Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6956-7328
Date Available
4-22-2027
Year of Publication
2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College
Graduate School
Department/School/Program
Gender and Women's Studies
Faculty
Dr. Carol Mason
Faculty
Dr. Jennifer Hunt
Abstract
Entering onto the often mutually-exclusive research trajectories of institutional scholarship on trans men/mascs and on queer (cis) masculinity, this project searches for ways of "doing trans theory" capacious enough for the undertheorized experiences of trans gay/queer men. It centers the sociocultural practices flourishing on gender borderlands where individuals assigned female at birth align, through their desires for being/fucking/loving men, with "the faggots and their friends." Employing interdisciplinary methods from queer and affect theories, as well as performance and cultural studies, I analyze archives of counterpublic (trans)sexual culture to craft emergent gender theory that thinks with trans gay/queer masculinity.
This "trans fag phenomenology" argues for an ethics of sexual and gender liberation derived from the kinship structures within which trans queer men reconceptualize the potentialities of masculinity, effeminacy, and intimacy. The project's core concern is how gender appears differently when read as a site and source of desire: an erotics that forms and is formed by attachments between the "stickiness" of bodies and the world—inclusive of factors such as race, culture, class, and ability—instead of a discrete identity category separated from sexuality. Ultimately, the project proposes a relational understanding of transness and queerness that operates from a politics of critical hope.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2025.06
Funding Information
Office of Policy Studies on Violence Against Women, Dissertation Fellowship, Fall 2024
Social Theory Graduate Student Research Grant, Summer 2024
Gender & Women's Studies Travel and Research Grant, Summer 2023
University of Kentucky Woman's Club Fellowship, Spring 2023
Recommended Citation
Mandelo, Lee, "Desiring Men Online: Trans Queer Masculinity and Digital Sexual Culture" (2025). Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies. 10.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gws_etds/10
Included in
Digital Humanities Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Queer Studies Commons
