Pfeffer Carla A
AJS. 2014 Jul;120(1):1-44. doi: 10.1086/677197.
For decades, sociological theory has documented how our lives are simultaneously produced through and against normative structures of sex, gender, and sexuality. These normative structures are often believed to operate along presumably "natural," biological, and essentialized binaries of male/female, man/woman, and heterosexual/ homosexual. However, as the lives and experiences of transgender people and their families become increasingly socially visible, these normative structuring binaries are called into stark question as they fail to adequately articulate and encompass these social actors' identities and social group memberships. Utilizing in-depth interviews with 50 women from the United States, Canada, and Australia, who detail 61 unique relationships with transgender men, this study considers how the experiences of these queer social actors hold the potential to rattle the very foundations upon which normative binaries rest, highlighting the increasingly blurry intersections, tensions, and overlaps between sex, gender, and sexual orientation in the 21st century. This work also considers the potential for these normative disruptions to engender opportunities for social collaboration, solidarity, and transformation.
几十年来,社会学理论记录了我们的生活是如何通过性、性别和性取向的规范结构并与之相悖地同时产生的。这些规范结构通常被认为是沿着男性/女性、男人/女人以及异性恋/同性恋等大概“自然”、生物学和本质化的二元对立来运作的。然而,随着跨性别者及其家庭的生活和经历在社会上越来越受到关注,这些规范性的二元结构受到了严峻质疑,因为它们未能充分阐明和涵盖这些社会行为者的身份和社会群体归属。本研究对来自美国、加拿大和澳大利亚的50名女性进行了深入访谈,她们详细讲述了与跨性别男性的61种独特关系,探讨了这些酷儿社会行为者的经历如何有可能动摇规范二元对立所依赖的基础,凸显了21世纪性、性别和性取向之间日益模糊的交叉点、紧张关系和重叠之处。这项研究还探讨了这些规范破坏为社会合作、团结和变革带来机遇的可能性。