Agency and Social Forces in the Life Course: The Case of Gender Transitions in Later Life

Background and Purpose:

Transgender and gender non-conforming people are among the most stigmatized and marginalized in society.  Further, older members of this group often experience additional social disadvantages related to aging.  Social service providers and advocates in LGBTQ aging have noted that many male-to-female identified people are now seriously contemplating gender transitions in their later years. This study explores the conditions under which people contemplate or pursue transition in later life in order to expand the social work knowledge base in LGBTQ aging.

Methods:

Using the extended case method (ECM), in-depth interviews were conducted with male-to-female identified persons (N=22) who have seriously contemplated or pursued a gender transition past the age of 50.  In addition, 170 hours of participant observation were carried out at 3 national transgender conferences generating ethnographic field notes on the topics of aging and gender transitions in later life.  Interpretive analyses were undertaken through open and focused coding, analytical memo writing and an iterative process of theory development.

Findings:

Interpretive analyses suggest that participants in this study followed unique paths to contemplating a gender transition, but also reflect a common condition under which they make this decision. They felt unrelenting social pressures to conform their gender identities and expressions to normative expectations throughout their lives, which contributed to a “dam bursting” in later life.  This finding reflects how transgender adults often internalize, but then find ways to resist, the constraining social forces in their lives.  In addition, their decisions were also inextricably linked to decades of transgender community organizing that “set in motion” the gradual changing of social forces and modification of social environments necessary to facilitate these decisions later in life.  The findings in this paper are used to extend the life course concept of agency within structure to account for the experiences of older transgender persons.

Conclusions and Implications:

These findings have implications for the ways in which social workers work with transgender clients.  The extension of the agency within structure model in this paper focuses attention on the meso-level forces that facilitate micro-level experiences of gender identity and push back on macro-level structure that oppresses gender variance in our society.  Greater attention to these dynamics has the potential to expand the way social workers join with their clients to promote individual and social change.