Sociology Identity and Joy of Trans Rural Elders Outside the Gender Binary Marcy Cobain Project Mentor(s): Griff Tester, PhD
Research on transgender lives has increased meaningfully. However, this work has centered hardship, medicalization, and binary transition narratives—particularly among younger metropolitan trans women—producing what scholars describe as “damage-centered” accounts. Work on trans elders and rural trans communities similarly centers barriers to care and social isolation, with little attention to holistic identity formation or sources of joy beyond gender itself. Virtually no scholarship addresses elder nonbinary lives in depth. Attending to the “joy deficit” in sociology and drawing on 19 in-depth interviews with trans elders who have ties to non-metro areas of the Pacific Northwest, this paper centers five participants outside the gender binary to examine how joy emerges across the life course. Rather than treating gender as the singular analytic focus, this study explores how participants interpret joy through other aspects of their identities. All participants came of age without language such as “nonbinary” or “two-spirit,” developing robust identities prior to naming their gender diversity. These narratives point toward an understanding of “un-gender”: an experience not of occupying a third gender category, but of living beyond the binary blueprint itself. Attending to un-gender complicates categorical research practices and calls for more expansive approaches to studying gender-diverse elders’ lives. As trans joy was my entry point for this research, I found that what participants reported about joy and hardship did not contradict existing literature. What was expanded on was things they reported when asked about joy—community, civic service, family, love—were integral parts of how they saw themselves, beyond gender.
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation (May 20, 9:30am–5:00pm) Keywords : Gender, Gerontology, Gender diversity, Identity, Rurality SOURCE Form ID: 69
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