‘Boying’ the boy and ‘girling’ the girl: From affective interpellation to trans-emotionality

Abstract

Once a body is named or interpellated as either ‘boy’ or ‘girl’, they will be expected to convey, communicate, relate and/or display a social gender that co-ordinates with the labelled sex. This is part of the process known as cis-gendering.¹ I propose that emotions are also socialized during this process and are expected to be communicated and displayed to co-ordinate with the named social gender. This ensures that bodies remain uncontestably cis-gendered and heterosexual. The interpellation of emotion for feeling is thus a major part of the socialization process used to construct cis-gendered bodies. In comparison, those people who feel uncomfortable doing their named social gender because it is at odds with their labelled sex may claim a trans² gender identity. This incorporates a wide range of self-identities including a gender-queer or non-binary³ identity (neutrois.me; transmediawatch.org). This article aims to explore how feelings are experienced in relation to a trans-gendered identity and what these mean for understanding and doing gender as ‘non-binary’. Using quotes from genderqueerconfession.com written by those who identify as members of a non-binary gendered community, I present a contemporary analysis of how gender is being re-interpreted and performed so that people may experience feelings they describe as either, both or neither ‘male’ or ‘female’. Findings show how gender becomes dis-orientated and takes up a liminal space where bodies and emotions are re-negotiated according to an emerging paradigm of trans-emotionality.⁴ No longer confined to a restrictive binary system, I argue that gender is an affectively embodied process that is constantly imagined, embodied, re-imagined and re-embodied.

Keywords

Affect feeling states genderqueer interpellation non-binary

Introduction

From the moment we take our first breath … the cry ‘It’s a boy’ or ‘It’s a girl’ ushers us into this world. The genders we’re assigned at birth lock us on to a course through which we’ll be expected to become whole, well rounded, creative, loving people – but only as men or as as women. (Bornstein, 1998: 1)

In an item of everyday newspaper reportage (Metro, 6 August 2013) a couple had been so convinced their child would be ‘female’ they bought £3000 worth of pink clothes and furniture and named ‘her’ Lily-Mae. The baby was instead born ‘male’ and was named Joseph. The couple were faced with trying to claim refunds ‘for all the girly accessories’, while re-decorating the bedroom with a ‘boy’ theme because ‘we think Joseph will prefer that to a pink room’.

Why would Joseph’s parents think that he is less able to do ‘boy’ or that doing boy will be more problematic if his room is pink and his accessories are ‘girly’? There is an implicit suggestion in the article that to be in proximity to social markers of ‘the feminine’ will compromise Joseph’s emotionality, by leaving him more vulnerable, less tough, less ‘hard’ than a ‘real’ boy; that he will somehow feel less ‘boy’ as a consequence of influence from ‘girly’ extras. It appears as though the very naming of ‘boy’ will rely on Joseph ‘doing boy’ effectively and affectively in everyday life in order to convey an emotional intelligibility that helps people recognize Joseph’s cis-gendered boyness.

Once the body is maled or femaled at birth, it is assumed that the sex and ‘social gender’ (Schilt and Westbrook, 2009: 441) are in alignment (cis-gendered). Emotions are also noticeably gendered (Root and Denham, 2010) and, I argue, exclusively ‘cis’ gendered. A language of emotions is introduced very early in a child’s life to socialize cis-gendered boys and girls to align with the enforced dominant cultural meanings for ‘normative gender boundaries’ that are ‘enforced’ upon children (Robinson, 2013: 139). This is demonstrated in the way descriptions about feelings linked to cis-gender girls are described as ‘tender’, leading girls to be inculcated into patterns of ‘nuturance, affiliation … responsibility for others … and … interpersonal relationships’, while cis-gender boys are expected to show ‘anger and related outer-directed negative emotions (as well as control of emotions)… autonomy, authority, dominance and combat’ (Zahn-Waxler, 2010: 103). Moreover, cultural values continue to prize a hegemonic (cis-gendered) masculinity that is not ‘sissy’ (Kane, 2006). This is emphasized in basic items like toys and clothes. Parents are likely to select gender-stereotypical toys for children, ‘especially for boys’ (Blakemore and Centers, 2005: 620), and the selection of toys lends itself to wide ranging psychological meanings. For example, so called ‘boys’ toys’ are understood to lead to fantasy play that is symbolic, while ‘strongly masculine’ toys are seen as violent and encouraging competition. In contrast, so called ‘girls’ toys’ lead to fantasy play that is focused on domestic play, and is considered more ‘nurturing’ and ‘attractive’ (Blakemore and Centers, 2005). While these points cannot be elaborated in this article, it is important to note that how a child plays and with whom, and the way they show to family and friends how they are doing ‘girl’ or ‘boy’, is used as criteria to denote if a child is dysphoric. In effect, there is an underlying, unspoken assumption that bodies ‘like this’ (cis-gendered male or female) will feel ‘like that’ (cis-gendered masculine or feminine) over the life course according to how the body has been named or interpellated.

In this article I intend to show the way emotion words – those words used to describe the way the body ‘feels’ (e.g. ‘I feel angry, weak, sad’, etc.) – are hailed or interpellated during the process of shaping gender. Furthermore, I will show how gender roles, performance, expression and aesthetics fit a cis-gendered binary and what happens when there is a sense of discomfort with cis-genderism and the taken-for-granted binary distinction. In this article, emotions are taken as culturally and socially shaped words and concepts, while feelings are nebulous, undefinable, visceral, real or imagined bodily experiences (Moon, 2010; Weirzbicka, 1999: 10). Feelings come to be named through a lexicon of ‘culture-bound’ (Weirzbicka, 1999) emotion words, ‘matching inner experience to a cultural dictionary’ (Hochschild, 1998: 6) that shapes gender. Emotion words are used to describe feeling, to help us understand each other in a world of feelings. For this reason I refer to emotion words and concepts (rather than simply ‘emotions’) in empirically analyzing descriptions of real or imagined feelings.

This article focuses on how emotion has been taken as a social object⁵ (Moon, 2010) and used as the basis for ‘orientating’ bodies by naming feelings as emotions within a system that prioritizes cis-gendered binary distinctions between male/masculine and female/feminine and a two-sex model.

Historically, the ‘two-sex’ model took heterosexuality for granted, while definitions of masculinity and femininity rested upon their material embodiment as heterosexual and male/female (Butler, 1990) where the latter is understood as cis-gendered. The power of this system of heteronormativity ‘rests on the cultural devaluation of femininity and homosexuality’ (Schilt and Westbrook, 2009). The implications of this for the meaning of ‘lived experience’ as well as how one experiences a ‘felt interiority’ became inscribed as part of the overall understanding of what it means to be a ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ (cis-gendered and heterosexual) man or woman, sharing desires only for the opposite sex. Meanwhile, those who shared feelings for the same sex were maligned as ‘partly the other sex’ (Birke, 2002: 59). People with same-sex desire were not only understood as relating to the wrong body, they were understood as being partly in the wrong body. Sexuality studies therefore began to focus on the intelligibility of gender (Butler, 1990) as well as the social and cultural meanings for masculinity and femininity.

Post-structuralist, trans and queer writers have spent over two decades exploring the complexities of detaching ‘masculinity’ from ‘the synonym for men or maleness’ (Halberstam, 1994, 1998: 13), ‘femininity’ from femaleness (Bornstein, 1998; Stone et al., 1991) and ‘stereotypical femininity’ from womanhood (Serano, 2013). Queer, trans and feminist accounts of identity negotiation interrogate the presentation, behaviours and performance of ‘doing’ different versions of masculinity or femininity. This is not without its tensions and rifts. Halberstam (1998) positively embraces the unintelligibility of gender variance; some feminist and/or transsexual theorists see things differently. Bernice Hausman (2006) remains adamant that the male/female binary provides an important framework for understanding gender relations; Prosser (1995) argues that ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories provide a legitimate ‘categorical home’ that should not be disavowed; and Christina Richards (2016: 5) debates the possibility of structural brain differences for trans people to legitimate the idea of a ‘fundamental [trans] self’.

For these reasons, I argue for the importance of lifting emotions ‘out’ of the body, to de-essentialize their transformative relationship to gender, but at the same time acknowledge the body as sentient, nebulous and full of feelings that need to be defined and given meaning. I argue that bodies are ‘trans-emotional’ (Moon and Steinberg, 2014), where ‘trans’ is understood as feeling-based, ‘accessible … to anyone who does not feel comfortable in the gender role they were attributed with at birth, or who has a gender identity at odds with the labels “man” or “woman” credited to them by formal authorities’ (Whittle, 2006: xi, emphasis mine). In this case, trans-emotionality is open to all people and may be experienced in any body at any time. It allows people to explore their feelings about gender while still retaining their belief in a binary system if this feels comfortable. This way of thinking about emotion and feelings is important because, as Wallerstein (2016) suggests from a constructivist perspective, ‘we can no longer accept gender as an ontological truth’. And yet this is exactly how we pursue gender – as a ‘real’ ‘feeling’ state, as a felt interiority of masculinity or femininity. It is as though we believe that deep down inside each of us there is a ‘real’, pre-determined set of feelings for ‘boy’ or ‘girl’, even though no one has ever explained or understood where it emerges from or why certain feelings indicate ‘boyness’ or ‘girlness’. Even some trans narratives appear to reflect cis-gendered meanings to describe feelings as emotions. For example, Halberstam (1998) in their outline of masculinity, reflects a cis-gendered version of masculine emotionality. In this article I attempt to show how some trans and non-binary people are trying to move beyond cis-normative expectations for masculinity and femininity, and also explore how trans and non-binary narratives challenge cis-gendered emotional regulation. In making this argument, I draw upon an analysis of non-binary young people on the blog site genderqueerconfessions. I focus on the way gender is gradually being rearticulated, and perform an in-depth analysis of bloggers’ statements.

Theoretical backdrop

Feminist and queer theorists including Judith Butler (1997, 2004), Zowie Davy (2011) and Sara Ahmed (2004, 2006) have widely engaged with work on affect, bodily aesthetics and gender. Butler’s (1997) explanation of interpellation expands Althusser’s (1971) original account, but the problem with her discursive and dialogical presentation is that there can be no room for discussion of a pre-discursive, feeling, sentient body that can be leaky, and that is messy, undefinable and largely ‘meaningless’ without language and culture. For Butler, subjects ‘are constituted in discourse’ (Jagger, 2008: 118). There is no discussion of ‘lived experience’ or the affective turn in hailing the subject. And while the act of ‘turning’ does not need to be literal, for Ahmed (2006: 15) bodies take the shape of the direction they turn, the orientation they have, rather than only being constituted via language. In a queer phenomenological approach to understanding how bodies are orientated towards other bodies and other objects, Ahmed (2004) states that emotions are part of this process because they are ‘directed towards objects’ and ‘they move us “toward” and “away” from such objects’ (Ahmed, 2004: 2). I am suggesting that emotions are used to orientate the body towards or away from other objects such as people, places or events. Once emotions are placed on to the feeling body, the body is directed in particular ways, towards and away from particular objects or other people. For example, Joseph’s room is re-painted ‘away’ from ‘feminine’ pink, while his toys are replaced with cis-gendered ‘boy’ toys so that he will continue to be developed as a ‘normal’ cis-gendered boy who feels comfortable with his toys and his boy-room. Expressions of discomfort or wanting to play with toys that are considered cis-gendered female could lead Joseph to be thought of as a ‘trans’ gendered or non-binary child, especially if this continues over time.

In her phenomenological study of bodily aesthetics, Zowie Davy (2011) focuses on lived experience and the way bodily appearance shapes gender. Wearing particular clothes or acting in certain ways in the social world helps to constitute the body as male or female because social experiences, actions and practices become embodied over time. Feelings are also negotiated as emotion words and concepts within and through these processes. Doing a gender is about doing social practices, actions and aesthetics, incorporating body images and evoking in others a feeling response that legitimates and is comfortable with the appearance of a cis-gender male or female.

As children and young people develop their gendered world, it will be expected that they present appearances, actions, behaviours and practices that reflect an embodied cis-gendered ‘self’. However, more recently, the diverse lived experiences of trans and non-binary people (Hines, 2007; Monro, 2000) have begun to show that people are challenging the usefulness of a binary that has been taken for granted as ‘real’ gender. Instead, because gender is a reflection of actions, aesthetics, social practices and emotions and it is these that constitute gender, I want to focus on how gender is being rethought and rearticulated through a focus on genderqueerconfessions.tumblr.com.

Introducing genderqueerconfessions

Genderqueerconfessions is a blog hosted by the social media platform Tumblr. The ages of those using the website are not explicitly mentioned, but often bloggers refer to being ‘at school’ or describe issues faced when disclosing information to a parent. People are invited to submit their ‘confession’ to the site. There is a conversational style, with many bloggers responding to statements with helpful ‘tips’, or at times scrutinizing the content of a particular confession.⁶

As a community blog, the content of genderqueerconfessions is mediated by administrators who also act as moderators for content added to the site. In practice, this administrative role also entails offering affirmations about choices of gender and sexuality, with administrators cris and elliot appearing open to the many ways people may experience gender. This provides a form of approval for bloggers to explore and experience their feelings about bodies and emotions, behaviours and presentation. Genderqueerconfessions is updated daily, with post content including questions or thoughts on gender or gendered experiences, and photographs.⁷ Numerous definitions of gendered identity are used on the site. Some of these include: ‘demi-boy’, ‘demi-girl’, ‘masc-romantic’, ‘masc-sexual’, ‘androsexual’, ‘genderfluid’, ‘agender’, ‘bigender’, ‘AFAB’ (assigned female at birth), ‘AMAB’ (assigned male at birth), ‘androgyne’, ‘gynesexual’, ‘pansexual’, ‘trans’, ‘demi-gender’, ‘genderless’, ‘transman’, ‘transwoman’, ‘chooses not to have a label’, ‘cis and straight and female’. These indicate the gradual emergence of new gender subjectivities. Some of these identities implicate sexuality as well as gender. There appear to be shifting meanings for the body as well as ways of interacting and negotiating social life.

Method and analysis

Over a period of six months, I conducted a retrospective thematic analysis of comments made to the blog site (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The research was undertaken between April and September 2016, looking at material produced for genderqueerconfessions throughout 2015. My analysis was primarily concerned with the meaning and impact of community-contributed content. I made a note of recurring social features, common practices and events of analytic interest, and saved hyperlinks to relevant content. Initial coding of the notes took place during the research process, with further coding undertaken following the completion of the research. This enabled me to identify and analyze recurring themes and issues within the blog’s content, as well as changes over time. After coding several times using a thematic analysis, a number of themes began to emerge. These fall into three main categories that I named as: 1) gender dis-orientation, 2) liminality, 3) trans-emotionality.

Gender dis-orientation

Ahmed suggests that ‘dis-orientation’ can ‘throw the body from its ground’ and feel ‘unsettling’ (Ahmed, 2006: 157). But dis-orientation can also mean a move, a sense of needing to ‘find a home’ (Ahmed, 2006), and those who write on the blog are, in some ways, finding a home for their feelings that appear to move beyond the cis-gendered binary. They appear to have shifted orientation away from a particular alignment with normative cis-gender categories that have previously been taken for granted, and are instead orientating towards finding ways of talking about ‘non-binary’ gender. There is a sense that bloggers had a ‘realization’ when they had finally reached a point where they ‘suddenly’ started to take note of, and question, the meaning of their gender because of what they had read on the blog site or shared with friends. For example, as one blogger reveals: ‘I don’t feel very masculine and I’d still want to dress feminine much of the time (and perhaps even “have” breasts)’. Thus begins a process of ‘dis-orientation’, a time where people ‘tread a different path’ (Ahmed, 2006: 170) that has become open to them. I use dis-orientation to describe the feeling of suddenly realizing that gender meanings can move beyond the binary, either through changing social practices linked to the named gender or altering the naming of the gender completely. It is made clear by genderqueerconfessions bloggers that dis-orientation was rarely ‘on show’ within the family space or at school, and neither was it communicated to parental figures, who within blog posts appear to represent a lack of awareness about gender variance and a conformity to the taken-for-granted binary system. Prior to dis-orientation, gender had always seemed cast iron or unshakeable because it had been designated or orientated at birth, and bloggers were expected to act, speak, dress and feel through socially sanctioned cis-gender norms that maintain this orientation. For example, one respondent stated:

I’ve always been confused by my gender … I often dress as a tomboy and wish to have a flat chest but the next day I’d walk around with a push up and skinny girls’ jeans. Same with interests. I like soccer and video games and action movies and so on but also horses and Disney movies etc. I think I found a way to describe my diversity as genderqueer.

The conventional categories of cis-gender no longer fit the experiences of this particular blogger, who is moving towards a trans-gender identity as genderqueer. While acknowledging they can experience their own agency by shaping the body to be how they want, they also resist normativity by enjoying social practices that may be considered specifically ‘masculine’ (video games and action movies) and ‘feminine’ (horses and Disney movies). For this person, accepting their trans-gendered behaviours in a ‘genderqueer’ way and feeling comfortable with ‘genderqueer’ as a way to describe their diverse orientation offers an alternative to feelings of dysphoria.

Another blogger stated:

For sixteen years I have identified as a girl cause I was born female … so I never considered anything different and then one day I was sitting around and it was like woah wait I’m non-binary (I saw your post awhile back about suddenly realizing your identity …).

The realization seems to be a jolt into a new understanding of the self, a self that had previously developed in line with the sex designated or interpellated at birth (female), a cis-gender ‘girl’, but which is now freed from the restrictive norms and roles that had been used to frame it. For the person posting the text, knowledge about gender variation shared on the social media site offered an opportunity to reconsider gendered meanings. It was also a point where they wanted to stop the gendering of their body (‘woah, wait’) and have an opportunity to re-focus, or re-orientate. Likewise, another blogger opened their text with: ‘In the past couple of weeks I’ve been questioning my gender. I’m just not sure if I’m genderqueer or not’. This indicates the level of confusion experienced as the person begins to question the way they are expected to conform to a binary system that no longer orients them in the direction they wish to subjectively experience. The idea of possibly aligning with a genderqueer identity actually lifts gender out of the binary while re-structuring it within a queer or non-normative set of values and norms for the lived body. The dis-orientation of gender indicates that language and taken-for-granted signifiers are no longer useful and, as people turn towards a different direction, they feel a change emotionally. There is literally a sense of ‘dis-orientation’, which most of the bloggers feel this as ‘confusion’, as we see here: ‘I feel like a boy, I want to be a boy but I still like feminine things like pink and flowers and fancy underwear and I really like boys. What do a go [sic] as it’s really confusing’. This is primarily because they have not been exposed to alternative representations for gender. This form of emotional work (Hochschild, 1983) operates because most people want to ‘find’ somewhere they can be orientated towards.

Gender liminality

Liminality marks the ‘betwixt and between’ experiences of bodies that are no longer simply male/ female or masculine/feminine. Liminality acts as a form of social transition where there is no longer familiarity and there is an ontological and epistemological shift as the person crosses conceptual boundaries (Land et al., 2010).

For some bloggers, the body is literally the site of change. Many talk about ‘queergramming’ – a way of understanding the expansive changes involved in discussing gender in a non-binary way. This may involve individuals changing their name, using different pronouns, wanting or not wanting to transition and sharing details of how to wear particular clothes like binders – where to buy them and how to feel it is acceptable to wear them regardless of gender. All of this involves understanding and experiencing how one feels about gender and realizing gender is far more expansive than a cis-gender orientation. One blogger shared how they had spent most of their younger years (11/12 years old) being mistaken for a boy and found this stressful, and then at 16 they finally began to question their gender and: ‘enjoyed being female, I loved my body’ and also liked being called ‘a guy’. Finally, this had an impact on pronouns and this blogger now uses ‘fae’ rather than she and they no longer ‘belong’ to the binary gender system. This person considered binary gender as restrictive and distressing because it limited how one should feel in relation to ‘doing’ gender. The ability to rearticulate gender as ‘beyond’ the binary allows them to adopt a more liminal and questioning stance.

In some cases, gender liminality may be understood in terms of those who want to name their body as male and/or female, and this may align or misalign with the way the body was named at birth. However, what it feels like to ‘be’ male or female can be problematic because to ‘feel’ like a boy or a girl seems to mean that this aligns with doing ‘things’ that are expected of a boy or a girl. It would seem that when a person reports doing ‘things’ they check to see if these ‘things’ are socially understood as masculine or feminine, and once this is done it becomes easier to identify the self as a boy or a girl. However, as bloggers realize that they enjoy doing ‘things’ identified as both boy and girl, they begin to embrace their feelings and seem to let themselves enjoy the ‘doing’ regardless of gender. In the below examples, both bloggers self-name or ‘hail’ (Althusser, 1971; Butler, 1997) their experience as boyness and girlness – a definite shift away from the binary way gender has been designated in the past. One blogger states:

I was AFAB and think I’m genderqueer. Since I was little I didn’t like being called a girl (cause I didn’t feel like one) I think I have gender dysphoria bc I hate it when someone calls me a girl. also I have body dysphoria. I identify as female (but it doesn’t bother me if someone calls me he, him, his pronouns). I don’t want to transition to male tho. Idk

Again, the blogger thinks through meanings around cis-genderism and examines how they feel when designated a ‘girl’: it is these feelings that mean they did not want the label ‘girl’ that was ‘assigned’ at birth. This is not just a complete rejection of the label. It also indicates the importance of affective experiences when considering the labelling of the body, the social and sexual practices involved, as well as the feelings linked to these wider forms of knowledge that help constitute gender. This person is caught between the labelling of a social gender without choice, their identity as female, their acceptance of male pronouns and their strong feelings about these different meanings. Genderqueer offers them a way beyond the binary.

Another blogger states that their gender identity can no longer be protected because their biological sex and gender do not match:

I often feel like I’m not protected by gender identity when I feel like using a restroom that doesn’t correspond with my biological sex simply because I don’t identify with any gender and don’t conform to masculine-feminine spectrum/system. I feel my sex and identity shouldn’t be anyone’s business when it comes to the places I go and the services I use.

With its infrastructure limitations and failure to offer a choice of genders in public spaces, the gendering of the social world and the way we monitor gender is shown when using basic facilities such as a toilet. A person is forced to make public their gender as binary. These structural limitations lead to affective experiences of being threatened and hailed as unacceptable. Quite simply, toilets marked as ‘male’ or ‘female’ are not available to those who are outside the cis-gender binary, thereby forcing people to be publically exposed as unintelligible. In this way, gender no longer protects individuals who are unable to designate within normative identity structures.

There is no certainty about labels. While some may choose to describe themselves as genderfluid or agender or genderless, it is noticeable that gender is often understood within the confines of the masculine-feminine binary when people try to present how they are experiencing their gender as it undergoes change. As they navigate resisting normative categories, they find unique ways to move away from a static binary. Pronouns seem to offer the most accessible way out of a fixed gender, with many bloggers describing a preference for ‘it’ or ‘they’. For example, one blogger stated: ‘I’m a genderfluid between male, female and agender. But instead of the popular agender pronouns I prefer “it” pronouns’. As the following person summarizes:

I’ve realized that I don’t always like female pronouns being used in reference to myself. I’ve always thought I was cis but I’ve just started to realise that I have days where my gender does not connect with my biological sex. I don’t really like labels so I’m not trying align myself with one.

In this final description, it seems as though a person who originally believed their natal sex and gender was cisgendered ‘realized’ this was not the case and also realizes that pronouns no longer fit. They seem to sum up the problem of gender and sex and how these may or may not align. The example indicates how language has been used to cement sex and gender together via pronouns and names to form the basis of an ontological binary system that is at best fabricated.

Trans-emotionality

So, I’m genderfluid. Or so I thought. I realised I tend to feel more masculine than not, and hardly ever feminine (I’m AFAB). (Anon.)

Trans-emotionality captures the consolidation of dis-orientation and liminality. There is a sense of ‘self’ as somehow ‘beyond’ cis-gender male or female. In this context there is a shift towards a more ‘feeling-led’ and trans-gender understanding of self, where an individual can ‘do’ gender more fluidly. Denoting that someone ‘feels’ male or female is a way of constituting gender as ‘real’, as ontologically secure and as though certain actions and practices denote maleness and femaleness within a prioritized cis-gender framework. Taking bodies as ‘trans-gender’ and denoting them as agender or genderqueer removes the need to define social practices and meanings as cis-gendered and therefore removes the need to define the body as ‘feeling’ male or female This requires new terms, a new way of thinking and a language that helps people to describe their everyday lived experiences beyond the binary. For example, one blogger states: ‘I want people to, in a way inform people that not everyone is just male or female’. In response, the moderators offer their full support, suggesting: ‘If you shift between genders, that’s genderfluid! If you still feel more masculine that would probably fall under demi-boy, but in the end remember it’s always what feels right for you’. This exchange suggests that boundaries set for binary cis-genderism are being removed and replaced with experiences, personal goals and values which are no longer restricted by a binary system. This allows people to develop a new reflexivity that takes account of feelings in relation to both or neither genders.

Bloggers are also reflective and reflexive about their felt interiority in relation to gendered bodily practices. Trans-emotionality marks the experience when bodily feelings and required male/female sex-role behaviours are incongruous and naming oneself as either a boy or a girl is far too limiting. One blogger stated: ‘After swearing I’m a girl not a boy for so many years I forced femininity on myself and developed serious body dysphoria’. In effect, while the blogger describes their experience of body dysphoria, their account also opens the door to explore the issues of social dysphoria. There is no doubt that while some people may experience a dislike for the body, there are others who experience a dislike of enforcing ‘orientating’ behaviours and actions onto the body; behaviours and actions which are not comfortable and yet are expected simply because a body has been interpellated as male/boy or female/girl.

Bloggers often refer to the feeling of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ as something that may be ‘felt’, even though what masculinity or femininity feels like seems difficult to distinguish other than through enacting daily social practices. For example, the following blogger stated:

So, I’m dfab but for just under a year ive known im not female, I was quite feminine as a younger child, but from the age of about 10 upwards I wasn’t. atm, I think I feel like I lean towards demiboy with the other ‘part’ being genderless/androgyne.

The issue here appears to be a feeling of incongruence because they were sexed as ‘female’ at birth while ‘feminine’ appears to describe particular ways of behaving in the world that are rejected in favour of ‘boyness’ and androgeny. Thus, far more scrutiny is required as to what constitutes sex (rather than it simply being ‘assigned’ at birth) and gender and how this relates to a felt interiority. Is there really a ‘boyness’ or ‘girlness’ inside the body that may be experienced solely by bodies designated as these labels at birth? Trans-emotionality suggests moving beyond a binary, allowing people to more openly explore their feelings and attached meanings in relation to gender.

Feeling is also mentioned in another blog post:

Realization story: I was laying in my bed thinking about life in general and it kinda hit me. I remembered telling my dad as a small child that I should have been born a boy. I thought about all the feeling of not fitting in with the girls nor really fitting in with the guys. I had no word for how I felt. After a little research I found my word: Gender fluid. I’ve since stopped trying to be a girl and just be myself. I’ve changed my name and better suited my appearance to how I feel inside.

This statement further highlights the problem of naming or hailing the gender of the body at birth while also showing how this person experienced their social exclusion because they failed to ‘do’ either boy or girl. It is interesting how there was no description for this experience or a way of naming how they felt. There is simply no available lexicon of emotion, while it is clear that ‘fitting in with the girls’ suggests that ‘doing’ girl leads to feeling girl. This can lead to what one blogger described as ‘dysphoria day’, when the named gender and bodily experiences simply do not match up. Feelings of discomfort are a way of understanding that named gender and practices/experiences do not match. Once they stopped ‘doing girl’ and enforcing a set of daily practices and moved into a more liminal space, this person realized there was no language to describe their feelings. Instead their bodily aesthetics openly show they no longer ‘fit in’ and they are managing their feelings associated with this experience. Feeling is used to negotiate a range of lived experiences that turn the person away from their previous direction as a ‘girl’. It is what I mean by ‘trans-emotionality’: an emotionality that turns both towards and away from doing ‘boy’ or ‘girl’.

Conclusion

In a cis-gendered and heterosexually dominated context, children have their feeling worlds socialized via ‘emotions’ to fit dominant cis-gender discourses (Ansara and Hegarty, 2012). However, as communities such as genderqueerconfessions show, to describe bodies as only ‘male’ or ‘female’, ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ limits language and understanding for those who simply do not fit these designations. While certain practices may be taken for granted as denoting what cis-gender boys or girls ‘do’, and therefore how they are expected to feel, an emerging trans-emotionality enables gender-variant and trans people to manage how they dress, act, behave, speak and/or respond in everyday social life in a manner that eludes socially prescribed gender categories and reflects gender as variant.

New gender subjectivities are beginning to emerge and, despite the limitations of language, many people no longer want to be fixed to gender binaries or labels that denote a particular cis gender body or subjectivity (Bornstein, 1998; Nestle et al., 2002). The importance of a feeling-led set of meanings for such individuals shows an underlying shift in the way gender can be described. Rather than being enacted through a male/female binary, gender is embedded in a trans-emotionality, wherein some people are choosing to name their ‘self’ as other than male or female, or to behave in ways that no longer indicate if the body is either male or female but neither or both.

Alternatively, trans-emotionality attempts to offer a feeling-led identity, where gender meanings and relationality allow us to re-configure the body away from the binary male-female, masculine-feminine.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Igi Moon’s work focuses on psychotherapy, gender, sexuality and emotion. It is an interesting combination! They have published two edited books, Counselling Ideologies: Queer Challenges to Heteronormativity (Routledge, 2010) and Feeling Queer or Queer Feelings: Radical Approaches to Counselling Sex, Sexualities and Gender (Routledge, 2007). They are presently working on developing a trans-therapeutic approach to working with trans and non-binary people and establishing a therapy clinic at Roehampton University. Igi is a Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS). They represent the BPS on a number of committees and they are presently involved with extending the Memorandum of Understanding against Conversion Therapies to protect trans and non-binary people. They are also an Associate Fellow at Warwick University in the Department of Sociology. Most of all they like playing with ideas. And the cat!

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