Communicative Acts of Identity: Non-Binary Individuals, Identity, and the Internet (original) (raw)

Queer Expressions In The Online Space

This paper tries to explore the ways in which youth from the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Trans* community have used the digital medium to engage in social and political processes. It makes an attempt to look at the various technologies that they have used. The report also seeks to understand whether the community perceives digital technology as a support system and how have they used the internet to project the community in the mainstream society. The report also looks at the flipside of using digital technology and who gets to access it. Throughout this process the paper seeks to explore what it is that makes the virtual space an important site for queer activism.

What’s the Story?: Exploring Online Narratives of Non-binary Gender Identities

The International journal of interdisciplinary social and community studies, 2016

Currently, people with non-binary gender identities-those who identify as either both genders or neither-are gaining more social visibility, suggesting that changes in social understandings of gender are now underway. Facebook, for example, has recently introduced a range of non-binary gender options for user profile pages; indeterminate and 'third gender' identities are now legally recognised in a number of countries, including Australia,

Of Real Identities: Expressions of Femininity and Sexuality in Online Spaces

Most mainstream media discourses frame discussions around selfies of young women in ways that see selfies as promoting narcissism, self-obsession and as damaging self-esteem. In most of these discourses, there has been a jarring exclusion of the voices of young women who are the central subject of discussion. In response to such an exclusion, this paper presents ethnographic research conducted with twenty young women in the age group of 13-19 years, exploring their engagement with selfies. The paper argues that selfies need to be read as sites where, through the act of self-representation, young women explore the specific experiences of their bodies, including their negotiations with social constructions of gender and sexuality. The paper also explores the contradictions that are present within the narratives of young women and how these might complicate our ideas of agency, resistance and empowerment.

Weavers & Warriors? Gender and online identity in 1997 and 2007

In 1997 the Internet was seen by many as a tool for radical reinterpretation of physicality and gender. Cybertheorists predicted we would leave our bodies behind and interact online as disembodied minds, and that the technology would reshape the way we saw ourselves. However, physicality has proved to be an inextricable part of all our interactions. Changing Internet technology has allowed Net users to find a myriad ways to perform and express their gender online.

A body of text: Revisiting textual performances of gender and sexuality on the internet

This article re-evaluates the relationship between gender identities, embodiment, sexuality and text-based, synchronous CMC (computer-mediated communication). A discourse analysis was conducted on two different IRC channels: #Cyberbar, a channel that hosts predominantly "straight" male/female gender performances; and #Queer, a channel mostly visited by participants who articulate "gay male" gender identities. The notion of embodiment played a pivotal role in both channels, as demonstrated by the identification of three "interpretative repertoires" that involve the invocation of corporeal aspects in the participants' performance of gender and sexuality. This invocation reaffirms gender's status as connected to a binary sexed body, which limits the scope of gender performances in a text-based environment such as IRC. However, the discursive interactions in #Queer did articulate alternative interpretations of masculinity, which challenged traditional heteronormative standards governing "male behavior." Eventually, it is concluded that the discourse in both channels is constructed by participants who bring their everyday, embodied experiences online. IRC might be a textual environment, in contrast to many of the web's popular graphical spaces, but this does not mean that the body is any less present.

Writing from Experience: Presentations of Gender Identity on Weblogs

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2007

This article examines how weblog authors present their online gender identity, in order to establish how these modes of presentation fit into the research landscape about gender identity and computer-mediated communication (CMC). After a preliminary descriptive analysis of a sample of Dutch and Flemish weblogs, the authors conduct a qualitative content analysis of four of these 'blogs'. They conclude that these weblog writers present their gender identity through narratives of 'everyday life' that remain closely related to the binary gender system. However, their performance of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' is more diffuse and heterogeneous than some theories in the field of gender and CMC would assume. In addition, the act of diary writing on weblogs can be understood as challenging the masculine connotation of the weblog as an ICT, demonstrating that the use of a technology is pivotal in shaping the ways in which technologies themselves are conceived of as 'masculine' or 'feminine'.

Doing Gender Beyond the Binary: A Virtual Ethnography

This article advances the " doing gender " framework by highlighting some unique interactive challenges that nonbinary individuals encounter within the binary gender system. In order to access testimony about these experiences from a large group of people, this study turns to a genderqueer community on the social media site Reddit. Discourse analysis of discussion threads and content analysis of selfies reveal various symbolic mechanisms through which nonbinary people do, redo, and undo gender. These findings illuminate a range of strategies that people utilize to negotiate gender attribution within the gender binary system. A video abstract is available at http://tinyurl .com/y7odrxbd.

The discursive construction and performance of gendered identity on social media

This article looks at the construction and performance of gendered identity through a subsection of Facebook web pages belonging to the Slut Walk movement. The authors' analysis suggests that gender is constructed through the subjects' participation in the 'post-feminist masquerade' through which their gendered identity is defined in relation to a hegemonic masculine ideal. This situates the web pages within a space characterized through the ambivalent and appropriative treatment of feminism and further, coiled within an acute tension between feminist and post-feminist discourses. Acts of resistance are framed as individual, momentary ruptures of Judith Butler's heterosexual matrix of 'cultural intelligibility'. The online context of these ruptures is found to vest a creative potential, by removing the constraints of time and location, indicating that the impact of these ruptures may extend beyond its immediate environment.

Sexual and gender identity work on social media

Sociology Compass, 2023

How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their experiences of online harms. They include people with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, asexual, non-binary, pansexual, poly, and kink (LGBTQ+) identities. We find that sexual and gender minorities face several challenges online, but that social media platforms provide important spaces for them to feel understood and accepted. We use Goffman's work to explore how sexual and gender minorities engage in 'front region' performances online as part of their identity work. We then turn to Hochschild's concepts of 'feeling rules' and 'framing rules' to argue that presentations of self, or front region performances, must include the role of feelings and how they are socially influenced to be understood.