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• 1. [Article] Transmobilities: Mobility, Harassment, and Violence Experienced by Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Public Transit Riders

  This research endeavours to fill a conceptual gap in the social science literature on gender, public space, and urban mobilities by exploring how transgender and gender nonconforming individuals experience ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Transmobilities: Mobility, Harassment, and Violence Experienced by Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Public Transit Riders Author: Lubitow, Amy, Carathers, JaDee, Kelly, Maura, Abelson, Miriam Year: 2017 This research endeavours to fill a conceptual gap in the social science literature on gender, public space, and urban mobilities by exploring how transgender and gender nonconforming individuals experience public transit. Although previous research has surveyed gender minorities about harassment and discrimination in a range of environments, little is known about the quality or content of these experiences. Drawing from 25 interviews with transgender and gender nonconforming individuals in Portland, Oregon, this article finds that gender minorities experience frequent harassment while engaging with the public transit system. We articulate the concept of transmobilites to describe the ways that transgender and gender nonconforming individuals experience a form of mobility that is altered, shaped, and informed by a broader cultural system that normalizes violence and harassment towards gender minorities. We conclude that gender minorities have unequal access to safe and accessible public transportation when harassment is widespread, normalized, and when policies prohibiting discrimination remain unenforced on urban public transit. Title: Transmobilities: Mobility, Harassment, and Violence Experienced by Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Public Transit Riders Author: Lubitow, Amy, Carathers, JaDee, Kelly, Maura, Abelson, Miriam Year: 2017 This research endeavours to fill a conceptual gap in the social science literature on gender, public space, and urban mobilities by exploring how transgender and gender nonconforming individuals experience public transit. Although previous research has surveyed gender minorities about harassment and discrimination in a range of environments, little is known about the quality or content of these experiences. Drawing from 25 interviews with transgender and gender nonconforming individuals in Portland, Oregon, this article finds that gender minorities experience frequent harassment while engaging with the public transit system. We articulate the concept of transmobilites to describe the ways that transgender and gender nonconforming individuals experience a form of mobility that is altered, shaped, and informed by a broader cultural system that normalizes violence and harassment towards gender minorities. We conclude that gender minorities have unequal access to safe and accessible public transportation when harassment is widespread, normalized, and when policies prohibiting discrimination remain unenforced on urban public transit. Close

• 2. [Article] Men in Context: Transmasculinities and Transgender Experiences in Three US Regions

  This dissertation addresses the central research question--How does context matter for men's experiences of gender, sexuality, and race? --by analyzing interviews with 66 trans men, female to male transgender ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Men in Context: Transmasculinities and Transgender Experiences in Three US Regions Author: Abelson, Miriam Year: 2014 This dissertation addresses the central research question--How does context matter for men's experiences of gender, sexuality, and race? --by analyzing interviews with 66 trans men, female to male transgender people, in the U.S. West, Midwest, and Southeast. This project contributes to four areas in the sociology of gender and sexuality: understandings of transgender people, regional variations in masculinity, inclusion of trans men in the study of men and masculinity, and understudied queer spaces. The first part of the analysis shows how being a man is a lifelong process of negotiating the expectations of different contexts in light of the gendered self and offers a conceptual framework for the subsequent analytic chapters, which focus on the different ways that context operates in the lives of trans men. The first of these chapters spotlights how emotional control, in this case appropriate emotion in particular contexts, is a hallmark of contemporary masculinities across spaces and a central way of marking distinctions between men and women and among men. The final two substantive chapters focus on how different spatial and institutional contexts affect trans men's fears and experiences of violence. The first centers on exploring the spatial distribution of fears of transphobic violence. This illustrates another aspect of context, how the ideas about who and what inhabit particular contexts shape men's actions in those settings. The second chapter shows how these fears and actual violence in particular institutional contexts act as powerful forms of social control that reproduce various forms of inequality. It illustrates how the structural arrangements of institutions are key contextual features that influence behavior and the reproduction of social inequality in ways that potentially reach outside of their institutional contexts. Finally, the dissertation concludes by returning to the research question and discussing the implications of this research on sociological understandings of inequality, the field of men and masculinities, and transgender politics. Title: Men in Context: Transmasculinities and Transgender Experiences in Three US Regions Author: Abelson, Miriam Year: 2014 This dissertation addresses the central research question--How does context matter for men's experiences of gender, sexuality, and race? --by analyzing interviews with 66 trans men, female to male transgender people, in the U.S. West, Midwest, and Southeast. This project contributes to four areas in the sociology of gender and sexuality: understandings of transgender people, regional variations in masculinity, inclusion of trans men in the study of men and masculinity, and understudied queer spaces. The first part of the analysis shows how being a man is a lifelong process of negotiating the expectations of different contexts in light of the gendered self and offers a conceptual framework for the subsequent analytic chapters, which focus on the different ways that context operates in the lives of trans men. The first of these chapters spotlights how emotional control, in this case appropriate emotion in particular contexts, is a hallmark of contemporary masculinities across spaces and a central way of marking distinctions between men and women and among men. The final two substantive chapters focus on how different spatial and institutional contexts affect trans men's fears and experiences of violence. The first centers on exploring the spatial distribution of fears of transphobic violence. This illustrates another aspect of context, how the ideas about who and what inhabit particular contexts shape men's actions in those settings. The second chapter shows how these fears and actual violence in particular institutional contexts act as powerful forms of social control that reproduce various forms of inequality. It illustrates how the structural arrangements of institutions are key contextual features that influence behavior and the reproduction of social inequality in ways that potentially reach outside of their institutional contexts. Finally, the dissertation concludes by returning to the research question and discussing the implications of this research on sociological understandings of inequality, the field of men and masculinities, and transgender politics. Close