Dressing the transgender body : a study on clothing and cisnormativity in Singapore
This paper explores how transgender people dress themselves and how that is affected by cisnormativity prior to and after commencement of social transition. Concepts of doing gender and passing were applied to the different stages of trans life in order to populate a cultural understanding of the...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Final Year Project |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10356/73727 |
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| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | This paper explores how transgender people dress themselves and how that is affected
by cisnormativity prior to and after commencement of social transition. Concepts of
doing gender and passing were applied to the different stages of trans life in order to
populate a cultural understanding of the everyday practices involved in negotiating
cisnormative society. Via in-depth, semi-structured interviews with three
male-to-female and three female-to-male transgender individuals, experiences with
dressing were sought. Interviews were broken up into pre-transition and post-transition
experiences with sub-sections addressing casual wear, formal wear, school uniforms
and experiences in shopping for clothes in public spaces. Findings revealed significant
differences in experiences of dressing in terms of gender-related distress and
satisfaction. Pre-transition was marked by assigned gender clothing which was found to
be oppressive through forced performativity leading to identity misclassification.
Post-transition was marked by identified gender clothing and the satisfaction of aligning
identified gender and outward presentation. However, passing was found to be a
double-edged sword in freeing identified gender and restricting the body so as to fit
cisnormative notions of acceptable gendered bodies. Passing thus becomes part of the
mechanics that perpetuate trans-invisibility in abiding cisnormative conceptions of
acceptable maleness and femaleness. Overall, a cisnormative agenda was found in the
contradiction between the state’s allowance of transgender people to medically and
legally confirm their identified genders and assumptions of cisnormativity in the
institutions of education and family. |
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