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Gendered Racialization

Josie and Katrice asked if they could do their interviews together and also take me on a tour of where they lived. Over the course of several hours, in two coffee shops as well as driving around their southern town, Josie and Katrice shared their experiences as Black trans women. Katrice talked about trying to join a trans peer support group in search of community and resources when she was first transitioning. White people in the group deliberately and repeatedly told her the wrong days and times for meetings so she could not attend, and they refused to share resources about medical and behavioral health providers who worked with trans people. Because of experiences like this, of exclusion from white-dominated trans community spaces, both Katrice and Josie shared how their activism was shaped by needing "to get our house together" first; their primary goal was to support other Black trans people in their work, and they built on lessons they had learned from civil rights activists in their families of origin in doing this. For them and for other Black, Indigenous, and other trans people of color from this research, race is and needs to be central in trans liberation.

Gendered Racial and Ethnic Expectations

The process of developing a sense of self not only involves individuals' self-concepts, but also others' perceptions of them and whether or not these align. In the case of transgender people, their gender self-concept may not match what others assign to them; thus, others' confirmation of one's gender identity can be a powerful force. For many trans people who make use of hormones and/or surgeries, the resulting changes in embodiment can significantly impact how others perceive them. In these situations, a trans person who transitions may experience aspects of gender socialization because of new types of gendered interactions and experiences with others. This socialization can also include learning the various ways that race, social class, sexuality, and other social categories, in intersection with gender, inform the meanings others draw upon in relation to their gender presentation. The planes of race, class, gender, sexuality, and more combine in specific ways such that others attribute these various combinations to trans people in interaction, therefore influencing how trans people see themselves. This can unexpectedly complicate people's self-perceptions through transition. Drawing on ethnographic data primarily with Black, Indigenous, and other trans people of color, we analyze the intersected identity frames, or the ways that race, social class, gender, and sexuality all intersect to create specific background identities that others attribute to individuals to frame their interaction (Goffman 1974). We can better understand these intersected identity frames through the experiences of trans people who engage in identity management. The meanings others attach to specific combinations are foregrounded in the context of transitioning, and these interactions take place in a larger context as well; some interactions occur with others who employ dominant, white settler cultural narratives, while other audiences draw upon racial and ethnic cultural narratives.

Transitioning can throw the multi-dimensionality of enacted identity into sharp relief against the background of intersecting social and cultural structural arrangements. This intersectional analysis illustrates the complexity of these frames, the resourcefulness of social actors, and how these frames are enacted in social interaction. Most BIPOC participants felt it vital to learn the specific racial and ethnic cultural expectations and meanings that others attached to their new social location, particularly the intersected identity frames others would attribute within certain racial/ethnic groups/communities and how social class and sexuality intersect with these understandings.

Amber (a middle-class fourth generation Chinese American bisexual trans woman) addressed her concerns about cultural differences within Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, how familial expectations were a major issue, and the notion that "rebelling against your culture or community" is not an option. Scholarship on the experiences of AAPI trans people remains lacking, and we build on the more recent work of Thai et al. (2021) and Hsu (2022). For Amber, what qualified as "rebelling" changed upon transitioning. Each racial and ethnic culture defines its members by specific intersected identity frames, so for trans people this can entail learning to negotiate multiple dimensions of what people now expect. Furthermore, the type of intersected identity frame others applied to them in specific cultural groups occasionally differed from those in dominant white settler culture, so learning about these differences, when to expect them, and how to respond to such different attributions was important in legitimizing one's gender. In this chapter, we highlight trans BIPOC experiences in relation to cultural narratives about intersected identity frames as well as social visibility related to gendered racialization.

Gendered Racialization Expectations and Interactions in BIPOC Communities

Interestingly, most of the Black trans women in this study stated they were "moving up in the African American community" (Josie, a middle-class African American trans woman). They shared their experience of being taken more seriously in the Black community. After hearing this, we asked the Black trans men if they experienced the opposite in Black communities. They uniformly replied that they did not experience a loss of status or rank (later we address how this experience differed within white dominant culture). This may be due to a few factors: first, the Black trans women in this study were older and transitioned on average nine years prior to their interview, while the Black trans men were newer to transitioning. Second, the Black trans women all identified as middle class, and their economic resources likely factored into their experiences. Third, upon transitioning, the Black trans women gained access to and participated in "women-only" spaces (e.g., beauty parlors). In general, access to and participation in specific culturally gendered spaces often conveyed others' acceptance of their racialized gender.

In addition to access to spaces, several trans men who had been active in women's communities prior to transitioning experienced a sense of loss of access to women's spaces, although they did express feeling a need to "let it go." This sense of loss is often in relation to trans men occupying a former lesbian or queer identity and being denied access to women's spaces upon transitioning.

Culturally gendered expectations also factor into "loss" of women's spaces. Several Latino trans men felt conflicting emotions over the change in gender roles within their community and, more specifically, within their families. For instance, Jacobo (middle-class Latino trans man) shared: "In the Latino community, at dinner, it's the woman that serves the food, it's the woman that prepares the food, it's the woman that cleans up the dishes." Both Jacobo and Dexter indicated that when they made efforts to help out in the kitchen, they were told by the men, "You don't have to anymore," and by women, "You don't belong in the kitchen anymore." This change in access to space also involves respecting women's spaces: "If a bunch of women are sitting around talking, you don't go over to the area and sit down" (Jacobo). While these cultural narratives were affirming in some ways, Jacobo and Dexter also found them to be limiting in terms of constructing and managing a type of masculinity they wanted for themselves.

Becoming a man of color can entail specific types of interactions with other men of color. Diego (a working-class Puerto Rican and Brown/white multiracial trans man) experienced being called "cousin" or "brother" (see Laing 2017; Majors and Billson 1992), while Jake (an upper-middle-class African American man) learned to interact in specific ways with other Black men:

In the African American community, there's this whole other ritual of how you breathe, how you do that chest thing when you grab hands and sort of come together, and sort of stay, and then move in, so that's another thing, another layer that I now have to master.

This is similar for Jacobo in the Latinx2 community. The racial/ethnic meanings others attach to their gender are significant and often vary from dominant, white cultural expectations. Jacobo explained how other Latinos treat him now: "They give you your place as another male Latino. They wouldn't do that to another female." Similar to ethnically gendered expectations, others employ and challenge dominant cultural narratives around intersected identity frames.

Partners of trans people also reflected on their experiences in BIPOC spaces and communities. Lola, a Black pansexual cis woman partner of David, a Black trans man, shared her perceptions of her and her partner's experiences in Black community:

When you see him, you see a Black man. And to be around a Black community of people who understand the Black man struggle is really . it's important, but to be excluded from those spaces, or discounted [because of gender] is really . is...