“Just Go In Looking Good”: The Resilience, Resistance, and Kinship-Building of Trans* College Students

This article explores the strategies transgender college students use to navigate gender-dichotomous collegiate environments. Using a critical collaborative ethnographic methodology (Bhattacharya, 2008), this 18-month ethnographic study alongside 9 transgender students elucidated how gender operates as a discourse to regulate the collegiate life as well as the various spaces through which the participants traversed. Study data also highlight the pervasive intersections of participants’ various social identities as well as speak to the importance of developing kinship networks among transgender students as a strategy to remain resilient and successful in college.