University of Minnesota Press Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America

Daring new theories of masculinity, built from a large and geographically diverse interview study of transgender men  American masculinity is being critiqued, questioned, and reinterpreted for a new era. In Men in Place Miriam J. Abelson makes an original contribution to this conversation through in-depth interviews with trans men in the U.S. West, Southeast, and Midwest, showing how the places and spaces men inhabit are fundamental to their experiences of race, sexuality, and gender.Men in Place explores the shifting meanings of being a man across cities and in rural areas. Here Abelson develops the insight that individual men do not have one way to be masculine—rather, their ways of being men shift between different spaces and places. She reveals a widespread version of masculinity that might be summed up as \u201cstrong when I need to be, soft when I need to be,\u201d using the experiences of trans men to highlight the fundamental construction of manhood for all men.With an eye to how societal institutions promote homophobia, transphobia, and racism, Men in Place argues that race and sexuality fundamentally shape safety for men, particularly in rural spaces, and helps us to better understand the ways that gender is created and enforced. Review "The most impressive innovation for analysis is her sample, consisting entirely of trans men whose voices can matchlessly capture the experience of doing masculinity. Abelson explores the process of discerning how to become men across all contexts--but with particular attention to the challenges of bathroom behaviors and medical settings--through interviews that span rural, suburban, and urban gender norms."--CHOICE "Miriam Abelson's book, Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (2019, University of Minnesota Press), is a masterpiece. It is an outstanding example of qualitative in-depth interviewing as well as feminist and grounded theory methodological approaches and analyses. Abelson's work to travel the United States interviewing 66 diverse transgender men across the Midwest, South, and West resulted in her amassing one of the largest in-depth interview samples with this population conducted to date. In a technologically-mediated era, Abelson could have conducted these interviews using internet technologies. Instead, she painstakingly traveled thousands of miles, across four years, to ensure that she could develop rapport and potentially longer-lasting research partnerships and connections with participants. Her refusal to take research shortcuts reveals her careful attention to feminist research ethics and a desire to obtain the richest data possible for her important study."--Social Forces "Miriam Abelson's book, Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race and Sexuality in America, is a masterpiece. It is an outstanding example of qualitative in-depth interviewing as well as feminist and grounded theory methodological approaches and analyses."--Social Forms "A complex and politically urgent text. Trans rights are under exceptional attack, and, as Men in Place makes clear, we will only be able to effectively advocate trans recognition and trans flourishing if we keep an intersectional analysis front and center. This lucid and meticulous book is thus not just a significant contribution to the scholarship on masculinity, sexuality, and race, it is also an imperative read for all of us fighting for trans livelihoods of all kinds."--Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities "In Men in Place, Miriam J. Abelson foregrounds the lives of an intentionally diverse sample of trans men in the U.S. to address shifts in the look and feel of powerful intersecting systems of inequality. In this brilliantly written, theoretically sophisticated, interdisciplinary, and compassionate study, Abelson poses new challenges to research on masculinities and gender and sexual inequality that illuminate dynamics of power and inequality that reach far beyon