Patricia Gagné

COMING OUT AND CROSSING OVER Identity Formation and Proclamation in a Transgender Community

Drawing on data from interviews with 65 masculine-to-feminine transgenderists, the authors examine the coming-out experiences of transgendered individuals. Drawing on the literature that shows gender to be an inherent component of the social infrastructure that at an individual level is accomplished in interaction with others, they demonstrate that interactional challenges to gender are insufficient to challenge the system of gender. Whereas many transgenderists believe that their actions and identities are radical challenges to the binary system of gender, in fact, the majority of such individuals reinforce and reify the system they hope to change.

Conformity Pressures and Gender Resistance Among Transgendered Individuals

Research on transgendered individuals has tended to come from medical, psychiatric, or deviance perspectives, with little attention to the social context in which these individuals exist or their efforts to resist normative expectations of sex and gender. Based upon in-depth interviews with 65 masculine-to-feminine transgendered individuals, this research examines gender as a social institution. Focusing on the pressures experienced by individuals to maintain binary enactments of gender, we demonstrate how the institution of gender is taken for granted as a presumably natural aspect of social life. Social pressures to conform, experienced as desires for relationship maintenance and self-preservation, as well as the overwhelming need to actualize an identity that does not fit within the binary system of sex and gender, illuminate the gender resistance and conformity exhibited among the individuals in our sample. Our analysis is rooted in an expanded Foucauldian perspective incorporating the theoretical insights of contemporary feminists who consider social actors as active agents in the development and enactment of everyday resistance. Transgenderism is a discursive act that both challenges and reifies the binary gender system. As such, it provides important lessons about the power dynamics of gender and how such systems may and may not be resisted.

APPALACHIAN WOMEN Violence and Social Control

The findings from case study research conducted in a small, rural central Appalachian community during the winter of 1987-1988 suggest that standard definitions of wife abuse obscure the elements of social control inherent in violent activities, while obviating the relationship between violence and other forms of social control. Three categories of control are developed. The first, normative control, refers to socially accepted ways in which womens lives are constrained by norms and ideology. The second, persuasive control, refers to nonviolent means of social control, including repeated verbal requests, withholding transportation, forced parenthood, and the use of stereotypes and ideologies to isolate women. The third, violence, refers to the threat and use of physical assault and the use of weapons to instill fear. The context-specific approach is used to demonstrate that social control is dependent on a culture and social structure which condone mens domination of women and that without cultural acceptance of and structural support for mens authority over women, violence would be less effective as a means of social control.

Designing Women Cultural Hegemony and the Exercise of Power among Women Who Have Undergone Elective Mammoplasty

This article draws on Foucaults concept of the exercise of power and Gramscis concept of hegemony to examine how women used cosmetic surgery to exercise power over their bodies and lives. The analysis is rooted in two feminist perspectives on cosmetic surgery. The first argues that women who elect to have their bodies surgically altered are victims of false consciousness whose bodies are disciplined by the hegemonic male gaze. The second asserts that women who undergo elective cosmetic surgery exercise free choice in controlling their bodies and lives. By examining sites wherein power is exercised by and over women, the authors argue for a synthesis of these two perspectives. They find that the women achieved greater power and control over their bodies and lives when they embodied hegemonic ideals of feminine beauty. Cosmetic surgery can be empowering for individual women while reinforcing the hegemonic ideals that oppress women as a group.

Corporate Logo Tattoos and the Commodification of the Body

This research explores the sociological factors underlying the increasing popularity of corporate logo tattoos. The authors draw upon critical theory, sociology of the body, and consumption to analyze data from in-depth interviews with a small sample of subjects with a corporate logo tattoo. Findings suggest that the increasing popularity of logo tattoos is a product of the commodification of culture via the culture industry. Findings show that the majority of the sample was motivated by brand loyalty and self-identification with a brand philosophy or lifestyle, while a small minority attempted to alter the intended meaning of the logo by appropriating it into a simulated meaning. This research suggests that corporate logo tattoos are one way that corporations have inscribed themselves onto the bodies and into the identities of many of those who acquire them, while others attempt to use such body modifications as a way to play with postmodern images.

Transgenderists: Products of Non-Normative Intersections of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Contemporary society is organized around the assumption that social arrangements will be fairly predictable and that individual behavior will be easily decodable. We expect that social interactions will conform to established norms and that people will act in accordance with salient statuses. Although the roles traditionally attached to some statuses, such as class, age, and gender, have become more flexible, sex has been an exception to this trend. All of social life, including personal relationships, organizational arrangements, and institutional policies and practices, is based on the assumption that sex is a dichotomous category determined by biology and that it is not subject to identity reconstruction or reinterpretation. Although one may be free to “gender bend,” social life is predicated on the premise that the gender one presents to society is congruent with one’s biological sex and that one’s identity as male or female also follows. However, as with all of social life, there are exceptions to rules and expectations, even when it comes to the sex of those around us. Some members of society, whether intentionally or not, present themselves as members of sex categories of which they are not biological members. Peo (1988, p. 57) refers “to the broad category of behavior where persons of one sex emulate or take on attributes of the other sex” as transgender behavior. While others (Devor, 1987, 1989) have examined females who socially present themselves as men, our focus is on males who present behavior patterns that are interpreted as indicators of womanhood.

Assumed and presumed identities: Problems of self‐presentation in field research

Understanding how qualitative researchers utilize and manage identities in the conduct of field research is a critical, yet underdeveloped, field of inquiry. This article explores the ways that qualitative researchers can facilitate their work through management of their presented identities. Central issues of establishing rapport and gaining trust, especially with stigmatized social groups, are examined in light of the authors’ experiences. Drawing upon a diverse range of fieldwork experiences, this article addresses confronting erroneous assumptions about researchers’ identities, managing multiple identities, the difficulties of competing field and professional identities, and the stresses that may arise from managing the politics of stigmas. Drawn together, these issues are presented as problematic, yet manageable and constructive influences on the conduct of field research.

Identity, strategy, and feminist politics : clemency for battered women who kill

This paper examines the impact of activism by feminists in the Ohio battered womens movement on the decision by Governor Richard Celeste to grant clemency to 26 women who were incarcerated for killing or assaulting abusive intimate partners or stepfathers. Drawing on post-modern, critical, and feminist critiques oftheories of liberal democracy, I expand the definition of activism and identify the strategy and tactics used by feminists in this movement. I find that feminists used their careers and personal relationships to establish consciousness raising groups in prison. Through these newly created democratic spaces, they established a social movement community within the womens prison and expanded incarcerated battered womens access to authorities and the public. I conclude by discussing how feminists created an opportunity structure that resulted in clemency, and I suggest strategies and tactics social movements will need to consider in political and cultural settings hostile to their goals and constituents.

An Analysis of Stereotype Refutation in Playboy by an Editorial Voice: The Advisor Hypothesis

Recent accounts of the contact hypothesis have stressed the cognitive aspects of the phenomenon. On the basis of this call for reformulation, we propose the existence of the advisor hypothesis, i.e., the idea that third parties can use their influence to inhibit stereotyping about in-group and out-group members. We conducted an examination of this construct, with reference to gender stereotypes, using an archival data set of 38 years of the “Playboy Advisor” column. Evidence from both qualitative and quantitative analyses indicated that the Playboy Advisor carried out several actions to inhibit misogyny and discourage the application of stereotypes to both men and women. Implications and limitations of the present research are discussed.

Battered Women's Justice: The Movement for Clemency and the Politics of Self-Defense

Imagine a state where the governor opens his home as a shelter for battered women, feminists hold appointed positions and respond to leftwing and feminist constituencies, the First Lady spends time talking with women in prison, and the Corrections Department allows inmates to speak with journalists. Imagine the governor grants mass clemency to 26 women incarcerated for killing abusive partners. Is this a fantasy from a feminist utopian novel? No, this was Ohio in the late 1980s, during the term of Richard Celeste. Patricia Gagne was inspired by these anomalous progressive gestures to chronicle and mine the Ohio battered womens clemency movement for strategies of social movement success. 468 Social Control and the Law