26:T52c,

This study examines the link between self-rated health and two aspects of gender: an individual’s gender identity, and whether strangers classify that person’s voice as male or female. In a phone-based general health survey, interviewers classified the sex of transgender women (n = 722) and transgender men (n = 446) based on assumptions they made after hearing respondents’ voices. The flawed design of the original survey produced inconsistent sex classification among transgender men and transgender women respondents; this study repurposes these discrepancies to look more closely at the implications of voice-based gender classification for the health of transgender men and women. Average marginal effects from logistic regression models show transgender men who are classified as women based on their voices are more likely to report poor self-rated health compared to transgender men who are classified as men. Conversely, transgender women who are classified as men are less likely to report poor self-rated health than are transgender women who are classified as women. Additionally, Black transgender men are more likely than any other group to be classified inconsistently with their gender identity, suggesting a link between race/ethnicity and gender perception.

27:T501,

Much research in social science concludes that uncertainty surrounding individual beliefs and identities is negative and anxiety-inducing, and that people are continuously searching for certainty. In the context of rising rates of religious disaffiliation in the United States, and the rise of social and political organizations created to promote nonreligious beliefs and values, the nonreligious offer a strategic case to explore the meaning and lived experience of certainty and uncertainty surrounding belief and identity formation. Drawing on an analysis of identity narratives from 50 nonreligious Americans, I find that uncertainty is just as often experienced as positive and motivating as it is isolating or anxiety-inducing, and although certainty-filled beliefs and identities are available for the nonreligious, they are just as often rejected for more uncertain ones. I reveal how some nonreligious individuals fluctuate between different orientations toward certainty and uncertainty regarding their nonreligion, whereas others exhibit more trait-like orientations to certainty and uncertainty. These findings have important implications for understanding how orientations to certainty and uncertainty shape identity and belief development in the modern world.

28:T533,

Gaslighting—a type of psychological abuse aimed at making victims seem or feel “crazy,” creating a “surreal” interpersonal environment—has captured public attention. Despite the popularity of the term, sociologists have ignored gaslighting, leaving it to be theorized by psychologists. However, this article argues that gaslighting is primarily a sociological rather than a psychological phenomenon. Gaslighting should be understood as rooted in social inequalities, including gender, and executed in power-laden intimate relationships. The theory developed here argues that gaslighting is consequential when perpetrators mobilize gender-based stereotypes and structural and institutional inequalities against victims to manipulate their realities. Using domestic violence as a strategic case study to identify the mechanisms via which gaslighting operates, I reveal how abusers mobilize gendered stereotypes; structural vulnerabilities related to race, nationality, and sexuality; and institutional inequalities against victims to erode their realities. These tactics are gendered in that they rely on the association of femininity with irrationality. Gaslighting offers an opportunity for sociologists to theorize under-recognized, gendered forms of power and their mobilization in interpersonal relationships.

29:T573,