Date of Award
1-1-2021
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Sociology
First Advisor
Willa Johnson
Second Advisor
Kirsten Dellinger
Third Advisor
Amy McDowell
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This research drawing from analysis of a Qualtrics, pre-interview survey and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven intimate partner violence shelter leaders across the united states examines service provision for transgender women and how these shelters rationalized inclusion or exclusion for these services. Analysis revealed that despite speaking negatively and against cisnormative public narratives of intimate partner violence that shelter leaders and their organizations actively displayed cisnormative imagery throughout their websites and did not utilize large scale outreach to transgender women to also build relationships past how transgender women might see these shelters as. Shelter leaders also discussed how their allocation of resources relies on transgender women to disclose their status ignoring societal barriers and hesitance transgender women have due to past trauma accessing social services as outlined in previous literature. This expectation of disclosure is combined with the concept of transgender outsourcing which is exhibited as shelters refer transgender women’s needs out as “specialized services” othering them in the process. Shelters also exhibited cisgendered organizational processes as they interacted with transgender women survivors through their reproduction of cisnormativity within those spaces. These processes are also exhibited through the production of diversity regimes (Thomas 2018) where diversity initiative rely on the condensation of diversity language on websites and discussion of board of directors, decentralization of organizational diversity work, and staging difference by utilizing LGBTQ+ shelter workers.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Parker, "Woman Enough?: Transgender Women and Intimate Partner Violence Shelters" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2061.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2061