Although trans* students often face greater levels of discrimination, harassment, and hostility on college campuses than their cisgender peers, research indicated that they can succeed by developing and honing survival strategies, such as resilience and being part of a trans* kinship network that resists trans* oppression. Having the support of family, and by taking the risk to cultivate relationships while in college also improves the likelihood of persistence through college. The term trans* is used in this study as an inclusionary term for transgender persons and other gender nonbinary identities. The purpose of this research study was to explore the experiences that trans* students have while being in college. Utilizing a phenomenological approach and the theoretical lens of feminist and queer theories, semi-structured interviews were conducted to better understand the lived experiences of trans* college students. Four Caucasian trans* undergraduate students, ranging in age from 19 to 25 were each interviewed five times. Twenty total interviews over a period of three months provided in-depth data. Five primary themes emerged that were common among the participants: exploration, experimentation, and self-discovery; living as a trans* person in college: developing survival strategies; cultivating relationships and seeking acceptance; race and gender privilege/power; and generational differences. The findings showed that the participants had educated themselves about their gender identity choices, developed resilience despite facing trans* oppression, cultivated healthy relationships with others, and also how they developed personal meaning-making that is centered on the intersections of their race, gender, and age.

Detta arbete har undersökt vilka strategier spelutvecklare kan använda sig av för att skapapositiv transrepresentation i digitala spel. Vi har identifierat en brist på transkaraktärer ispel och sett återkommande stereotyper bland transkaraktärer i spel och media. Genomsemi-strukturerade intervjuer med tillhörande enkät har 8 transpersoner intervjuats för attsammanställa deras uppfattning om existerande representation samt om två unikatranskaraktärer vi skapat. Resultaten visade att deltagarna anser att det bör skapastranskaraktärer av varierande kroppsformer, bakgrunder, könsuttryck och stadier avtransition för att förstärka att alla transpersoner är olika och att undvika karikatyrer, fokuspå deras trauma och presenterande av alla transpersoner som androgyna. Generellt ansågsvåra karaktärer vara positiva transrepresentationer, däremot är de inte mallar för hur allatranskaraktärer bör designas. Mer forskning behövs för att vidga normalitetsbegreppet förvilka som accepteras i samhället då sättet representation visas påverkar människorsuppfattningar om minoritetsgrupper.

This article focuses on the dialogues within and between Disney's The Princess and The Frog and a 1930s animated series about a young Black boy-Little Ol' Bosko. Both films feature Black characters who navigate a fairy tale world set in the swamps of southern Jim Crow era America in which they grapple with fears about reductive and demeaning black film stereotypes. Although they are in some ways trapped within the white gaze of the film's meaning, I argue that in their fantasies, both Bosko and Tiana outmaneuver the regime of representation that underlies racial stereotyping, opening a space for trans-coding and revision of its meanings. In addition, a comparison of the films demonstrates a clear improvement from the 1930s in terms of an increased differentiation in the representation of Black Americans, acknowledging, if not embodying, the fact that "Black America" is a diverse and complex reality.

This essay explores how, for many minoritized peoples, cyborg ontology is experienced as dehumanizing rather than posthumanizing. Rereading Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto through a decolonial, transfeminist lens, it explores the implications of Haraway’s assertion that cyborg subjectivity is the “illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism” by examining the modern/colonial development and deployment of microprosthetic hormonal technologies–so often heralded as one of the technologies ushering in a queer, posthuman, post-gender future–as mechanisms of gendered and racialized subjective control operative at the level of the biomolecular.

Recent years have seen an unprecedented paradigm shift wherein pathologizing approaches to caring for trans children have been contested by efforts to accept and affirm trans children as their self-determined gender. This has resulted in a mainstreaming of gender affirming and de-pathologizing approaches to caring for trans children. While gender affirming care undoubtedly benefits many trans children, this research analyzes the ways in which practices and delivery of gender affirming care can be exclusionary of children who do not fit within a normative, binary, medicalized, white, and middle-class conceptualization of trans childhood. Applying critical social citizenship as a theoretical framework, this research argues that care for trans children is shaped through a complex interweaving of normative liberal citizenship regimes, professional and social care practices, and relational care practices that seek to recognize and create space for children to belong as their self-determined gender. Using a community-based research methodology to engage with trans youth and supportive parent caregivers around their experiences of care, this study sought to a) better understand how the contested landscape of care impacts the lives of trans children and b) offer possibilities for transforming care for trans children. Centring the voices and experiences of trans youth and parents, this research argues that trans children face exclusions and barriers when accessing care. This research then discusses what relational care practices, as shared in participant narratives, offer for envisioning care possibilities that centre trans children’s agency and gender self-determination. The outcome of this research is a vision of care for trans children that is rearticulated through a critical theorization of trans children’s citizenship. / Graduate

The essay aims to make a theoretical analysis of the consequenses from violence and its constitution of the subject. With the background of vulnerability for transgendered bodies in prostitition the analysis consist of the discussing reasons for the problematic capability to exit prostitution safely while still being able to dream of a social future life, and further the essay attempt to contribute with a discussion of how the mechanics of violence has fatal impacts for these vulnerable bodies. Conclusively, I will adress the importance of a more poststructural understanding of repercussions of violence to be able to offer an adequate social support. With the basis of a queer perspective of the ontology of death, primarily based on Judith Butler and Martin Heidegger, I will suggest a more radical erotogenizing of the body to constitute itself rather than on the basis hegemonic conventions.

No description available.

No description available.

Ribosomes stall on defective messenger RNA transcripts in eubacteria. Without a mechanism to release stalled ribosomes, these cells would die. Transfer-messenger RNA (tmRNA) and small protein B (SmpB) reactivate stalled ribosomes in a process known as trans-translation. Together, tmRNA and SmpB mimic alanyl-tRNA, entering the A site of stalled ribosomes and accepting transfer of the stalled polypeptide. A portion of tmRNA is then positioned as a template for the ribosome to resume translating. The tmRNA open reading frame encodes a proteolysis tag to mark the aberrant polypeptide for degradation and a stop codon to release the ribosome. How are tmRNA and SmpB allowed into stalled ribosomes? In normal translation, decoding mechanisms carefully monitor the anticodon of tRNAs entering the A site and select only those that are complementary to the mRNA codon. How do tmRNA and SmpB get around the decoding machinery? It appears that interactions between the SmpB C-terminal tail and the decoding center are responsible. Using an in vivo tagging assay and an in vitro peptidyl-transfer assay, we monitored the effect of mutations in the SmpB tail on trans-translation. We found that mutations in SmpB that prevent helix formation are unable to support peptidyl transfer. We also found that while mutation of key nucleotides in the ribosomal decoding center severely inhibit peptidyl transfer to normal tRNAs, these mutations do not inhibit peptidyl transfer to tmRNA. We conclude that the SmpB tail stimulates peptidyl transfer by forming a helix that interacts with the ribosome to signal decoding in a novel manner. How is the tmRNA open reading frame positioned for the ribosome to resume translating? Mutation of the tmRNA nucleotide A86 alters reading frame selection. Using a genetic selection, we identified SmpB mutants that restore normal frame selection to A86C tmRNA without altering frame selection on wild-type tmRNA. Through rational mutation of the SmpB tail we identified an SmpB mutant that supports peptidyl transfer but prevents translation of the tmRNA open reading frame. We conclude that SmpB plays a functional role in selecting the tmRNA open reading frame.

No description available.