Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity

TLDR

The article examines how nontransgender individuals interact with transgender people to illustrate the link between gender performance and heteronormativity. The study contrasts public and private interactions across nonsexual, sexualized, and sexual contexts to reveal the inseparable link between gender and sexuality. The study finds that gender category membership criteria differ between social and sexual contexts, that gender performance is more closely tied to genital shape in sexual situations, and that men and women employ distinct gendered tactics to police and repair breaches of heteronormativity.

Abstract

This article brings together two case studies that examine how nontransgender people, “gender normals,” interact with transgender people to highlight the connections between doing gender and heteronormativity. By contrasting public and private interactions that range from nonsexual to sexualized to sexual, the authors show how gender and sexuality are inextricably tied together. The authors demonstrate that the criteria for membership in a gender category are significantly different in social versus (hetero)sexual circumstances. While gender is presumed to reflect biological sex in all social interactions, the importance of doing gender in a way that represents the shape of one's genitals is heightened in sexual and sexualized situations. Responses to perceived failures to fulfill gender criteria in sexual and sexualized relationships are themselves gendered; men and women select different targets for and utilize gendered tactics to accomplish the policing of supposedly natural gender boundaries and to repair breaches to heteronormativity.