on the topic, and attending LBGT

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organizations. Further, transgender became more than a personal identity, but emerged as
a social category equated with critical postmodern concepts of struggle and liberation
against genderism.

Nine participants in the study were part of transgender support and advocacy
organizations. Diondre named his most profound campus activist experience as the day
that cisgender participants in the graduate employees union claimed transgender
identities as their own, proudly displaying the protest signs, “We’re all transgender
GEU!” In the mid-19903, Wendy was involved with the founding of the ﬁrst transgender
support and advocacy group at University B, which was also one of the few such
organizations in the region. This new opportunity for transgender individuals was so
signiﬁcant, that people ﬂom across the state came to participate in monthly gatherings,
often driving for three to four hours. From the critical postmodern perspective,
transgender identity equaled activism, advocacy, and organization for liberation.

In sum, the critical postmodern perspective suggests that the interaction of
cultural norms and labeling work to create powerful and contradictory meanings for the
term transgender. It can be used to label individuals deviant, forcing accountability to
binary gender norms. Yet, the very existence of the term also creates a means for
individuals to become visible, to discover their identities and to join with others for
support and struggle against oppression. An implication of this study is that future
research regarding trans gender students must not only account for their personal identity
development processes, but also include the ways the category transgender is linked to

struggle and organization against genderism.

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Towards a Synthesis of Theory and Practice
In Tiemey’s (1993) landmark text, Building Communities of Diﬁ’erence, he
asserted that critical postmodernism was founded in the Marxian goal: “T o comprehend
the world in order to change it.” (p. 9) Critical postrnodernists seek to bridge the gap
between research and action, a gap that has been promoted by traditional positivist
research. Kincheloe and McLaren (2000) suggested that positivists have focused to much
on understanding the technical aspects of how social change can be more efﬁcient,
instead of addressing critical postmodern research questions related to deconstructing the
meanings of social change, and who may be empowered by it. As Lather, (1986) asserted,
“Rather than illusory ‘value-ﬂee’ knowledge of the positivists, praxis-oriented inquiries
seek emancipatory knowledge” (p. 259). Boje (2001c), in discussion of praxis, extends
these concepts further,
Praxis is taking action, not just writing more theory. That is for pretenders to the
critical or critical postmodern. There needs in addition to theory, to be a life style
of action, more than cynicism and skepticism, there needs, in my view, to be
action. Mine may differ ﬂom yours. For me, it is a visit to the local
slaughterhouse, examining food and clothing habits, spending spring break in a
sweatshop, taking a trip to the land of the Other, and conducting an action of non-
violent resistance to the dominant narratives and discourse. In whatever praxis,
disabuse yourself of the notion that postmodern is without ethical or critical
purchase or answerability. (p. 26)
A challenge for this study was to utilize theory in a way that enlightens the understanding

of gender theory, as well as a call for action-oriented change. The systemic and

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systematic nature of genderism requires a comprehensive approach to addressing its
impact and providing support to transgender students in higher education. In this section,
alternative practices are suggested, clustering responses to genderism into three areas:
creating accommodating facilities, comprehensive education and training, and inclusive
and supportive institutional policies.
Creating Accommodating Facilities

In a Maslovian sense, safety and support on campus begins with creating comfort
in some of the most intimate environments on campus: locker-rooms, bathrooms, and
residence halls. For the transgender students in this study, fears of harassment and
violence are connected to daily choices about which restroom to use. At Universities A
and B, managing identities in facilities with “M” or “F” designations not only created
pragmatic challenges for transgender students, but reinforced a rigid binary gendered
culture that had consequences for all.
Restrooms and Locker rooms

At Universities A and B, with few exceptions, all restrooms were “M” or “F”
community bathrooms, with few uni-sex or gender-free options. Asher’s experience of
managing daily life around restroom use mirrored that of many of the participants in this
study. He described planning each day in the context of identifying safe bathrooms in
proximity to class, personal commitments, and employment. In addition, these decisions
were informed by Asher’s daily reﬂections on how well he was passing as male, in
addition to selecting restrooms that were, as Asher said, “Off the beaten path.”

To support transgender students, a number of universities are considering the

creation of gender-neutral restrooms (single-stall lockable, uni-sex restrooms) in existing

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and newly constructed buildings. For example, in 2003, student governance at San Diego
State University passed a resolution that called for the implementation of safe restrooms
across campus for transgender students (Beemyn, Curtis, Davis, Tubbs, 2005).
To begin the process, the group ﬁrst approved ﬁmding for converting a set of restrooms
in the student union ﬂom cisgenderto gender-neutral. Changes included the alteration of
door signs and instillation of locks. In addition, locations of all gender-neutral restrooms
were listed in the university’s general catalog. At the University of Chicago and Beloit
College (Wisconsin), student advocacy led to the implementation of gender-neutral
restrooms in the most ﬂequented campus buildings (Transgender Law and Policy
Institute, 2005). Beemyn (2005) suggests that locker rooms can be made safer by creating
individual showers with curtains or private changing rooms. At Universities A and B, the
issues presented by single-sex restrooms were also reﬂected by residence hall facilities.
Residence Halls

For the participants in this study, residence hall living, with housing options
exclusively based on biological sex assignment, was particularly problematic. Asher,
Razi, Danielle, and Wendy described personal discomfort and fears about the reactions of
residents to their gender identities. Wendy believed that violence would be a consequence
if she failed to pass as a male on her ﬂoor. Traditional housing policies, room or ﬂoor
choices, and assignment procedures reﬂected genderist invisibility and marginalization of
transgender students.

To accommodate housing concerns, Beemyn (2005) suggests that, given the
diverse ways that transgender students identify, providing appropriate housing should be

handled on a case by case basis, with mutual decision-making occurring between the

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student and housing staff. To guide housing assignment and decision making processes, a
number of institutions have enacted related guidelines. The University of Minnesota,
Twin Cities, enacted a policy that respects the gender identity a student establishes with
the university and strives to provide accommodations whenever possible. Similarly, The
Ohio State University policy states that no student “whom they know to be transgendered
will have to ﬁnd a comfortable, welcoming housing assignment on their own.” (Ohio
State University, 2005). The housing policy at the University of California, Riverside,
focuses on providing “reasonable accommodations” for transgender students, with a
request that the university is notiﬁed in a timely manner (University of California,
Riverside, 2005). In terms of the types of accommodations offered, Asher, Razi, and
Danielle all stressed the need for housing choices outside “M” or “F.”

A number of institutions are offering “gender neutral” housing options. In gender
neutral housing, room assignments are made without regard to the individual’s biological
sex, so residents may request a roommate of any gender (Curtis and Tubbs, 2004).
Among the institutions that provide this opportunity are Sarah Lawrence College, the
University of California Riverside, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of
Southern Maine, and Wesleyan University (Cutris and Tubbs, 2004; Transgender Law
and Policy Institute). Some universities have implemented alternative housing options,
such as an LBGT and Allies Hall. However, Beemyn (2005) cautions against assuming
transgender student comfort in these settings. These environments may not be
comfortable for transgender students if they identify as heterosexual or are not open
about their gender identity. Postmodern feminist and queer theory perspectives would

admonish practitioners to be mindful of the dangers of categorical assumptions.

144

Some of the aforementioned options may be helpful for transgender students, and
forms of traditional housing may be alternatives as well. Asher said that ultimately, he
would be most comfortable living on a University B co-ed ﬂoor (two room suites of men
or women with shared bathrooms, mixed genders throughout the ﬂoor), a single room
with a bathroom, or even in a university apartment. Yet, given the unique housing
assignment concerns for transgender students, it is also important to address issues of
ﬁnancial equity (Beemyn, 2005). As an example, while Charlie would have preferred a
single room option, the cost was prohibitive, so he chose to live in an all female suite
style room, hoping roommates would be personally supportive. Offering housing options
for transgender students may be complicated by the fact that, as Asher related,
these students are often aﬂaid to articulate their needs, and are unsure of how
administration will respond.

To create more comfort with students self-identifying concerns, a number of
universities are changing the sex desigration on their housing intake forms (Transgender
Law and Policy Institute, 2005). These forms provide alternatives to binary “M” or “F”
boxes with simple ﬁll-in-the blank options, “Your gender is: .” or the
multiple choices of “Male,” “Female,” “Self-Identify: .” Housing forms
also often ask students to indicate any special needs (Transgender Law and Policy
Institute, 2005).

Feminist, queer theoretical and critical postmodern perspectives all suggest a need
to both examine, dismantle, and alternatively, to expand traditional notions for
categorizing gender. Similarly, the solutions presented here ultimately rest in creating

more options for diverse forms of gender expression, such as gender-neutral restrooms

145

and additional housing options beyond “M” or “F.” Though some alternatives, such as
the reﬁt of facilities, may require sigriﬁcant costs, genderism impacts all members of the
university community. Private changing rooms and gender-ﬂee restrooms not only
beneﬁt transgender individuals, but also families with small children, as well as people
with disabilities that require the assistance of an attendant of a different gender. Beyond
facility concerns, genderism touches all spheres of institutional life. Thus, comprehensive
educational infusion and training about transgender identities and experience is
recommended.

The Need for Training and Education related to T ransgender Identities

As described by participants in this study, genderism had a sigriﬁcant impact in
contexts related to academic experiences, campus employment and career development
and LBGT student organizations. In class, transgender students were often igrored,
degaded, and tokenized. Campus employment and career development contexts were
laden with fears about consequences for being “out” at work, as well as students being
worried about how their identities would impact their ability to gain employment or
admission to gaduate school. While transgender students expected to ﬁnd support in
LBGT student organizations, they were often marginalized in favor of their cisgender
peers. Appropriately desigred educational initiatives can bring visibility to transgender
lives and experiences in all spheres of institutional life.
Curriculum Infusion and Education

In this study, participants discussed faculty insensitivity to their identities, as well
as a lack of curriculum infusion on transgender perspectives. A number of authors

(Beemyn, 2005; Renkin, 2003) suggest that institutions can create an academic culture

146

that values transgender related scholarship through related colloquia, inviting nationally
regarded scholars to campus, and creating campus networks of faculty and students
engaged in research related to gender identity. Others (Curtis and Tubbs, 2004) suggest
providing mini-gants as incentives for faculty to engage in trans gender related research
and curricular infusion initiatives. Providing educational workshops on transgender
students concerns for faculty and academic support staff, such as academic advisors,
could also help to improve the academic climate for transgender students.
Education Related to Career Development Concerns

This study suggests a need for staff and faculty to be involved with student career
development to in order become familiar with issues facing transgender students and
provide effective guidance. In application processes related to jobs and gaduate school,
how, when, and, if at all, does the transgender student explain identity? If name and
pronoun changes without legal changes, when and how is this explained? As an example,
Razi was applying to gaduate school progam in Student Affairs. Though male
identiﬁed, be marked ‘F’ on the application to conform to legal standards of the
university. Razi chose to list his name as Sandra (Razi) Baker. Yet, in his cover letter,
Razi chose to explain his identity and his preference for use of pronouns “he” and “him.”
His rationale for being out in his application focused on a desire to work with transgender
students and serve as a role model. Transgender students may be in a wide range of
places regarding their desire for “outness” at work and gaduate school. A staff member
providing career guidance should understand these unique issues. The reality is that a
college transcript may reﬂect a different name and gender than what the student currently

uses. Faculty and staff should be prepared to assist students to develop multiple strategies

147

for managing such discrepancies. Further, campus career service ofﬁces should be
informed of the gowing list of educational institutions and corporations that provide
active support for trans gender persons.
Training and Education on Employment Issues

Regarding employment, Asher and Razi lived double lives, going by birth name
and gender in work settings and being authentic selectively. Others, like Wendy, chose
underemployment to help her remain invisible to potentially non-supportive supervisors
or coworkers. Few universities have identiﬁed procedures for employees who wish to
transition at work. A number of organizations recommend the development of a
“transition team,” which may include a human resources professional, the employee, the
supervisor, and sometimes an outside consultant with expertise on transgender issues
(Israel and Tarver, 2005). The team provides resources and support to the employee with
issues related to: informing supervisors and co-workers of gender change, new name, and
when transition will occur; helping the employee ﬁnd additional support resources for the
transition; creating appropriate transgender related education for all those in the
workplace; and addressing, if applicable any concerns related to restroom use (Israel and
Tarver, 2005). As applied to higher education settings, transition teams may be
broadened to include an academic advisor, a residence hall director, or other appropriate
university personnel.
Education in LBGT Communities and Student Organizations

While a number of participants described ways that their identities felt afﬁrmed
by LBGT communities, others described ways that genderism privileged gay male and

lesbian female identities over all others. Numerous examples were given, as Danielle

148

said, about how the “T” was just “tacked on” to LBGT, when most community and
student organization ﬁrnctions really were about “homosexual.” For participants like
Nick, who shared multiple identities-lesbian, transgender, genderqueer-the
segnentation of identity into distinct categories caused him to feel that the had to choose
one identity over others. Students who failed to fall into static LBGT identity categories
were invisible.

Student Affairs professionals charged to do LBGT work, as well as campus
LBGT resource centers, have a responsibility to address genderism within LBGT
communities. As informed by postmodern feminist and queer theory perspectives,
challenging the overly simplistic nature of LBGT categories may be a beginning. At
University B, the LBGT Center has renamed all training and education initiatives to use
broader, more inclusive language, with titles such as Understanding Gender Identity and
Sexual Orientation Issues on Campus. This shift in terminology allows for training to
provide a broader ﬂarnework for examining these identities, recogrizing the ﬂuidity
between, across, and outside the categories of sex and gender. Within LBGT
communities, education about gender identity concerns should be a regular and on-going
activity, instead of events like the once per year “tranny day” Triston described. Speciﬁc
examples of such activities include the development of a transgender ally progam or
speakers bureau, inviting leading transgender speakers to campus to speciﬁcally address
LBGT communities, and scheduling a separate awareness week for transgender issues
(Beemyn, Curtis, Davis, and Tubbs, 2005). Education and training to counteract

genderism in classrooms, campus employment and career development, and LBGT

149

organizations are crucial. Yet, the foundation for dismantling the eﬁects of binary
systems ultimately lies in the transformation of university policy.
Creating Supportive Institutional Policies

This study suggests that genderism is expressed through institutionalized policies,
procedures, and practices that are implicit and explicit. Counteracting genderism also
requires legislative power. Thus, university anti-discrimination policies, inclusive of
gender identity, are important considerations. As of this writing, 52 colleges have some
form of anti-discrimination policy that fully includes gender identity and expression.
Neither University A or B have such policies. In this study, Damien, Diondre, Debbie,
Triston, and Razi, ranked the need for full inclusion of gender identity and expression in
university anti-discrimination policies as among the top priorities for their universities.
Diondre believed that if such policies were implemented; responding to genderism
would become institutionalized. Beemyn (2005) asserted that a supportive anti-
discrimination policy creates leverage for addressing issues related to campus housing
and employment. Further, Beemyn (2005) also suggested that such policy should
address university records.

The ability to be recogrized by gender identity and chosen name was a crucial
need for the participants in this study. Institutions can provide better support for
transgender students through the adoption or modiﬁcation of policies and procedures
that accommodate name and gender changes. This recogrition validates their identities
and provides a geater level of personal safety. Students are protected ﬂom being
“outed” or having their identities questioned in ways that could result in discrimination

and harassment. Further, it relieves the onus upon transgender students to have to

150

explain to each of their faculty members every semester why their name(s), gender(s),
and appearance(s) have changed since their credentials were produced upon
matriculation. A student electronic mail address is also an identity record, often issued
by institutions as a hybrid of student’s birth names, such as marchmarv@univeritv.edu.
The ability for students to either self select or modify email addresses is also critical.

A number of institutions have created procedures to address these concerns, with
a streamlined, one-stop process. With supporting documentation ﬂom an emotional
health professional, transgender students at the University of Maryland may change their
name and gender on university records (Beemyn, 2005). At Ohio State University,
transgender students who legally have changed their name and gender identiﬁcation may
have college records modiﬁed by ﬁlling out a form in the registrar’s ofﬁce (Beemyn,
2005). At both institutions, these processes led to names and genders being changed on
all campus records, including documentation found in admissions and registrars’ ofﬁces,
residence halls, and health centers. It also is important that such processes are ﬂexible
enough to accommodate special considerations. While the desire to make such changes
is most often expressed by transsexual students, genderqueer or gender variant students
also may wish to make such changes as well. Five students in this study were using male
pronouns, new names, and were expressing male gender in all aspects of life. Yet, these
students may never, or could be years away ﬂorn making the kind of legal name and
gender changes that could, more easily, be accommodated by institutions. For students
in similar circumstances, the University of Vermont allows transgender students to
request an ID card with a name other than their birth name (Beemyn, Curtis, Davis and

Tubbs, 2005). In addition, institutions must account for unique circumstances where an

151

all-encompassing “M” or “F” desigration on all records could potentially harm a
student. As an example, Diondre was placed in a difﬁcult situation. To identify only as
either male or female could possibly cause him either to lose university health or
domestic partner beneﬁts. Institutional systems of name and gender change processes
are made more complex by regional differences in name and gender change procedures,
which vary by state, as well as by institution. These complexities only magrify the
importance of attention to university policy that addresses a range of transgender student
concerns. Given genderism’s enactment at University A and B through implicit and
explicit policies, procedures, and practices, creating institutionalized support for the
identities of transgender students is a priority.
Conclusion
Through the voices of the transgender students who participated in this study, I
was able to shed light on the practical issues and unseen power of binary gender systems
that exist in two higher education institutions. I also examined ways genderism informed
postmodern feminist, queer theory and critical postmodern perspectives. From this, I
detailed and discussed implications for future research regarding genderism and
transgender student identities. Further, through the synthesized lens of both theory and
practice, I outlined recommendations for improving higher education practice related to
serving transgender students in relationship to the four categories (i.e., academic, campus
employment and career, LBGT organizations and communities, and facilities) in which
the participants of the study indicated the geatest degees of genderist oppression.
Interestingly, while previous scholarship (i.e., Beemyn; Cutris and Tubbs, 2004) on

climate for transgender students provided critical insight for guiding the

152

recommendations outlined in this chapter, the recommendations that I provide differ
sigriﬁcantly. The difference is that the change strategies that I outlined emerged from the
transgender student voices of their actual lived experience of oppression. Examples of a
few recommendations that emerged from this study include accommodations to locker
and rest rooms, different residence hall placement formulas, and modiﬁed policies,
regulations, and procedures. This is in contrast to other recommendations generated by
previous scholarship (i.e., Beemyn, 2005; Curtis and Tubbs, 2004), that indicated the
creation of transgender inclusive services in counseling centers and health centers as
priorities. These recommendations are not mentioned in my chapter six, and they only
barely are acknowledged by the participants of this study. So, why did the transgender
students not mention these speciﬁc needs?

I do not intend to imply that health and counseling services are not important to
transgender students. As Diondre stated, for transsexuals, ongoing health care support is
“life and death.” But, I must also point out that Diondre, who was the only participant in
the study to talk about transgender health issues, spoke generally about these concerns, or
named them primarily in the context of oppressive policy systems. He hardly mentioned
the campus health care facility. While this issue may be partly accounted for by the fact
that none of the participants in this study were currently involved with a medical gender
transition, it is nonetheless a curious phenomenon. Similarly, regarding counseling
services, three participants accessed support ﬂom campus counseling centers, and
appeared satisﬁed with their experiences. Yet, given the historical realities of medical and
emotional health agencies acting as agents of genderism, future research should examine

related issues for transgender students.

153

Thus, a core implication of this study is that without research on the lived
experience of systemic genderism, there is a gap in the ability to accurately desigr and
implement student support strategies. For the practitioner and scholar concerned with
improving campus climate for this population, one assessment question may be, “what do
transgender students need?” Yet, a more informative question is, “how do transgender
students experience life on campus?” There is a sigriﬁcant difference between asking
what needs are, and studying the experience of students to assess their experience to meet
their needs. And, as informed by postmodern feminist, queer theory and critical
postmodern perspectives, this study suggests that the examination of student needs must
account for both the categorical assumptions and systemic nature of oppression.
Postmodern feminist, queer theory and critical postmodern perspectives suggest that
intentional institutional responses are part of the essential strategies for challenging
genderism, with the aim to assist transgender students in self liberation.

In closing, I ponder what lies beyond the gender binary and the ways that
transgender youth will redeﬁne themselves and the future of higher education.
Thoughtfully and deliberately, Debbie reﬂected on her own identity and a multi-gendered
future:

I love trans youth because they are unencumbered by some of the traditional

thought and I am very encumbered by traditional thought. At some point I see a

future where being transsexual in the traditional way that I am transsexual is an

anachronism because I clearly do not challenge the binary. I reinforce the binary.

I jumped ﬂom this box to that box. And I am okay with that. I was born in the

ﬁfties. I was raised in a society and a culture that gendered people and roles and

154

behaviors and so it’s particularly difﬁcult for me to extract myself from that
training. So yeah, I am ﬁne with being gendered. I just want to be gendered
female not gendered male. But transgender youth have this vision that I just ﬁnd
wonderful, where they really don’t feel constrained by the binary, and at some
point, they are going to break ﬂee of it in a profound way where people really are
just able to be... But we are not talking about the end of sex. We are talking bout

a radical alteration to the social construction of gender identity and expression.

155

Appendix A

156

PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT LETTER

Dear Student,

I am a doctoral student at Michigan State University and I am doing dissertation
research on the college experience of transgender students in the Midwest. As you may
know, there is very little written about transgender college students, and it is my hope
that this research will help students, staff, and faculty to understand the experience of this
population on campus. Your participation can make an important difference in the
sigriﬁcance of this study. I am recruiting 10—1 5 Students from University
to participate in what I believe will be an excellent experience.

If you choose to participate in this research project, I will ask you to meet with me
for an initial one to two hour individual interview focusing on your experience as a
transgender student on campus. Should you be interested in further participation in this
study, you will be given a disposable camera, and invited to take a series of photogaphs
that captures the “gender system” on your campus. I will cover the costs of developing
the photogaphs. You will also have the option of participating in a one and a half to two
hour focus goup with other transgender students on your campus, and reﬁ'eshments will
be served to all of those who participate in the session. After I have completed all of the
interviews and focus goups on your campus, I will write a summary of the data and you
will have the option of meeting with me to share your response to it.

I hope that students who participate in the study will enjoy the opportunity to
reﬂect on their own college experience and to discuss their thoughts on being a
transgender student. Students who were part of a similar study I conducted in 2002 said
they enjoyed the self-awareness gained from participating as well as the knowledge that
they were contributing to the study of gender identity in the United States.

In presenting the results of this study, institutions will be anonymous, any
identifying details about you will be obscured and I will use pseudonyms for all
participants (you may select your own if you choose). Your participation in this study is
entirely voluntary and you may withdraw ﬂom the study at any point by contacting me at
the address, phone or email listed below. Should you have questions or concerns about
my research, you can contact me or my advisor, Dr. Kris Renn, any time.

Thank you in advance for your participation and I look forward to working with

 

you.
Sincerely,
Brent L. Bilodeau
1138 Arbor Dr. East Lansing, MI, 48823
517-337-1658
Bilodeau@msu.edu

Advisor:

Kris Renn, Ph.D., Michigan State University, 517-353-9597

157

Appendix B

158

Individual Interview Consent Form
Project Title: Transgender College Student Identity Development

This research study is being conducted by Brent Bilodeau, a doctoral student at
Michigan State University. The study focuses on the identity development of
transgender students and how this may (or may not) be inﬂuenced by their experiences
in higher education.

The individual interview is structured to last approximately 60—90minutes. During the
interview, Brent Bilodeau will ask you a series of questions about your experience
as a transgender student at the university you attend.

In similar studies involving transgender student populations (Renn and Bilodeau, 2003),
student participants reported that they enjoyed the individual interview as a means to
reﬂect on their life experiences and often gained personal insight. While the risk is
minimal, there is a possibility that talking about your transgender identity and
experience on campus could cause you to feel uncomfortable.

Your participation in the study is voluntary, you may chose not to participate at all, or
you may refuse to respond to certain questions during the individual interview. You
may also choose to discontinue participation in the interview without penalty. Your
responses will be kept conﬁdential. Your privacy will be protected to the maximum
extent allowable by law.

The signature below indicates that you have read, or that an interviewer has read to
you, the above statement and you agree to participate.

 

Respondent Signature Date

The interview may be tape recorded for transcription and data analysis, but only with
your approval. Tape recorded interviews are kept in secured and locked ﬁles and are
destroyed once the interview tape is reviewed and transcribed. Written transcriptions
will be destroyed once data analysis is complete.

0 Yes, I consent to the interview being tape recorded.
0 No, I do not consent to the interview being tape recorded.
The signature below indicates that you have read, or that an interviewer has read to

you, the above statement regarding tape recording and have marked the “yes” or “no”
box.

 

Respondent Signature Date

159

The following questions are related to how contact information about you was
obtained for being invited to participate in this study:

How were you contacted to participate in this study?

The following statement to completed by the researcher, Brent Bilodeau. Please
identify how you received the name and contact information on this participant:

Post Individual Interview Option: Focus Group Participation

Should you choose, you may participate in a focus group that will be offered a few
weeks after this individual interview. The focus group discussion will center on your
reactions to summaries of general themes related to transgender student college
experiences compiled from the individual interviews. No personally identifying
information will be shared in these summaries about any of the interview participants.
All individual interview participants will be invited to the focus group. This focus
group will last approximately 1.5 to 2 hours.

0 Yes, I consent to being contacted with an invitation to participate in the focus group.

0 No, I do not consent to being contacted with an invitation to participate in the focus
group.

If you marked “yes”, please provide the following contact information:
Name: Email:

Phone:

The signature below indicates that you have read, or that an interviewer has read to
you, the above statement regarding you be contacted to participate in the focus group,
and have marked the “yes” or “no” box.

 

Respondent Signature Date

160

Questions about this study can be addressed to:

Brent Bilodeau
Doctoral Student
Bilodeau@msu.edu
517-337-1658

Kristin Renn
Faculty Advisor

Renn@msu.edu
517-353-5979

If you ﬁnd you have questions about or concerns about your rights as a study
participant, or are dissatisﬁed at any time with any aspect of this study, you may
contact:

University of Michigan Institutional Review Board
Kate Keever

540 East Liberty Street, Suite 202

Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2210

734-936-0933

email: irbhsbs@umich.edu

Michigan State University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects
Peter Vasilenko, Ph.D, 202 Olds Hall

East Lansing, MI 48824

Phone: (517) 355-2180

Fax: (517) 432-4503

UCRIHS E-mail: ucrihs@msu.edu

161

Appendix C

162

Transgender College Student Study
Participant Information

So that I may contact you as needed for this study, please complete the following
information. To maintain conﬁdentiality of participants, this information will be kept
separate form other study data in a secure location. Thank you.

Name: Year of Graduation:

 

Mailing address::

 

 

 

Email Address:

 

Telephone:

 

Chosen Pseudonym:

 

( ) I would like a summary of the ﬁnal results of this research

163

Appendix D

164

Individual Interview Protocol

Backggound:
1. Why did you go to choose to attend

2. What terms or phrases would you use to describe your gender identity?
How did you come to identify as [term] ?

 

The College Exm'ence
3. Has your coming out process as a transgender person been inﬂuenced by your

experience at this college? In what ways?

4. How supportive is the university of your gender identity? (prompt for: policies,
classroom experiences, curriculum infusion, residence halls, student services
ofﬁces, student organizations, physical environment of college, peers/ friendships)

5. Are there individuals, campus ofﬁces, or other campus entities that have been
particularly supportive of you? How?

6. Are there individuals, campus ofﬁces, or other campus entities that have been
particularly not helpful or non-supportive of you? How?

7. What’s kept you in college? Why did you choose to stay here?

8. What is your major? What do you hope to do post college?

Gender Systems at this College
9. [fl were to ask you to describe the gender system at this college, how would you

describe it? (prompts: Is the gender system here more binary? Is there room here
for multiple/ﬂuid ways of expressing gender here? How do you see binary and/or
ﬂuid gender systems expressed at the college?)

10. How are you impacted by this gender system? .

11. How are students, faculty, staff impacted by this system?

12. How does this gender system impact students ﬂom a broad range of diverse

experiences? (prompt for: racial/ethnic, disabilities, international, lesbian

bisexual, gay)

13. If you could change the gender system here, how would you change it?

14. Do you behave in any ways that are reinforcing of the very things you dislike about
the gender system at your college?

14. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about your experience at this college?

Closing

-thank the participant

-share information sheet about the option to participate in the “photo gaphing gender on
campus activity” and follow-up interview

-invite to participate in the focus goup and approximate timing of it

165

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