Despite the increase of studies done on trans college students and an increase in LGBT Centers on college campuses, college campuses are still failing to adequately meet the needs of their trans students. Furthermore, the ongoing effects of racism in queer and trans spaces remain a phenomenon in urgent need of redress. This study uses queer of color critique to examine the specific ways trans students of color (TSOC) use the internet as a way to explore notions of self as well as navigate the pernicious material realities of campus life.
Trans theory is a set of ideas, tools, contestations, divergences, and investments in gender(s) in and beyond the gender binary of male and female as it is understood in Western contexts. Gender identity is, in part, an individual’s gendered sense of self. Both transgender theory and gender identity are implicated by and concerned with education given the relative (in)visibility of transgressive or variant genders. Educational spaces are concerned with gender since they are one of many socializing and normalizing structures that seek to instill binary genders. Trans theory and gender identity are understood in educational spaces as additive to the social norm of binary gender, though both the theory and the concept ultimately elucidate the need for a reexamination of what gender is and what it does, as well as to and for whom.
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