ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Gender, Sex and Sexualities
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1656821
Changing Rooms and Changing Rules: A Trans Teacher's Lessons in Gender and Institutional Ambiguity
Provisionally accepted
- 1Taipei City University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan
- 2Taipei City University of Science and Technology, Taipei City, Taiwan
- 3INTI International University, Nilai, Malaysia
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This study adopts a critical autoethnographic approach to explore how a transgender teacher navigates structural violence and institutional erasure during gender transition within Taiwan's educational system, addressing a research gap on transgender educators in Asia. Through embodied narratives of administrative encounters, spatial exclusion, sexual harassment, and pedagogical tensions, the research reveals a disconnect between gender diversity legislation and the institutional inertia of school governance. Drawing on "administrative violence," "institutional diversity," and "gender performativity," it analyzes how everyday practices such as data fields, bathroom access, gendered evaluations, professional recognition, and harassment responses reproduce epistemic violence and marginalization. It further argues that non-normative embodiment, relational pedagogy, and affective labor serve as key strategies for reconfiguring teacher subjectivity and challenging dominant assumptions of a "qualified" educator. By highlighting the dual condition of visibility and vulnerability in classrooms, the research shows transgender teachers as not only victims but also agents of disruption and transformation.
Keywords: Non-normative Embodiment, Administrative Gender Regimes, Educational Marginalization, Gender performativity, transgender teacher
Received: 30 Jun 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 YAU, Shen and LIM. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
YI YAU, Taipei City University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan
Ya Chun Shen, Taipei City University of Science and Technology, Taipei City, Taiwan
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