Un/gendering Social Selves: How Nonbinary People Navigate and Experience a Binarily Gendered World

Abstract

Based on in‐depth interviews, we explore how people who do not identify exclusively or consistently as either women or men (i.e., nonbinary people) navigate a culture that bifurcates people into women or men. Using an interactionist approach, we first analyze how interviewees employ discourse (e.g., names, identity labels, and pronouns) and the body (e.g., expressions, decoration, and transformation) to present themselves as nonbinary, which we conceptualize as ungendering social selves. Second, we examine the emotional benefits (e.g., authenticity, pride, liberation) and burdens (e.g., fear, rejection, exhaustion) of ungendering. Third, we uncover the emotional, social, and structural conditions under which our nonbinary‐identified participants sometimes present themselves as binarily gendered, which we conceptualize as gendering social selves. We conclude with discussing empirical and theoretical contributions.

Challenging the Cisgender/Transgender Binary: Nonbinary People and the Transgender Label

“…Beyond this research on nonbinary transgender people, few qualitative sociological studies have focused explicitly on how nonbinary people as a diverse group negotiate binary accountability. However, a small body of such literature has begun to emerge (Barbee and Schrock 2019; Darwin 2017, 2020; Risman 2018; shuster 2017). In my earlier (Darwin 2017) virtual ethnography of a genderqueer social media community, I demonstrated that nonbinary people are held accountable to binary gender ideology at all three levels of interest to the “doing gender” model: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional.…”

(Bio)Logics of The Family: Gender, Biological Relatedness, and Attitudes Toward Children’s Gender Nonconformity in a Vignette Experiment1

“…Gender is important cultural material with which we must contend in our lives (Barbee and Schrock 2019) and from which parents draw, intentionally or unintentionally, as they raise their children. In recalling whether they wanted a son or a daughter, Kane (2009Kane ( , 2012 found that parents relied on gendered scripts surrounding the anticipation of types of relationships and parenting experiences they thought would materialize based on the child's gender-a process she referred to as "gendered anticipation" (Kane 2012).…”

“Multiplicity, Race, and Resilience: Transgender and Non‐Binary People Building Community”

“…Non‐binary people compose up to one third of the transgender community (Matsuno and Budge ) yet experience alienation in the binary transgender community (Sumerau, Mathers, and Moon ). Non‐binary people may not identify as transgender (Barbee and Schrock ; Darwin ), and non‐binary transgender people are disproportionately affected by expectations of transnormativity and being considered “trans enough” (Garrison ; Johnson ). Non‐binary individuals, whether also transgender or not, are prone to more misrecognition and subject to different kinds of gender accountability (Darwin ; Garrison ; Nicolazzo ).…”