The constructs of “queer” and queer theory have enriched popular and scholarly discourse specifically because they signify a refusal to restrict sex, gender, and sexual identity to the terminologies that reify dominant epistemologies. However, the English-speaking public, its popular media, and many in the academy still insist on maintaining, limiting and reducing these constructs to articulate the lived gender identity expressions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender identified experience. Despite a prolific generation of gender-bending and gender-challenging activism and scholarship, and despite increasingly documented life experiences that cannot be captured by or implicated in upholding “male/female” and “man/woman” dichotomies, the language used to describe and depict sex, sexuality, and gender in English language cultures still fails to reflect the rethinking, revision, and reform that “queerness” and queer theory suggest.

Responding to an apparent stagnation in developing deconstructive language that challenges the continued naturalization of dichotomous identities, panel organizers seek presenters whose research centers on third gender (gender variant) identification, and the challenges, relevance and significance of developing terminology for unrecognized populations that remain unnamed in English language cultures.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to studies involving third gender (gender variant) people in relation to: