My Gender Can Get Me Paid If I So Choose: The Processes of Transgender and Non-Binary Labor Commodification and Embodied Work

In this paper, we explore how non-binary and transgender expressions and identities become commodified within a heteronormative-capitalist society and how their gender becomes the embodiment of progressive values and or sexual desires that are marketed and exploited for profit. Using a critical mixed-methods approach, including in-depth interviews with non-binary and transgender people in the Greater Boston area, we highlight how areas of employment, both formal and informal, are not just exploitative of non-binary and transgender people’s physical bodies but are spaces in which gender is situated as the most desirable aspect of their existence. Our three findings reveal that our participants (1) were broadly excluded from most job opportunities; (2) steered toward either low-wage service work or sex work; and (3) sought agentic, gender-expressive work opportunities. Overall, our participants weighed risk against reward when commodifying their bodies and recognized the structural harm that comes with pursuing gender affirmation through labor.