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Article published In:
Corpus Linguistics in Language and Sexuality Studies: Developments and Prospects
Edited by Heiko Motschenbacher
[Journal of Language and Sexuality 7:2] 2018
► pp. 205–236

“I wanna be a toy”

Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users’ biographies

| Lancaster University | Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

The paradigmatic transgender woman is often negatively oversexualised, pornographised and fetishised in mainstream conceptualisations and discourses. However, self-sexualisation by transgender individuals is often portrayed as a (sex-)positive social phenomenon. Little research has been conducted that analyses the self-sexualisation strategies of the multiple instantiations of gender-variant identity, including transmasculine and non-binary social actors. This paper uses a corpus-informed socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies to identify differences between the self-sexualisation strategies and underpinning cognitive models of different gender-variant user-groups on Twitter. 2,565 users are coded into five categories: (1) transfeminine; (2) transmasculine; (3) transsexual; (4) transvestite; (5) non-binary. Findings show that transvestite- and transsexual-identifying users most closely fit the pornographised and fetishised conceptualisation, whilst non-binary users are the least self-sexualising user-group.

Keywords: transgender, gender-variant, sexualisation, Twitter, socio-cognitive, corpus linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sexualisation strategies – A brief overview
  • 3.Data contextualisation and analytical framework
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Transfeminine users
      • 4.1.1Keywords
      • 4.1.2Collocates
    • 4.2Transmasculine users
      • 4.2.1Keywords
      • 4.2.2Collocates
    • 4.3Transsexual users
      • 4.3.1Keywords
      • 4.3.2Collocates
    • 4.4Transvestite users
      • 4.4.1Keywords
      • 4.4.2Collocates
    • 4.5Non-binary users
      • 4.5.1Keywords
      • 4.5.2Collocates
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.17016.web
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