Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America. Miriam J. Abelson, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2019 (ISBN: 978-15179-0351-0)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Framed by queer theory, critical race theory, and feminist theory, Miriam J. Abelson's analysis of the interview-based research she conducted with sixty-six trans men residing in thirteen states across the western, midwestern, and southern regions of the US addresses both the underrepresentation of these regions and contributes to the deeper understandings of the particularities shaping normative or ideal masculinity governing rural, urban, and suburban spaces in these regions (5).Committed to critical feminist scholarly praxis, Abelson elevates the voices of participants whose ages range between nineteen and fifty-five, a little over half dwelling in urban areas and a quarter in the suburbs or in rented housing in rural areas.The bulk of these trans men are white, with one-fifth being men of color.Some men were just beginning to transition whereas others transitioned as long as twenty-two years prior to their interviews (20).Privileging the narratives of trans men also enables Abelson to contribute to discussions concerning masculinities in critical masculinity studies (CMS) and transgender studies.Concentrating on gender as her "primary category of analysis" (7), Abelson focuses on how "becoming a man"-a material process occurring via social interaction-is mediated through the ways that race, sexuality, and class lend themselves to specific characteristics shaping places in the South, Midwest, and West.Written during a time of rising conservative backlash against trans people, and the slow uptick of trans men and masculinities in CMS, Abelson asserts that trans men are men (195).While attentive to the specificity of trans men and masculinities, the differences between trans men's experiences of masculinity, and the insight that transitioning offers to better grasp the complexities of masculinity as an always shifting governing process within particular places (4), Abelson integrates key concepts developed by CMS scholars (for example, Raewyn Connell's masculinities as "patterns of practice" [14]) to emphasize that all men must continuously become men-a performance that varies situationally and differs across space (48).Abelson focuses on trans men's experiences and transition as a vantage point to unpack the relational and situational dynamics shaping normative masculinity.Trans men provide much insight into social expectations and the politics of recognition underlining one's acceptance as a "regular" or "good guy."Abelson employs "Goldilocks masculinity" (28) as the key concept to analyze the hybrid masculinity that trans men and nonbinary masculine subjects reproduce actively through negotiating the dynamics of place and space.Men are classified according to collectively held social meanings that exist along a continuum comprised of
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".