Navigating between gendering and being gendered A qualitative study of non-binary gender unintelligibility and intersectional power relations around gendered embodiment in the Japanese context

Abstract

This thesis explores the lived experiences of ten non-binary individuals in Japan, focusing on how they navigate the interplay between gendering themselves and being gendered by others within a cisnormative society. Drawing on qualitative interviews and analysed through reflexive thematic analysis, the study engages with theoretical frameworks of norms and intelligibility, queer phenomenology, and intersectionality. The unintelligibility of non-binary gender contributes to low expectations of being recognised as non-binary in interactions, which motivates them to various practices. Whether blending in or resisting cisnormativity and the gender binary, their practices are influenced by these normative orientations and tend to be directed toward increasing comfort and mitigating discomfort within specific contexts. The study also highlights how intersectional factors such as neurodivergence, age, generational position, whiteness as foreignness, marital status and body shape, stratify access to less normative gendered embodiments. Some intersections complicate the livability of nonbinary gender in ways that cannot be simply reduced to privilege or disadvantage. Participants’ practices emerge not only as expressions of identity but as situated negotiations within broader power relations. In the absence of adequate discursive resources for non-binary people, participants necessarily rework language, space, and temporality to create inhabitable spaces for a livable life.