Trans*Parenting: Family as a Site of Queer World-Making

• In Event: 133 - Section on Sex and Gender Paper Session. Intersectional Approaches to Trans Studies (co-sponsored with LGBT Caucus)

Abstract

Survey data indicates family acceptance and support may be necessary to the survival of trans people. Beyond this, families are an important site of joy and fulfillment in the lives of trans people who are more likely to face discrimination than not (Grant, et al. 2011). Even when families of origin prove unsupportive, chosen families are a key way in which trans people create alternatives to the negativity they encounter in institutions and public life. Family life in quotidian practice holds the ability to make new worlds for trans people in which their lives are valuable, meaningful, and fulfilling. In what follows, I use data collected from an interview study of LGBT parents (n=50) in which half of the respondents included self-identified trans and gender non-conforming parents and their co-parents (n=25). In contrast to the very important studies that focus on transphobia and hardship, I focus on the potentiality of queer and trans utopias located in the micro communities of chosen families. Within families of choice (which often turns out to be a collage of biological kin, friends-turned-family, partners, ex-partners, and children) trans people find support (emotional and/or financial), encouragement, grounding, safety, healing, and love.

Author

• Laura Victoria Heston, University of Massachusetts-Amherst