Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-50).

Thesis (M.S.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2009. / Thesis advisor: Jane Fried. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Counseling." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 26-28). Also available via the World Wide Web.

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Relationships in which one partner is transgender are disproportionately challenging compared to other LGBQ+ relationships (Gamarel et al., 2014; Pulice-Farrow et al., 2017). While research has yet to examine how transgender-cisgender couples experience emotional intimacy, it is theorized that this process may be critical for relationship health during gender transition. This study explored how transgender-cisgender couples experience emotional intimacy during their transition process. Symbolic interactionism was used to examine the questions: (1) How do perceptions of couple emotional intimacy influence how each partner assigns meaning to their experiences with transitioning? and (2) How do partners communicate about their emotional experiences during their transition process? Constructivist grounded theory was used to analyze individual interviews with 20 transgender and cisgender participants (ten couples) using group-level analysis. The process model that emerged from the data indicated that transgender and cisgender partners experienced emotional tensions internally and within their relationships as they created meaning from their experiences with transitioning. Tensions created pathways for partners to emotionally withdraw from or engage in communication about their experiences. Communication processes ebbed and flowed as partners created meaning for their relationship in transition. When couples engaged in communication, they created shared meaning about their experiences and strengthened emotional intimacy. Data revealed that these processes of building and sustaining emotional intimacy were interactional and iterative. Recommendations for research and clinical work with these couples are provided, in light of these findings. / Doctor of Philosophy / Relationships in which one partner is transgender are particularly challenging compared to other LGBQ+ relationships (Gamarel et al., 2014; Pulice-Farrow et al., 2017). Research has yet to examine how transgender (a person whose gender identity does not align with their assigned sex at birth) and cisgender (a person whose gender identity aligns with their assigned sex at birth) intimate partners experience emotional intimacy. However, emotional intimacy may be critical for relationship health during transition (a person's process of developing a gender expression that matches their gender identity). This study explored how transgender-cisgender couples experience emotional intimacy during their transition process. I explored how each partner emotionally experienced their relationship during transition and how partners communicated about their emotional experiences during their transition process. I analyzed individual interviews with 20 transgender and cisgender participants (ten couples) (Charmaz, 2006). The findings revealed that both transgender and cisgender partners experienced emotional tensions within themselves and within their relationships as they created meaning from their experiences with transitioning. While experiencing tensions, partners chose to either engage or withdraw from communication. Communication ebbed and flowed as partners created meaning for their relationship as they transitioned. Efforts to communicate brought couples closer and strengthened emotional intimacy. Recommendations for research and clinical work with these couples are provided.

The purpose of the present study was to determine the current characteristics and needs of the male-to-female transgender voice client. Specifically, what are the current characteristics (e.g. age, marital status, number of children) of the male-to-female transgender client? Does participation in therapy affect overall satisfaction with feminine presentation? Do alternative methods for voice feminization (e.g. DVDs, YouTube, peer mentors) result in similar levels of satisfaction? Lastly, do male-to-female transgender avoid community activities in order to prevent being perceived as male, and can therapy help with this? We evaluated the responses of 77 participants who completed an Internet-based survey. Results were compared to Blanchard’s 1994 study of characteristics of male-to-female transgender persons. Characteristics of the 1994 study and the MtF transgender client of 2010 were comparable, with a slightly older age for the present study. The client was likely to have been married at least once, and to have at least one child. Respondents who had participated in speech therapy were more satisfied with their femininity overall when compared to those who had not received speech services. Satisfaction with alternative methods was low. In addition, both groups reported a high level of avoidant activities based on fear of being perceived as male. / text

Male-to-female transgender clients seek therapy to learn to safely modify their voices in order to sound more feminine. Unfortunately, to this author’s knowledge, there are no data that report the number of transgender individuals who are actively seeking speech therapy, nor any accurate estimate of the number of transgender individuals in the United States. Moreover, current resources for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) lack up-to-date, comprehensive information about assessing and treating transgender clients. The present handbook will provide the most recent research related to appropriate therapeutic guidelines and activities to SLPs and SLP graduate students. In specific, the handbook will include research and techniques for modifying pitch, resonance, intonation, semantics, and nonverbal communication for transgender women. Moreover, the handbook will include background information about the current issues transgender women face in society and in seeking medical treatment. / text

This thesis explores how transgender identities are constructed and discursively produced in the socio-historical context of the early twenty-first century. In so doing, it addresses the relationship between experience and discourse. I examine the ways in which identities are embodied and articulated through an analysis of interviews with self-identified transgendered people. Chapter one outlines the key aims of this thesis, including situating myself as a researcher and how I came to be doing this. Chapter two explores the historical and cultural conditions within which sexed and gendered identities are constructed. Theoretical debates have mainly taken place on the essentialist/constructionist continuum which can usefully be understood as connoting a space between fixed identities and fluid social processes. Much has been written on what sex and gender are, and are not, and most of this work underplays the importance of the heterosexual matrix as the source of sex and gender categorisation. Chapter three describes how the phenomenological approach meets the challenges of engaging with the complexities of sexed and gendered identities in that it focuses on the lived experiences and voices of the eleven participants recruited for the study. I use a narrative approach which illustrates how stories are embedded in social and cultural discourses through which sexed and gendered identities are constructed. Chapter four outlines the personal dissonance experienced by transgendered people when their sexed and gendered identities are not congruent with the binary categories of the western heterosexual matrix. The participants’ stories illustrate that gender is something that is an internal phenomenological “felt” experience in their lives and incongruent with the external identity that society has assigned them. Chapter five illustrates how stories are grounded in cultural and historical discourses. In particular, the participants demonstrate how self esteem and mental health are central to their developing identities and how important it is for them to be in contact with a larger collective identity category. Chapter six and seven explore the two mutually reinforcing processes involved in transitioning — passing and self-identification. Chapter six explores the processes of emotional and physical changes entailed by the various choices transgendered people make about their self-identity and the ensuing action required. Chapter seven examines the process of self-identification, illustrating the hegemonic power of heteronormativity and its understanding of identity and desire. Chapter eight discusses the research findings in relation to heteronormativity. It shows how peoples’ understandings of their sexed and gendered identities challenge hegemonic binaries and their fixed assumptions about sexed, gendered and sexual identities. The participants’ stories show the tension between the limitations of categories that have been available for transgendered people and the lived experience of transgendered subjectivity within which the historical legacy of particular hegemonic categories remain potent. I argue that it is not enough to research into sexed and gendered identities without critically questioning the dominant influence of hegemonic heterosexuality in producing normative accounts of sex, gender and sexuality. The chapter concludes by pointing to how the category of “transgender” has the potential to expose and begin to move beyond the limited conceptual space of heterosexual discourse which depends on binary sexed and gender categories for exploring and understanding erotic relationships. The conclusions drawn from this research propose a commitment to engaging with queer theory as a way of blurring and expanding the definitions of sexed and gendered identities that are regulated by the heterosexual matrix.

Given the rates of discrimination against transgender people and the flaws inherent in existing models of coexistence and allyship, I offer two main concepts to improve trans allyship. First, an ethic of responsible listening, which I explain as the process of opening up discursive spaces for transgender voices to be heard and responded to, based on an obligation to craft dialogue and to recognize trans people as people. In tandem with listening, then, is its result, ally labor: a category of complex practices without guarantee that seek to benefit transgender lives through a process of cis people leveraging their privilege to enable trans people to better navigate systems of oppression. I work through two theoretical questions to help solve the problems with existing theories of allyship: First, how might we move towards more affirming modes of coexistence that allow for difference with the goal of recognizing transgender people as equal members of society? And second, how might we practice allyship differently through listening to voices that have traditionally been marginalized? Working through these questions, I critique existing coexistence discourses and look toward modes of enacting a more productive discourse of allyship. In order to move beyond understandings of allyship that focus on identity categories, diversity and inclusion discourses, institutional response, and education, we can think of allyship differently, as an ethical orientation that facilitates those who are different from one another living and existing together. I forward a rhetoric of allyship through this dissertation, which I define as the discourses that circulate, modify, and extend the meanings of allies and ally labor, a rhetoric that works to understand how trans and cis people can better coexist together, given an intervention that focuses on trans vernacular voices in order to build and maintain this rhetoric. Intervening rhetorically allows a focus on the ways that discourses are malleable, contingent, and balance the universal and particular. In order to do so, I analyze a variety of texts: from popular media coverage of trans celebrities and fictional film and televisual representations to understand the ambivalence of visibility, to ally training manuals from colleges and universities across the United States to parse through the logics of ally training programs, to blogs, zines, and online magazines that craft definitions of solidarity from activists, ending with an qualitative analysis of interviews with 13 transgender people in order to better understand the unique and varied needs of trans people to craft a more holistic version of allyship.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 137 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.