Exploring the Experiences of Heterosexual and Asexual Transgender People

Sumerau, J. E.; Barbee, Harry; Mathers, Lain A. B.; Eaton, Victoria

doi:10.3390/socsci7090162

Cited by 19 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…There is also some limited quantitative data that indicates that gender diversity or gender nonconformity is fairly common among asexual people, although cisnormativity can still be found within the asexual community (e.g., Sumerau et al 2018). This has been the case for studies that have recruited within the asexual community, as well as studies recruiting on a population-wide basis.…”

Section: (A)sexuality and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

“When We Talk about Gender We Talk about Sex”: (A)sexuality and (A)gendered Subjectivities

Cuthbert

2019

Gender & Society

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Gender diversity is seemingly prevalent amongst asexual people. Drawing on qualitative research, and focusing on agender identities in particular (which have received very little sociological or queer scholarly attention), this article explores why this might be the case. I argue that previous explanations which centre 1) biologistic understandings of sexual development, or 2) the liberatory potential of asexuality, or 3) psycho-cognitive conflict, are insufficient. Instead, I offer a sociological perspective in which participants' agender subjectivities can be understood as arising from an embodied meaning-making process where gender was understood to fundamentally be about sexuality. I emphasise the importance of understanding asexuality and agender in the broader structural context, as particular subjectivities were shaped and sometimes necessitated in navigating hetero-patriarchy.However, these entangled understandings of (a)sexuality and (a)gender were sometimes rendered unintelligible within LGBTQ+ discursive communities, where there is often a rigid ontological distinction between gender and sexuality arising from histories of misrecognition and erasure. The article is therefore an attempt to complicate this distinction, as I argue that already-invisible subjectivities may be made even more invisible by this distinction. The article serves as an illustration of the need to empirically explore meanings of the categories 'gender' and 'sexuality', and the relationship between them, rather than siloing them in our methodological and conceptual frameworks.Asexuality, which has been dubbed the "invisible orientation" (Decker 2014) is arguably becoming less so. Not only can we find the existence of some asexual characters in mainstream entertainment (Todd in the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, Liv Flaherty in the UK soap Emmerdale), but these characters are also portrayed as complex and nuanced, rather than one-dimensional stereotypes. The US clothing retailer Hot Topic sell Asexual Pride tshirts (Hot Topic 2019), and asexual terminology such as ace and aromantic were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018 (OED 2018). Asexual is increasingly included in official governmental research (e.g. in the findings from the UK government's NationalLGBT survey in 2018) and there are plans to include asexual in the 2021 UK census (ONS 2018). We may well be seeing an asexual 'tipping point'.There has also been a small but growing body of scholarship on asexuality for a decade and a half, ranging from the positivistic, to textual explorations, to the sociological. Not only is asexuality of interest as a social phenomenon in and of itself (especially given the increased visibility demonstrated above), but those working in asexuality studies have pointed out that should be interested in asexuality because of its potential to inform our understandings about society and social organisation more broadlyfor example, about the compulsory nature of sexuality (Gupta 2015); about the possibilities for conducting relationships ...

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Section: (A)sexuality and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

“When We Talk about Gender We Talk about Sex”: (A)sexuality and (A)gendered Subjectivities

Cuthbert

2019

Gender & Society

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“…As I noted in my fieldnotes, When I first got to the shelter tonight, two youth gave me a hug, so it seems like I’m building decent rapport. As trans people are often skeptical of scientific research, given the history of mistreatment toward trans people, being trans can help in recruiting and building rapport with trans participants (Sumerau & Mathers, 2019). I took the intimacies of hugs, touch, doing our hair, singing together, and other queer pleasurable moments as positive signs.…”

Section: Queer Pleasures and Trans Connectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Building on Compton et al’s (2018) argument on doing queer work in a straight discipline and on how cisnormativity’s cousin heteronormativity—the privileging of heterosexuality as natural and normal—is embedded in sociological theory, practice, and knowledge production, I examine the meanings and consequences around being non-binary and doing trans and queer work in a cisnormative discipline. In doing so, I interrogate cisnormative knowledge production (Sumerau & Mathers, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-Binary Embodiment, Queer Knowledge Production, and Disrupting the Cisnormative Field: Notes From a Trans Ethnographer

Robinson

2022

The Journal of Men’s Studies

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In this article, I show how my non-binary embodiment, along with regularly being misgendered, shapes the questions I ask, the research I conduct, the data I can gather, how I understand my research and data, and the knowledge I produce. Through this interrogation of my body in relation to research methods and epistemologies, I illuminate how trans and non-binary scholars disrupt the cisnormative assumptions of ethnographic fieldwork, of sociology, and of academia. These disruptions generate queer forms of knowledge production that center trans and non-binary experiences and perspectives and that move us toward thinking anew about researchers, embodiment, and methods, and their epistemological effects.

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“…While some within the asexual community view their gender and sexual identities as distinct and separate, others described their asexual identities as freeing them from traditional gender expectations (MacNeela & Murphy, 2014). The gender composition of asexual communities raises many questions within the sociology of sexualities that can help extend theoretical insights into the interaction between gender and sexuality and how cisnormativity and heteronormativity operate to marginalize transgender asexual people (Sumerau, Barbee, Mathers, & Eaton, 2018).…”

Section: What Are Asexual People's Experiences?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data on race within asexual communities has been inconsistent, and few researchers have begun to explore connections between asexuality and racialized sexual stereotypes that might marginalize asexual people of color (Owen, 2014). Higher proportions of cisgender women and transgender individuals within asexual communities also raise more questions than have been answered (Gupta, 2018;MacNeela & Murphy, 2015;Sumerau et al, 2018). Given the contentious and contradictory relationship that has historically existed between women's sexuality and the feminist movement, asexuality can open new doors to thinking about the relationship between sex and power from a feminist perspective (Cerankowski & Milks, 2010;Fahs, 2010).…”

Section: Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asexuality and Its Implications for LGBTQ-Parent Families

Carroll

2020

LGBTQ-Parent Families

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Asexuality, most often defined as a lack of sexual attraction, has emerged as a relatively new sexual identity category, and very little research has yet to explore asexual families and parenting. In this chapter, I review the literature on asexuality and its implications for parenting research and LGBTQ-parent families. First, I explain the meanings of asexuality through a review of its competing definitions and the evolving vocabulary of sexual and romantic dispositions within the asexual community. I also examine the methodological issues that have made asexuality especially difficult to research and the growth of asexuality as an identity movement in resistance to pathologizing narratives of sexual dysfunction. Next, I examine intersections between asexuality and gender, race, class, and disability, with critical attention toward the relationship between asexuality and the broader LGBTQ umbrella. I then review existing knowledge of asexual individuals' experiences of parenting, intimate relationships, and marginalization. Practitioners are urged to consider the validity of many types of intimacy as research on asexual parenting can further societal understandings of diverse expressions of love and family formation.

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Exploring the Experiences of Heterosexual and Asexual Transgender People

Cited by 19 publications

References 61 publications

“When We Talk about Gender We Talk about Sex”: (A)sexuality and (A)gendered Subjectivities

“When We Talk about Gender We Talk about Sex”: (A)sexuality and (A)gendered Subjectivities

Non-Binary Embodiment, Queer Knowledge Production, and Disrupting the Cisnormative Field: Notes From a Trans Ethnographer

Asexuality and Its Implications for LGBTQ-Parent Families

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