Gezocht: Medewerker m/v : Een onderzoek naar de ervaringen van transgenders op de werkvloer in Nederland en de omgang met stigmatisering in een seksedichotome omgeving

J. Turksma

In the Netherlands it is assumed that sex determines gender and exists of two natural categories that are mutually exclusive. However, there seem to be more and more examples of people who do not identify with their given sex. These people are deviances of the sex dichotomy and can be summoned under the term ?transgender?. In this thesis I will explore the relation between exclusion of transgenders from public domains and the urge of maintaining the sex dichotomy as it is. Therefore I will focus on the experiences of transgenders at the workplace. The workplace serves as a context where social interactions take place on a daily basis. 14 in-depth interviews with a variety of transgender people from the Netherlands were conducted for this research. Transgenders often experience trouble at and around the workplace because of their deviancy of the sex dichotomy. I will outline how the transition is experienced as an undesirable state of being, due to the way liminal beings are treated. In analysing this I will make use of Victor Turners (1969, 1974) concept of liminality and how it is related to preserving the existing social structure. Some transgenders will never come across the betwixt and between status that Victor Turner describes; they will never be recognized as unambiguously man or woman. At this point I will distinguish between transgenders who stay ambiguous after transition and transgenders who seem physically unambiguous after transition by making use of Erving Goffmans (1963) distinction between a discredited (visible) and discreditable (invisible) stigma. I will show how transgenders with a visible stigma and transgenders with an invisible stigma try to avoid or overcome stigmatization at the workplace in different ways. I will illustrate how liminality and stigmatization are both mechanisms of excluding deviant beings from the public space, in order to preserve the existing social structure. I will conclude by showing how individual strategies of transgenders to prevent or avoid stigmatization, eventually perpetuate stigmatization of transgenders in society.