Gender Accountability and Non-Binary Identities: Redoing Or Undoing Gender in the Search for Liberation?

• In Event: 50409 - Regular Session on Gender: Challenging Gender

Abstract

In this paper, we address the debate about whether gender can be undone or merely redone. We ask whether those who opt out of the gender binary intend to reduce the salience of gender in their own lives or instead aim to revise gender categories rather than move beyond them. We analyze 123 interviews with non-binary people in three metropolitan regions in the US. While we find evidence of attempts both to redo and undo the gender structure, the majority want to live a life where gender does not determine the expectations for how they behavior or present their bodies, to undo gender. Many of our respondents purposefully challenged gendered conventions, seeking to confuse others who would impose gender norms. They did not seek to establish a new category, but rather aimed to deconstruct categories altogether. One in five of our respondents, however, do not want to move beyond gender per se, but instead conceptualize their non-binary category as an authentic self with tangible and consistent expression. They simply want to one or more gender categories to complicate the gender structure beyond a binary. Our findings indicate that the construction of gender and the confines of the gender accountability structures are shifting.

Authors

• Mary Ann Vega

• Barbara Jane Risman, University of Illinois-Chicago

• William Joslyn Scarborough, University of North Texas