Compulsory Heterogenderism: A Collective Case Study

Using a collective case study approach, this study explored a phenomenon called compulsory heterogenderism, a neologism created to explain the ways in which gender identities and sexualities are consistently understood in and through each other. Put another way, although participants’ sexualities (e.g., being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer) were distinct from their gender identities as trans*, the way cisgender (non-trans*) individuals made sense of participants’ gender was through their sexuality. As a result of compulsory heterogenderism, participants’ gender identities often went unrecognized, rendering their trans* identities invisible. Specifically, this collective case study focused on four participants whose gender identities as trans* were erased by others’ insistence they were cisgender queer, lesbian, and/or heterosexual women.