Abstract
Using a sociological feminist theoretical framework, specifically symbolic interactionism, Kristen Schilt sheds much-needed light on how transgender men’s unique experiences provide evidence that gender inequality is alive and well in the workplace. The results of her ethnographic research explain how coworkers of transgender men deal with their own cognitive dissonance when confronted with their colleague’s transition. Compared to Devor’s (1997) qualitative study of transmen (female to male), Schilt’s focus is exclusively on the workplace.
Schilt’s methodology is extensive. Schilt conducted in-depth interviews with 54 transgender men to explore how they and their coworkers dealt with their transitioning or transitioned strategies in the workplace. Her findings are also informed by interviews with 14 coworkers of 8 open transmen, participant observation in the southern California and central Texas communities, attendance at 10 conferences that focused on transgender issues, observations of workplace differences between transmen and transwomen, questionnaires from transmen and transwomen, and a content analysis of newspaper stories and legal cases about transgender employment. In addition, Schilt addresses discrimination experienced by transmen of color even though only 8 of her 56 interviewees were transmen of color.
The results show how transmen’s experiences inform and are used to reinforce the idea that gender is binary. Schilt illustrates “how transmen’s unique perspective provides insight into not just the cultural working of gender difference but also the social maintenance of gender inequality” (pp. 8–9). Using Patricia Hill Collins’s (1986) term of outsider-within (used to describe African American women’s unique perspective in white society, specifically, academia), Schlit applies the outsider-within idea to transgender men’s experience in the workplace. She uses transgender men’s stories to show how supervisors and coworkers accept or reject transmen (and, in some cases, transwomen) to fit gender binary thinking and justify the inequality of women in the workplace. Her primary focus is on how gender is “done.” Her discussion on how gender can be “undone” is minimal. Schilt does address the support from employers that white, educated, and/or physically passable transmen receive and the lack of support received by transmen of color, visibly gender-variant workers, and/or transmen working in entry-level retail jobs.
If one reads only the first and last chapters, one will miss important stories and vocabulary. Chapter 2 also gives a history of how transition has been dealt with by professionals and within the gay, lesbian, and feminist movements starting with the first gender clinics in the United States. Chapter 6 reveals how colleagues of transmen make sense of transitions in one of four ways: (1) rejecting the transition to neutralize challenges to the male/female binary, (2) anchoring transmen to a legal female gender or encouraging them to leave the workplace, (3) creating “token trannies” and making “trans” a master status, or (4) reshaping gender boundaries to incorporate transmen as just another one of the guys. The fourth method could serve as a spring board for the next study: how people in the workplace can undo the biological gender binary. This book deserves a thorough read by theorists, academics, professionals, and, most important, coworkers of transmen.