“To(o) Queer the Chican@s: Disrupting Genders in the Post-Borderlands" examines representations of non-normative genders and sexualities in Mexican American literature. / text

Studiens övergripande syfte är att göra en kvalitativ studie om hur transpersoners livsvillkor påverkas av deras könsidentitet, könsuttryck samt heteronormen. Ytterligare ett syfte var att undersöka hur transpersoner upplever att de blivit bemötta när de passerat som kvinnor och/eller uttryckt en kvinnlig könsidentitet jämfört med när de passerat som män och/eller uttryckt en manlig könsidentitet. Data samlades in genom kvalitativa intervjuer med fem självidentifierade transpersoner, varav tre identifierade sig som MtF (Male to female), en som FtM (Female to male) och en som intergender eller genderqueer. Deltagarna rekryterades med hjälp av Internet samt med hjälp av personliga kontakter. Med utgångspunkt i socialkonstruktivistiska teorier som queerteori har en tematisk analys av insamlad data genomförts, av vilken det framgått att transpersoners livsvillkor i stor utsträckning påverkas av heteronormen samt att de blivit bemötta på mycket olika sätt beroende på om de passerat som män eller kvinnor. Forskning om transpersoner i relation till socialt arbete är i Sverige idag mycket begränsad och denna studie kan på ett småskaligt plan bidra till att fylla det hål som forskning om transpersoner i relation till socialt arbete utgör.

Historically, in academic literature—sociological and otherwise—surrounding the daily lives of LGBT+ people, people who reject binary gender are very marginally represented. In this study, I specifically seek to understand the way my participants articulate their sense of their gender identities through the stories they tell of their experiences. This study attempts to answer the following questions: What are the stories of gender identity construction for people who reject binary gender? How do they understand the ways they are held accountable to binary gender in the day-to-day? How do they perceive and make meaning of gender in their lives? Through ten in-depth interviews with participants accessed through online groups and snowball sampling, this project reinforces gender surveillance and accountability theories such as West and Zimmerman's. Although participants largely identified the root of their feelings about gender as within their selves, the stories they told about their experiences of gender revealed that interactions with others were important and thus have a large effect on their lives. This indicates that these interactions with others where participants are held accountable to binary gender do have an impact on the ways they construct their gender and selves but because this has been such a consistent part of their lives, participants perceive this as innate to their selves and private feelings.

Traditional psychotherapy with transgender clients has focused on helping gender dysphoric individuals assume an "opposite" gender role. However, recently, there have been calls for trans-positive therapy focusing on the exploration and affirmation of alternative gender identifications. The majority of the research on transgender identity has been conducted with male-to-female (MTF) identified, or transfeminine, individuals. Comparatively little attention has been given to the experience of female-to-male (FTM) identified, or transmasculine, individuals. The primary goal of this study was to explore constructs and identify underlying themes that transmasculine people use in constructing their gender identities in order to develop a structural model of transmasculine identity. Broadly speaking, results showed that transmasculine identity may be conceptualized on a continuum from an essentialist binary perspective to a constructivist non-binary perspective. This is reflected in the language the individual uses to self-identify - including identity labels, proper names and pronouns. Individuals define, experience, and embody transmasculine identities differently depending on a number of inter-related constructs including: (1) current stage of identity development and past transmasculine identity development events, (2) conceptions of masculinity and femininity, (3) context, and (4) sexuality. Further, if one of these constructs shifts it usually influences the others. Implications for theory, practice, and future research directions are discussed.

This thesis paper gives a brief history of the vampire narrative and its role in representing the collective anxieties of an age as well as serving as a metaphor for oppressed peoples. It uses Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla as historical examples of how the vampire adapts to suit issues of the day such as reverse colonization and female sexuality, respectively. The latter part of this paper speculates on the future role of the vampire in literature and proposes that the vampire could be used to discuss transgender issues as well as challenge the gender binary. It addresses the suitability of the vampire narrative in particular for representing gender as a spectrum using the lenses of Foucault’s heterotopias, Kristeva’s abject, and Freud’s uncanny and pulls examples of early evidence of this trend from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.

This thesis explores young people’s transgenderings through negotiations of language, bodies and experiences of different peer and community-based support spaces in Aotearoa New Zealand. It critically examines what ‘support’ means for young people in relation to developing subjectivities and embodiments shaped by being both young and transgender/ gender non-conforming. While these perspectives are varied, I argue that the production of community and peer-based support for those who are both young and transgender or gender non-conforming has been undergoing a period of significant change, reflecting queer and postmodern shifts which have worked to re-conceptualise the ways queer and transgender communities and peers are imagined, incorporating a greater inclusive focus on diversity. Utilising Sara Ahmed’s concept of queer phenomenology and post-structuralist theory, the thesis thinks beyond binary approaches to gender and support, to consider support and gender non-conformity through the process of ‘disorientation’. Throughout this project both ‘gender’ and ‘support’ are positioned as being subjective, embodied and discursive knowledges and actions, represented in multiple and contradictory ideas, identities and expressions of the different participants. The study utilises in-depth qualitative interviews with participants who are young people (aged 16-30 years) and support providers and developers of transgender/queer based support in Aotearoa New Zealand. Working with young people and support providers, this research provides an analysis of support development for transgender and gender non-conforming young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, arguing that all participants in support (both providers and recipients) are shaping its provision.

Bakgrund: En transperson är en person vilken delvis eller inte alls identifierar sig med det kön personen tilldelats vid födseln. Transpersoner är en utsatt grupp med sämre psykisk och fysisk hälsa än genomsnittsbefolkningen, detta samtidigt som gruppen söker vård i lägre utsträckning. Syfte: Denna studie syftade till att belysa binära och ickebinära transpersoners upplevelser av bemötandet inom primärvården, detta eftersom primärvården utgör den första instansen i den svenskaevårdkedjan. Metodbeskrivning: En kvalitativ studie med ett strategiskt urval där underlaget utgjordes av sex-intervjuer. Huvudresultat: Transpersonerna i studien uppgav att de ogärna sökte primärvården, en följd av tidigare dåliga vårdkontakter. Personerna upplevde brister i primärvårdens kunskap om transpersoner och att de därför ofta blev tvungna att undervisa vårdpersonalen. Vidare förelåg tankar om att transidentiteten kunde ha en negativ inverkan på bemötandet och vården. Primärvårdens styrkor bestod av personal som ej antog könsidentitet, ställde öppna relevanta frågor och inte utgick från binära könssystem. Det fanns en önskan om stöd och längre vårdkontakter, detta för att minska den oro och stress som deltagarna erfarit inför besök hos primärvården. Avslutningsvis efterfrågades att HBTQ-undervisning integrerades i vårdutbildningar och hos redan verksam personal. Slutsats: Primärvården behöver öka sin kunskap om transpersoner för att kunna ge ett bättre bemötande samt förbättra hälsan inom gruppen. / Background: A transgender person is a person who partially or not at all identifies with the gender that the individual was assigned at birth. Transgender people are a vulnerable group in society with inferior physical and mental health than the average population; meanwhile, the group seeks contact with healthcare in lower frequency than the average population. Aim: This study aimed to illuminate how binary and non-binary transgender people experienced the contact with primary care, since the primary care is the first instance in the Swedish-health-care-system. Method: A qualitative study, with a strategic selection of six individual interviews. Results: The transgender people in the study stated that they were unwilling to seek contact with primary care, as a result of earlier bad meetings. The informants experienced deficits when it came to transgender knowledge in the primary healthcare, and that they many times felt forced to educate the personnel. Furthermore, the participants expressed thoughts that their transgender identity could have a bad impact on their personal treatment and care. The strengths in the primary care consisted in personnel who did not assume gender identity, used open ended questions and abandoned binary gender assumptions. To reduce anxiety and stress there was a wish for more support and continuity in the care. Finally the participants requested LGBT-education in healthcare training programs as well as for the personnel in the sector. Conclusion: To enable improvement of transgender people´s health, the primary healthcare needs to increase their knowledge about transgender identities.

Studiens syfte är att i relation till den pågående covid-19-pandemin fördjupa förståelsen av hurgenderqueera personer i Sverige skattar sitt psykiska mående och sin tillgång till socialt stöd underkristider. Vidare är syftet att identifiera och analysera skillnader mellan hur cis- och genderqueerapersoner i Sverige skattar sitt psykiska mående och sin tillgång till socialt stöd under, och irelation till, samma omständigheter som nyss nämnts. Studien utförs kvantitativt och bygger pådatamaterial från ett internationellt forskningsprojekt som undersöker unga vuxnas psykiskamående i samband med covid-19-pandemin. Med hjälp av korstabeller, t-test och linjäraregressionsanalyser undersöks olika samband mellan skattade svar på skalor utifrån MSPSS ochDASS-21. Studiens resultat diskuteras med koppling till teori och tidigare forskning. Vidarediskuteras de brister som finns i studiens konstruktion. De slutsatser som har signifikans är attgenderqueera personer skattar högre än cispersoner avseende alla studerade former av psykisktmående samt att det finns ett samband mellan genderqueer könsidentitet, lägre skattad tillgång tillsocialt stöd och högre skattad grad av såväl stress, ångest som depression. Sammantaget ärstudiens bidrag till det sociala arbetet inom hälso- och sjukvården att det kan konstateras attgenderqueera personer har större sannolikhet att behöva psykosocialt stöd i samband med en krislikt covid-19-pandemin.

This research is a curiosity for the spaces outside the gender binary, the spaces where an “I” and a “we” could manifest unencumbered by this hierarchical binary[1]. The binary is often in gender research considered a system of understanding sexed peoples in this world based on their differential position in relation to one another. Gender as a “social category imposed on a sexed body”[2] arose in academic usage by feminists in the 1980s, it was introduced to dismantle the idea of separate spheres, and yet it “does not have the power to address existing historical paradigms”[3] and has therefore remained anchored in the idea of two, the male and female identity, and even whilst the idea of male and female social identities has been expanded to contain other sexed and gendered bodies, , the idea of an agendered subject is sparsely addressed. In essence this work seeks to address the binary of existence and non-existence in the bio-social-psychological world that is gender studies, to attempt to find the alchemical magic that creates a new cartography of gender, or at least a sliver of new territory.                Gender is currently one of the base categories of identification in a world built on: §  religious narratives in which “God/s” made only man and woman.  §  biological determination which posits a dependent binary relationship based on gametes.  §  and systemic thinking grounded in Patriarchal thinking.  Whilst the spaces outside the gender binary have become more thinkable in recent decades with the advent of Transgender studies[4] as an academic field, Irigaray[5] offers that the space outside the binary structure offers only “social and psychological damage”[6] to anyone seeking to inhabit it. This thesis thus explores a particular identity cartography which I here call the alchemy of agender, in reference to the potentially mythical, potentially magical space outside of the “norm”.    This research does not claim to cover all theories of power, subjectivity, sexual difference, or the growing body of knowledge within gender studies, pertinently transgender studies, queer studies, and intersectional studies. Conversely, I start from lived experience, both my own; in encountering questions and concerns from the students I teach; and the lived experience of others which manifests in a desire of a community to speak themselves into existence.                In my 8 years of teaching variations of gender studies I have observed that the language and space young people have for imagining and queering their gender has steadily increased. Yet, agender is still very unexplored as a concept, with a constant question of “why do we need gender?” accompanying my student’s reflections. Throughout human history we have examples of agender/non-binary/queer/non-conforming individuals, creating an “I” and a “we” that is outside, beyond or uninhibited by the gender binary, or at the very least the infamous, and equally at times unwelcome, “third wheel” to the binary.    With this research I would like to follow two intertwined threads; a short and questionable diachronic journey of agender; secondly to posit what an “I” and a “we” without and beyond gender might constitute, succinctly to explore how agender/ non-binary identities are formed. Our thought system allows for feminine males and masculine females, or a patchwork of gender traits blended in what is recognized as non-conforming or gender queer, yet I am curious if agendered experiences offer merely another blend or an entire alternative.   In my quest to draw a cartography of agender, I am motivated by the concept of eidetic reduction, this being the Husserlian approach that argues that we can determine the limitations of a phenomena through exploration of lived experiences of that phenomena. For this research, it means gathering experiences from self-identified agender individuals online to determine the essences of this experience. Namely eidetic reduction is when one moves from lived experience, to a more abstract essence, through to a kind of collective categorization of a concept. This is achieved through identifying experiences that are unique to the group in question. In this I am excited to see how exploring agendered experiences can create gender magic, and consequently a possibility to re-imagine who you or I might be.   Succinctly an online ethnographic study of agender discussions will be used to ascertain if there is something unique about the agender experience, how it might differentiate from a trans* experience or a gendered experience.  [1] Scott, J.W. (1986) Gender: A Useful category of Historical Analysis. The American Historical Review, Vol 91, No. 5, pp.[2] Scott, J.W. (1986) Gender: A Useful category of Historical Analysis. The American Historical Review, Vol 91, No. 5, pp.1056[3] Scott, J.W. (1986) Gender: A Useful category of Historical Analysis. The American Historical Review, Vol 91, No. 5, pp.1057[4] In the western world the advent of this field is associated with an article written by Sandy Stone published in 1987 entitled, “The Empire strikes back: A posttranssexual manifesto” (first presented at a UCSC conference entitled "Other Voices, Other Worlds: Questioning Gender and Ethnicity"). [5] Braidotti, R (2003) Becoming Woman: or sexual difference revisited. Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.20, Issue 3, pp. 43-64[6] Braidotti, R (2003) Becoming Woman: or sexual difference revisited. Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.20, Issue 3, pp. 43-64

Research shows that teachers’ and educators’ responses to gender diversity issues in schools either improves or limits the experiences of students. The school counsellor has an important role to play in this process by working closely with other stakeholders to advocate for transgender, intersex and genderqueer (TIG) students. Following a review of recent developments in the USA, recommendations are made and resources identified to assist school counsellors in validating TIG students, and improving school systems in pursuit of their academic, social and emotional success