scholarly journals 'When I was transgender'

Author(s):  
Benjamin Hegarty

This think piece reflects on the ways in which the category ‘transgender’ is used by waria – Indonesia’s ‘national transvestite’ (Boellstorff 2007) – based on ethnographic data collected from informants aged forty years or older in Yogyakarta and Jakarta. I was struck by how this group used the category ‘transgender’ with reference to a particular time in life that stretched from mid-teens to late twenties, a period marked by national and transnational migration for intensive sex work and other labor. Their use of ‘transgender’ to describe certain times of their lives but not others validates scholarly calls to question the privileging of gender and sexuality in analyses of subjectivity. It also troubles the basis of Western assumptions about aging and its relationship to the self, which presumes an experience of time as an orderly chronological progression. Finally, their use of ‘transgender’ demands closer attention to why the use of categories of gender and sexuality might shift across the life course. My informants’ narratives invite us to consider how people in different locations draw upon globalized categories to make meaning. Greater ethnographic attention towards how categories are drawn upon to produce and reflect subjectivity in diverse ways may produce a reflexive understanding of the relationship between categories and the context of entrenched structural inequalities in which they are used.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2098078
Author(s):  
Max Stick ◽  
Tina Fetner

Men’s identification with and support for feminism has attracted the interest of masculinity scholars. This study explores an under-researched dimension of this phenomenon, investigating the relationship between feminist identification and sexual behavior. In heterosexual encounters, do feminist men report having sex more recently than those who do not call themselves feminists? During sexual encounters, do feminist men behave differently than non-feminists? In particular, do feminist men organize their sexual behavior in a way that prioritizes their partners’ sexual pleasure to a greater extent than non-feminists? Using representative survey data of Canadian adults, we examine the self-reported sexual behavior of heterosexual Canadian men. We find that self-identifying feminist men report having sex more recently and are more likely to report engaging in breast stimulation and performing oral sex on their partners than non-feminists. We discuss the implications of these findings on the sociological literature on gender and sexuality.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica McKenzie ◽  
Lene Arnett Jensen

Drawing from qualitative analyses of interviews, ethnographic data, and a review of interdisciplinary literature, this manuscript puts forth a theory of moral life course narratives among U.S. evangelical and mainline Protestants. This theory delineates the relationship between religious worldviews and conceptions of moral behaviors, and the manner in which these worldviews and attendant moral conceptions change across the life course for community members. Grounded theory analyses of 32 participants’ divinity-based moral discourses were interpreted in conjunction with their worldviews, as well as church, home, and school contexts. Analyses indicated that evangelical children highlighted their moral transgressions because they regarded themselves as still quite close to a sinful birth. Evangelical adults, who had been saved and were moving toward God, temporally and spiritually distanced themselves from the morally wrong deeds of their youth. Meanwhile, mainline children and adolescents rarely reasoned about their moral experiences in terms of divinity. This finding is understood in light of their church’s emphasis on developing an individualized relationship with God over time. The study and resultant theory elaborate cultural constructions and transmissions of moral life course narratives that, in turn, provide a framework for understanding when, why, and how divinity enters into moral meaning making for cultural community members. We conclude by advocating for theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches that expose the cultural nature of developmentally dynamic moral selves.


2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 592-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Rocque ◽  
Wesley G. Jennings ◽  
Alex R. Piquero ◽  
Turgut Ozkan ◽  
David P. Farrington

School dropout has been extensively studied in the literature as a correlate of negative life outcomes. A precursor to school dropout is truancy, the unexcused or illegitimate student absence from school. Few studies have examined the relationship between truancy and involvement in crime and adjustment more generally over the life-course. This study extends previous work by exploring whether truancy at age 12 to 14 is related to later life outcomes such as crime, aggression, and adjustment using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Results indicate that truancy has long-lasting associations with negative life outcomes, especially for non-violent crime and problem drinking. Importantly, these findings hold for certain outcomes controlling for a comprehensive host of environmental and individual childhood risk factors.


1999 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 511-531
Author(s):  
Will Coster

IN 1974 Margaret Spufford was able to describe wills as ‘largely unused by local historians’. Over the last quarter of a century this situation has changed radically, and wills have been called upon to provide evidence on subjects as diverse as popular piety, charity, literacy, economics, demography, and familial ties. In this process a divide has developed between religious historians, who have largely been concerned with the preambles of wills, and social historians, who have confined themselves to the content. This paper attempts to bridge that gap by examining the relationship of geography, status, and the life course, with the form and content of the wills.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S6-S6
Author(s):  
Ioana Sendroiu ◽  
Laura Upenieks

Abstract Perceived life trajectories are rooted in structural systems of advantage and disadvantage, but individuals also shape their futures through setting goals and expectations. “Future aspirations” have typically been used in life course research to refer to one’s conception of their chances of success across life domains and can serve as a resource to help individuals persevere in the face of hardship. Taking a life course approach and using three waves of data from the MIDUS study, we utilize hybrid fixed effects models to assess the relationship between future aspirations and income. We find that, net of age, health, and a host of other time-varying factors, more positive future aspirations are indeed related to higher income over time, but that this relationship takes different shapes in different contexts. In particular, in lower quality neighborhoods, higher future aspirations lead to worse economic outcomes over the life course, while in higher quality neighborhoods, higher aspirations are indeed related to higher incomes. We thus argue that aspirations are only helpful in some contexts, and are inherently contextual not just in their sources but also in their effects.


1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald L. Redfoot ◽  
Kurt W. Back

Despite the recent popularity of the term, the degree to which the “life course” as such is experienced in everyday life is not clear. Explorations of this question have not been very satisfying because they tend to either eliminate biographical time (as in survey research) or assume its presence (as with clinical, biographical, and life historical research) through the methods used. Our exploratory research used the meanings of personal possessions as an indirect measure of the temporal framing of experiences among forty women who had moved into facilities for elderly persons. We found considerable variation in the relative frequency and importance of biographical references in descriptions of those possessions, which challenges the concepts that have been used to relate experiences of temporality to the self and the methods that have been used to explore these experiences.


Gerontologia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-114
Author(s):  
Sarah Åkerman ◽  
Fredrica Nyqvist ◽  
Mikael Nygård

Den demografiska utvecklingen leder till omorganiseringar inom den finländska äldreomsorgen. Privatisering, marknadisering och närståendevård ökar med konsekvenser för vårdbehövande och deras anhöriga. Temat för den här artikeln är närståendevård. Tidigare forskning har fokuserat i större utsträckning på vårdarna, trots att också vårdtagaren är en aktiv part i vården. Enligt livsloppsperspektivet ses åldrande som en livslång process. En individs livslopp påverkas av de begränsningar och möjligheter som styr hennes val och handlingar i en specifik historisk och social kontext. I den här studien har sju vårdtagare intervjuats med kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer. Syftet var att studera äldre närståendevårdtagares vårdval ur ett livsloppsperspektiv. Studiens frågeställningar var: hur kan bakgrunden till närståendevårdtagarnas vårdval förstås ur ett livsloppsperspektiv? Vad har vårdtagarna för tankar om framtiden? Resultaten visade att valet av närståendevård påverkades av den personliga bakgrunden och relationen till närståendevårdaren, men även av delvis negativa attityder till formell äldreomsorg. Vårdtagarna oroade sig för framtida vårdarrangemang. ”You receive help when you need it” – older informal care recipients’ care choice from a life course perspective Demographic development leads to increasing privatization, marketization and informal care in Finnish eldercare. The theme for this study is informal care. Previous research has focused on caregivers, even though the recipient is also an active part in care. According to the life course perspective, ageing is a lifelong process that takes place in a historical and social context. Seven older informal care recipients have been interviewed using qualitative semi-structured interviews. The aim was to study older informal care recipients’ care choice from a life course perspective. The research questions were: how can the background of the recipients’ care choice be understood from a life course perspective? What are the recipients’ thoughts on the future? The results showed that the care recipients’ choice was affected by personal reasons and the relationship with the caregiver, but also by partly negative attitudes towards formal eldercare. The care recipients worried about future arrangements.


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