Carla A. Pfeffer

Utilizing in-depth qualitative interviews, with a geographically–diverse sample of fifty women partners of trans men across the United States and Canada, the following research questions are addressed: 1) How do women partners of trans men describe the performance, structure, and division of household labor and emotion work in their relationships?; 2) How do these descriptions compare to one another as well as to those from women in both heterosexual and lesbian relationships (as reported in the existing body of sociological empirical literature)?; 3) How is sociological knowledge about “doing” sex, gender, bodies, identity, cohabitation, families, and work developed, expanded and challenged through studying everyday practices and experiences of women partners of trans men? In developing (and analyzing responses to) these questions, interrelated sociological analytic frameworks of symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and phenomenology are employed.