Looking for Signs of Trans Life: Rejecting Transnormativity to Explore Genderfluidity as Both Identity and Relational Process

Abstract

Genderfluidity refers to having a gender that changes consistently and nonlinearly. For people who are genderfluid, change is the basis of gender identity cohesion; past genders are not rationalized as a phase, a misnaming, or confusion, future genders are anticipated, and one’s current gender experience is not upheld as more “true” or “real” than those past or future genders. It is a form of nonbinary gender, and is an aspect of some transgender people’s experience that has so far been understudied. The present research used hermeneutic phenomenology to explore 16 people’s experiences of genderfluidity. In their interviews, participants described genderfluidity as a relational experience, fundamentally informed by their interactions in community, rather than solely as an individualized identity. Major themes included the importance of gender euphoria (as opposed to dysphoria) for finding an authentic gender presentation; authentic gender embodiment as a prerequisite for building authentic and noncoercive relationships; genderfluidity as an experience which blurs the lines between masculinity, femininity, and androgyny and which is therefore treated as illegitimate under cisnormativity; White supremacy and ableism as defining features of cisnormativity and anti-transness; and fluidity-affirming community ties as permission to exist as a genderfluid person. Genderfluidity therefore provides a unique lens through which to understand connections between anti-transness, patriarchy, White supremacy, and ableism, as well as possibilities for resisting these forces through noncoercive, responsive, and authentic relationships.