“They”-ifying the Gender Binary: Mason Students, They/Them Pronouns, and Nonbinary Gender Identities

This thesis examines the nonbinary identities of a handful of students at George Mason University using autoethnography, digital ethnography, and participant observation, grounded in the queering of folkloristics. Due to a lack of information in many institutions and a lack of media representation on nonbinary identities, some nonbinary people turn to the internet and utilize placemaking practices to construct and negotiate their nonbinary identities. Nonbinary identities are liminal insofar as they can be transitional in the movement of one gender identity to another, and they can also be liminal in the sense of existing outside of or between cultural norms in cases where nonbinary people do not arrive at a binary gender identity. Nonbinary identities are impacted by cultural context, bodily surveillance, stereotyping, and ideas of cultural borrowing.

Author

• DiNardo, Ang

• gender identity
• transgender
• folklore
• ethnography
• non-binary gender
• nonbinary

Identifier

hdl:1920/14615

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:MARS:1920/14615