Being and becoming professionally other: Understanding how organizations shape trans* academics' experiences

BEING AND BECOMING PROFESSIONALLY OTHER: UNDERSTANDING HOW ORGANIZATIONS SHAPE TRANS* ACADEMICS’ EXPERIENCES By Erich N. Pitcher Transgender or trans* individuals are now more visible within higher education contexts than ever before, signaled by campuses hosting speakers on trans issues, trans* inclusion within women’s colleges, and the initiation of trans* studies programs, among many other positive trends. While trans* issues are more discussed, college environments remain unfriendly, and in some cases, overtly hostile. Further, despite a robust body of research about gender equity for faculty, and faculty diversity more broadly, transgender faculty voices have yet to be explicitly included within this research. Moreover, scholars and activists alike agree that trans* people face intense workplace discrimination, yet, with the exception of my pilot study, there have not yet been systematic investigations of the academic workplace experiences of trans* people. Given the increased visibility and widespread discrimination, as well as the noted gap in the literature, this study focused on how higher education organizations shape the experiences of trans* faculty. Drawing on institutional logics, inequality regimes, and critical trans* politics, in this study I sought to understand how interand intra-organizational practices shaped the experiences of 39 trans academics from diverse personal histories, disciplinary backgrounds, institutional 1 I use trans* and trans interchangeably throughout this dissertation. Trans* is used to express the broadest possible array of gender diverse identities (Enke, 2011) and is used to “open up” trans for a “greater range of meanings” (Thompkins, 2012, p. 26). I do not use the asterisk in quotes as it is contested and unclear if this would be in concert with participants’ wishes. affiliations, and personal identities. I used a transformative research paradigm, qualitative interviews, and narrative responses to elucidate the experiences of trans academics. Findings indicate that the salient institutional logics shaping transgender academics’ experiences are the corporation and the market amidst a declining state logic. Each of these logics converged to create the academic market/workplace. The presence of these intraorganizational logics created a series of tensions for participants. The converging institutional logics created tensions for participants between producing good workers or good citizens, as well as challenges associated with increasing international enrollment. I also identified specific tensions within academic libraries and across institutional types (e.g., community college, private research university). With respect to inter-organizational processes, participants described a variety of experiences with genderism including being misgendered interpersonally and digitally, being hyper-visible and invisible, and exercising agency over disclosures about trans identity/history/status. The intraand inter-organizational processes created four key tensions for participants’ experiences wherein they experienced isolation, alienation, precarity, and silence but yearned for community, familiarity, security, and voice. Based on the assentation that trans* faculty are and/or become professionally other, I argue trans* academics must engage in coalition building with other minoritized scholars, while institutional leaders engage in substantial organizational change efforts that make trans* identities possible. Copyright by ERICH N. PITCHER 2016