ABSTRACT
Marriages involving transgender individuals are heterogeneous and complex. What appears from the perspective of an observer – be that family, friends, researchers, or the state – to be a same-sex marriage might or might not be considered one from the perspective of the participants. Moreover, a marriage may change from being a different-sex marriage to a same-sex marriage, or vice versa, as it endures over time and through the gender transition of one or both of its members. In this chapter, we draw on narrative data from a qualitative, in-depth interview study involving a diverse sample of 39 adults who identified with the term “transgender” and were living in a gender different from their sex assigned at birth. We focus primarily on the stories of the 11 currently married participants and present illustrative examples. We develop our analysis with reference to the life-course perspective because its five principles – linked lives, agency, lives in time and place, life-long development, and timing and sequencing – are useful conceptual lenses through which to focus an analysis of gender transition, legal sex designation, and sexuality in relation to same-sex marriage. Our results elucidate the personal, social, and cultural salience of marriage in the lives of transgender persons, and the ways that the lived experiences of married transgender individuals can complicate conceptualizations of “same-sex” and “different-sex” marriage.
