UC Davis

The now-classic essay “Doing Gender'' by West and Zimmerman (1987) was published over 30 years ago. Since then, gender accomplishments and failures have been discussed at length; but what aspects of gender knowledge are necessary in order to do gender? Gender categories (men, women, nonbinary people, etc.) and statuses (cisgender or non-cisgender) structure social life and guide life chances, yet they lack significant sociological definition and analysis. To better understand gender categories and statuses, I conducted 75 interviews examining gender transgressions and the meaning-making of gender boundaries. My analysis of gender rule-breaking will produce a theoretical intervention explaining the construction and transmission of gender knowledge. What exactly do we know when we know that a gender boundary is transgressed? Specifically, I will focus on why, despite engaging in many of the same gendered actions, cis and non-cis people occupy such different social and material realities. While non-cis experiences have been theorized as the exemplar of doing gender, there remains a need to critically analyze the cisgender status as a social phenomenon. The aim of my research program is to investigate the commonly-accepted divisions between gendered actors: between binary and nonbinary people, and between those who are cisgender and non-cisgender. My inquiry primarily explores the idea of gender difference by considering the concept of gender transgressions as they occur through both gender category and gender status. By first offering a typology of gender transgressions, I will then uncover the functions they serve and ultimately examine how they are policed and perceived through social interaction. I will lay a theoretical foundation to assess everyday power dynamics among all gendered actors. My study of cisgender and non-cisgender people’s experiences will produce new analytical tools to understand the gender system in which we are all immersed. In so many ways, to know one’s gender is to know one’s place in society. My work seeks to build on the doing gender literature by exposing the underlying mechanisms of what it is to “know” gender.