Transgender Intersections

While transgender lives are at the forefront of contemporary politics, what do we really understand about the complexity of trans experience? Trans people who go through various aspects of gender transition experience shifts not only in their gender, but also with regards to other categories of identity such as race, social class, sexuality, disability, and more.

Centering the stories of trans people and their loved ones, Sojka and de Vries investigate how intersectionality operates at various levels of social meaning – the individual, the interpersonal, and the structural – in the experiences of transgender people. Collectively, they present an argument about why gendered and racialized processes, in intersection, are central to understanding trans lives. Chapter 1: Intersectionality and Trans Experience
Chapter 2: Gendered Racialization
Chapter 3: Multiraciality
Chapter 4: Whiteness
Chapter 5: Race and Gender Intersections with Social Class, Sexuality, Disability, and Nationality/Citizenship
Chapter 6: Intersectional Trans Futures

Appendix: Methodology
References

"This book is crucial for understanding the breadth of trans experience and life. It offers a sorely needed capacious sense of how we move through and between categories, and the ways that such movement converges with other modes of subjective existence. The book takes seriously the robustness of transgender's intersections, leaving readers with a decidedly hefty (re)understanding of what trans identity does and can mean. Read this – now."
—Marquis Bey, Northwestern University

"In a time of hostile stereotyping of trans groups by right-wing politicians and media, it is refreshing to meet the reality, clearly presented: complex lives, shaped by the whole spectrum of differences and relations of power across the contemporary USA."
—Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney

Carey Jean Sojka is Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Southern Oregon University.
Kylan Mattias de Vries is Professor and Chair of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Southern Oregon University.