The nexus of trans collegians’ pronouns and name practices navigating campus space(s): Beyond the binary.
Maureen Alice Flint, Cindy Ann Kilgo, Kit Emslie, Lauren Anateira Bennett · Journal of Diversity in Higher Education · 2021
The purpose of our study is to explore the nexus between trans students’ experiences with pronoun usage and naming practices through campus interactions and navigations of campus. Grounded in a Deleuzian conception of becoming, our analysis explores the multiple and simultaneous ways that pronoun use effects trans student’s experiences on campus. As a theoretical orientation, becoming centers the multiplicitous and entangled narratives, experiences, and negotiations of pronoun usage and naming practices with the trans students in our studies, disrupting the dominant culture. Our study’s findings contribute to the literature on trans collegians’ experiences navigating genderist campus environments, as well as theoretical and methodological considerations for centering trans, nonbinary, and agender student narratives. Specifically, our analysis of student narratives emphasized the ways in which students simultaneously experience isolation and affirmation, the ways in which policies designed to affirm and support trans students could also work to silence them, as well as how students practiced resilience and built relationships within these contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)