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“I wanna be a toy”: Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users’ biographies

“I wanna be a toy”: Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users’ biographies
“I wanna be a toy”: Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users’ biographies
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.
2211-3770
205-236
Webster, Lexi
73920a7c-4aac-4188-81fb-b604c1dac45c
Webster, Lexi
73920a7c-4aac-4188-81fb-b604c1dac45c

Webster, Lexi (2018) “I wanna be a toy”: Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users’ biographies. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 7 (2), 205-236. (doi:10.1075/jls.17016.web).

Record type: Article

Abstract

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.

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Published date: 27 August 2018

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 471198
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471198
ISSN: 2211-3770
PURE UUID: 028435a5-df30-47fb-a02d-785bb22f4ab0
ORCID for Lexi Webster: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5721-8236

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Date deposited: 31 Oct 2022 17:44
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:14

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Author: Lexi Webster ORCID iD

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