Rights statement: This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Language and Sexuality, Volume 7, Issue 2, 2018, pages: 205-236, © 2018 John Benjamins, the publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use the material in any form.
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - "I Wanna Be a Toy"
T2 - Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users' biographies
AU - Webster, Lexi
N1 - This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Language and Sexuality, Volume 7, Issue 2, 2018, pages: 205-236, © 2018 John Benjamins, the publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use the material in any form.
PY - 2018/8/27
Y1 - 2018/8/27
N2 - The paradigmatic transgender woman is often negatively oversexualised, pornographised and fetishised in mainstream conceptualisations and discourses. However, self-sexualisation by transgender individuals is often portrayed as a (sex-)positive social phenomenon. Little research has been conducted that analyses the self-sexualisation strategies of the multiple instantiations of gender-variant identity, including transmasculine and non-binary social actors. This paper uses a corpus-informed socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies to identify differences between the self-sexualisation strategies and underpinning cognitive models of different gender-variant user-groups on Twitter. 2,565 users are coded into five categories: (1) transfeminine; (2) transmasculine; (3) transsexual; (4) transvestite; (5) non-binary. Findings show that transvestite- and transsexual-identifying users most closely fit the pornographised and fetishised conceptualisation, whilst non-binary users are the least self-sexualising user-group.
AB - The paradigmatic transgender woman is often negatively oversexualised, pornographised and fetishised in mainstream conceptualisations and discourses. However, self-sexualisation by transgender individuals is often portrayed as a (sex-)positive social phenomenon. Little research has been conducted that analyses the self-sexualisation strategies of the multiple instantiations of gender-variant identity, including transmasculine and non-binary social actors. This paper uses a corpus-informed socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies to identify differences between the self-sexualisation strategies and underpinning cognitive models of different gender-variant user-groups on Twitter. 2,565 users are coded into five categories: (1) transfeminine; (2) transmasculine; (3) transsexual; (4) transvestite; (5) non-binary. Findings show that transvestite- and transsexual-identifying users most closely fit the pornographised and fetishised conceptualisation, whilst non-binary users are the least self-sexualising user-group.
KW - transgender
KW - Twitter
KW - sexualisation
KW - corpus linguistics
KW - socio-cognitive
KW - gender-variant
U2 - 10.1075/jls.17016.web
DO - 10.1075/jls.17016.web
M3 - Journal article
VL - 7
SP - 205
EP - 236
JO - Journal of Language and Sexuality
JF - Journal of Language and Sexuality
SN - 2211-3770
IS - 2
ER -