Trans* identities have a history of being constructed, regulated and erased. Often a trans* individual’s social status is judged by others on the basis of their perception of that individual’s achievement of normative standards of gender. We are living through a time characterized by the prioritization of visual identity alongside intense scrutiny of trans* identities in relation to their authenticity and right to recognition. Research should support a reorientation of scrutiny towards these issues and acknowledge their relevance to lived experiences of the hegemonic discourse related to conceptualizations of gender as binary that engulf trans* individuals' lives. This paper is informed by empirical research undertaken at the University of Plymouth and in particular reflections on trans* individuals’ lived experiences of social harms. It contributes to victimology by presenting a discussion of cultural (re)presentations of the self and processes of othering in relation to trans* individuals. The adoption of participatory visual-narrative methods as a route through which to challenge these harmful discourses is proposed. Such methods can refocus our gaze away from trans* individuals as problematizing the world for others, and on to the lived experiences of the structures and processes that foster stigmatization and marginalization.
BettcherTM (2007) Evil deceivers and make-believers: On transphobic violence and the politics of illusion. Hypatia22(3): 43–65.
7.
BettingerTV (2010) Ethical methodological complexities in research involving sexual minorities. New Horizons in Adult Education & Human Resource Development24(1): 43–58.
8.
BillingsDBUrbanT (1996) The Socio-medical construction of transsexualism. In: SkinsRKingD (eds) Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. London: Routledge, pp. 99–117.
9.
BocktingWO (2009) Transforming the paradigm of transgender health: A field in transition. Sexual and Relationship Therapy24(2): 103–107.
10.
BornsteinK (1994) Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge.
11.
BoumanWPSchwendASMotmansJ, et al. (2017) Language and trans health. International Journal of Transgenderism18(1): 1–6.
12.
BrodyNDavisDCDrushelBE, et al. (2012) Social networking and impression management: Self-presentation in the digital age. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
13.
BrooksJG (1999) In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
14.
BurkettE (2015) What makes a woman. The New York Times, 6. June 2015
15.
CalifiaP (1997) Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press.
16.
CampbellRWascoSM (2000) Feminist approaches to social science: Epistemological and methodological tenets. American Journal of Community Psychology28(6): 773–791.
17.
CapuzzaJCSpencerLG (2017) Regressing, progressing, or transgressing on the small screen? Transgender characters on US scripted television series. Communication Quarterly65(2): 214–230.
18.
CarrabineE (2012) Just images: Aesthetics, ethics and visual criminology. The British Journal of Criminology52(3): 463–489.
19.
CatalanoDCJ (2015) ‘Trans enough?’ The pressures trans men negotiate in higher education. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly2(3): 411–430.
20.
CohenS (1985) Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification. Cambridge: Polity Press.
21.
ConaghanJ (2009) Intersectionality and the feminist project in law. In: GrahamECooperDKrisnaJ, et al. (eds) Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location. London: Routledge, pp.21–48.
22.
CroghanRGriffinCHunterJ, et al. (2008) Young people’s constructions of self: Notes on the use and analysis of the photo-elicitation methods. International Journal of Social Research Methodology11(4): 345–356.
23.
DarwinH (2017) Doing gender beyond the binary: A virtual ethnography. Symbolic Interaction40(3): 317–334.
24.
DennyD (2004) Changing models of transsexualism. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy8(1–2): 25–40.
25.
DixonBGaddD (2006) Getting the message? ‘New’ Labour and the criminalization of ‘hate’. Criminology and Criminal Justice6(3): 309–328.
26.
EkinsRKingD (2006) The Transgender Phenomenon. London: SAGE.
27.
EnkeAF (2007) Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
28.
Farber R (2017) ‘Transing’ fitness and remapping transgender male masculinity in online message boards. Journal of Gender Studies26(3): 254–268.
29.
FeinbergL (1996) Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Durham, NC: Beacon Press.
30.
FergusonJM (2013) Queering methodologies: challenging scientific constraint in the appreciation of queer and trans subjects. The Qualitative Report18(13): 1–13.
31.
FerrellJ (1999) Cultural criminology. Annual Review of Sociology25(1): 395–418.
32.
FoucaultMBaudotACouchmanJ (1978) About the concept of the ‘dangerous individual’ in 19th-century legal psychiatry. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry1(1): 1–18.
33.
GagnéPTewksburyR (1999) Knowledge and power, body and self. The Sociological Quarterly40(1): 59–83.
34.
GarberMB (1997) Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. London: Psychology Press.
35.
GarlandJSpalekBChakrabortiN (2005) Hearing lost voices: Issues in researching ‘hidden’ minority ethnic communities. British Journal of Criminology46(3): 423–437.
36.
GheroviciP (2017) Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference. London: Taylor & Francis.
37.
GreenJ (2004) Becoming a Visible Man. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
38.
GrossL (2012) Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America. New York: Columbia University Press.
39.
HalberstamJ (2005) In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. London: NYU Press.
40.
HardingS (1992) After the neutrality ideal: Science, politics, and ‘strong objectivity’. Social Research 59(3): 567–587.
41.
Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (1979). As cited in MeyerWIIIBocktingWOCohen-KettenisP, et al. (eds) (2002) The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s standards of care for gender identity disorders, sexth version. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality13(1): 1–30.
42.
HaywardK (2010) Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. Oxford: Routledge.
43.
HennessyR (1994) Queer visibility in commodity culture. Cultural Critique29(Winter, 1994–1995): 31–76.
44.
HenrySMilovanovicD (1991) Constitutive criminology: The maturation of critical theory. Criminology29(2): 293–316.
45.
HumphreyR (2016) ‘I think journalists sometimes forget that we’re just people’: Analysing the effects of UK trans media representation on trans audiences. Gender Force56: 23–43.
46.
IantaffiABocktingWO (2011) Views from both sides of the bridge? Gender, sexual legitimacy and transgender people’s experiences of relationships. Culture, Health & Sexuality13(3): 355–370.
JohnsonAH (2016) Transnormativity: A new concept and its validation through documentary film about transgender men. Sociological Inquiry86(4): 465–491.
50.
JohnsonC (2002) Heteronormative citizenship and the politics of passing. Sexualities5(3): 317–336.
51.
JoyrichL (2014) Queer television studies: Currents, flows, and (main) streams. Cinema Journal53(2): 133–139.
52.
KatzJ (1988) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books.
53.
LevAI (2006) Disordering gender identity: Gender identity disorder in the DSM-IV-TR. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality17(3–4): 35–69.
54.
LevineSB (1999) The newly revised standards of care for gender identity disorders. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy24(3): 117–127.
55.
LombardiEL (1999) Integration within a transgender social network and its effect upon members’ social and political activity. Journal of Homosexuality37(1): 109–126.
56.
LombardiELWilchinsRAPriesingD, et al. (2002) Gender violence: Transgender experiences with violence and discrimination. Journal of Homosexuality42(1): 89–101.
57.
MannayD (2010) Making the familiar strange: Can visual research methods render the familiar setting more perceptible?Qualitative Research10(1): 91–111.
58.
MartinJIMeezanW (2003) Applying ethical standards to research and evaluations involving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services15(1–2): 181–201.
59.
MeyerMD (2003) ‘It’s me. I’m it.’: Defining adolescent sexual identity through relational dialectics in Dawson’s Creek. Communication Quarterly51(3): 262–276.
60.
MeyerowitzJJ (2009) How Sex Changed. London: Harvard University Press.
61.
MillerLJ (2015) Becoming one of the girls/guys: Distancing transgender representations in popular film comedies. In SpencerLGCapuzzaJC (eds) Transgender communication studies: Histories, trends, and trajectories. Lanham, MD: Lexington, pp.127–142.
62.
MirzoeffN (2002) The Visual Culture Reader. London: Psychology Press.
63.
MitchellWT (2005) What do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images. London: University of Chicago Press.
64.
MonroSRichardsonD (2010) Intersectionality and sexuality: The case of sexuality and transgender equalities work in UK local government. In: TaylorYHinesSCaseyM (eds) Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.99–118.
65.
NamasteV (2000) Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. London: University of Chicago Press.
66.
NamasteV (2011) Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on identity, institutions, and imperialism. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
67.
PhillipsCBowlingB (2003) Racism, ethnicity and criminology: Developing minority perspectives. British Journal of Criminology43(2): 269–290.
68.
PhillipsJ (2006) Transgender on screen. Basingstoke: Springer.
PresdeeM (2003) Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. London: Routledge.
71.
ProsserJLoxleyA (2008) Introducing Visual Methods. ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Review Paper, NCRM/010, October.
72.
RoseN (1990) Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Taylor & Francis.
73.
RussellACDiazND (2012) Photography in social work research: Using visual image to humanize findings. Qualitative Social Work12(4): 433–453.
74.
SedgwickEK (1997) Paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, You’re so paranoid, you probably think this introduction is about you. In SedgwickEK (ed.) Novel gazing: Queer readings in fiction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 123–151.
75.
SekulaABoltonR (1989) The body and the archive. In: BoltonR (ed) The Contest of meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Boston: MIT Press, pp.342–390.
76.
SeranoJ (2007) Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Berkeley: Seal Press.
77.
SeranoJ (2013) Skirt chasers: Why the media depicts the trans revolution in lipstick and heels. The Transgender Studies Reader2: 226–33.
78.
SieblerK (2012) Transgender transitions: Sex/gender binaries in the digital age. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health16(1): 74–99.
79.
SinghAABoydCJWhitmanJ (2010) Counseling competency with transgender and intersex persons. In Erickson CornishJASchreierBANadkamiLI, et al. (eds) Handbook of Multicultural Counseling Competencies. Hoboken: Wiley, pp.415–440.
80.
SinghAARichmondKBurnesTR (2013) Feminist participatory action research with transgender communities: Fostering the practice of ethical and empowering research designs. International Journal of Transgenderism14(3): 93–104.
WarnerM (1993) Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. London: University of Minnesota Press.
88.
WarrDJ (2004) Stories in the flesh and voices in the head: Reflections on the context and impact of research with disadvantaged populations. Qualitative Health Research14(4): 578–587.
89.
WilchinsR (1997) Read my Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender. Ithaca: Firebrand Books.
90.
WilloxA (2003) Branding Teena: (Mis) representations in the media. Sexualities6(3–4): 407–425.
91.
YoungJFerrellJHaywardK (2008) Cultural Criminology: An Invitation. London: Sage.
92.
ZabusCCoadD (2013) Transgender Experience: Place, Ethnicity, and Visibility. Oxford: Routledge.
