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Gendering the Fat Body: Rhetoric and Personhood in Transition

Advances in Trans Studies: Moving Toward Gender Expansion and Trans Hope

ISBN: 978-1-80262-030-6, eISBN: 978-1-80262-029-0

Publication date: 19 November 2021

Abstract

Though ciscentric discourses often claim that genitals alone define gender, public disciplining of gender deviance suggests a move toward a broader and less genital-focused concept of gender, even among people who explicitly object to the normalization of trans people in society. In this chapter, I explore genital focused and holistic concepts of embodied gender in public discourses about cisgender celebrities and then in trans writings about gender and fatness emerging around the time of the transgender tipping point of 2014. I argue that hyperfocus on genitals in ciscentric discourses about trans bodies not only misunderstands trans experiences of gender but also misrepresents the role of genitals in post-millennium discourses about cisgender bodies.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

Sincerest gratitude to Zakiya Luna, my advisor during the thesis stage of this research, and a valued mentor in the years since. I am also deeply grateful to Elena Skapoulli-Raymond, Tracy Royce, Blu Buchanan, Hannah Kagan-Moore, Nik Valdez, Mercedes Forster, Jessica Rosewillow, Christina Hollowell, and Max Rorty for their generous help over the course of the research, and to the editors and authors who made this work possible.

Citation

Koehle, H. (2021), "Gendering the Fat Body: Rhetoric and Personhood in Transition", Johnson, A.H., Rogers, B.A. and Taylor, T. (Ed.) Advances in Trans Studies: Moving Toward Gender Expansion and Trans Hope (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 32), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 77-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-212620210000032006

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited