Transmisogyny

This article takes as its starting point a recent appearance by musician, actress, and TransTech Social Enterprises CEO Angelica Ross on Caitlyn Jenner's reality television show, I Am Cait. The first section places Ross's exegesis in conversation with C. Riley Snorton on the representation of Black sexual duplicity in popular culture and Audre Lorde's critique of white saviorism. Part 2 turns to contemporary discourses of transmisogyny and demonstrates that the term is ill equipped to address the structures of power that manifested in I Am Cait. The discussion suggests that race and class surreptitiously impact the emergence and circulation of transmisogyny as an analytic. Julia Serano's scholarship is read alongside Marlon B. Ross on the universalization of whiteness in theories of gender and sexuality. A final, briefer section posits alternative genealogies of trans feminism that focalize the writing, activism, and performance work of trans women of color.

Passing Through Divinity is a research project looking at the discrimination religious trans women face and how religiosity can be a factor for resiliency. The process included interviews with six religious transsexual and transgender women (five participants and the researcher) living in Southern Ontario. The focus was to discuss the transmisogyny, the hatred and widespread discrimination against trans women, and religious discrimination they experience as well
as how religiosity helped trans women challenge oppression. The participants came from Santeria, Reform Jewish, Christian (Anglican, Deaf Church, Quaker) and Heathen communities. The aim of my research is to build knowledge for understanding the various ways that religion can allow trans women to resist oppression and exploring how that knowledge can be used by social service professionals to better provide support for other trans women.

Employment discrimination remains a consistent and widespread concern among transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) people. A secondary data analysis was conducted using the Transgender Law Center California Economic Health Survey (n = 646). The aim of this study was to examine workplace discrimination among transgender and gender non-conforming adults. Sexual citizenship theory informed both the grouping of variables and analysis of findings. Bivariate, multivariate, and multivariable statistical tests were conducted to examine problems related to hiring and to various forms of workplace harassment. Analyses revealed that about 67% of respondents reported some kind of workplace mistreatment. Trans men (FtM) were 132.6% more likely to report discrimination in the workplace (chiefly misgendering and privacy breach), while trans women (MtF) were more likely to experience a wider variety of types of discrimination. Respondents out to their co-workers were 292.4% more likely to expe...

The notions of gender transgression and gender policing served as the basis for this presentation. Looking at the historical representations in media, major stories in the social awareness of transgender people, and transfeminist politics of the modern era allowed a freedom to look at the roots of trans-misogyny from multiple lenses. I wanted to humanize transgender people and simultaneously address a major question of the day. Namely do trans people have the right to exist in public spaces? This led to several related questions to help frame the issue on a historical and sociological basis and allow a synthesis of the two. I’m also asking why is femininity not more warmly embraced as part of the social justice struggle for gender equality? Why is it seen as inferior to masculinity? Why is gender socialization framed mostly in binary terms instead of acknowledging the variety of gender expression that actually exists? Why is gender fluidity not brought up when discussing gender discrimination? In choosing quotations I wanted to include the best of the writers and theorists from the recent wave of trans activism that has taken place since the 1990s. Additionally, by focusing an entire page on Christine Jorgensen, she is placed at the center of the modern transgender experience where her story belongs. As the first American to receive gender reassignment surgery her impact upon popular culture and trans awareness is staggering, like an atom bomb going off in the middle of the staid cultural landscape of 1950s America.