Identity Impermanence as a Generic Social Process

The Malleability of Gender in Transgender and Nonbinary People's Lives

Bibliographic Data

ID19218283
AuthorsStef M Shuster (0000-0003-1970-5257, Michigan State University), Andrew Kirks-Cler (0009-0005-1238-8801, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Year2026
Publication date2026-06-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSymbolic Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/symb.70059
OpenAlexW7163881538
LanguageEN
References cited48

Drawing on 40 in‐depth interviews with transgender and nonbinary people, we found that respondents' gender identities or displays shifted day‐by‐day and audience‐by‐audience. The first describes respondents shifting their identities and displays based on feeling their way through gender while the latter describes feeling out an audience. These shifts are nonexclusive to trans and nonbinary people. Instead, we offer new tools for symbolic interactionists by theorizing the impermanence of identity as a generic social process. Examining such impermanence reveals how people feel their way through facets of the self and audiences to quell the possibility of experiencing social inequalities in interaction

Feeling · Globality · Heteronormativity · Identity (music) · Impermanence · Malleability · Sexual identity · Social identity theory · Transgender · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Social Power and Status Dynamics

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access