Gender physics: An autoethnographic essay

• In Event: Counter-Storytelling for Queer & Trans Epistemic Justice

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: To mine a series of personal experiences told as vignettes to build a personal relationship to/with (a theory of) gender.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: Relying on sociocultural theory, I position events of my life as mediating objects with which I am able to concretize existing beliefs as well as grow theory about the/my-self. Trans and queer epistemological assertions break the spatial and temporal limitations of the self, and it is here that I am able to develop what I call ‘gender physics,’ where past, present, and future are simultaneously available in deeply pedagogical ways.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: As an autoethnographic piece, I not only recount a series of experiences, vignettes titled “Liv,” “Because of my hair,” and “Only unmarried women,” but also challenge myself, with care, on my tacit beliefs about gender, sex, and self.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: I share a photo of myself at a particular time, detail stories of my life including quotes from grindr conversations, and cite key and transgressive authors in curriculum and pedagogy to make sense of these experiences.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or
warrants for arguments/point of view: Through this exercise of encountering the self, I demonstrate support for the pedagogical potential of the autoethnographic form. Additionally, I formulate two analytics (detailed below) that emerge from this nexus of sociocultural, trans, and queer theory.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work: In this work, I develop two analytics for use in future work: space travel and time travel, two forms of what I refer to in the paper as gender physics. Space travel is a queer read of the spatial unity of self, where we journey–even unconsciously–with the Other toward futures and pasts beyond our knowledge, suggesting an infinite recursivity of intermeshed experience. Time travel is a trans read of the temporal unity of self, where re-encountering the self can cause time distortions, bringing seemingly unrelated experiences into contact with one another, building knowledge and theory.

Author

• Jared Boland, University of Toronto - OISE