Misgendering, Cisgenderism and the Reproduction of the Gender Order in Social Interaction

Abstract

This article investigates moments in social interaction where tacit processes of gender attribution become visible because they are temporarily disrupted and exposed through misgendering. Our data consist of publicly available audio and video-recorded cases of misgendering, mostly from UK and US contexts. Practices of misgendering embody assumptions that map people’s current gender onto their self-presentations and gender histories. Organisational features of social interaction facilitate the reproduction of these assumptions as taken-for-granted criteria for gender attribution. In the current climate of ‘gender panics’, the rise of a norm whereby people’s self-defined gender should be respected clashes against enduring assumptions that uphold a gender order grounded in cisgenderism. The exposure of gender assumptions in moments of misgendering presents a potential for social change, but this potential is also limited by practices that reproduce (rather than challenge) the dominant gender order.