IJ TRANSGENDER - XVII HBGIDA - Abstract - Configurations of Ungendering and the Emergence of Gender-Negating Identities

Editors:
Friedemann Pfäfflin,
Ulm University, Germany

Walter O. Bockting,
University of Minnesota, USA

Eli Coleman,
University of Minnesota, USA

Richard Ekins,
University of Ulster at Coleraine, UK

Dave King,
University of Liverpool, UK

Managing Editor:
Noelle N Gray,
University of Minnesota, USA

Editorial Assistant:
Erin Pellett,
University of Minnesota, USA

Editorial Board

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ISSN 1434-4599

XVII Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Symposium
31 October - 4 November 2001, Galveston, Texas, U.S.A.

Configurations of Ungendering and the Emergence of Gender-Negating Identities

EKINS, RICHARD U.K.

E-mail: RJM.Ekins@ulst.ac.uk

Ekins and King (2001a) distinguished four major modes of contemporary transgendering (‘migrating’, ‘oscillating’, ‘negating’ and ‘transcending’) with reference to the attendant sub-processes identifiable within each mode (‘erasing’, ‘substituting’, ‘concealing’, ‘implying’ and ‘redefining’). This paper further develops the analysis of the social process of negating by comparing and contrasting three selected transgendering negating ‘stories’ (Ekins and King, 2001b): those of Debra Rose’s sissy maids, that of the ‘gender-free’ writer and activist Christie Elan-Cane, and those of the web-based ‘Girl-a-matic Guides to Sissification’, in order to elaborate aspects of contemporary transgendering that remain unexplored in both scientific and popular writings. Within the negating mode of transgendering, the sub-processes of erasing, substituting, concealing, implying, and redefining are variously co-opted and implicated within the emergence of gender-negating identities within diverse interrelations between sex, sexuality, and gender; self-identity and social world; and the meaning frames of ‘member’, ‘scientific’ and ‘lay’ knowledge (Ekins, 1997).