The clothes make the trans: region and geography in experiences of the body.
Written as an autoethnographic essay, the article explores the relationship between LGBT experience and geographic differences. The author discusses her experiences of forming a butch self while living in a suburban, subtropical environment and comparing herself to images of urban lesbian pop culture. If gender is performative, how do clothes permit us to or impede us from envisioning the body or being seen by others as butch/trans/masculine/multiple-gendered/diverse? Does the fashion uniform of the urban tranny boi and the publicizing of urban youth movements as the measure of LGBT experience impede LGBTs in other regions from envisioning themselves as "trans" or "butch: enough? Using interactionist sociological theory and gender performance theories, she considers the relationship between the visually sexed body and gendered embodiment. The goal in this piece is to open the conversation about regional LGBT experiences and their influence on physical embodiment.
Crawley
Sara L
SL
Department of Sociology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, CPR 107, Tampa, FL 33620-8350, USA. scrawley@cas.usf.edu
D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D003020:Clothing; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005260:Female; D019513:Feminism; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D012933:Social Identification; D013240:Stereotyping; D014189:Transsexualism / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States