Table Of ContentRethinking Transgender Identities
This volume explores the diversity and complexity of transgender people’s
experiences and demonstrates that gendered bodies are constructed through
different social, cultural and economic networks and through different spaces
and places.
Rethinking Transgender Identities brings together original research in the form
of interviews, participatory methods, surveys, cultural texts and insightful
commentary. The contributing scholars and activists are located in Aotearoa
New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, Catalan, China, Japan, Scotland, Spain, and the
United States. The collection explores the relationship between transgender
identities and politics, lived realities, strategies, mobilizations, age, ethnicity,
activisms and communities across different spatial scales and times.
Taken together, the chapters extend current research and provide an
authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research, which will appeal to
scholars and graduate students working within the fields of sociology, gender
studies, sexuality and queer studies, family studies, media and cultural studies,
psychology, health, law, criminology, politics and human geography.
Petra L. Doan is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida
State University and a leading international researcher on the topic of trans
geographies and planning.
Lynda Johnston is Professor of Geography at the University of Waikato,
Aotearoa New Zealand, and an expert in feminist, embodied and queer
geographies and more specifically in geographies of gender, sexualities, tourism
and social justice.
Rethinking Transgender
Identities
Reflections from Around the Globe
Edited by Petra L. Doan and
Lynda Johnston
First published 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Petra L. Doan and Lynda Johnston;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Petra L. Doan and Lynda Johnston to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-472-48601-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-12637-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-61370-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315613703
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Contents
List of Figures vii
About the Editors viii
Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction: Under, Beside and Beyond the
Transgender Umbrella 1
PETRA L. DOAN AND LYNDA JOHNSTON
2 Defining a Cross-dresser 13
MIQQI ALICIA GILBERT (AKA MICHAEL A. GILBERT)
3 Brother (“xiong di”) Communities in Mainland China 27
AIWAN LIAO
4 Age, Sexuality and Intersectionalities: Spatial
Experiences of Brazilian Travestis and Transwomen
Aging Process and the Sex Market 44
JOSELI MARIA SILVA, MARIA RODÓ-ZÁRATE AND
MARCIO JOSE ORNAT
5 Social Inclusion: Measuring the Invisible and the
Insignificant 61
CHLOE SCHWENKE
6 Political Entanglements: Practicing, Designing and
Implementing Critical Trans Politics Through Social
Scientific Research 76
RAE ROSENBERG
vi Contents
7 Constructing an Ethics of Depathologization:
Epistemological, Methodological and Ethical
Reflections in Trans and Intersex Studies 91
AMETS SUESS SCHWEND
8 Transnormativities: Reterritorializing Perceptions and
Practice 124
AND PASLEY, TOMMY HAMILTON AND JAIMIE VEALE
9 Cisnormative and Transnormative Misgendering:
Holding Gender Minorities Accountable to Gender
Expectations in Mainstream and Trans/Queer Spaces 148
SONNY NORDMARKEN
10 Transitioning Through the Toilet: Changing
Transgender Discourse and the Recognition of
Transgender Identities in Japan 163
S.P.F. DALE
11 Contested Identities: Cisgender Women in Trans
Relationships and the Politics of Naming 182
AVERY BROOKS TOMPKINS
12 “When a Trans Is Killed, Another Thousand Rise!”:
Transnecropolitics and Resistance in Brazil 198
JOSELI MARIA SILVA, MARCIO JOSE ORNAT, VINÍCIUS CABRAL AND
DÉBORA LEE COMASSETO MACHADO
Index 210
Figures
1.1 Transgender symbol created by Holly Boswell 3
3.1 Reasons for not taking hormones 35
3.2 Reasons for not having any surgery 36
3.3 Comparison of major reasons hindering body modifications 36
3.4 Major legal and policy claims – grouped by gender identity 40
3.5 Major medical care claims – grouped by gender identity 41
4.1 General semantic net on the aging process narrated by
travestis and transwomen in South Brazil 46
4.2 Semantic community 1 49
4.3 Semantic community 2 53
4.4 Semantic community 3 56
10.1 Toilet sign with a figure in a rainbow “half-skirt” 175
10.2 Interior of single-stall gender neutral restroom 176
10.3 Gender-neutral bathroom sign with a rainbow flag 177
10.4 Men, all gender, women sign 178
About the Editors
Petra L. Doan is Professor at Florida State University and conducts research
on planning and the LGBTQ community. In addition to numerous journal
articles, her most recent edited book Planning and LGBTQ Communities:
The Need for Inclusive Queer Space was published by Routledge in 2015.
Lynda Johnston is Professor of Geography and Assistant Vice Chancellor Sus-
tainability at the University of Waikato. Lynda conducts research and activ-
ism on the challenges and spatial dimensions of inequalities and is one of the
editors of the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies (2020).
Contributors
Vinícius Cabral is Researcher of the Group of Territorial Studies at State
University of Ponta Grossa. His research focuses on the relationship between
space and human rights, with special attention on trans-sexualities. He is a
member of the Renascer (Reborn) non-governmental organization (NGO),
which works in support of human rights of LGBTQIA+ groups.
Débora Lee Comasseto Machado is trans-activist and coordinator of the
Renascer (Reborn) NGO, which works in support of citizenship and the
human rights of LGBTQIA+ groups in Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil. Cur-
rently, she develops actions for HIV/AIDS prevention and health promotion
with sex workers.
S.P.F. Dale is an independent scholar whose research looks at x-gender, non-
binary identity and transgender issues in Japan. Dale received a PhD in
Global Studies from Sophia University (Japan) and has taught at Hitotsub-
ashi University, Sophia University as well as other institutions in Tokyo.
Miqqi Alicia Gilbert (AKA Michael A. Gilbert) is Professor Emeritus of
Philosophy at York University. S/he has many scholarly articles in Argumen-
tation Theory and Gender Theory. Miqqi Alicia is a life-long cross-dresser,
written up in numerous newspapers and magazines, and has appeared in
many television and radio interviews.
Tommy Hamilton (they/them/he/him) is a tauiwi, trans masculine, endo-
sex, able bodied and neuro typical person. Tommy is a narrative therapist
working across rainbow and mainstream services and SOGIESC community
development and sustainability in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Aiwan Liao is a non-binary identified translator and activist of gender diver-
sity. They began working for Chinese queer movement in 2008, before
they earned a master’s degree in anthropology and had some unsuccessful
attempts for a PhD. Their transformation of self and society goes on.
Sonny Nordmarken is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgia State Uni-
versity. His research examines the relational processes that maintain complex
inequalities in the lives of transgender people and the strategies social actors
use to resist these operations of power.
