GENDERED VULNERABILITY IN NECROPOLITICAL BORDERING

Displaced Men’s Material and Affective Abandonment in Greece

By Oska Paul and Meena Masood

The concept of vulnerability has become increasingly integral to state and humanitarian legislation, policies, discourse, and practices in contexts of displacement. Asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants legally categorized as ‘vulnerable persons’ are ostensibly entitled to specialised and additional care. Yet in practice, the ‘vulnerable person’ category is widely used to divide people into those considered ‘deserving’ and ‘underserving’ of rights, services, and protection from the state, humanitarian agencies, and solidarity initiatives.

Social categories, including gender, age, sexuality, class, and race, shape who is considered a ‘vulnerable person.’ There are grave and negative implications for all who are unable to fit conceptions of vulnerability. In our article, we focus on the implications of the vulnerability classification system for men experiencing displacement. Specifically, we take the issue of housing as our case study.

Drawing on extended fieldwork and interviews with humanitarians and displaced men, we demonstrate how gendered conceptions of vulnerability are integral to immigration law and humanitarian policies. Further, we foreground the centrality of gendered vulnerability conceptions in shaping the everyday discourses, practices and emotional orientations of humanitarians, solidarians, and even displaced men themselves.

Let us first explore the role of vulnerability in immigration legislation and humanitarian policy. The term ‘vulnerable person’ has been present in EU asylum legislation and humanitarian policies for a long time, but it took on greater significance in the Greek context especially in 2016. Vulnerability has been defined, in the legal context, in ways that make it very hard for most men to be recognised as vulnerable because it explicitly refers to categories that involve women or which are associated with women, such as …

Vulnerability categories are used by the state and humanitarian organisations to mediate access to the asylum procedure and to distribute resources and services. For example, often only those who can provide evidence of a categorical vulnerability can register for asylum, leaving many people, especially men, undocumented. This in turn means that many are unable to apply for accommodations available for asylum seekers. Even when men do manage to register for asylum, they are generally unable to access accommodation because priority is given to ‘vulnerable persons.’ More than that, even men with recognized vulnerabilities are deprioritized from housing because of gendered assumptions that men are not vulnerable or less vulnerable than others, especially women. This points to the ways that vulnerability goes beyond legal and policy definitions to include shared gendered assumptions.

We noticed that many humanitarians and solidarians do not perceive men as vulnerable, often ignoring their needs. There is a certain apathy and disinterest towards men’s suffering or potential exposure to harm. This is also reproduced by some displaced men themselves, who actively understood their gendered identities as distinct from the idea of vulnerability, and juxtaposed assumptions about women’s need for care against their own masculine resilience.

The prevalence of these assumptions and emotional orientations towards men’s suffering and needs, combined with a legal framework that precludes men as vulnerable, means that many men are expected and forced to live in conditions characterized by a slow and attritional form of violence. Many men are forced to live in inadequate conditions for lengthy periods, often years. In camps for displaced persons, men are almost always allocated the worst housing facilities, and when there is a shortage of space, men, especially single men, cannot access any facilities at all, as camps limit their facilities to women and children. Accordingly, high levels of homelessness typify experiences among displaced men. Homelessness, even more so than camps, exemplifies the slow and attritional forms of violence displaced men are exposed to. Many sleep in parks and streets where access to even the most basic needs and facilities, such as food and toilets, are non-existent. One of our participants, Javed, testifies the emotional collapse that such experiences inflict:

I was on the road all the time, eating dust […] I was just running to different other places to find free food. […] I was homeless, I was penniless, I was joyless, and I was this near to hopelessness. And if I was ready to be hopeless it was to be a disaster (Interview with Oska, 2018).

These daily, unceasing, compounded harms—both material and emotional—do not typically receive as much attention as more direct and pervasive forms of border violence in Greece. Yet, the protracted abandonment and slow exposure to harms are important practices of bordering and they are enabled and sustained by a wide range of actors, not only representatives of the state and humanitarian organizations, but also solidarians, grassroot humanitarian practitioners, and even displaced men themselves.

In response, however, many displaced men have created their own networks of care to support each other. There are over forty registered national associations in Greece. These associations are typically run on small monthly membership fees and provide important social and political functions, for people, particularly men, who are largely excluded from other services. As another participant, Kennedy, explains:

People leave us because we are men. You have to try yourself, you have to do everything by yourself. No one wants to help you, no one wants to give you advice or support. So, as a community we built [our association] (interview with Oska, 2023).

Although housing is a complex and costly service, not typically provided by associations, the Union of Guineans in Greece established their own reception facilities, whereby members of the community rented an apartment to house  new arrivals who lacked other options. Such initiatives are indicative of ways displaced men in Greece challenge official conceptions of vulnerability as a means of distributing care. These practices are a vital source of solidarity, especially amid the increasing withdrawal of state, humanitarian and solidarian housing infrastructures. Overall, the Greek case is exemplary of how formal and informal vulnerability classification systems are constructed and applied in close relation to racialized men and masculinities, and the insidious effects this has on their lives. The issue, however, is not only that men, including those with serious needs, cannot access specialized care or protections, although this is important. The problem is that vulnerability is the dominant framework through which basic rights and protections are distributed. Moreover, it is important to note that the system of aid and rights distribution based on vulnerability emerged in Greece when a large number of people started arriving in Greece, the majority of whom were single men. This system, therefore, facilitates the withdrawal of rights and care from the largest group of people in need and curbs the financial and operational burdens of humanitarian engagement. Ultimately, this results in displaced men’s exclusion from almost all forms of care.

For more, please read their article “Gendered Vulnerability in Necropolitical Bordering: Displaced Men’s Material and Affective Abandonment in Greece.”

Oska Paul is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick. He has been involved in migrant-justice initiatives as an activist, a legal advice professional, and a researcher in London and Athens. His PhD project contributes to a growing body of work on solidarity networks in Greece, by exploring the gendered dimensions of migrants’ and refugees’ alternative infrastructures and socialities of care, especially with regard to the practices, affective responses, and agency of displaced men.

Meena Masood is a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Candidate at Queen Mary University of London. Using mixed methods, her PhD project investigates how humanitarian actors in Greece operationalize the concept of vulnerability. She focuses on how single asylum-seeking, refugee, and migrant men fit into humanitarian understandings of vulnerability and men’s experiences with humanitarian service provision.

Photograph by Meena Masood, 2022

Is There a Better Way to Address Gender-Based Violence in SportsWorld?

By Katie Mirance, Katelyn E. Foltz, Angela J. Hattery, Marissa Kiss, and Earl Smith

As many as one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college, and 26-36% will experience an act of intimate partner violence. For this reason, in the early 2000s advocates began exploring Title IX, the gender equity law in the United States (passed in 1972), as an avenue for victims/survivors of sexual assault or intimate partner violence on college campuses to seek remedy. Indeed, every US administration, beginning with that of President Obama, modified Title IX in ways that reflected their overall commitment to gender equity.

Gender-based violence on college campuses impacts students across all demographic groups, however, there is one hypermasculine institution on campuses that is exceptionally likely to be home to both perpetrators and victims/survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence: collegiate athletics.

Collegiate athletics is one of the most visible entities in the institution of higher education. As the “front porch” of the university, collegiate athletics is responsible for producing an immense amount of revenue and subsequent branding for the university. It is also an institution that is highly gender-segregated, and thus, is not immune to issues like gender-based violence. In the same way that gender-based violence is a problem across other masculine social institutions (e.g., military, religious institutions, and prisons), it is especially prevalent in the sporting world among not only athletes, but coaches, trainers, owners (for professional sports), and team doctors as well.

Title IX has specific provisions to address gender-based violence on college campuses, and this applies to sport when an incident involves a member of a collegiate athletic team—coach, trainer, or athlete—who is either the victim or the accused. The most recent revisions to Title IX, released by the Biden Administration earlier this year, will prevent colleges and universities from suspending athletes if they are accused of gender-based violence. We ask: is the best way to address gender-based violence within collegiate sport? Or within sport more generally? Our recently published paper on gender-based violence in SportsWorld tackles the issue of (1) how to respond to and address gender-based violence and (2) how to use sport as a site for analytical inquiry into this problem.

Feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s were organized around the notion that sexual and intimate partner violence were rampant, caused great harm, were fundamental in upholding gender inequality, and therefore must be remediated. As Paige Sweet documented, these movements soon found themselves in bed with the tough-on-crime approach, and they enthusiastically embraced criminal legal responses to gender-based violence. By the early 2010s, Black feminists began articulating the harm that criminal legal responses bring to both the victim—who they were designed to protect—and those held accountable. As jails and prisons returned those who were convicted to society, it was evident that formerly incarcerated individuals re-entered society with more trauma and barriers that negatively impacted their re-entry and resumption of familial and intimate relationships (see Allison Monterrosa). As we argue in our recent Gender & Society article {‘Theorizing Feminist Abolitionist Approaches to Gender-Based Violence: A descriptive case study of gender-based violence in SportsWorld”}, we join the work of many feminist researchers and activists in questioning whether the criminal legal system is equipped to handle cases of gender-based violence. We agree with many feminist/abolitionists who have noted that the criminal legal system is rooted in white supremacy and call for the abolition of prisons.

Our research, recently published in Gender & Society, explores various non-carceral strategies for addressing gender-based violence in sports (both college and professional) that center the voices and experiences of victims/survivors while providing consequences that reduce further harm. To do so, we analyzed data from a unique database we built that catalogs more than 500 cases of sexual and intimate partner violence in SportsWorld—cases in which the accused is an athlete, coach, or trainer. Approximately 50 of these cases involve collegiate coaches, trainers, or athletes.

Among the arguments for utilizing Title IX for remedy in these cases is that it, along with other campus policies designed to address student misbehavior, allows for a wide range of non-criminal legal sanctions that range from developmental “learning opportunities” to suspension and expulsion. Our analysis reveals that in 38.8% of these cases, there was no sanction imposed and 78.7% of NCAA athletes, coaches, or trainers who perpetrated gender-based violence continued to play or coach. Moreover, athletes were rarely if ever suspended from the team or the university, and violence perpetrated by coaches and trainers was largely ignored allowing them to abuse dozens if not hundreds of other children and young adults. In fact, 42.0% of our collegiate cases were identified as serial abusers. The same was true among professional sports, albeit the percentage of serial abusers in professional sports was nearly three times lower (15.3%).

At first glance, one obvious pathway to non-criminal legal accountability is the utilization of existing policies designed to address gender-based violence, including Title IX. Yet, as our research demonstrated, Title IX in its current form, does not center on the voices and experiences of survivors, nor does it provide any meaningful remedy or harm reduction. We concluded the paper by offering recommendations for revising Title IX in ways that center survivor experiences and voices while providing meaningful non-criminal legal system sanctions for those accused. Attending college and even more so, participating in collegiate athletics is a privilege. Thus, in cases involving collegiate athletes, we argue, at a minimum, for suspension from athletic teams and possible additional restrictions (e.g., scholarship or other monetary benefits), depending on the severity of the case and the survivor’s wishes.

The Biden Administration’s revisions to Title IX on, was designed, in part, to reverse the policy revisions of the Betsy DeVos/Donald Trump administration which prioritized the due process rights of the accused over the needs of victims/survivors. Changes made by the Biden administration are an attempt to bring better balance by re-centering the needs of victims/survivors while also protecting the accused’s due process rights. Though these revisions do not offer guidance for pathways for greater accountability, as we would have hoped, we continue to advocate for non-criminal legal system responses to incidents of gender-based violence in ways that center the experiences and voices of survivors, provide meaningful remedies for the harm they experienced, and reduce future violence.

For more on this, please read their article “Theorizing Feminist Abolitionist Approaches to Gender-Based Violence: A Descriptive Case Study of Gender-Based Violence in SportsWorld.” You can also find them on Twitter/X: @gbvsportdata

Katie Mirance is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware and a research assistant at the Center for the Study & Prevention of Gender-Based Violence. Her research interests include gender-based violence, sport, gender, and feminist criminology.

Katelyn E. Foltz is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland- College Park and a research assistant at the University of Delaware’s Center for the Study & Prevention of Gender-Based Violence. Her research interests include gender-based violence, race, masculinity, and sport.

Angela J. Hattery, PhD, is a professor of Women & Gender Studies and co-director of the Center for the Study & Prevention of Gender-Based Violence at the University of Delaware. She is the author of 12 books, including three that interrogate various forms of gender-based violence. To read more about her: www.smithandhattery.com

Marissa Kiss, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Immigrant Research (IIR) at George Mason University. Dr. Kiss earned her doctorate in sociology at George Mason University in 2020. Her dissertation, “Baseball: The (Inter) National Pastime,” examined immigrant Major League Baseball players and immigration policy. Earl Smith, PhD, is Rubin Distinguished Professor of American Ethnic Studies & Sociology, Emeritus, at Wake Forest University. Currently, he is a professor of Women & Gender Studies at the University of Delaware. Smith is the author of Race, Sport & American Dream. His most recent book is Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy, and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement.

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Hiding Gender Inequality Behind the Myth of Mutuality

Jaclyn S. Wong and Allison Daminger

Why are women in dual-career relationships more likely than their husbands to move for their spouse’s career? Why do women do more unpaid housework and childcare than their husbands, even when both partners are employed? Questions like these about persistent gender inequality in work and family are ultimately questions about gendered power: who has the authority to call the shots in which areas of life, who benefits from the work and family decisions that get made, and who labors to implement those decisions? In “The Myth of Mutuality” we investigate how highly educated different-gender couples manage their power dynamic when making career, household, and parenting decisions. Examining a group that endorses gender-egalitarianism and idealizes a marriage of equals gives us a clear window into how gendered power imbalances in decision making can emerge even when partners work to avoid disempowering each other.

We combined interview data from two separate interview studies of couples’ decision making to answer our research questions. One study focused on how couples make high-level career decisions that shape the broad conditions of partners’ lives. The other focused on how couples make household and parenting decisions that shape partners’ everyday experiences. Each study gathered data on the non-focal domain, giving us a final complementary dataset of 112 interviews from 44 couples.

How do you measure marital power? Sociologists typically look for the partner who holds the most decision-making authority. But the decision-authority-as-power perspective overlooks the fact that decision making is also a form of cognitive labor or mental effort that can produce benefits for others. Because feminist theories suggest doing invisible unpaid labor that benefits others can mark someone as relatively less powerful, we theorized decision-making as a complex mixture of costs and benefits and sought to understand who was investing labor in, and who was reaping the rewards of, couples’ work-family decisions.

The vast majority of couples we interviewed sought a power dynamic characterized by mutuality. They believed both partners should have equal authority over work and family decisions, that both partners should benefit from those decisions, and that both partners should share the work or responsibility involved in carrying out those decisions.

These weren’t just empty words, either. To achieve mutuality, couples used two tactics for sharing power: emphasizing “us” and balancing a decision portfolio. Partners emphasized “us” when they generated a joint vision for their shared lives via formal planning sessions and constant communication that obscured their individual points of view. If emphasizing “us” was too labor-intensive or impossible because partners had competing interests, couples sought to balance their “decision portfolio.” They strove to evenly allocate decision authority, benefits, and responsibilities across partners within or across the domains of career and family.

Despite using very deliberate tactics to manage their power dynamic, many couples reproduced a gendered power imbalance that favored men. Men and women both did cognitive labor to make career decisions that disproportionately benefitted men. They insisted they were emphasizing “us” even when they emphasized “him,” and they failed to anticipate that balancing a decision portfolio over time would be impossible if his early career “wins” foreclosed opportunities for her to “win” or benefit from career decisions later.

Men and women made household and parenting decisions to benefit children or the family unit. They believed they evenly shared such decision-making responsibility, yet women bore a heavier cognitive labor burden when men’s participation often meant simply rubber-stamping women’s carefully considered choices. They saw themselves as balancing women’s authority at home with men’s authority in the career space without considering the differences in social and economic status between these two spheres.

Couples’ belief in what we call the mutuality myth helped them overlook gendered power imbalances like these. Partners’ insistence that they equally allocated decision authority, benefits, and responsibilities because they emphasized “us” and balanced a decision portfolio led them to appreciate their efforts to practice mutuality without critically evaluating their success.

Our research updates Aafke Komter’s 1989 concept of “invisible marital power.” Invisible power operates through a shared, unspoken consensus that a power-imbalanced situation is natural or inevitable. In Komter’s day, the consensus upholding men’s invisible power was the assumption of male superiority. We found little direct evidence of this assumption in our datasets but considerable evidence of a new consensus involving the myth of mutuality. The presumption that partners were striving for mutuality obscured the persistence of gendered power imbalances in their decision making. Our work highlights the importance of centering power dynamics when considering the reproduction of inequalities in nominally collaborative social groups. It shows that couples and other cooperative groups – like workplace teams and civic group members – should be aware of the distribution of decision benefits and labor. Without considering who has authority, who does the work, and who enjoys the benefits, we risk overlooking processes that perpetuate inequality in everyday interactions.

For more, please read their article “The Myth of Mutuality: Decision-Making, Marital Power, and the Persistence of Gender Inequality” in Gender & Society online and in print, Volume 38 Issue 2, April 2024.

Jaclyn S. Wong is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina. Her multimethod research examines gender inequality in families over the life course. She recently published Equal Partners? How Dual-Professional Couples Make Career, Relationship, and Family Decisions (University of California Press). | @JaclynSWong on Twitter/X and Mastodon

Allison Daminger is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research, which focuses on gender inequality in family life, has been published in the American Sociological Review. She is currently at work on a book about cognitive labor, under advance contract with Princeton University Press. | @AllisonDaminger on Twitter/X

Thinking about the Gender Binary During Shelter-in-Place

Amy L. Stone, PhD and Alexandra Gallin-Parisi, PhD

The shelter-in-place period of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was a peculiar time. As many people transitioned to staying home and Zooming in to work and school, this social isolation also created conditions for people to explore identities outside the gender binary. Alpha, a Black nonbinary person in their late teens, was living with their family in shelter-in-place and spent a lot of time in their room. They called the isolation “a blessing and curse, because my mental health was really bad and I had to seek therapy, but at the same time I had time to do my research, had time to think, and educate myself.” Our research team interviewed 22 U.S. adults who came out as nonbinary or genderfluid during the shelter-in-place period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many interviewees like Alpha described this time period as complex and ambivalent. One of the most productive aspects of the pandemic for our interviewees was how shelter-in-place created opportunities for them to think about their gender identity differently. We argue in our article that the pressure of constant accountability and external assessments that people feel from others was reduced during the shelter-in-place period of the pandemic.

For many of these nonbinary people, not going to work and school in-person, along with spending less time in public, meant that they did not have to manage constant interactions with people who saw their full-body gender expression. Rather than being concerned with how their gender was going to be perceived at work or school, or ways they might be held accountable for their gender, they got some relief from this everyday experience. Many nonbinary interviewees had experienced work and school as places where they had to relentlessly worry about how others would react to their gender expression. Ella, a white nonbinary transgender person in their early 20s, described being closeted at their not-queer-friendly high school and inhibited to experiment. During shelter-in-place, Ella explored their gender, because they were “in [their] room for days and weeks at a time” with less concern about others’ assessments. Ryan, an indigenous nonbinary and genderfluid person in their early 40s, experienced working from home as a shift away from “expressing an image” in the workplace, because “the niceties of gender went away.”

Although many interviewees described feeling the freedom to explore their gender in private through being socially isolated at home, this sense of freedom was not the same for everyone. Eight participants were high school or college students sheltering at home with family members. These younger participants, specifically Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Latinx youth, described their families as very attentive to their gender. For example, Socks, a Latinx nonbinary genderfluid person in their late teens, explained that “at college I feel a bit more flexible with as far as what I can wear and how I present myself,” and noted that they have to be more aware of their presentation at home. Additionally, space to experiment during the pandemic required privacy, which some of these minoritized youth did not have. Rat, an AAPI genderfluid person in their late teens, described limited privacy: Their parents “were just like watching me like a hawk” and “my parents can barge in whenever they want.”

Nonetheless, most nonbinary people we interviewed described the shelter-in-place period as a time when they could reflect on their gender identity and experiment with new haircuts and outfits. For Charlie, a Latinx nonbinary person in their late teens,

The pandemic really gave me a chance to work things out without any pressure from other people, what other people might think, anything at school or anything like that.… What the pandemic did was give me time to think about it and explore it without really any outside influence, if that makes sense.

The pandemic created space for Charlie to think about their gender without constant pressure from others and instead Charlie felt like they could explore their gender without this outside influence.

Many nonbinary people we interviewed tried new haircuts, new clothes, and new pronouns during shelter-in-place. When they did go out in public, wearing masks created new ways of moving through the world and being perceived by others. After wearing pandemic casual clothes around the house for several months, a few people discovered that they felt gender dysphoria and discomfort in gendered clothes. For example, Sirius, a white nonbinary transgender person in their teens, described that the isolation “had me turn inwards a lot more,” because they had ignored how their chest gave them dysphoria. Sirius explained that during shelter-in-place “you’re not really dressing up to go anywhere or go to school, you’re just kind of in pjs or whatever.” Anytime they put on clothes to leave the house, they realized, “wow, this feels really uncomfortable, and it’s got me thinking about why does this feel so much more uncomfortable now than it did before?” It was through these experiences that many people explored and discovered new gender identities like nonbinary and genderfluid.

These stories from nonbinary and genderfluid people who came out during the shelter-in-place period tell us important things about gender in everyday life. All the interviewees were acutely aware of how other people evaluated their gender expression every day, particularly at work and school. The relief of not having to experience these external assessments during the pandemic freed our interviewees to explore and reconsider their gender identities. And the study raises questions about how much the pandemic changed gender for all of us.

Amy L. Stone (they/them) is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Trinity University

Alexandra Gallin-Parisi (she/her) is Associate Professor and Outreach and Engagement Librarian at Trinity University’s Coates Library in San Antonio, Texas.

Does a victim need an injury to hold offenders accountable?

Joohyun Park

In defining rape, there are two predominant legal frameworks across the globe: one based on coercion and the other on consent. The coercion-based model considers physical force, attack, and/or threat as necessary elements to determine the existence of the crime. Italy, France, and some US states such as Michigan follow this model. In contrast, the consent-based model defines rape as an act committed without the victim’s consent. This model is supported by the European Court of Human Rights and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and is used in England, Sweden, and Canada.

Different legal models entail different assumptions about victims and how crimes of sexual violence should be punished. Critics of the coercion-based model have pointed out the underlying assumption of a perpetrator’s coercion and a victim’s resistance in rape cases. This model establishes rape based on the degree of the victim’s resistance and the resulting injuries. These critics advocate for a consent-based model that does not predicate a crime on the victim’s injuries. On the other hand, others are concerned that consent-based models fail to reflect coercive or imbalanced power dynamics, suggesting that even seemingly clear consent might obscure exploitative relationships, such as grooming. Instead, they call for an expanded interpretation of coercion to encapsulate a wider spectrum of scenarios.

To delve into the implications of a coercion-based model and victims’ injuries, I examine cases from South Korea. South Korea serves as an example of a rape law model where the standard of coercion has been broadened and where movements for a consent-based model have nevertheless persisted for decades. South Korean feminist organizations have been pushing for legal revisions towards a consent-based model to more accurately reflect reality in court, leading me to ask: What is the inherent problem with the coercion-based model that cannot be overcome by incorporating broader standards?

My quantitative analysis confirmed the expected relationship between victims’ injuries and court decisions. A comparison of court cases shows that in strictly defined coercion cases, victims’ injuries matter more than in broadly defined cases. As the court adopts a broader definition of coercion, the impact of victims’ physical and/or psychological injuries on prison sentences decreases, which is a step forward. However, the impact remains significant across all levels of coercion cases under a coercion-based model.

My qualitative analysis traces the implications of victims’ injuries for criminal punishment. Even when a defendant uses minimal force, the existence (or lack thereof) of a victims’ injuries influences court decisions. For example, minor injuries, vaginal injuries only, or the victim’s sturdy body figure were frequently mentioned as legal justifications to mitigate the sentence. Additionally, judges frequently assume the psychological impact on the victims, including feelings of shame and fear. The display of shame is often utilized to support the threat posed by the perpetrator and to establish the credibility of the victims.

At the center of my findings lies the understanding of victims’ experiences of violence through their injuries. Through the lens of victims’ injuries, we can better grasp their pain and experiences and find ways to provide support. However, when injuries become a consistent criterion for defining groups or individuals as victims, a different narrative arises: it ties anticipated sexual harm to certain bodies and sexual practices, often those that are feminized in heterosexual, homosexual, or transgender contexts. For example, when cases of sexual violence highlight the injured status of female victims, the association turns into an expectation that female bodies are weak and passive. This portrayal excludes the diverse range of victims’ agentic experiences such as grief, anger, and disgust, as exemplified in the opening case.

This research aimed to reconsider victims’ injuries as a source of asserting their agency, as opposed to completely dismissing it. My paper shows that the current model of coercion-based rape, which casts victims as necessarily injured and ashamed, limits the political potential for victims’ agency. In order to counter the courts’ expectation of victims’ injuries and shame under the coercion-based model, I argue for a shift to a model centered on consent. Such a model would also help promote broader discussions about sexual consent throughout South Korean society.

“He Changed the Name!”

How Couples Think Baby Name Decisions Should Be Made . . . And What Actually Happens

By Christina A. Sue, Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, and Adriana C Núñez

“I guess her name is Cleopatra,” remarked actress Christina Ricci after her husband, Mark Hampton, announced the name of their daughter on Instagram when Christina was recovering from childbirth. As Christina was being prepared for a cesarian section, she and Mark were discussing names but did not arrive at a decision. Christina made clear her intention to continue the conversation, saying, “We’ll figure this out later.” But there was no “later” before Mark’s public announcement. In a televised interview, Christina appears to cover for her husband’s disregard for her wishes to arrive at a joint decision. She refers to Mark’s “excitement” as the reason he preemptively posted the name without consulting her and legitimized the name by referring to it as “a queen’s name.” In doing so, Christina simultaneously shores up the relationship publicly and minimizes her husband’s gendered power play.

Christina Ricci’s baby-naming story features major themes we pursued in this study: how couples who believe women and men should have an equal say in major decisions attempt to choose a baby’s first name together. Successful or not, they then tell stories to themselves, family members, friends, co-workers, and even strangers, about how they named the baby in a way that portrays the naming process and decision as collaborative. This helps themselves and others think of the couple as modern and egalitarian. In the Ricci–Hampton pair, we witness the couple’s attempts at collaboration but also see traditional forms of patriarchy surface, including what we refer to as “hijacking” (men taking away women’s power in crucial moments) and the often ensuing efforts to repair the relationship and restore the couple’s image as egalitarian.

We found similar attempts at collaboration, as well examples of men taking control over what was supposed to be a joint naming decision, among our U.S. sample of 46 predominately middle-class Mexican-origin heterosexual respondents. In one case, the first author had been invited over to a couple’s house for an interview and was greeted at the door by Lucero who welcomed her in. After only a few steps inside, Lucero’s wife, Mercedes, exclaimed from behind the kitchen counter: “He changed the name!” pointing to Lucero. Interviewing the couple, it became clear that Mercedes and Lucero did not have equal naming rights, despite their initial attempts at egalitarianism. Among their four children, Lucero chose the first child’s name and while Mercedes chose the second child’s legal name, Lucero then called her by the name he had preferred after she was born. The couple agreed Mercedes could choose the third child’s name, which she did. However, after they left the hospital, Lucero officially changed the name to one he alone preferred. For their fourth child, Lucero tried to make amends for breaking prior agreements and let Mercedes choose the name, but she ended up selecting a name she knew her husband really wanted – Lucero, Jr. This arrangement–women offering a name they already know men want–surfaced in other interviews. It avoided potential conflict and allowed the couple to distance itself from an image of strict patriarchy. In the aftermath of unfulfilled desires, loss of power, and hijacking, women were left to deal with the negative ramifications, whether or not they confronted their partners. In this case, despite Lucero’s attempts to remedy the situation, Mercedes had a hard time shaking the memory of prior hijackings. She summarized her thinking about men: “You’re never going to win, never.”

Instead of being a “special” and happy couple event, resentment around baby naming decisions sometimes lingered for many years after the birth of a child when things went awry. Our interview with Victoria began with her lamenting, “This is something we’ve been debating for so many years.” The ensuing conversation was filled with feelings of loss, sadness, and tension. Victoria had hoped for a collaborative process and shared naming rights. Ultimately, however, her husband, Octavio’s, will prevailed, even though he had agreed to an equal-odds arrangement, with Victoria naming any daughters and he, any sons. Victoria honored their agreement for their first two sons. Their third child was a girl and Victoria intended to name her after her grandmother who helped raise her. Octavio breeched their accord by assigning a different name in the hospital when Victoria was recovering from the birth. Like Christina Ricci, Victoria tried to smooth over the hijacking incident, saying, “I’m happy now. I think it sounds okay.” However, her demeanor and tone of lingering sadness belied her words.  

Of course, not all our respondents engaged in or experienced hijacking. Nevertheless, gender also mattered for these parents in ways that tilted the naming process and decisions in men’s favor. We found that, in striving for collaboration and a name that both parents agreed upon, women would often identify, anticipate, and take on men’s tastes, searching for and bringing a list of names to discuss that already conformed to their partner’s naming preferences. They would also go to great lengths to draw men into the naming process, initiating conversations about potential names and encouraging men to look through baby names books/online naming sites with them, hoping and expecting that the process and decision would be done together. However, these measures that women took, coupled with men’s inaction, ultimately ended in women doing more labor, including the research of potential names, creating a name choice set, and ushering the couple through a collaborative process. Women also performed more “emotion work,” which included being agreeable and avoiding conflict to ensure the process and name choice felt good to both parents. Submerging these gender inequities, both men and women oftentimes portrayed the process as collaborative and naming decision as equal by telling naming stories that used “we,” to signal shared labor and decision-making power. We refer to this as “couple identity work,” or the work involved in creating and projecting a desired impression of a relationship for multiple audiences. As a publicly visible and highly symbolic family milestone, the study of baby naming is valuable for understanding how, even among couples that aspire to equality, men hold more influence and power in couple decision making. Socialization from multiple sources encourages women to invest in family, setting up family as priority for women by cultural decree. In contrast, being a man is largely defined through autonomy and financial provision. Consequently, women often invest in family labor with higher levels of energy, meaning, and emotion as it is tied to their moral worth and identities as wives and mothers, in a way it is not tied to men. Women’s identities and labor are also more closely tied to their relationships. They often attend to their relationship’s needs and men’s needs, at the expense of their own. These social pressures can result in sustaining patriarchal practices such as patrilineal surnaming and, as we found in this study, male privilege that infiltrates first naming practices. Ultimately, we show how gendered behaviors and portrayals of the couple as a single unit–a “we”–can obscure gendered power and inequality, and how this can occur even in the least suspecting of places, and a symbolism of the union itself: a child’s name.

For more information, please see the full article “Couple Identity Work: Collaborative Couplehood, Gender Inequalities, and Power in Naming” on the SAGE website for Gender & Society.

Christina A. Sue is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

Jessica Vasquez-Tokosis Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon.

Adriana Núñez is a Reference Specialist at Isaacson,Miller, an executive search firm.

LOOSENING THE GRIp

Delegation of Financial Decision Making to Spouse in Old Age

By Dr. Anup Basu

You can find Professor Basu on Twitter/X @anupkbasu !

Image generated by AI

Aging can bring about a decline in cognitive abilities, thereby affecting our financial decision-making capacity. Although in many married households, one spouse is primarily responsible for managing household finances, discharging this responsibility can become challenging with age and it may become necessary to share it with the other spouse. Recognizing when and how to share or delegate financial decisions to the spouse is crucial to prevent the risk of financial mismanagement and hardship in old age.

Our study explores this often unspoken transition of financial decision-making power within older couples. We conducted an experiment with Australian heterosexual couples over 60 in which both spouses were given a series of financial tasks that became progressively more difficult. Participants could complete the tasks themselves or delegate all or some of them to their partner. The results showed a startling gender imbalance in delegation: women were 25 times more likely than men to share financial decision-making responsibilities with their spouses. In fact, less than 5% of men delegated a single task to their partner.

The gender difference in delegation behaviour persisted even after accounting for differences in the financial competence, education, age, or cognitive status of the spouses, which suggests that gender identity and expectations play a pivotal role in the handing over of financial decision-making responsibilities to the spouse. If financial decision-making is seen as primarily ‘men’s work’, there may be reluctance among men to give up these responsibilities due to the fear of losing their identity. Overconfidence, more prevalent among men, may also have had a role to play.

The implications of these findings are profound, especially when considering that women often outlive their partners and could be left unprepared to manage finances in the absence or incapacity of their husbands. Therefore, any adverse consequence of poor financial decisions in old age would disproportionately fall upon women. As society continues to evolve, there is an increasing need to address this disparity and foster an environment in which both men and women are equally empowered to make financial decisions that will secure their future well-being.

Delegation is never easy as human beings find it difficult to give up control. Moreover, perceived level of autonomy or control over one’s own affairs is found to be an important marker of life satisfaction in old age. One of the aims of our study was to explore whether the level of control one has over the delegation process is related to their willingness to delegate. To examine this, we randomly assigned the research participants to two groups. Participants in the first group had the option to delegate to their spouse whichever task(s) they wanted to. However, in the second group, once a participant chose to delegate a task, all subsequent tasks also got automatically transferred to their spouse. We found that those in the first group delegated more often than those in the second, which suggests that having greater control over how delegation takes place can make individuals more willing to give up control when necessary. This finding has important practical implications related to substituted decision-making mechanisms, such as Power of Attorney, among the elderly population. A better understanding of provisions such as the authority to revoke a Power of Attorney or using a “springing” Power of Attorney (which becomes effective only upon the occurrence of specific events) may encourage older people to put in place such arrangements in a timely manner.

This study is a stepping stone towards understanding and developing systems that support gender equitable financial planning and decision-making in old age. It invites us to look at our close relationships and consider how we can build resilience into our financial lives, preparing for a future where both partners are informed, involved, and ready to take the helm when required.

Please find the full Open Access article by the authors on the Gender & Society SAGE website at LOOSENING THE GRIP: Delegation of Financial Decision-Making to Spouse in Old Age.

The Intersectionality of Parenting Rights

How Racist and Anti-Trans Stereotypes Work Together in Adoption and Custody Disputes

By Derek Siegel

Anti-trans legislation is at an all-time high. In 2023, 49 U.S. states proposed almost 600 anti-trans bills that would restrict access to gender-affirming care, ban mentions of LGBTQ people from K-12 schools, and ban trans women and girls from joining women’s sports teams. Bans have been proposed even in places where no trans athletes have knowingly participated, let alone “dominated” the sport. But what does this have to do with parenting and reproductive justice?

I’ve written elsewhere about anti-LGBTQ stereotypes that create barriers to parenting and about

the joys of trans motherhood. After all, it’s important to highlight the families and communities that trans women build for themselves despite racial, class, and gender inequalities.  

In my recently published article for Gender & Society, I discuss how particular stereotypes about trans women (i.e., that they are dangerous, deceptive, and not “real women”) shape their ability to secure and maintain parenting rights. More specifically, I interviewed 54 trans women across race and class backgrounds—both current and prospective parents—and asked them about their experiences of adoption and custody. I consider the role that judges, case workers, and everyday people play in limiting or expanding trans people’s access to parenting rights. I also argue that the policing of transgender mothers heightens discrimination against anyone who is perceived to violate mainstream norms of gender, motherhood, and femininity.

The concepts of “parental fitness” and “best interest of the child” (which are the legal standards used to grant or deny parenting rights) are notoriously subjective. In 1993, for example, Northwestern University hosted a convening of experts to discuss what constitutes the “best interest of the child.” “Professionals agreed in fewer than 50% of cases,” and even when they did agree, they cited different explanations for their decisions.

In other words, discrimination can occur even in states that have legal protections for trans people. For context, only 28 states explicitly bar discrimination based on gender identity, while 13 states have “religious freedom” clauses that permit legal discrimination.

Some of the women I interviewed experienced open hostility in the courtroom. Maggie, for example, is a white trans woman in her 50s, who had been the sole provider for her two children when their other mother, with whom they didn’t have a relationship, demanded full custody and outed Maggie to the judge. (Maggie is a pseudonym, not her actual name).

She recalls the judge’s immediate prejudice against her as a trans woman, “When we went to court, it didn’t matter what crazy loony shit she did, I was always the bad person, not her…” The judge believed that the children were better off away from Maggie, mandating that they visit a therapist who specializes in gay conversation therapy. She eventually moved across state lines to avoid continued judicial harassment (to a jurisdiction where her kids could choose who they live with regardless of legal parenthood).

Maggie’s experience is awful, but not terribly surprising. We know that the state’s responsibility to promote the “best interest of the child” has been used to target low-income families and families of color. I argue that the increased portrayal of trans women as a threat will inspire judges to become even bolder in using their power to investigate and potentially separate marginalized families. In fact, I think we’re already seeing this. In February 2022, Texas Attorney general Ken Paxton instructed welfare agencies to investigate parents of trans children for child abuse if they help their kids access gender affirming care.

Another participant, Jane, confronts both anti-trans and anti-Black stereotypes in the adoption process: “People judge you because they consider us confused or mentally ill. So they think you’ll not be a [good] parent to the child. It’s been so hard…three years trying to adopt.”

She continues: “I’m a person of color and unemployed, on top of being trans. Being a Black woman who is not working, trying to adopt kids, they’ll ask you how you will raise this child and whether you do drugs … because I’m sorry to say that we’re associated with drugs and crime.”

Judges and case workers, tasked with representing the best interest of the child, might ask these sorts of questions to people of all racial and class backgrounds. To Jane, however, these questions reflect—and I would argue, reinforce—the cultural hysteria surrounding low-income Black mothers in this country. The welfare queen is one of many stereotypes about Black womanhood, including the angry Sapphire and the promiscuous Jezebel.

This portrayal of low-income women of color as “bad mothers” (who fail to meet the standard of white, middle-class womanhood) has dangerous consequences, from sterilization to pushing long-acting birth control methods that are difficult to reverse.

Ultimately, I argue, racist and anti-trans discrimination reinforce one another. Every time a trans woman is policed for not doing womanhood or motherhood in the correct way, it implies there is indeed a “right way” to be a woman or a mother. This matters in the courtroom, where “parental fitness” is conflated with being white, middle-class, and cisgender. It also matters outside the courtroom. For example, trans sports bans disproportionately subject Black and brown cisgender women to “suspicion-based tests” for being “insufficiently feminine.”

By looking at how gender and racial inequalities work together, I have several goals: 1) centering the experiences of trans women of color (who are often left out of research on parenting), and 2) showing that the movements for trans liberation and racial justice are deeply connected, and that we cannot talk about one in isolation from the other.

Derek P. Siegel (they/them) is a PhD Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose work addresses race, class, and gender inequalities with a focus on reproduction, parenting, and family, and transgender people’s experiences in other institutional contexts (i.e., healthcare and the law).

Reconciling normative expectations with stigmatized desires

Straight men and women in Hong Kong’s sex parties

By: Pamela Tsui

How do straight people reconcile their aspirations to conform to normative expectations with their desires for stigmatized sexual exploration? My 29-month ethnographic study investigates this tension between normative aspirations and nonnormative desires among heterosexual, cisgender participants in a sex party club in Hong Kong. These participants, typically embracing their roles as dutiful wives, husbands, daughters, and sons in daily life, discreetly explore their deviant sexual desires within sex parties, which are tightly regulated to ensure confidentiality and safety.

At the core of this study is “bounded nonnormativity,” a concept I coined to capture the tension between normative and nonnormative practices. Bounded nonnormativity manifests in a carved-out space and time where participants can simultaneously maintain respectability in their daily lives while experiencing liberation in their covert activities. Within the confines of sex parties, conventional gender norms and monogamous expectations are temporarily set aside, offering a place for the exploration of a diverse array of sexual desires and practices. Despite diverging from mainstream norms, the bounded practices paradoxically neither challenge nor disrupt the existing social order. Instead, they serve as a coping mechanism, compartmentalizing participants’ normative daily lives and their nonnormative intimate pursuits.

My study highlights distinct gender-based experiences in managing normative pressures. Men find these sex parties a refuge from the burdens of maintaining a respectable masculine facade, enjoying a space for truthful sexual expressions and the fulfillment of being desired. Women, conversely, perceive these parties as safer and more satisfying alternatives to their usual sexual encounters in long-term relationships or casual sex, often tainted by threats of sexual violence and a lack of gratification. In these parties, women feel empowered to assert and explore their sexual desires with less fear or judgment.

Set against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s social context, my study also examines the impact of familial expectations and parental control on adult sexuality. Participants of all ages and genders struggle with the pressure to conform to the regulatory norms of chastity, monogamy, and heterosexuality. This pressure is particularly acute among young women, who express a palpable fear of their foray into sex parties being uncovered by their parents.

Bounded nonnormativity primarily serves as an escape from the regime of normalcy, yet it also harbors the potential to transform heteronormative sexual boundaries. A notable example is the “King’s Game,” a recurring activity at the parties, which sheds light on how straight men navigate and reinterpret same-sex encounters. In this game, men are sometimes tasked to perform oral sex on another man. The implications of the King’s Game are double-edged. On one hand, it reflects underlying homophobia within the parties, as the act’s perceived challenge to straight masculinity is what gives it a sensational aspect. On the other hand, through repeated playful enactments, the participants’ attitudes towards queer sexuality evolve.

A participant, pseudonymously named Richard, exemplifies this shift. Initially, he steered clear of homoerotic encounters, finding his first same-sex fellatio experience in King’s Game deeply uncomfortable. However, after two years of participation in the parties, his attitude shifted to a more playful acceptance in subsequent King’s Games, showing that he no longer perceived the homoerotic act as transgressive of his personal boundaries. Richard’s transformation, although far from subversive, is significant. As he recounted, “When I first joined the club, I’d definitely avoid anal sex or men [as sexual partners]. But if you ask me now, I think it depends on who that person is. There is no particular act but only particular persons that I am averse to.” This shift demonstrates how prolonged engagement in nonnormative sexual activities can blur one’s sexual boundaries and challenge established norms.

Aurora’s story is another example of transformation, suggesting the queering potential of bounded nonnormativity. Initially conforming to heteronormative expectations, Aurora was primarily attracted to men, an orientation influenced by her peers during her school years. Her involvement with the sex party club, however, provided a more inclusive environment that encouraged her to explore and experiment with her sexuality. As she expressed, “It was only after joining the club that I began having sex with women, as I became courageous to be more open about myself . . . I talked to the club’s organizer about it because I didn’t know any friends to talk to about these issues . . . After talking to him, I felt more liberated and embraced the idea of pursuing further [intimate] relationships with women.” Aurora’s journey through the club led her to a queering process, where she felt empowered to explore relationships with women, a significant shift from her previous orientation​​.

This study offers valuable insights into the regime of normalcy, revealing the varied ways in which men and women navigate and contend with the pressures of institutionalized heterosexuality and compulsory monogamy. In the context of Hong Kong’s evolving socio-political environment, the potential of bounded nonnormativity emerges as a critical focus. As formal, democratic channels for feminist and queer advocacy constrict, the latent potential within these nonnormative spaces in grassroot organizations may offer subtle yet precious opportunities for change in an increasingly repressive society.

Pamela P. Tsui is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Toronto.

“SORRY, I HAVE A BOYFRIEND:” WHEN STRAIGHT IS STRATEGIC

By Rebecca Lennox, Ph.D.

Hollywood movie producers and feminist researchers offer divergent portraits of heterosexuality. The Hollywood portrait is epitomized in the romcom, a genre that travels a narrative pattern in which a man and woman meet unexpectedly, fall in love, and abruptly encounter an insurmountable barrier to being together.

In The Adjustment Bureau, for example, David (Matt Damon) and Elise (Emily Blunt) are separated by an omnipotent Chairman who has already written separate futures for each of them. Resolved to thwart the Chairman’s plan to keep him away from Elise, David (Damon) gatecrashes Elise’s (Blunt’s) wedding to another man and drags her barefoot through the streets of New York in a dramatic bid to outrun the members of the Chairman’s adjustment bureau. He kisses Elise as members of the adjustment bureau close in. Instead of being disciplined by the Chairman, David and Elise are instead invited to rewrite their own futures for themselves. Echoing the narrative arc of When Harry Met Sally, Bridget Jones Diary, and Pretty Woman, true (straight) love, once again, conquers all.

Whether in The Adjustment Bureau,the fairytale weddings of Friends and the Gilmore Girls, or the diamonds that sparkle out of thick bridal magazines, the Hollywood portrait of heterosexuality is decidedly rose-colored.

Feminist scholars have disrupted this portrait of heterosexuality by pointing to the coercive cultural, social, and economic forces that make heterosexuality a compulsory survival strategy for women. As Jane Ward puts it in her 2020 book The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, “[women’s] sexual relationships with men have been maintained by force, both through cultural propaganda targeting girls and women and more directly through sexual assault, incest, compulsory marriage, economic dependence, control of children, and domestic violence.”

My recent study contributes to a feminist and queer tradition of research on heterosexuality that commits to “seeing straight” and rendering heterosexuality visible as a social institution that normalizes inequalities between men and women, and between straight and queer people. Cognizant of the ways in which feminist framings of compulsory heterosexuality may represent women as masochistic, I answer recent calls to redress the pessimism implicit in representations of straight feminine sexualities as “passive, dependent, dominated, and sexually objectified.” My research thus foregrounds cis, trans, straight, and queer women’s agency in navigating pervasive pressures to be, look, and act straight.

To uncover how women might exercise agency by participating in heterosexuality, I analyze 113 interviews in which I talked with women about their experiences of sexualized come-ons and hostile put-downs in public places.

Women’s stories in interviews show that they creatively repurpose heterosexuality to prevent unwanted stranger harassment in public places. Whether or not they identify as “straight,” queer, trans, cis, and heterosexual women hold the hands of men friends, wear fake wedding and engagement rings, and display affection for men friends to deter stranger men’s unwelcome intrusions. In so doing, women creatively “do heterosexuality,” repurposing an oppressive social structure to create everyday dignity.

By performing straight romantic relationships—and marking themselves as the taken, sexually respectable figures that are idealized in romcoms and bridal magazines—women experience a liberating reprieve from stranger harassment. For example, as Jessica, a white cis woman in her mid-twenties told me:

I do feel safer…with my partner. … There’s something about it I can’t really pinpoint. … Since I’ve been with my partner, I don’t get catcalled nearly as much. … It’s phenomenal! It’s like they really do just respect…any man. My boyfriend is skinny and short, so it’s not…a big buff thing. It’s really just the presence of a man.

While for Jessica, putting in the labor of looking straight is a worthwhile tradeoff for safety, the math behind “doing heterosexuality” was not straightforward for some of the women I talked with. For racialized, queer, and trans women, the labor of looking straight could be draining—even when it was successful in preventing harassment. As Michelle, a white trans woman told me:

[P]eople assum[e] that I’m from the gutter because I’m trans. … They just assume you’re this freak of nature that wants to jump on all of them. … [S]ome of my gay guy friends, I’ve grabbed their hands in situations, but I wish it didn’t have to be that way. Unfortunately, that’s a thing.

For Michelle, and for other trans, racialized, and queer women I interviewed, “doing heterosexuality” was exhausting—it was an emotionally draining activity that brought only limited respite from transphobic, racist, and homophobic gender harassment.

In emphasizing straight, queer, cis, and trans women’s agency in repurposing heterosexuality, my research invites readers to think about heterosexuality as a performance: to unlink sexuality from the body and recognize the ways in which our sexual and romantic arrangements are structured by forces that extend far beyond the Hollywood portrait of unstoppable love.

At the same time, my conversations with a diverse group of women emphasize the negative impacts of “doing heterosexuality,” particularly in the lives of women who are trans, racially marginalized, and queer. This finding underscores the urgent need for safe, inclusive public spaces in which diverse groups of women can meet with friends, run errands, and use public transit unburdened by the labor of performing heterosexuality, and free from the indignity and disrespect of gender harassment.

Rebecca Lennox is an Assistant Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She studies how structural inequalities are transformed and reproduced in everyday stranger interaction. She has written about women’s fear of crime, public perceptions of criminal legal system legitimacy, and gendered public safety messaging. She teaches courses on gender, qualitative research methods, and violence against women.

“When Family Members Refuse the Gender of Trans and Nonbinary People”

By Amy L. Stone

Arjana is a 28-year-old bisexual, multiracial, trans woman from San Antonio, Texas, with beautiful hair and an expressive face. She leans in closer with a face full of emotion as she describes cutting off contact with her stepfather, who had been physically abusive towards her as a child. “I felt like he made it his mission to try to make me not become this,” Arjana reflects. She started to estrange her stepfather after a conversation they had when she was in her early twenties. Arjana looked very “womanly” when she went to visit him and her mother. She remembered, “I wanted him to say something to confirm, I wanted him to call me ‘beautiful’ for once.” Yet, her stepfather adamantly refused to do so, and Arjana decided that “I cannot put up with being called out of my gender anymore.”

Similar experiences were described over and over again in our interviews with 25 transgender and nonbinary adults in South Texas. Trans and nonbinary people who had experienced abuse and instabilities in their families decided to  cut off contact with relatives when those family members invalidated their gender, rather than for a host of other possible reasons. We call this phenomenon “refusing gender.” Other people recognizing one’s gender identity is an important part of feeling like one belongs, and getting refused instead of recognized by others is painful.

We describe four important aspects of “refusing gender” in our article: it is intimate, perceived as intentional, embedded within existing family instabilities, and disruptive of family relationships. First, refusing gender is very intimate and matters the most when done by family members and partners. Misgendering someone’s name, gender, and pronouns, may feel different when done by a family member or partner, rather than by a stranger. Refusing gender disrupts these family ideals about love, closeness, and growth, and adult children understand this behavior as evidence that parents and other family members are being deliberately unloving.

Second, refusing gender was perceived as intentional. Being misgendered by other people was most painful for trans and nonbinary people when they perceived it as intentional, that the other person knew their gender identity and intentionally refused to recognize it. For example, Sebastian, a 20-year-old Hispanic trans bisexual person, differentiated between accidental and intentional misgendering in his interview. “If someone accidentally calls me the wrong name, I don’t care…as long as I can see you’re putting in the effort,” he explained. However, “when they do it on purpose, like with my dad’s family, I don’t correct them, but I also don’t see them that often…. this is a choice that you are consciously making.” He did not correct his father’s family, because he did not want to be confrontational. But he avoided those family members, because he understood “doing it on purpose” as intentional and controlling. Sebastian, Arjana, and other interviewees interpreted this gender refusal as an intentional, conscious choice. To refuse their gender was to intentionally deny their existence as a trans and nonbinary person in the family. 

Third, refusing gender seemed connected to family instabilities. Family instabilities include issues like housing instability, substance abuse or mental health challenges by adults in the household, and physical or emotional abuse. Almost all the interviewees who described family members refusing their gender also had at least four types of instabilities or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in their childhood. These trans and nonbinary interviewees understood this misgendering as malicious and as fitting into a history of physical and emotional mistreatment from the family member in question.

Fourth, refusing gender disrupts relationships among family members, particularly parents and adult children. Trans and nonbinary interviewees severely reduced or eliminated their contact with family members who refused their gender as a way of protecting themselves. Even interviewees who described significant abuse or neglect in their childhoods experienced family members refusing their gender as the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” in their relationship. A few Black trans and nonbinary interviewees became homeless due to this estrangement, but they argued that the distance was beneficial for their mental health. Why is refusing gender so important to understand? Refusing gender helps us understand how some trans and nonbinary people experience family life as adults. This concept also provides a window in the deep investments that many family members have in keeping all family members cisgender. By refusing gender, instead of correctly gendering family members, families work to remain cisgender.

For more on this, please find the full article online here, “REFUSING GENDER: INTIMATE (MIS)RECOGNITION OF GENDER IDENTITY AND ITS RELATION TO FAMILY INSTABILITIES”

Amy L. Stone (they/them) is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Trinity University and author of books about LGBTQ life, including Queer Carnival: Festivals & Mardi Gras in the South and Cornyation: San Antonio’s Outrageous Fiesta Tradition. You can find Professor Stone on X/Twitter: @amylstone1