Doing Genderqueer

• In Event: 464 - Regular Session. Gender

Abstract

West and Zimmerman’s (1987) “Doing Gender” revolutionized the way that sociologists conceptualize gender displays and everyday interaction. Since then scholars have advocated for shifting focus away from how gender is done to how gender might be undone (Butler, 2004; Deutsch, 2007; Risman, 2009). In order to more fully and specifically theorize nonbinary gender identity, this investigation turns to the Genderqueer community on the social media site Reddit. Results from this virtual ethnography reveal a diverse spectrum of being, looking, and doing genderqueer, which deviate from the binary gender model. These findings advance the “undoing gender” framework by 1) identifying unique aspects of discrimination with which genderqueer individuals contend on a daily basis and 2) unique mechanisms through which they “do genderqueer.” These findings reveal the binary assumptions within the “doing gender” model that render it an insufficient framework for analyzing the genderqueer identity.

Authors

• Helana Darwin, Stony Brook University

• Michael Kimmel, State Univ of New York-Stony Brook