Understanding Gender Categorisation in a Binary Society

This chapter explores how trans and gender variant people navigate their identity within a society which is still beholden to the gender binary. Sociopolitical and cultural representations of gender place people in two homogeneous categories based upon perceived sex (Butler 1990, 1993), and legislation has mostly reflected this until 2004. Trans and gender variant people have had to exist within this binary society which places salience on cisgender identities, and within this chapter I will explore how trans people in North East England have found a name for themselves within a restrictive social, and hence, linguistic binary.