ABSTRACT
The growing concern with gender diversity fuelled by the rapid expansion of transgender scholarship generated a rich body of research that mapped the plurality of life courses and identities within the trans umbrella. However, despite the emphasis on diversity and complexity against narrow metaphorical conceptions of gender migration as processes of transition from man into woman or inversely, less attention has been given to the linkages between transgender trajectories and the production of inequality. Drawing on a qualitative study carried out in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Portugal, we propose the concept of trans/gender trajectories as processes with a duration in time, through which the advantages of privilege and the disadvantages of disempowerment take shape (Matthew Effect). In order to reconstruct trans individual’s trajectories, we deconstruct views of trans lives as linear sequences of events leading to an end and identify, instead, multiple and often hard to sequence moments of transition with variable and juxtaposed durations, but where tipping points may be identified. Through this analytical strategy, while contributing to expand our understanding of privilege and oppression as processes with a temporal dimension, we demonstrate that gender and transgender can be conceptualised as a trajectory with a certain duration in time where certain tipping points occur.
