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Gender, Place & Culture
A Journal of Feminist Geography
ISSN: 0966-369X (Print) 1360-0524 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgpc20
Telling stories; telling transgender coming out
stories from the UK and Portugal
Ana Cristina Marques
To cite this article: Ana Cristina Marques (2019): Telling stories; telling transgender coming out
stories from the UK and Portugal, Gender, Place & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2019.1681943
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1681943
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 11 Nov 2019.
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Telling stories; telling transgender coming out stories
from the UK and Portugal
Ana Cristina Marques
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kurdistan Hewl^
er, Erbil, Iraq
ABSTRACT
Telling transgender and gender-diverse stories is an increas-
ingly common process. The stories that are told are situ-
ated reflections of individual lives. Nonetheless, these
stories tell us something about the world we live in, since
they are, simultaneously, conditioned by and an expression
of the social, cultural and historical contexts that surrounds
them. Drawing upon 58 transcribed in-depth interviews
with transgender and gender-diverse people in Portugal
and the UK, in this paper, I focus on the dynamics and
complexity of coming out stories and their relation with
specific spaces such as the ‘private’spaces of the family,
the ‘virtual’and ‘face-to-face’spaces of transgender and
gender-diverse communities and the ‘institutional’spaces
of work and school within these individuals’lifecourse. I
will consider these transgender and gender-diverse peo-
ple’s social positionings, specifically in terms of age and
national contexts in order to understand how their stories
are shaped by several interconnected and mutually inter-
influencing factors that condition their experiences and
fields of possibilities. I will argue that coming out processes
are strongly interrelated with located social times and
spaces and the significant, symbolic and generalized others
that occupy them.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 5 July 2018
Accepted 3 August 2019
KEYWORDS
coming out stories;
gendered lifecourses;
gender processes; gendered
spaces; transgender and
gender-diverse people
Introduction
With the medicalization of gender transition processes, transsexual stories
came into being where genitals are conflated with gender identities (Ekins
and King 2006; Stryker 2008; Whittle 2006). These stories were narrated in
medical reports, sociological analyses and gained increasing media attention.
Other subterranean stories existed during the 20th century that account for
the origin and development of local, national and international networks of
support for a diversity of transgender people.
CONTACT Ana Cristina Marques anacristina.hmarques@gmail.com School of Social Sciences,
University of Kurdistan Hewl^
er, 30 Meter Avenue, Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq
ß2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE
https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1681943
By the 1990s, new transgender stories emerged telling politicized narra-
tives of pride, visibility and gender diversity (Doan 2007; Ekins and King
2006; Pearce, Steinberg, and Moon 2019; Stryker 2008; Whittle 2006).
Trangender narratives and identities became more accessible to people who
did not identify with their assigned gender at birth. The development of
information technologies and, particularly, the Internet enabled ‘the develop-
ment of a new, geographically dispersed, diverse trans [communities]’
(Whittle 2006, xxii). The anonymity, and hence the relative safety that it
allows the storytellers, made the Internet a popular medium through which
transgender stories are told (Doan 2007; Ekins and King 2006). Also during
this decade, a new field of transgender studies emerged and, with it, came
new stories told by highly reflexive transgender academics, activists and
artists (Doan 2007,2010; Stryker and Whittle 2006; Pearce, Steinberg, and
Moon 2019). The turn of the millennium brought with it new stories where
the fight for human rights, inclusion, equality, recognition and auto-deter-
mination came to centre stage (Connell 2012; Hines and Santos 2018; Nash
2010; Whittle 2006). The attention towards non-binary identities and gender-
diverse people is now further considered, particularly in its association with
politicized narratives of transgender visibility and the increasing ‘discursive’
‘incorporations’of these identities by transgender people, especially in virtual
worlds (Moon 2019). It is noteworthy that rather than replacing each other,
medicalized, subcultural and politicized trangender narratives tend to co-
exist (Bettcher 2014; Ekins and King 2006; Pearce, Steinberg, and
Moon 2019).
Moreover, the spaces of possibilities where these stories are told and lived
are not necessarily the same. Quite often the opposite is true. Gender
embodiments, stories, and experiences are highly contextualized according
to the individual’s social positionings in time and space (Doan 2010; Hines
2007,2010; Munro 2010; Nash 2010; Vries 2012); with individuals having dif-
ferent possibilities to move in and between different spaces and their associ-
ated normative power structures (Nygren,
€
Ohman, and Olofsson 2016). As
Doan (2010, 649) states, ‘gender strongly influencies the ways that spaces
are perceived and the kinds of activities that are possible, acceptable, or
even safe within them’. Transgender and gender-diverse people are increas-
ingly more visible, but, despite this, they keep suffering from discrimination,
violence and abuse in a varied range of social spaces (Bettcher 2014; Doan
2007,2010; FRA 2014; Nygren,
€
Ohman, and Olofsson 2016; Sanger 2013;
Westbrook and Schilt 2014).
Drawing upon 58 in-depth transcribed interviews from Portugal and the
UK, in this paper I will focus on transgender and gender-diverse people’s
coming out processes, and their relation with specific spaces such as the
‘private’spaces of the family, the ‘virtual’and ‘face-to-face’spaces of
2 A. C. MARQUES
transgender communities and the ‘institutional’spaces of work and the edu-
cation system within the individual’s lifecourse. Further, by considering the
research participants’social positionings, especially in terms of generation
and the national contexts where they live, were born and/or raised in, I want
to highlight how these coming out processes are shaped by several intercon-
nected and mutually inter-influencing factors that condition people’s experi-
ences and their fields of possibilities. Consequently, different gender
expressions are often adopted throughout the individual’s biography in rela-
tion to different significant, symbolic and generalized others and in different
public and private spaces. Thus this paper aims to contribute to the existent
literature on transgender and gender-diverse people’s coming out stories,
taking into particular account, the existence of multiple and inter-influencing
social positions that transgender and gender-diverse people occupy, the
importance of issues of space and time in relation to transgender and
gender-diverse people’s narratives as well as their relations with significant,
symbolic and generalized others.
Telling transgender stories
Telling stories is not only about the individuals who tell them but also about
society. Telling stories is about the past, the present and the future, but
always within the situated and reflexive lenses of the now. Stories can help
to structure peoples’experiences, organize memories, make sense of life
events and give meaning to individual truths. Nonetheless, stories also tell
us something about the world we live in. Stories not only reflect ones’indi-
vidual position but also the larger material and discursive conditions, social
relations, institutions, cultural and historical contexts in which they are anch-
ored and that help shape them (McAdams 2005; Plummer 2010). However,
stories are always partial, fragmented and ‘subject to contingencies, connect-
edness, complexity, conflict and contradictions’(Plummer 2010, 196) that
permeate people’s lives. Consequently, stories are dynamic, reflexive, revised
and changeable with time. Moreover, stories are interrelated with specific
spaces, times and generations that need to be taken into consideration since
they ‘always speak of lives lived at particular moments in history at particular
points in particular aging and the life cycle’(Plummer 2010, 181).
Accordingly, Plummer (2010, 172) argues that ‘any specific generational [gen-
der and] sexuality can be linked to a generational narrative standpoint within
a matrix of inequalities’thus creating a plurality of existing stories.
Furthermore, the author articulates the idea of generational sexual stories
with the idea of subterranean traditions, that is, ‘lived sexual cultures that
run against the grain, where any ideas of a dominant world or a hegemonic
dominance are subverted, resisted, quietly ignored, or loudly challenged’
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 3
(Plummer 2010, 165). These subterranean traditions with the passage of
time, the renewal of generations and the transformations brought about
with social change might then move ‘gradually into public cultures’
(Plummer 2010, 187). The coming out stories of gay, lesbian and transgender
people are such subterranean narratives, which are now increasingly coming
into the daylight (Plummer 2010).
In recent times, transgender stories can be found at a national and inter-
national level and in diverse spheres of social life such as in the media and
popular culture, the internet, academia, social movements, community
spaces, health, legislation and politics (Doan 2007,2010; Ekins and King
2006; Hines 2007; Pearce, Steinberg, and Moon 2019; Stryker and Whittle
2006; Stryker 2008). Transgender stories are then told in a diversity of spaces,
‘where investments in versions of trans identities are played out, struggled
over and realised’(Rooke 2010, 67). Within academia, a wide array of trans-
gender narratives are told such as tales of identity and authenticity, social
and medicalized gender identity transitions, embodiments, sexuality, care
and intimacy, communities, citizenship and social movements, discrimintion,
abuse and violence. More recently, researchers have been paying attention
both to the diversity of narratives existent within transgender communities
and to transgender people’s multiple social positionings (Abelson 2016;
Bettcher 2014; Doan 2010; Elliot 2009; Hines 2007,2010; Munro 2010; Nash
2010; Vries 2012). Consequently, it is possible to interpret this diversity of
transgender narratives as reflecting ‘particular experiences of oppression,
specific needs and political goals’(Elliot 2009, 8).
This ‘material turn’(Munro 2010) on gender and transgender studies
within the social sciences and humanities opened space for the voices,
embodied experiences and subjectivities of transgender and gender-variant
people (Stryker 2006). Simultaneously, this approach is consistent with multi-
layered analyses of gender processes in general, and transgender processes
in particular. According to Connell (2009,2012) (trans)gender is a relational
and multi-layered process that is always being remade in everyday life while
simultaneoulsy being conditioned by gender orders composed of gendered
regimes and structures. Therefore, as West and Zimmerman (2009) argued,
gender is (re)done in everyday life within the context of structural and his-
torical circumstances that still allow spaces for changes in people’s orienta-
tion to dominant normativities in social relations and thus to gender
transformation. This material and multi-layered approach to (trans)gender
takes into account the inter-relationships between agency and structure, situ-
ated spaces and times and the intersections of multiple social positionings
(Connell 2009,2012; Hopkins 2018; Munro 2010; Nash 2010; Sanger 2013;
Vries 2012; West and Zimmerman 2009). Though the idea of intersectionality
is not a new one, since there is a ‘long tradition of similar analyses before
4 A. C. MARQUES
this term was coined’in gender theory (Walby, Armstrong, and Strid 2012,
2), the use of intersectionality as an analytical tool has been particularly use-
ful to help to understand the complexity of transgender people’s stories.
According to Hill Collins and Bilge (2016, 25), the use of an intersectionality
framework can help achieve ‘a more in-depth understanding of the complex-
ity of peoples’lives, inserted in complex social worlds by showing how these
social lives are shaped by several factors that work together in various and
“mutually inter-influencing ways”’. Furthermore, the authors underline the
importance of considering the social context to examine intersecting social
inequalities, relationalities and relations of power (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016;
Hopkins 2018). On similar lines, Hopkins (2018, 2) underscores the import-
ance of the work of feminist geographers in ‘expanding, deepening and
enhancing how scholars engaging with intersectionality conceptualise and
work with ideas about social context’, since it fundamentally refers to ‘the
role of locality and the importance of place in shaping and being shaped by
other key characteristics of intersectionality’. This is more the case when the
work of feminist geographers has been highlighting the importance of
‘political, social and spatial implications of gendered and sexualized identi-
ties, practices and behaviours’(Nash 2010, 582) and thus in considering the
meanings given to bodies as historically and spatially situated. Taking into
account the inter-influencing social positions of transgender and gender-
diverse people enables a further understanding of factors such as access to
‘trans-friendly’social spaces and levels of support from intimate and institu-
tional networks that are also spacially and temporally located and which
help to structure the experiences of transgender and gender-diverse people
(Hines 2007,2010). These different fields of possibilities can be seen in trans-
gender and gender-variant people’s coming out stories.
Transgender and gender-variant people’s coming out processes can be
interpreted as complex, ‘ongoing process[es] of gender exploration’that
involve early transgender experencies, coming out to oneself, coming out to
others and resolutions of identity’(Gagn
e, Tewksbury, and McGaughey 1997,
485). There are varied processes of coming out that need to be seen as rela-
tional due to the important part that others play in them (Sanger 2013).
Families, partners, friends, jobs, symbolic others and communities are central
to understanding ‘when’,‘why’,‘how’and with ‘what consequences’coming
out processes come into being.
Portugal and UK: medical, social and legal contexts of gender identity
Both Portugal (since 2011) and the UK (since 2004) have gender identity
laws that do not require transgender people to undergo any type of gender
reassignment surgery to legally change their names and/or gender (Hines
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 5
and Santos 2018). Additionally, both countries, in the face of international
directives (see, e.g., the Council of Europe’s Resolution 2048 [2015]) and pres-
sures from international and national social movements are in the process of
discussing and promulgating new policies and legislation that depatholo-
gizes transgender people and tackles the discrimination against them. For
example, a new gender identity law—law N. 38/2018—was approved
recently by the Portuguese parliament that allows for the auto-determination
of transgender and gender-diverse people. The 2018 law enabled individuals
over 18 to be legally recognized within one’s current gender identity without
the need of any medical certificate or procedure.
Notwithstanding the similarities, both countries have different histories in
relation to the medicalization of gender transition processes, LGBT activisms
and citizenship rights. For instance, in the UK, the medical procedures aimed
at ‘supporting’transgender people were practiced throughout the 20
th
cen-
tury (Ekins and King 2006). By the 1950s, there was already a range of treat-
ments being offered to people that wished to undergo gender transition
processes, even if these procedures were, and still are, seen as controversial.
Moreover, even if the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004 was considered one
of the most advanced gender identity laws in the world, currently it is con-
sidered to be pathologizing and in need of revision (Hines and Santos 2018;
Women and Equalities Committee 2016). Still, the UK is often considered ‘a
leading political actor from which early LGBTIQ activism and lesbian and gay
studies emerged’(Hines and Santos 2018, 36) having transgender networks
and support groups since the 1970s and politically organized activist groups
since the 1990s. Such is the case with Press for Change, that has an import-
ant influence promoting transgender equality issues in the public and polit-
ical spheres (Hines and Santos 2018).
Compared to the UK, the ‘visibility’of transgender history, citizenship and
activism is fairly recent in Portugal. Before the 25
th
of April 1974, during the
period of dictatorship, values associated with the patriarchal family and gen-
der inequalities were promoted. People considered to be a peril to the moral
values defended by the regime (for instance, ‘homosexuals’,‘prostitutes’, the
‘homeless’, or the ‘mentally ill’) were punished, hidden from society and insti-
tutionalized (Almeida 2009). During this period, people were not participat-
ing in the social and legal transformations occurring in countries like the UK
and the USA that had begun consolidating significant changes. Nevertheless,
after the 25
th
of April of 1974 and before the discriminalization of homosexu-
ality in 1982, some nightclubs started to emerge in what is still called
Lisbon’s gay district (Freitas 2015).
However, during the 1970s and 1980s, the LGBT movements were almost
non-existent in Portugal (Almeida 2009). It was only since the 1990s onwards
that LGBT questions gained visibility. The first LGBT associations were created
6 A. C. MARQUES
during this decade with the first transgender only organization—Trans
Portugal—being created in 2000. Since then, the LGBT movements in
Portugal have been able to consolidate and increased exponentially
(Almeida 2009; Hines and Santos 2018). Furthermore, in Portugal, it was only
in 1995, in the context of a legal void, that the Doctors Public Association
started performing gender reassignment surgeries to individuals that had a
clinical diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’. Currently, the Portuguese state sup-
ports free treatments, psychological support and medical appointments to
transgender people. Still, the length of the process leads those who can
afford it to seek private care (Hil
ario 2017).
Nowadays, both in Portugal and the UK, politicized discourses of gender
diversity, non-binary gender spaces and queer identities circulate within vir-
tual and face-to-face LGBT communities. Nevertheless, what can be consid-
ered as more medicalized and ‘traditional’narratives of gender identity are
still present in both countries. Furthermore, a recent report (FRA 2014) shows
the existence of high levels of discrimination against transgender people in
different areas of social life throughout Europe. This report (FRA 2014),
though not representative, also states that transgender people in the UK are
amongst those who say the most that they tend to be open about their
transgender selves within different spheres of the social life, whereas trans-
gender people in Portugal are among those who say it the least.
Accordingly, Santos (2012) states that a strong cis-heteronormativity, based
on the idea of the heterosexual nuclear couple with children, remains
predominant in the Portuguese society.
Methodological considerations
In this paper, I draw on data from 58 transcribed in-depth interviews with
transgender people in Portugal (30 participants) and in the UK (28 partici-
pants) carried out within the frame of a wider international project:
TRANSRIGHTS—Gender Citizenship and Sexual Rights in Europe: Transgender
Lives from a Transnational Perspective which aims at a critical reflection of
gender and citizenships by focusing on transgender people. The focus on
Portugal and the UK was, on the one hand, a practical decision on my part
to analyse the interviews that had already been transcribed; but, on the
other, it was a reflected decision underpinned by the different historical
paths of both countries in terms of gender issues and transgender rights.
Thus, though currently Portugal and the UK have legislation that account for
the rights of transgender and/or gender-diverse people, both countries had
very different historical processes of transgender and gender-diverse citizen-
ship, with Portugal concentrating in a few years, profound changes in terms
of gender issues and transgender rights.
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 7
The TRANSRIGHTS project is based on qualitative methodologies with
extensive empirical research, which creates a rich and diverse dataset. Both
in Portugal and in the UK, the recruitment of participants was initially made
through contact with a diversified range of stakeholders (e.g., LGBT and
Trans activists, and gender and sexual right’s associations) and the establish-
ment of contacts with key informants. The participants were then recruited
through a snowball process where a criterion of saturation was applied. A
convenience strategy was used where diversity was sought in order to
‘represent’the ‘transgender umbrella’, even if it was not entirely possible.
Acknowledging that there are problems with this term, with whom many
people do not identify with, I use the term ‘transgender’as an ‘umbrella’
adjective that includes people with a vast diversity of gender expressions;
namely transgender, cross-dressers, genderqueer and other forms of gen-
dered identities, expressions and lives. Thus, using the word transgender as
an ‘umbrella’has pratical, ‘social and political purposes’, but we need to be
wary that it includes several different ‘subcultures and social worlds’(Ekins
and King 2006, 232
The interviews were conducted between 2015 and 2016, in a place of the
participants’choice. Interviewees were given pseudonyms, and personal ele-
ments that might identify any of the participants were omitted. Ethical issues
were considered particularly relevant and as an ongoing and reflexive part of
the research process. Furthermore, transparency and rigour were followed
throughout all stages of the research process.
I draw upon a narrative approach (McAdams 2005; Plummer 2010), where
research participants’stories were thought of as a way of gaining a sense of
their gendered memories, experiences, representations and expectations
thoughout their life-course. The stories told by the research particpants were
then analysed through a ‘holistic-content’approach ‘to the study of life story
narratives’that ‘is grounded in a close textual reading and focuses on salient
themes in the life story as a whole’(McAdams 2005, 560). From the themes
that emerged from the research participants’narratives, in this article I am
focusing particularly on transgender and gender-diverse people’s coming out
stories in their relation with space and generation.
Respondents’ages varied between 18 and 73 years, and their level of edu-
cation ranged from the 9
th
grade to holding a PhD. There was also a large
variance in terms of jobs from low to high-qualified jobs. The respondents
were mostly British and Portuguese citizens, but there were also migrants,
particularly from Latin America and other European countries. Furthermore,
interviewees used a wide range of gender classifications for self-identify.
There was also diversity among the inteviewees in relation to their gender,
legal and/or medicalized gender transition processes, their involvement with
transgender communities and their positioning towards politicized narratives.
8 A. C. MARQUES
Transgender coming out stories
The diversity of the research participants mirrors, to a certain extent, the
diversity of transgender communities. These coming out stories talk about
processes that are often dynamic, diverse, and contextual illustrating the
existence of multiple paths towards gender formation with its own contra-
dictions in the context of existent multiple gender configurations (Connell
2012). As the literature showed (Connell 2010; Doan 2010; Gagn
e, Tewksbury
and McGaughey 1997; Hines 2007; Mason-Schrock 1996), they tell tales of
earlier gender memories, feelings of difference, estrangement and/or con-
straint, difficulties of facing the bodily changes brought about through
puberty, lack and subsequent gain of knowledge of transgender issues and
people, experimentation with gender and/or sexual orientation, acknowledg-
ment and incorporation of one’s transgender self, coming out to others,
empowerment and discrimination. However, a common thread throughout
the narratives is the fact that transgender coming out processes are highly
relational and contextual—that is, spacially and temporally located.
Earlier gender memories, the ‘private’space of the family and the
‘institutional’space of school
Feeling different from a young age is a common aspect of transgender com-
ing out narratives (Doan 2010; Gagn
e, Tewksbury and McGaughey 1997;
Hines 2007; Mason-Schrock 1996). Earlier memories of gender tend to start
in childhood and become accentuated during puberty when several research
participants ‘recalled’their discomfort (Moon 2019) and disconnections with
their bodies in what can be interpreted as embodied distress (Roen 2019).
This discomfort or disconnection with one’s bodies tends to be traduced in
practices and ideals of their ‘preferred’gender, and/or a refusal of embodi-
ment, and practices and norms associated with their assigned gender. For
instances, as a child, Fernando (Portuguese man, in his mid-thirties, teacher)
would pray to Jesus asking to be transformed into a boy: ‘I would go to
sleep and in the following morning I would transform myself into a boy and
the error was solved’. However, with the body transformations associated
with puberty, he began to struggle with his feminine body: ‘[I felt] the need
to hide the breasts. I had to wear very large shirts. I started having a very
curved posture to hide the breasts. [ …] I didn’t want them there’.
Feelings of being different or being perceived as different by others were
particularly visible within school spaces where a non-adherence to gender
normativities was traduced on being made accountable not only by peers
but also by teachers and other staff working within school places. For
Fernando, this happened earlier on, at kindergarden: ‘during playtime chil-
dren separate themselves a lot into boys and girls groups. And the adults
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 9
themselves [ …], they forced me to belong to a group that I was never com-
fortable with. I was sure that I wanted the boys’group’. For several of the
participants, feelings of being different were reinforced through bullying as
happened to Joseph (British transgender man, early twenties, student/
unemployed): ‘I had a very complicated relationship with school. [ …]Iwas
bullied from reception until Year 3 severely. [ …] So of course I would retali-
ate and get in trouble, the typical story’.
Many of the research participants also faced challenges at home, where
their families expected of them gender performances in accordance with
their assigned gender at birth. Through comments, reprimands and/or the
interiorization of dominant gender binaries, many research participants soon
realized that their gendered feelings were not acceptable, and when that
was the case, learned to hide their cross-dressing practices and/or keep their
feelings to themselves. This was the case of Eileen (British transgender
woman, early seventies, retired):
‘I got into trouble because I started borrowing my Mum’s and my sister’s
clothes, and I got caught going to school in some of them. In my mind, I
was practising to be the woman I was sure I was going to grow up to be
[…]. My parents were horrified and told me it was naughty. [ …] The prob-
lem with that is that I learnt from it that it was something I shouldn’tbe
doing and that society wouldn’t accept me’.
However, as highlighted by other authors (Connell 2010; Hines 2007,
2010; Roen 2019), not all the research participants adhered to this more
‘traditional’narrative of early gender difference. For instance, some trans-
gender and gender-diverse people described other points in their life course
when an identification with a transgender or a gender-diverse identity
occured. Tracey (British woman with a transexuality history, mid-fourties, lec-
turer), for example, was in her early 30 s when she started exploring her gen-
der identity: ‘I didn’t have any feelings that I wanted to be female when I
was a child. [ …] I used to play rugby, and I used to play football. [ …]It
was only really about 2005 that I sort of felt that there was some-
thing missing’.
Moreover, for several research participants, periods of confusion, feeling
different, crossing gender boundaries or of exploring gender identitities and
sexual orientations were accompanied by a general lack of knowledge of
transgender and gender-diverse people and issues that, at times, created
confluences between gender identity and sexual orientation (Hines 2007).
Not knowing what one was had led many research participants to firstly
adopt a sexual identity as a lesbian, a gay man and/or a bisexual person that
did not always feel right! The case of Paula (Portuguese woman, late fifties,
retired) illustrates how there was not only a lack of information on trans-
gender issues in Portugal in the 1970s and 1980s, but also how the only
10 A. C. MARQUES
information available about homosexuality was highly unacceptable within
the more ‘conservative’social circles in which she circulated: ‘In Portugal
these things [transgender issues] were not discussed. The only thing that
was discussed was homosexuality, but it was a forbidden, obscene thing.
Still, I used to hang around with the artists, and the thing carried on more
or less in disguise’. Even under these circumstances, she could still find some
spaces in Lisbon where people could act upon a non-heteronormative sexual
orientation (Freitas 2015).
Finding others, finding oneself –virtual and face-to-face spaces of
the community
As in the case of other studies (Connell 2010; Doan, 2007; Gagn
e, Tewksbury
and McGaughey 1997; Hines 2007,2010; Mason-Schrock 1996; Moon 2019;
Rooke 2010; Sanger 2013), for the research participants the gain of informa-
tion was mostly associated with the media, the Internet and/or with meeting
other transgender and gender-diverse people. With the access to knowledge
of transgender and gender-diverse issues and the face-to-face, mediatized or
virtual contact with symbolic others with whom one could identify, new gen-
dered selves were construsted, even if sometimes resisted. For instance, John
(British transgender man, mid-twenties, unemployed) first learned about
transgender issues by watching documentaries and by doing research on the
Internet. Tellingly, it was his public coming out online that helped him to
consider it necessary to come out to his family:
I kind of did some research, and then I got in touch with a few groups on social
media and a few people that were in documentaries on TV. [ …] They were ticking
every box possible! [ …] It was a real relief when I told my family. First of all, I
changed everything on social media [ …], and then I wrote letters to my family.
[…] I am a lot happier now.
Symbolic others tend to be perceived as supportive; being central to help
individuals refashion a new sense of self (Mason-Schrock 1996) and often
form communities with strong ethics of care (Hines 2007,2010). Accordingly,
Doan (2007,2010) shows how these communities not only give individuals
the opportunity to express their gender selves but can also empower them
to live in what they consider to be their ‘true’gender identities. In this sense,
George (British transgender man, early forties, manager of a NGO) was in his
mid-twenties when he became engaged with symbolic others within the
context of a transgender support group: ‘It was about seeing a very, very
diverse set of trans masculine people and realising if they can do it, then I
can do it, and also, I don’t have to do it in this way; I can do it in the way
that suits me. That was really a power moment!’However, it is important to
note that LGBTI, transgender and gender-diverse community spaces are
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 11
permeated by their own gender normativities, which can also cause rifts
within these communities (Doan 2007; Hines 2007,2010; Marques 2019;
Nash 2010).
The dominant cultural gender normativities existent in societies at certain
points in time and the availability and access to information about gender
identity issues are essential firstly, to enable a recognition of oneself as a
transgender or gender-diverse individual and secondly, to bring about the
possibility of acting upon this knowledge and embrace these gender identifi-
cations. As Hines (2010, 603) argued, age and generation are ‘important in
signposting historical and contextual possibilities for “being”trans’.
Accordingly, for several transgender and gender-diverse people from older
generations, the access to knowledge regarding gender identity issues and
the possibility to come out in public in their ‘true’gender selves happened
later in their life-courses, after having led entire lives of ‘cis-hetornormativite’
adulthoods. Elsa, for instance, was in her early forties when she found out
about gender diversity issues and decided to come out:
I didn’t feel that I was different. But I know what I am since I was a child. At the
time, there was no Internet, there was no information, nor a place to search for
information. I left it like that; I kept it to my self until I started seeing things in the
Internet and reading and understanding what was happening with me; and it got
to the time when I said: “OK. From now on it is enough!”
In the case of Eileen, the existence of ‘subterranean’(Plummer 2010) trans-
gender communities in the UK allowed her to be out within these contexts
since the beginning of the 1970s within certain parameters: ‘I have been a
member of different support groups or help run or been involved with
groups almost ever since’. Nevertheless, according to Whittle (2006: xiv), the
1970s were still ‘dangerous and unpleasant’times to come out as a trans-
gender person in the UK. Still, such possibility would be even more difficult
in Portugal before the realization of a democratic state in 1974.
Similarly to other studies (e.g. Hines 2007,2010; Sanger 2013; Roen 2019),
younger generations of transgender and gender-diverse people have earlier
access to knowledge about transgender and gender diversity issues due to
the media and the Internet, and they tend to have earlier contact with other
transgender people within their life-courses; consequently, they have
become aware of the possibilities of being transgender in their adolescence
or young adulthood. The increased visibility of transgender and gender-
diverse people and issues in the media and the development of new
technologies of information are thus essential factors in terms of access to
transgender and gender-diverse people and knowledge (Doan 2007; Ekins
and King 2006, 2010; Rooke 2010; Whittle 2006). This knowledge circulates
transnationally, giving people around the world with access to Internet
(Sanger 2013) contact with a similar range of diverse medical, communal
12 A. C. MARQUES
and political narratives and communities. In recent times, both in Portugal
and the UK, politicized discourses of gender diversity circulate within virtual
and face-to-face communities, making it possible for individuals to move in
and out of these spaces. This was the case of George who was trying to
move to a more non-binary space within the spectrum of masculinities espe-
cially at the discursive level: ‘I am identified in the world as a man; I identify
mainly as a trans man. However, I feel words like “trans masculine,”[and]
“non-binary masculine”also appeal to me at the moment’. A similar situation
was also true for Alex (Portuguese non-binary transgender woman, late
twenties, technical job/student) who, while self-identifying as a non-binary
girl and wanting a female embodiment, is exploring her gender expression
and wants to incorporate the complexities of her past masculine embodi-
ment and experiences thus illustrating existing discourses of continuity
(Andrucki and Kaplan 2018): ‘I am a lot closer to what is a feminine line
because I feel a lot more like a girl. But I don’t abandon my boy’s character-
istics because I like some of them’.
Telling others, facing others
Like in so many other transgender stories (Connell 2010; Gagn
e, Tewksbury
and McGaughey 1997; Hines 2007; Mason-Schrock 1996; Nygren,
€
Ohman and
Olofsson 2016; Sanger 2013), the research participants tell stories of support,
acceptance and even of empowerment from their friends, partners, families
and within work environments and communities, but they also tell stories of
loss: hindered careers, severed ties with family members and/or ‘friends’, bro-
ken relationships and stories of discrimination, abuse, harassment and vio-
lence especially in public settings but also in their private lives. Thus,
especially for those research participants with more ‘traditional’narratives,
there was often a period when they tried to repress themselves, hiding their
feelings and behaviours, and conforming to dominant gender binaries.
However, our respondents ended up coming out as transgender individuals
at some point in their lives either in more temporary or permanent ways.
Telling others, facing others—significant others and private spaces
When decisions are made to tell others, significant others—families, partners
and/or friends—are told only when and if it felt possible to do so. Significant
others are then especially critical either for hindering or enabling coming
out processes. Responsibilities associatied with work and family, pressures for
conforming to dominant gender normativities and ‘the financial, physical
and social implications of not conforming’(Hines 2010, 603) lead some older
research participants to postpone their ‘public’coming out until later in their
life-course. This was the case of Eileen who had several instances of coming
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 13
out throughout her lifecourse and in different spaces –finally coming out
‘full-time’as a woman with a transgender past in her retirement years after
her parents died: ‘I was staying in my birth gender [ …]. But I was able to
be me at home [ …]. It was only when I went to work or visited my parents
or other family members that I wasn’t Eileen’. However, the fear or at least
the wariness of coming out to significant others did not totally disappear
with the younger generations of transgender and gender-diverse people. In
Portugal, there were some younger research participants whose parents
were not understanding of their children’s coming out processes. This was
the case of L
e (Portuguese non-binary transgender man, early twenties,
student/unqualified job) whose father didn’t accept his coming out as a
transgender man:
My family is very transphobic and homophobic. They have made an effort to try to
understand things, but it is not always easy. [ …] I was kicked out by my father
around 8 months ago. I stayed with friends. That is why I came to live in Lisbon,
and it was only now that I got a job and was able to pay rent …
Moreover, not all significant others are unsupportive. For instance, Hines
(2007) and Sanger (2013) show how partners can stand by transgender and
gender-diverse individuals throughout coming out processes. Parents and
other relatives can also be accepting of transgender and gender-diverse peo-
ple coming out, even if initially they might struggle to accept it (Abelson
2016; Hines 2007); sometimes having a central role giving not only emotional
but also practical and financial care. In Joseph’s case, after an initial period
of struggling acceptance, his mother’s financial and emotional support was
central for his achievement of a desired masculine gender display and
embodiment: ‘She wanted me to get a proper haircut, so she took me to a
barber to get a proper haircut—bought me some men’s clothes because she
said “you can’t be wearing these.”’ For Fernando, his girlfriend at the time
called his attention to the possibility of him being a transgender man, help-
ing him to initially start questioning his feelings and then ask for medical
support: ‘She asked herself if she was bisexual and I was, in her eyes, her first
non-hetero experience. But then she understood that she wasn’t dealing
with a girl. And she started making a series of questions that I responded
to’. Moreover, this previous girlfriend and his family stood by him through
the very complex process of getting his name and gender legally changed
before the 2011 gender identity law: ‘I had to find a lawyer to initiate a legal
process against the State, demanding that they would change my legal
name since it didn’t match my actual gender identity. [ …] Then I had some
witnesses: my father, a friend from faculty, my girlfriend …’
Still, these coming out stories are not told to everyone or, at least, not
told to everyone at the same time (Abelson 2016; Gagn
e, Tewksbury and
McGaughey 1997; Hines 2007,2010; Nygren,
€
Ohman and Olofsson 2016).
14 A. C. MARQUES
Often it is assumed that generalized others do not need to be told con-
stantly about one’s transgender identity. Other times, a more conscious
‘decision’about being out in particular spheres of life is made generally with
families and close friends or within LGBT communities while ‘choosing’to be
‘invisible’as a transgender person in public cis-heteronormative spaces
(Westbrook and Schilt, 2014). This is the case of George who is out as a
transgender man at his work and with his family and friends but not in gen-
eral associated cis-heteronormative public spaces like his neighbourhood:
My trans status is public, but you are always meeting people who don’t necessarily
see your transness, so it is a kind of point where you have to make a decision
whether to share that information or not. [ …] At home, we look really
heterosexual and live in a semi-detached house. We have got kids. I live in a cul-
de-sac, and we say hello to the neighbours, and nobody knows.
There are then multitemporalities (Andrucki and Kaplan, 2018) and multispa-
cialities associated with coming out processes that transgender people more
or less strategically develop throughout their lifecourses, rendering gender
highly contextual in terms of space and time. In this sense, participants
showed conditioned forms of agency when, where and to whom they
wanted or not to come out as transgender.
Telling others, facing others–the institutional spaces of the
labour market
Coming out at work shows again the diversity of processes and experiences
of transgender and gender-diverse individuals. While some of the research
participants were ‘out’at work, others were not. Some were waiting to
change jobs or to retire for that possibility to arise; others, like L
e, left the
places where they lived in their assigned genders to start a new life in a
new place where people did not know about their gendered pasts or to
move into ‘bigger’cities where it is often expected that gender diversity will
be more accepted, even if, as Abelson (2016) and Doan (2007) have shown,
that might not always be the case.
For several of the reseach participants, being a transgender or gender-
diverse person was a significant aspect of their work lives. This was the case
of Hannah (British transgender woman, early forties, artist) for whom being a
transgender woman was an important part of her work as an artist: ‘Being
trans does figure in my art and my chosen career because of things I have
been able to do as a trans person and the people that I have met and the
communities I have met’. Working within and for transgender and gender-
diverse communities, like some of the research participants did, might
‘protect’them against problems of discrimination at the labour market,
which does not reflect what happens in other areas of society. Furthermore,
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 15
similar to what Hines (2007,2010) has previously shown, in the UK, but also
in Portugal, there was a differentiation within the labour market where more
intellectual, artistic careers or careers that are associated with self-employe-
ment allowed for more acceptance of gender diversity as opposed to manual
jobs or jobs where dominant gender normativities tend to be more strictly
followed and were usually less accepting. Moreover, bigger companies might
also be supportive of the gender transitions processes of their employees
showing, at least publicly, a desire to be transgender friendly, implementing
policies for gender equality and thus adhering to what Westbrook and Schilt
(2014) call ‘identity-based determination of gender’; this was the situation of
Alex: ‘At that time I started to talk to people from the HR and so on …[…]
There were colleagues that were already watching documentaries, that were
questioning me, asking me how it was, trying to understand a bit better
what one feels’.
Notwithstanding these havens of safety in the workforce, the existence of
discrimination within the labour market can be seen reflected in the stories
of several participants, particularly in Portugal, but also in the UK, when they
talk about not being able to get jobs, being fired for being transgender or
not coming out at work for fear of negative consequences. Thus, for
example, Emma (British transgender woman, mid-forties, self-employed/sev-
eral jobs) explains how she tried to come out as a transgender woman dur-
ing the 1990s but ended up not doing so due to the perceived negative
social attitudes towards transgender and gender-diverse people:
I am currently in the middle of my medical transition. It is actually the second time
I have tried to transition. I first had an attempt in my mid to late 20’s, back in the
1990s. Social attitudes were quite a lot different back then towards trans people. I
had a group of friends who I grew up with who were very open minded anyway,
and they were all pretty supportive at the time, but I was in a job that wasn’t. It
had very homophobic and transphobic attitudes, and I just felt trapped between
two lives almost at the time, and I needed to live and to earn money and to get
by. So I literally had a breakdown around about those times and then put it all
back in the closet almost and carried on for a good few years.
In Portugal, Elsa, in what has to be seen as a consequence of an interrelation
between her age and her feminine transgender identity, never got another
job after coming out as a trangender woman: ‘As long as I lived as a man, I
always had work. Since I came out as a woman, I never worked even one
day again. I think this says it all. It must have been 12, 13 years ago’. But if
this was more the case for the older generations of transgender and gender-
diverse individuals, younger generations also shared stories of discrimination.
In this sense, Joseph mentioned having being fired while transitioning at
work due to a mismatch in what the law says and what is actually practiced,
expressing a common critique to the Equality Act 2010 (Women and
Equalities Committee 2016): ‘In the workplace, I have seen the usual
16 A. C. MARQUES
misinterpretation of what the Equalities Act means [ …]. My surgery was put
down as if it were any other absence. [ …] So I ended up basically losing my
job because of that extra day of illness’. The diversity of coming out stories
told by the research participants points then to the co-existence of different
gender narratives within the labour market and more generally, within
British and Portuguese societies.
Conclusion
In this paper, I have explored the coming out stories of 58 research partici-
pants from the UK and Portugal and their intersecting social locations, par-
ticularly in terms of generation and national context. Transgender and
gender diversity issues, locations, generations and social change are clearly
intertwined in these stories, where ‘traditional’gender normativities were
more ‘compelling’for the older generations (Hines 2010), but started to
loosen up in recent times, where gender diversity became increasingly more
accepted, even if not yet totally. Therefore, taking into account the research
participants’social locations helps to better understand the complexities
existing within the transgender and gender-diverse communities, the individ-
ual agency of transgender and gender-diverse people and the existing rela-
tions of power and conditionalisms that affect their lives. Accordingly,
transgender and gender-diverse people’s coming out stories need to be
understood within the spatial, material, relational, embodied, social, cultural
and historical contexts in which they unfold (e.g. Connell 2012; Elliot 2009;
Hines 2007,2010; Nash 2010; Sanger 2013; Munro 2010; Stryker 2006; Vries
2012). Interestingly, in terms of national contexts, in Portugal and the UK,
the historical processes regarding activism, access to healthcare, and the
granting of citizenship for transgender and gender-diverse are very different.
However, the current influence of transnational institutions that have a
strong stand in the defence of human rights for transgender and gender
diverse-people, and the transnational circulation of information allowed by
the new technologies of information, particularly the internet, on trans-
gender and gender-diverse people, communities and issues, creates patterns
of convergency in these different national contexts.
Moreover, in a context where increased visibility associated with the fight
for recognition and access to human rights co-exists with continuous forms
of discrimination, harassment, abuse and violence, transgender and gender-
diverse people’s coming out stories tend to be complex and dynamic.
Coming out stories are not only multiple and diverse within transgender and
gender-diverse communities, but they also demonstrate how transgender
and gender-diverse people might often tell different coming out stories to
themselves and to others, throughout their lifecourses and within different
GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 17
social contexts. As a consequence, transgender people become multiple
storytellers when faced with multiple and diversified audiences (Hines 2007).
There are then multi-temporalities (Andrucki and Kaplan 2018) and multispa-
cialities of coming out processes that are associated with the presence of
more or less cis-heteronormatives and dominant gender binaries (Westbrook
and Schilt 2014). Significantly, Doan (2010, 638) considers that more than
examples of dichotomous divisions between public and private, everyday
places in which transgender and gender-diverse people move are ‘part of a
much richer continuum’. I would add that those significant, symbolic or gen-
eralized others who also move within these spaces and/or times can and do
often work to transform them into unsafe spaces and times—especially
where and when one has to be invisible and repress his/hers/their ‘true’gen-
dered selves due to others’lack of understanding; but they also can and do
help to create safe spaces and/or times—when and where one can come
out with his/hers/their current gender identity due to others’support.
Considering coming out processes as relational (Connell 2010,2012; Gagn
e,
Tewksbury, and McGaughey 1997; Hines 2007,2010; Mason-Schrock 1996;
Sanger 2013) is then central to thinking about the influence that family,
intimate and personal lives, the labour market, communities (spatial, identity,
work, religious …), symbolic others (either mediatized, virtual or physical)
and generized others have for them.
Nevertheless, there are limits to the analysis that should be taken into
consideration in future research. For instance, I did not look into the privil-
ege of whiteness that most, even if not all, research participants possessed.
This situation was not intended, but it might be interpreted as an
‘intersectional invisibility’(Purdie-Vaughns and Elbach in Vries 2012: 51); and
we can assume that many of these research participants tell stories drawn
from the narratives of dominant white groups. Moreover, the focus on the
intersections of generation and national contexts, leaves behind a diverse
number of other social locations such as gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity,
religiosity or health/illness, that are important for transgender and gender-
diverse people’s subjectivities, lived experiences and expectations.
Acknowledgments
The reflection developed drew on data collected in the frame of the European Research
Council funded project TRANSRIGHTS: Gender citizenship and sexual rights in Europe:
Transgender lives in transnational perspective. The project reflects only the views of the
author, and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be
made of the information contained therein. The author would like to thank all the mem-
bers of TRANSRIGHTS team and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the pre-
vious drafts of this manuscript. Furthermore, the author would like to thank the
transgender and gender-diverse people who agreed to take part in the project.
18 A. C. MARQUES
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research
Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC
grant agreement n615594.
Notes on contributor
Ana Cristina Marques participated as a post-doctoral researcher in the project
‘TRANSRIGHTS’, at the Instituto de Ci^
encias Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa,
Portugal. Her work focuses on gender, sexuality, and family, intimacy and personal lives.
ORCID
Ana Cristina Marques http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9385-1899
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