<p> This transdisciplinary inquiry is about (de)positioning the (hetero)normative model of identity and facilitating systemic equity for the trans*/gender non-conforming community. The purpose of this research is to explore how the positioning of a heteronormative model of identity is socially and culturally constructed and positioned as normative and can be depositioned by a transformation of social consciousness regarding sexual and gender identity formation. </p><p> This dissertation examines some of the theories that have shaped the U. S. based social and cultural formations of gender and sexual identity, created and evolved U.S. social movements of politics and identity, and shaped the U.S. systemic language used to create categories of gender and sexual identities. The goals of this dissertation are to (1) understand and demonstrate the positioning of social norms regarding sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression, and; (2) employ this understanding in order to suggest and facilitate a framework for the transformation of social consciousness. </p><p> Through these processes, I analyze feminist theory, queer theory, communication theory, and systems theory by bracketing, bridging, and creating transitions zones to develop a metatheory that I call <i>trans*/gender non-conforming standpoint epistemology of identity formation.</i> </p><p> The implications of this study are to locate the nexus of normative social identities and those correlations to systemic equity. Further implications include an impetus of the transformation of social consciousness regarding all gender and sexual identity formation.</p>

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abstract: ABSTRACT For almost a decade now, the Greek economic crisis has crippled the Greek nation and its citizenry. High unemployment rates as well as increased levels of homelessness and suicide are only some of the social repercussions of the collapse of the economic system. While we know much about the impact of this crisis on Greek citizens, the literature surrounding the crisis lacks a full range of perspectives and experiences. This project works to fill-in the gaps surrounding the Greek economic crisis and the specific experiences of undocumented, immigrant, domestic workers. Looking at the ways in which these women exist in a constant state of violence, fear, and suffering I identify normalized violence in two main arenas: state/institutional and quotidian/everyday acts. Borrowing from Cecilia Menijvar’s pillars of normalized violence (2011), this work identifies the ways in which state-sponsored bureaucratic violence leads to real suffering and fear exemplified in moments of quotidian violence. Understanding the unique experiences of these women, works to weave together a more nuanced understanding of the impacts of the Greek economic crisis. Along with these moments of violence, this ethnographic inspired project highlights modes of survival, resistance, and resilience employed by these women in response to their violent circumstances. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Gender Studies 2017

<p> Paulo Freire stated that there are two ways to be in this world: a "non-reflexive" one, which implies being an object of the history, and a "critical" one, which means being a historical subject. As part of his pedagogy, this Brazilian educator designed a transition methodology between one conscience and the other, in order to liberate the oppressed people. This proposal has been applied in a wide variety of contexts throughout the world, not only in populations with limited resources. However, there is little literature on these processes. This work is an ethnographic research that focuses on the experience of promoting indigenous women (factory workers, domestic workers, store sellers) with low schooling, who become teachers of high academic and human quality within a Freirean project of Popular Education and Local Development of INEPE (community-based organization from La Dolorosa de Chilibulo / Isoloma) in Quito - Ecuador. It is argued that the agency (conceived as the act of educating for freedom) is part of the development of critical awareness of these indigenous women; and also, that these are simultaneous, collective and spiral processes, driven by solidarity, participation and dialogue of knowledges.</p><p>

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-124). / This research explores the meanings of marriage for South African lesbian women who have accessed marriage as a legal right through the Civil Union Act since its inception in 2006. As a researcher coming from the United States, where same-sex marriage is not nationally available, to South Africa, where same-sex marriage is a constitutionally recognised legal right, my research began with the question, "What has changed?" Because same -sex marriage is highly contested in disparate global spaces, an understanding of how the legislation is being used by those accessing it has the potential to contribute to a body of knowledge encouraging more inclusive legal relationship recognition in spaces where same-sex marriage is not yet legally available. The research makes use of semi-structured in depth interviews with 15 South African lesbian women who have married through the Civil Union Act. The women come from diverse "racial", religious and socio-economic backgrounds. Calling on feminist frameworks theorising marriage as an institution which has historically restricted women's social, political and economic autonomy, in addition to literature framing marriage as a contemporary "battle ground" for human rights, the research attempts to conceptualise the relationship of married lesbian women to their citizenship through their experiences of accessing a legal right embedded in specific cultural, social and religious meanings. The research concludes that while a right critical to the experience of citizenship is being exercised by lesbian women in South Africa, the richer experience theorized as "belonging" has not been fully inscribed in their lived realities. For the lesbian women represented in this research, marriage involves a re- examination of their partnerships as a precondition for the "traditional" celebratory involvement of family and community. Therefore, while marriage has been understood to embody both legal and symbolic meanings, viewing marriage as a human rights issue reveals a fracture between the legal aspects of the institution and the socio-religious contexts that lend it its authority. The research attempts to identify alternative ways of viewing marriage and family constructions by privileging the experience of lesbian women who have accessed marriage from their diverse social and cultural "sites". The research suggests that theorizing marriage from the site of the partners' happiness or fulfilment is a powerful lens with which to destabilise the dominant discourses of respectability most commonly invoked as a point of departure for discussions around same-sex marriage.

There is an overwhelming body of research in the Global North that focuses on the narratives of the impact of a spinal cord injury on men living with paraplegia, while existing research in South Africa and the Global South lacks knowledge on these narratives. This study explored the narratives on the impact of a spinal cord injury on fifteen coloured men living with paraplegia on the Cape Flats. This study adopted a life story approach, as a primary research methodology, and examined how these men constructed and told their life stories, how meanings and experiences of living with paraplegia were conveyed, and how they negotiated the intersection of disability, masculinity, race, class and sexuality in their lives. A participatory action research (PAR) methodology, photo-voice, was used as a complimentary methodology which depicted how these men visually represented the way they think main-stream society sees them and the way they see themselves. Drawing on Frank’s (1995) work on narratives and illness, this study used two life stories and theoretically shows how life stories with a central focus on paraplegia as a spinal cord injury are constructed and narrated. Through a narrative thematic analysis, themes and sub-themes highlighted the complexities and tensions in the construction and performance of masculinities after the injury. The following themes emerged from the narratives: feelings of shame and infantilization, a loss of independency, dehumanizing social perceptions of being a man living with a disability, vulnerability to violence, and challenges in sexual intercourse and intimacy. The narratives also show that a man in this context can develop a positive sense of self through learning to live independently, strategies to prevent violence, redefining sex, and redefining what it means to be a man and ‘disabled’.

Initiating this research project I reflected on the subject of popular and youth culture, gender and sexuality; which then drove me to consider an analysis of dress codes and fashion in regards to notions of female respectability. Through my research process, I have often thought that I had digressed considerably; yet as I begin to narrate this story I am both surprised and amazed to find that this is in fact what I have done and thankfully, I believe I have done more. This "full circle," in thinking, doing and now presenting new knowledge was initiated in part due to a personal interest in the gendered socio-political, economic and historical meanings attached to the body surface as a whole, which I soon changed to a consideration of both the bodily surface and its interior. As stated in my research proposal, it was my contention that the female body, as opposed to the normative (or rather socially normalized) male body, has been discursively constructed as defiled, unclean and as reeking with sickness according to dominant paradigms of knowledge and social practice. Through the processes of conquest, colonialism, imperialism, racism and apartheid; black people and especially black women's bodies have suffered this violence. I have an interest in dissecting the manner by which such discourses then translate into common-sense understandings about how we both dress and perform our bodies in various social spaces; about how we begin to construct the discourse of "our culture," of good girls and social misfits, who wear the labels of "prostitute," "lesbian," or "rural," (despite their true actions or conditions) within urban spaces in contemporary Southern Africa; considering the impact of the history of a geographical apartheid, a migrant labour system, the production and re/production of notions of femininity closely associated with domesticity and the very dominant narrative of female respectability.

Includes bibliographical references (150-157). / This research was carried out in Langa Township, Cape Town and worked with 7 young black women, between the ages of 19 and 26 years old. The aim was to explore the fluidity of identity, in particular gender identity, by exploring the performance of 'normative' femininity and 'hidden/subversive' femininity performed in different spaces. The focus was on 'hidden/subversive' femininity and the experiences of pleasure and danger in clubs spaces in Cape Town. It was found that these experiences centre on appearance, use of alcohol and dancing and expose the way in which young women negotiate between the pleasurable and dangerous that, consciously or unconsciously, push the boundaries of entrenched gender norms. In addition, owing 10 the nature of the research, constructions of masculinity were also explored and discovered to have a profound impact on young women's experiences within club spaces and in their everyday lives, relating to sexual relationships. This study aims to reveal the power and agency of young women, as well as the struggles and restrictions.

The metropolis has featured prominently in queer theory, cultural productions and advocacy work as the ideal site of queer life (Massad, 2002; Gray, 2009; Herring, 2010). Because of the concentration of resources in the metropole and discursive investments in locating ‘outof-the-way places’ (Tsing, 1993) at a temporal and geographic distance from metropolitan centres, I argue that queer organising in ‘out-of-the-way places’ is ‘southerned’. In other words, work that happens at the geographic margins continues to be rendered unrecognisable in a metric of ‘rights’, generated in a specific location and projected as ‘universal’. This dissertation is an account of the way that ‘discursive formations’ (Foucault 1972) shape the context for queer presence and work in ‘out-of-the-way places.’ The ethnographic work presented here was conducted in the United States South and South Africa over a period of two years, during which I collected and analysed public presentations and semi-structured in-depth interviews thematically and with discourse analysis. Through field work in two ‘souths’, the analysis presented here is situated in relation to a body of theoretical work that is interested in spatial and temporal politics of sexuality that frame ‘out-of-the-way places’ as inhospitable to queer existence. The hegemonic discourses of ‘rights’ generated in the metropole renders the kinds of work and existence carried out by queer bodies in ‘out-of-the-way places’ illegible. Queer work is ongoing in ‘out-of-the-way places’. This dissertation seeks to understand how that work is shaped both by the contexts in which the work unfolds and by the metronormative demands placed on what working queerly is supposed to look like. The research concludes that the complexities of queer existence and queer work in the ‘two souths’ represented here must be understood on their own terms rather than through the reductive lens of expectations and interpretations projected from the metropole. In order for queer work to thrive in ‘out-of-the-way places’, historical and contemporary issues that are residues of colonial legacies of resource extraction, violence, exploitation, environmental degradation and restricted access to a range of things not reducible to the metronormative rubric of ‘rights’ must be addressed.