Browsing by Subject "Transgender"
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Item Clinical considerations in speech therapy for female-to-male transgender populations(2013-05) Maurer, Elizabeth Hobbs; Byrd, Courtney T.Purpose: The purposes of the present study consisted of primary, secondary, and tertiary purposes: 1) to determine what factors that can be addressed in speech therapy are the most important for female-to-male (FtM) transgender individuals in passing as their true gender, 2) to determine what factors may contribute to these individuals seeking speech therapy services and to the importance that they assign to speech therapy as part of the transition process, and 3) to determine awareness of this population in regards to the availability and scope of speech therapy services relative to transitioning or passing as their true gender. Method: A 38-item survey was developed to address these research questions and a link to the online survey was distributed via email to various listservs, organizations, and personal contacts to assist in the electronic distribution of the survey link. The responses of the final participant pool of 63 respondents were evaluated. Results: Overall, the participants ranked voice characteristics as the most important for passing followed by nonverbal communication and social language use. These broad categories rankings are generally supported by the existing literature. Within category rankings revealed rankings that are in accord with the existing literature, others that oppose the existing literature, and others that have not been explored in the literature. The following factors stood out as possibly contributing to how important FtMs find speech therapy as facilitating their ability to live as their true gender: desire to pass, satisfaction with hormone related pitch changes, current overall presentation, and whether speech/language contribute to instances of not passing. Factors that appear to possibly contribute to how likely FtMs are to have sought speech therapy include: satisfaction with hormone related pitch changes, voice prior to transition, and if aspects of speech and language contribute to instances of not passing. Overall, FtMs have little awareness regarding speech therapy as part of the transition process, particularly for FtMs.Item Domestic violence in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community(2010-08) Pal, Hoimonti; Awad, Germine H.; Sherry, AlissaDomestic violence is considered a serious health and social problem in the United States and around the world. Annually, domestic violence costs in the U.S. are estimated at 8.3 billion dollars. Domestic violence issues first came to modern attention with the women’s movement of the 1970’s. Much of the literature focuses on domestic violence within heterosexual relationships. There has not been much attention directed towards domestic violence in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This report reviews information about domestic violence, its causes, theories, and how domestic violence affects individuals in the LGBT community.Item I am (wo)man: The rhetoric of transidentity in politics, law, and performance(2008-12) Endres-Parnell, Prairie A.; Langford, Catherine L.; Gring, Mark A.; Gelber, William F.This rhetorical analysis uses close textual methodology to analyze a speech, court case, and play that each construct transgender identity through language. The close textual analysis reveals that gender is constructed through language thus constraining transgender agency through labels.Item "Listen to what your jotería is saying” : pain, social harm, and queer Latin@s(2015-05) Glisch-Sánchez, David Luis; Rudrappa, Sharmila, 1966-; Rodríguez, Néstor; Ekland-Olson, Sheldon; Carrington, Ben; Peña, SusanaIn this dissertation, I investigate how transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (TLGBQ) Latin@s have experienced social harm during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, what is the socio-historical context for their experiences, and how have ideologies of Latin@ gender and sexuality shaped these experiences. This is accomplished through the analysis of twenty-six (26) life story interviews where TLGBQ Latin@s provide a testimonio account of their encounters with social harm. Using a social harm framework and centering markers of pain, I develop the theoretical concept algorithms of pain to understand the dynamic and complex experiences TLGBQ Latin@s have with harm rooted in the everyday and institutional realities of racial, gender, sexual, and class inequalities. Algorithms of pain asserts that the totality of social harm TLGBQ Latin@s encounter shapes the meaning they assign to any individual harmful event, informs evaluations of pain and potential harm, and structures daily behavior and attitudes. Algorithms of pain reveal the myriad of ways TLGBQ Latin@s can and do express, communicate, and narrate pain; thus, countering the dominant presumption that pain manifests and is communicated in very narrow terms. This is exemplified in what I have observed as racial utterances, where TLGBQ Latin@s narrate in ways that make use of silence, brief remarks, or stories in passing as ways to index racial social harm, instead of stories thick with detail, description and explicit accounts of pain. Additionally, algorithms of pain establish the centrality of racism, patriarchy, transmisogyny, homophobia, class exploitation, and xenophobia to constructing the full spectrum of emotions that represent pain. Lastly, the dissertation documents through an analysis of governmental mission statements why the state is unable to intervene into the social harm effecting TLGBQ Latin@ lives. The state represents the institutionalization of an algorithm of pain that privileges whiteness, cisgenderness, heterosexuality, wealth, and citizenship, which results in harm management being the overall orientation and function of the state in social harm.Item Majestic presence : narrating the transgender self in 21st-century Tamiḻakam(2016-08) Rajic, Nikola; Selby, Martha Ann; Hyder, Syed Akbar; Stewart, Kathleen; Rudrappa, Sharmila; Freiberger, OliverThe purpose of this dissertation is to document the emergence of a new identity of Tamil transgender women as articulated by transgender women themselves through works of autobiographies (Revathi’s Veḷḷai mōḻi and Living Smile Vidya’s Nān Vityā), fiction (Priya Babu’s novel Mūṉṟām pāliṉ mukam), or scholarship (Priya Babu’s ethnography of her community Aravāṇikaḷ, camūka varaiviyal). I pay special attention to how these women articulate their selfhood and the identity of their community in reaction to the specificities of the South Indian context (association with religious festivals such as the Aravaṉ festival in Koovagam, and other transgender phenomena in the Indian subcontinent). Self-narration, especially for stigmatized people and communities is inextricably linked to overcoming traumatic experiences, and for asserting new identities. Speaking and writing about one’s trauma can be a powerful force for transforming pain and loss into political action, and studying it can help us understand how trauma creates new possibilities of community and public culture that is as attentive to shame and alienation as it is to pride and solidarity. Therefore, I focus on trauma and stigma, as expressed in the aforementioned works, as vehicles for creating unique public cultures and artistic subjectivity.Item The male-to-female transgender voice client of the 21st century(2010-05) Bodoin, Erika Melissa.; Byrd, Courtney T.; Adler, Richard K.The purpose of the present study was to determine the current characteristics and needs of the male-to-female transgender voice client. Specifically, what are the current characteristics (e.g. age, marital status, number of children) of the male-to-female transgender client? Does participation in therapy affect overall satisfaction with feminine presentation? Do alternative methods for voice feminization (e.g. DVDs, YouTube, peer mentors) result in similar levels of satisfaction? Lastly, do male-to-female transgender avoid community activities in order to prevent being perceived as male, and can therapy help with this? We evaluated the responses of 77 participants who completed an Internet-based survey. Results were compared to Blanchard’s 1994 study of characteristics of male-to-female transgender persons. Characteristics of the 1994 study and the MtF transgender client of 2010 were comparable, with a slightly older age for the present study. The client was likely to have been married at least once, and to have at least one child. Respondents who had participated in speech therapy were more satisfied with their femininity overall when compared to those who had not received speech services. Satisfaction with alternative methods was low. In addition, both groups reported a high level of avoidant activities based on fear of being perceived as male.Item Queens of the South Plains: Collected oral histories of drag queens living in Lubbock, TX(2013-05) Ballard, Katy; Check, Ed; Akins-Tillett, Future; Ortega, Francisco; Peaslee, Robert M.; Sharp, Elizabeth A.In my dissertation research, Queens of the South Plains: Collected Oral Histories of Drag Queens Living in Lubbock, Texas, I am collecting oral histories of five Lubbock, Texas performance artists who participate or have participated in local drag queen shows and culture: Thomas Mims, Devon Nicole, and Damion Davis, Audrianna Guillen, and Chris Wheeler. I utilize oral histories because no other institutional histories exist. Academically, there is a large amount of research on drag histories in metropolitan areas and on non-metropolitan lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, questioning, queer and intersexed (LGBTQ) lives, but there is very little, if any, research that connects these two fields of study. Since the early 1990s, there has been a small but growing body of literature and art documenting rural and non-metropolitan spaces and lives. However, other than the collected interviews of two rural drag queens in the documentary film Small Town Gay Bar scant literature exists on drag queens in rural areas. In this study, I conduct face-to-face interviews with five subjects that I document through audio recordings using a semi-structured interview format. In addition to the five subjects/performers, I conduct supplemental interviews of people involved in the subjects’ lives to gain a broader perspective of small city drag culture in Lubbock as a non-metropolitan setting. The literature review of urban drag queen cultures and rural queer lives is juxtaposed against the contexts and invisible histories of the lives of drag queens in rural/non-metropolitan settings. This research is a small step in bridging the gap in academic research connecting drag queen culture and research on rural and non-metropolitan LGBTQ lives.Item “Shake your tuchas” : Jewish parody rappers and the performance of Jewish masculinity(2012-12) Tyson, Lana Kimura; O'Meara, Caroline; Seeman, Sonia Tamar, 1958-; Dell'Antonio, AndrewAmerican Jewish rappers have become an increasingly prevalent topic in Jewish popular and scholarly media, where critics and scholars seek to understand how hip-hop performance and consumption serves as a platform for exploring and articulating Jewish identity. This thesis explores the work of what I term “Jewish parody rappers”—rappers who foreground Jewishness while destabilizing normative American Jewish identity using humor or parody—in order to demonstrate how nuanced gender and ethnoracial identity performances can be found in an often overlooked segment of Jewish rap. Using Jamie Moshin’s concept of “New Jewishness,” I argue that Jewish parody rappers recontextualize tropes of Jewish masculinity through black hip-hop codes, evoking a long history of Jewish engagement with African-American performance. Through an examination of Jewish parody rappers and their performances—including the Beastie Boys, 2 Live Jews, Chutzpah, and Athens Boys Choir—I demonstrate how these New Jews destabilize, or queer, Jewish identity through hip-hop performance. The Beastie Boys’ parodic performances highlight Jewishness as a liminal identity as they use the malleable and performative markers of Jewish masculinity to foreground their whiteness in the black-dominated arena of hip-hop. 2 Live Jews and Chutzpah recuperate tropes of effeminate and impotent Jewish masculinity through their extended parodies. Harvey Katz of Athens Boys Choir plays with tropes of Jewish masculinity not only to queer Jewishness, like other Jewish parody rappers, but also to articulate an explicitly queer Jewish identity. Each of these core samples illuminates various ways in which Jewish parody rappers perform New Jewish identity; however, these rappers do not evade the specter of problematic racial appropriation as they articulate Jewishness through and against tropes of black hip-hop hypermasculinity.Item The spectacle of transformation : (re)presenting transgender experience through performance(2016-05) O'Rear, Jess; Gutierrez, Laura G., 1968-; Rossen, RebeccaIn December 2015, when The Public Theater cast two cisgender actors in the leading roles of a musical based on the true story of two transgender individuals and their fight against transphobia in the United States, performance makers from across the country spoke out against the casting decision. This outrage joins a chorus of transgender people and allies speaking out against a continuously growing film, television, and theatrical archive of performance which focuses on transgender characters without centering actual transgender people. While media attention on transgender individuals in the United States might be at an all time high, when it comes to representing transgender experiences in performance, transgender-identified characters are repeatedly performed by cisgender actors whose gender identities do not match that of their character. This thesis argues that these casting choices and the critical praise that these performances (termed “cross-gender performances” by the author) garner reinforce cissexist and heteronormative ideology wherein biological sex and gender identity are inextricably linked. Therefore, self-determined gender identity is invalidated and the lives of transgender individuals are devalued in favor of valorizing the “spectacle of transformation” that the cisgender actor undergoes in preparation for the role. This thesis tracks the legacy of these “cross-gender performances” across U.S. film and stage history in order to demonstrate how critical responses to these performances shift attention away from the transgender character and onto the body of the cisgender actor. After tracing this legacy from the late 19th century theatrical stage and late 20th century Hollywood to early 21st-century Broadway, this thesis arrives at the work two contemporary transgender performance artists, Sean Dorsey and Annie Danger, in order to demonstrate how transgender stories told by transgender performers refutes, reclaims, and repurposes the harmful tropes and stereotypes perpetuated by performances helmed by cisgender directors and producers with cisgender actors for mostly cisgender audiences. Finally, this thesis imagines the revolutionary and liberatory possibilities of finding joy through queer and transgender bodies and experiences, ultimately asserting the value of these lives through their celebratory presence in performance.Item Therapy for the male-to-female transgender client : a clinician's guide(2014-05) Haun, Lindsey Lee; Byrd, Courtney T.Male-to-female transgender clients seek therapy to learn to safely modify their voices in order to sound more feminine. Unfortunately, to this author’s knowledge, there are no data that report the number of transgender individuals who are actively seeking speech therapy, nor any accurate estimate of the number of transgender individuals in the United States. Moreover, current resources for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) lack up-to-date, comprehensive information about assessing and treating transgender clients. The present handbook will provide the most recent research related to appropriate therapeutic guidelines and activities to SLPs and SLP graduate students. In specific, the handbook will include research and techniques for modifying pitch, resonance, intonation, semantics, and nonverbal communication for transgender women. Moreover, the handbook will include background information about the current issues transgender women face in society and in seeking medical treatment.Item Transness : an urban phenomenon in Istanbul(2013-05) Saltan, Ece; Merabet, Sofian, 1972-This study is about "transness" in contemporary Istanbul. As this thesis demonstrates, transness is an urban phenomenon, an identity specific to time and space. In Istanbul, it is a subculture, defined by sex, gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. "Transness: An Urban Phenomenon in Istanbul" situates itself as part of a conversation about marginal subcultures in Gender Studies, Queer Theory, and especially Transgender Studies. This study fills two gaps: the temporal gap between the early Turkish scholarship on trans issues and the contemporary trans world of Istanbul; and the conceptual gap between trans words -- transvestite, transsexual, and transgender -- and trans identities in Istanbul. Furthermore, this study brings the current issues and discussions of US-based queer scholarship into the Turkish context and does so by discussing recent Turkish examples of media representations ranging from a documentary to a movie, and to a newspaper article; and by analyzing certain drag performances. All these examples discussed in this work exemplify the temporality and spatiality of transness, its relation to heteronormativity, and its publicness as a subculture. As is suggested by my examples, transness is 'out-of-time' and 'out-of-place,' always already public, and, as a performance, it asserts individual identity. Moreover, it is also always a public performance. All the examples point to the complex relationship between queerness and transness, and claim that the queerness of transness is always contextual. Combining the detailed analysis of these examples with the ethnographic work on Istanbul's trans world, "Transness: An Urban Phenomenon in Istanbul" provides answers to the following questions: "What is transness?" "What is the impact time and space have on transness within the urban structure of Istanbul?" "What is the relationship between dominant normativity and transness?" Finally, this MA thesis offers new perspectives and opens new paths for further research on the topic intended to help imagining new futures for trans folk in Istanbul.