Becoming Knowably Gendered: The Production of Transgender Possibilities in the Mass and Alternative Press

In this paper, I examine the production of the category “transgenderÀ by the trans community press and the mainstream news media. I find that in the 1990s transgender was defined broadly, including a number of previously unnamed gender practices. This definition made these ways of doing gender legible and those who do them recognizable as human. These definitions quickly spread to the mainstream news media, paving the way for social understandings of “genderÀ to change significantly. But, although the usage of and ultimate acceptance of transgender expands the possible ways of living, like all categories, it also constrained possible ways of living. For example, as “transgenderÀ was (re)produced within the mainstream press, it came to mean people who were not “real womenÀ or “real men.À As transgender replaced and encompassed “transsexualÀ in the mainstream press, people who had “sex-changeÀ surgeries were understood as transgender rather than as men or women. Furthermore, although “transgenderÀ made more ways of doing gender legitimate, in making previously illegible genders readable it reproduced the idea that all people have a knowable gender, thus reinforcing the norm of knowability.

Publisher: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Sheraton Boston and the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, MA, Jul 31, 2008
Year of Publication: 2008