Representations of Transgender Children in Picture Books

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Representations of Transgender Children in Picture Books University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations Spring 2020 Are You a Boy or a Girl?: Representations of Transgender Children in Picture Books Joshua Hill Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Language and Literacy Education Commons Recommended Citation Hill, J.(2020). Are You a Boy or a Girl?: Representations of Transgender Children in Picture Books. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/5743 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Are You a Boy or a Girl?: Representations of Transgender Children in Picture Books by Joshua Hill Bachelor of Arts University of Delaware, 2001 Masters of Education University of North Carolina- Greensboro, 2007 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Language and Literacy College of Education University of South Carolina 2020 Accepted by: Julia Lopez-Robertson, Major Professor Cathy A. R. Brant, Major Professor Jennifer Morrison, Committee Member Janine Schall, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Joshua Hill, 2020 All Rights Reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank my dissertation committee for helping me through the dissertation process, from all the amazing feedback on my research proposal to your assistance with this dissertation. Dr. Lopez-Robertson, you have been with me since I started as a Doctoral student here at the University of South Carolina: thank you for your support. Dr. Brant, you took me under your wing and helped me get my first publication. Your support has been amazing. Dr. Morrison and Dr. Schall, from our meetings at the NCTE conference to now, your advice has been invaluable. Finally, I must thank my significant other, Heather. Thank you for supporting me through this process. iii ABSTRACT This research was a critical content analysis of picture books that contained transgender children utilizing Butler’s (2004, 2006) performativity of gender and recognizability of gender alongside Engdahls’s (2014) wrong-body discourse. The question was, how do picture books about transgender represent various versions of queerness in children? This analysis was done by examining 20 total picture books which included 10 books about trans girls, six books about trans boys, and four books about nonbinary children. These 20 books were then broken down into eight books for a deeper analysis of the ways that queerness was represented. The findings included the ways in which these children both upheld gender norms and also resisted these same norms. The dress as a clothing item became the focal point for both trans girls and trans boys, with trans girls viewing this clothing item as the most important element of claiming their femininity. Trans boys had to reject the dress as a way to assert that they were not girls, but there were no other single items that defined boyhood for trans boys in the same way a dress defined girlhood for trans girls. The trans children resisted gender norms when they claimed a different gender identity than what was assigned to them at birth. In addition, they transgressed gender norms within their play and their bedroom decorations. Finally, nonbinary children illustrated queerness through their refusal to define their gender identity for others and their desire to exhibit both male typical and female typical play and gender expressions. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iv List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature .................................................................................24 Chapter 3: Methods ...........................................................................................................57 Chapter 4: Analysis of Data ..............................................................................................78 Chapter 5: Discussion and Implications .........................................................................117 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................133 Appendix A: Initial Selection of All Potential Children’s Books for Study ...................149 Appendix B: List of Books with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Children ....156 Appendix C: List of All Books Used in Study ................................................................160 Appendix D: Final List of Focal Books for Deeper Analysis .........................................162 v LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1 Books with Protagonist’s Names ......................................................................79 Table 4.2 Protagonists and Gender Recognizability .........................................................94 Table 4.3 The Reinforcement of and Resistance to Gender Norms ...............................103 Table 4.4 The Wrong-Body Discourse in These Books .................................................111 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Imagine yourself as a child. Do you feel like a boy? Do you feel like a girl? Do you feel somewhere in-between? When children are playing with dolls and painting mermaids, do you want to do that? When other children are building with blocks or playing soccer, do you want to do that, too, or do you want to do that instead of playing with dolls? Do your clothing and hairstyle match the way you think about yourself? When children are born, the doctor, the nurses, and even their own parents decide that the child is a boy or a girl and for some, as they get older, this does not feel correct. The children feel maybe there was a mistake made by the adults, that they are a girl, even though others see a boy body. They feel like they are a boy, even though others see a girl's body. There are even children who do not want to be labeled as either boy or girl. Sometimes they feel like they are a gender normative girl; they want to play with dresses, paint pretty pink pictures, and dance. Other times they feel like a gender normative boy, playing with trucks and getting dirty. Sometimes these children are transgender, the gender they are assigned at birth does not match the way they see their own gender. Just as there is no one way to be a girl or a boy, there is no one way of being transgender. Some transgender people like to conform to the gender expression that is expected of their gender identity, trans women who like to wear make-up or high-heeled shoes and trans men who like to wear a suit or have short hair. There are other transgender people who do not want to conform: they want to have the freedom to move between gender 1 expressions, one day wearing heels and the next wearing a tie or maybe both at the same time. Gender is fluid; it can and often does change over time. As a way to explore this gender fluidity, I am focusing in this dissertation on books that feature children who mostly identify as transgender; however, not all of the books include self-identified transgender children. A few of the books include children whose gender identity is more fluid; the words and illustrations may contradict each other. Male pronouns are used for a child whose gender expression may align more closely with a feminine gender expression or female pronouns are used for a child whose gender expression is more masculine. These children may not yet identify as transgender or as another gender identity than what was assigned to them at birth, but this does not mean that, as readers, we cannot think about how these children might be beginning to socially transition even before they share their inner thoughts. In other books, the text and illustrations support a transgender identity for the child, but the author did not use that label. Perhaps this was because the book was an early example of the writing about transgender children and the label transgender would not have been acceptable to a publisher, or maybe the author does not want to label children as a way to allow them to grow into and be able to choose their own gender identity. Whatever the reason, I examine how the child presents themself and then think about the possible gender identities for this child. All of the books about transgender children allow us to think about how gender is ever changing. Terms in the Study Assigned Male at Birth (AMAB) and Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB). These terms are used to define how a person is assigned a sex at birth which may differ 2 from the gender that they are. (“LGBTQ+ Definitions – Trans Student Educational Resources,” n.d.). Cisgender is the term for those who are not transgender (GLAAD, 2016). “[A] cisgender man or cisgender woman is thus one whose internal gender identity matches, and presents itself in accordance with, the externally determined cultural expectations of the behavior and roles considered appropriate for one’s
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