Resisting the Gender Binary: The Use of (ING) in the Construction of Non binary Transgender Identities
This paper examines how speakers from a non binary community of practice located in the Greater Toronto Area make variable use of (ING) in order to construct non binary transgender identities while navigating spaces that they experience as safe or non safe. I explore how two central members of this community exhibit stronger variant preferences in non queer spaces, as opposed to queer spaces, in order to create stances of resistance to cis normative gender ideologies and index their non binary identities. For this group, non safespaces often require a degree of conscious identity work in order to avoid being misgendered as their genderassigned at birth, an insight that was reflected in their linguistic production. By drawing together metacommentary and patterns in (ING) production, I show how the safeness of a space is constituted in part through the constraints placed on non binary speakers' linguistic performances. This research provides a perspective on gender identity and its interaction with place by highlighting the importance of linguistic production in particular interactions. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http:/repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/