ABSTRACT
Etymologically speaking, resilience is a noun, connoting the impression that it is something one either does or does not have. Framed this way, one might think that if trans* students have the ability to persist through college despite negative cultural climates (e.g., the gender binary discourse, compulsory heterogenderism), or if trans* students can respond positively to any potential negative experiences they may face, they are resilient. Viewed from such a perspective, resilience is something that one must possess. Educational scholars doing resilience-based work have yet to address adequately the question of how individuals may be able to develop their own resilience, if they can at all. However, I suggest that resilience might not necessarily be something that one has or does not have (e.g., an ability) but a practice. Thus, the notion of resilience becomes less of a noun, or a thing one possesses, and more of a verb, or an action one can practice. In this sense, even if one does not feel resilient or does not think of hirself as resilient, one may be able to practice resilience as a strategy to overcome individual enactments of trans* oppression as well as the cultural realities of the gender binary discourse and compulsory heterogenderism.
