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Self-misgendering among multilingual transgender speakers
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Abstract:
“Misgendering” is a term used broadly to mean referring to someone using the wrong gender. In the transgender context, it usually refers to cases where a transgender person is referred to using the gender assigned at birth, rather than according to gender presentation. Misgendering is sometimes a form of anti-trans aggression, but can also be accidental or otherwise unintended. “Self-misgendering”, where transgender speakers unintentionally misgender themselves, is apparently previously unstudied, seems mainly to occur in a foreign-language context, and may bear some similarity to language-interference effects observed in the study of multilinguals, a “first-gender effect” analogous to first-language effects. One may also hypothesize social gender bias, variable gender-identity, or similar factors. This paper quantitatively surveys self-reported self-misgendering among multilingual transgender speakers to identify factors of correlation or causation. Using data and respondents’ comments from an online survey, it shows strong correlation between self-misgendering by full-time transgender speakers and (lack of) fluency in the language spoken, with no significant correlation to other linguistic or social gender-related factors. This suggests the self-misgendering phenomenon is primarily a fluency effect, independent of social or identity factors such as attitude to gender in language, attitude to being misgendered, or “default” masculine gender.
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Keyword:
Applied Linguistics and Communication (to 2020)
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URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2018-2014
https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/18541/3/18541.pdf
https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/18541/
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