Gender Transcendence

Abstract

Over a period of eight months, I conducted an ethnographic comparative study in a northeastern metropolitan area, identifying and exploring a variety of non-normative social spaces regarding both gender and sexuality. I focus this research on comparing two different non-normative communities of gender and sexuality, the queer and the lesbian communities. By concentrating on spaces populated by those who identify as queer, I witness and discuss the process of identity formation. Negotiation of both tangible and theoretical spaces contributes to the operationalization of queer as a category of identity. Using social space bound by identity as a unifying factor, I share observations of time spent in lesbian community, where intricacies of queerness, both as critique and as category of identity, were illuminated. The meaning of the theoretical construct of queer as explained in the literature and the experience of queer as an identity within community have areas of disconnect to which I draw attention in this paper. I interpret community space as giving power and visibility to the experience of those who live outside of, or between, gender norms in an experience that is unrecognized within mainstream heteronormative culture. I found this space creates a voice for a more encompassing and liberating embodiment of gender than that found in mainstream western society with its adherence