You Aren’t From Around Here: Race, Masculinity, and Rural Transgender Men

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Trans Identities

Abstract

Scholarly, media, and everyday understandings of transgender people tend to assume that they can only live well in urban places. This assumption tends to operate as common sense, yet there is little research on the transgender people actually living in rural communities. This paper examines the experiences of transgender men to understand how some transgender people may find a measure of acceptance in rural communities where others do not. It is part of an effort in recent years towards increasing scholarship on the lives of gender and sexual minorities in non-metropolitan locations in order to challenge the notion that urban spaces are necessarily better for the lives of transgender people. Through an analysis of 66 in-depth interviews with trans men from the Southeast, Midwest, and California, this paper challenges the idea that rural transgender people necessarily and automatically fare worse than those in cities. Indeed, these data demonstrate that a more productive question might be, which transgender people have difficulties finding belonging in rural communities and which integrate into rural communities? The reported experiences of trans men suggest that the claims to sameness that are crucial to inclusion in rural communities are articulated through whiteness and the performance of rural working class masculinities. This claim to sameness allows for a measure of acceptance in rural communities under strain in the 21st century.

Author

• Miriam J. Abelson, Portland State University