Finding a Gender Home: Gender Identity Assertion and Housing Status Among Unstably Housed Transgender Youth

Background and purpose: Unstably housed transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) young people face unique challenges that their LGB and cisgender counterparts do not encounter.  Sanger (2008) communicates the necessity to recognize that TGNC people are not merely another sexual minority group that can be easily included within existing frameworks for LGB development.  The same is true from a programmatic perspective - TGNC people are not merely another sexual minority group that can be easily included within existing programmatic models for LGB youth.  Understanding their specific challenges, successes, and occurrences provide insight into how to craft effective policy and programmatic solutions to diminish the rates of housing instability among this population.

Methods: Twenty-seven unstably housed TGNC young people (ages 18-25) participated in this qualitative study.  The data collection methods employed in this inquiry include semi-structured interviews and the visual method of mapping.  The semi-structured interview guide asked participants to describe their experiences related to both their gender identity and also their experiences of homelessness.  The visual mapping prompt produced visual data that is representative of each participant’s unique journey, further building upon the interview responses and introducing new areas for exploration.  NVivo9 was utilized for data management and storage.  The heuristic process of phenomenological inquiry guided analysis.

Findings: Two key concepts that emerged from the data are gender identity assertion and the notion of a gender home.  The majority of participants in this study described an early awareness of their gender identities.  Though their identities may have already been developed, they lacked the ability to assert these identities within the constraints of their home environments.  Gender identity assertion refers to the participants’ ability to lay claim to who they are in a gendered sense.  Gender identity assertion was an aspect of finding one’s gender home. The term gender home describes a TGNC young person’s understanding of who they are in a gendered sense, as well as their ability to safely articulate this knowing.  The concept of a gender home takes contextual factors into account, rather than focusing solely on one’s own internal process of identity acceptance and consolidation.  This added dimension of finding comfort and safety in the act of aligning one’s physical presentation with their authentic gender shifts the focus from the individual alone to the individual in relation to the environment. 

Conclusion and Implications: Many of the unique challenges TGNC young people face are the direct result of violating the binary gender system that is paramount in our cisnormative society, and that does not support the creation of a gender home for TGNC people.  Notably, more than one-third of the participants stated they would have committed suicide if they never left their physical homes.  This finding illuminates the critical nature of these emergent concepts - gender identity assertion and gender home - for many TGNC young people.