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Item Longitudinal outcomes of gender affirming hormone therapy on gender incongruence and psychosocial wellbeing : a mixed methods study : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand(Massey University, 2023) Reynolds, EmmaAccess to Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT) has increased internationally and in Aotearoa, New Zealand, in recent years. While majority of research supports the positive impact of GAHT on gender congruence and wellbeing, there is a dearth of longitudinal data specifically within Aotearoa. To address this gap, I conducted a mixed methods study to explore the longitudinal outcomes of GAHT on gender congruence and psychosocial wellbeing. In study one, 35 participants aged between 18 and 59 years (m = 27.5) completed the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-SADS) measuring somatic, depressive, and anxious symptomology, the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI), the Transgender Congruence Scale (TCS), and a Visual Analogue Scale tracking their personalised goals (GTF). Survey scores were collected at baseline (prior to starting GAHT) and at a six month and 12 month follow up of GAHT commencement. Both binary and non-binary trans identities were included in this study. In total, 22 participants received oestrogen-based gender affirming hormone therapy (E-GAHT) and 13 participants received testosterone-based gender affirming hormone therapy (T-GAHT). Differences between survey responses over time were measured using repeated measures ANOVA. Quantitative findings revealed that scores on the TCS and GTF significantly increased over time, suggesting participants experienced enhanced gender congruence and progress towards their individual GAHT goals after one year of treatment. Responses from the PHQ-SADS did not significantly change over time suggesting that these symptomologies remained stable following GAHT. Similarly, responses from the PWI showed no significant change over time. Of note, participants mean baseline scores on the PHQ-SADS were within the minimal and mild ranges resulting in a floor effect for detecting any reduction in symptomology. Study two comprised of semi structured interviews with 10 participants from study one aged between 21 and 45 years (m=30). Qualitative analysis was performed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. From this study, five participants were taking T-GAHT and five E-GAHT, six participants identified with a binary trans identity, and four identified with a non-binary or agender trans identity. Qualitative analysis yielded five overarching themes. The first theme highlighted the lengthy and thoughtful decision-making process of participants preceding the initiation of GAHT, reflecting participants' extensive contemplation and understanding of their gender identity and desire to seek GAHT. Themes two, three, and four explored the outcomes of GAHT on the physical body, sense of self, and social interactions. Changes in these three areas were mostly positive and well received, while discussions also acknowledged aspects that GAHT did not affect, such as certain physical changes and certain societal attitudes and reactions towards trans individuals. The fifth theme centred on the importance of support throughout the GAHT journey, encompassing interpersonal relationships, community support, and comprehensive healthcare services. Overall, the research indicated that GAHT did not significantly impact participants' mental health, physical health, or subjective wellbeing after one year. GAHT positively influenced feelings of gender incongruence and the achievement of specific goals. Participants' decisions to pursue GAHT were well considered, and they expressed satisfaction with the outcomes. Additionally, robust social support and access to comprehensive services were deemed essential alongside GAHT. These findings highlight many favourable longitudinal outcomes of GAHT across physical, emotional, and social areas with findings from the qualitative analysis providing further context for the quantitative findings. These findings also underscore the necessity for improved access to GAHT within primary healthcare settings, increased availability of additional gender-affirming services beyond the scope of GAHT, and the need for ongoing advocacy and support for trans people from wider society.Item "I feel I'm no longer an alien" : the experiences of females who receive a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Condition late in life : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand(Massey University, 2021) Dukes, Stacey LeeThe purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of females who receive a late diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). A growing number of women identify and receive diagnoses of ASC in adulthood after years of unexplained difficulties. However, as societal understandings of ASC are male-dominated, autistic females are underrepresented and frequently diagnosed late, leaving their needs misunderstood. This study aims to provide further insight into women’s lived experiences with ASC to increase awareness of their specific needs. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the accounts of nine females diagnosed with ASC late and the significance this had on their lives. The participants described their experiences prior to and then post-diagnosis. Prior to diagnosis, common barriers included cost, gendered misconceptions, and male-dominated ASC stereotypes. The participants were aware of being different prior to diagnosis and expressed difficulty fitting in, particularly with gendered and social norms. This led to coping strategies such as camouflaging (masking) and often poor coping such as emotional focused coping strategies ultimately, leading to mental distress. Each participant had a unique journey to diagnosis, with three seeking help in their teens, while the remaining women were diagnosed in adulthood. Despite the differences, all the participants went through a period of adjustment and made changes in their lives once they identified as autistic. While these changes were specific to each individual, they were largely positive, including forming connections with the Autism community, adapting to accommodate social challenges and sensory sensitivities, and conducting their own research. The diagnosis was tied to a better sense of self (self-acceptance), a sense of belonging to a community (shared social identity), and an increased awareness of triggers that could lead to meltdowns or autistic burnout. Despite the positive aspects of diagnosis, the participants reported ongoing challenges with socialisation, friendships, understanding social norms around relationships. An important finding in the study is the high level of self-awareness and sociality participants reported. Participants described awareness of the social and communication challenges they face and clearly expressed the impact of the gender expectations and pressures placed on them. Alongside the high level of awareness concerning social and gender expectations, many participants described adopting compensatory strategies to comply with these expectations and mitigate the sense of difference and exclusion they felt. These findings highlight the complexity of navigating identity as acting ‘neurotypical’ and acting like a woman. Lastly, irrespective of age, experiences of stigmatisation related having ASC was mentioned by all the participants, indicating the challenges of living as a marginalised identity. In summary, social representations of ASC are complex as it is largely an invisible condition that presents differently for females. More work needs to be done to increase awareness and acceptance surrounding ASC, particularly the unique way in which ASC presents in females and the effects of gender on the experience of ASC. These findings have implications for clinicians and provide insight into areas where support can be provided to females who receive a late diagnosis of ASC.Item #liveyourbestlife : considering the discursive construction of feminine psychological wellbeing within Instagram during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Aotearoa, New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology, at Massey University, New Zealand(Massey University, 2020) Stevens, JessicaInformed by post-feminist theory (Gill, 2017; McRobbie, 2007), which contends that there are societal expectations around how feminine subjects live their lives, I question how feminine psychological wellbeing is discursively constructed within Instagram during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Aotearoa New Zealand. There is currently a lack of research on how feminine psychological wellbeing is constituted within digital spaces. There is also an increasing social emphasis on the importance of psychological wellbeing, which has continued since the response to COVID-19. This project was an opportunity to consider and critique dominant understandings of psychological wellbeing. Based on a feminist post-structural epistemology, the project is qualitative, utilising a critical discourse analysis of public Instagram posts. My interest was in identifying and critiquing the discourses present in the postings and how they may contribute to expectations for feminine psychological wellbeing, at present, considering the unique experience of lockdown during COVID-19. The analysis of these public postings was informed by a reflexive consideration of my own Instagram consumption at this time, as this informed the analytical lens brought to the project. The analysis demonstrated that a feminine audience was being addressed in a direct and instructional manner. Dominant understandings of successful femininity that were reflective of neoliberal and post-feminist ideals, were drawn on to constitute feminine psychological wellbeing and white, middle-class, heteronormative, young feminine figures were presented as normative within this content. Traditional Eurocentric norms of femininity were evident as reformulated and reinstituted within this post-feminist context. Feminine psychological wellbeing was described as constant work upon the feminine self, with specific sites for control and discipline including feelings, thoughts, the body, and behaviour. During Aotearoa's first COVID-19 lockdown, feminine subjects were encouraged to get through and stay resilient, by working on themselves, focusing on what they could control, and remaining productive.Item Caught in a double bind : young bisexual women's sexual identity narratives in Aotearoa (New Zealand) : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand(Massey University, 2020) Andersen, Cassie MareeAlthough research on sexual identity and LGBTIQ+ issues have produced valuable knowledge about gay and lesbian populations, research about bisexuality remains minimal. This oversight reflects the wider erasure of bisexual identities in general. Organised around binary conceptualisations of gender and sexuality, Western understandings of bisexuality typically degrade and invalidate the legitimacy of bisexual identities, leading to the marginalization of bisexual individuals and their stories. Responding to this gap, I explore the narratives of young bisexual women in Aotearoa (New Zealand), drawing on the theoretical notions of spoiled identities and cultural (un)intelligibility. The aim of this research is to explore the possibilities of young women’s construction of intelligible bisexual identities. Ten bisexual women (aged 18-24 years) living in Aotearoa were interviewed and their narratives were analysed using Taylor and Littleton’s (2006) narrative-discursive method. This approach allows for a synthesis of macro and micro level analyses and consideration of personal identity work, as well as collectively held narratives that may shape identity construction. In the analysis I identify the discursive resources and positions available to participants and examining how these enable and constrain their sexual identity construction. The narratives of the young bisexual women in this study reflect how they must navigate heteronormativity and monosexism to construct their identities. Caught in a double bind, participants negotiated claiming the spoiled identities (i.e., the hypersexual bisexual, either straight or gay, just a phase, fraudulent) offered by discourses of bisexuality and modifying gay/lesbian discourses (i.e., the coming out story, normalisation, visual identities) to construct an intelligible identity. The findings of this study highlight the complexities of bisexual identity construction and the lack of alternative discourses available to these young bisexual women.Item "It's been worth it" : the experiences of employed caregiving fathers : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand(Massey University, 2020) Bethune, Danielle SianAn increasing number of men are in caregiving roles, yet the overwhelming majority of research at the work-family interface has focused on women’s experiences, with little attention having been paid to men’s. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse the accounts of eight caregiving fathers to explore the experiences of men who have altered their working arrangements to care for their children. This resulted in rich, detailed knowledge about their experiences and produced two broad themes. The first theme The Caregiving Father was about participants’ experiences entering and being located in a caregiving role. Men became caregiving fathers as an outcome of a range of interrelated factors shaped by social forces. Once in the role, they experienced a complex interplay in their masculine identities, suggesting that although hegemonic masculinity and fathering norms are expanding to be more inclusive of caregiving, breadwinning expectations and the norms around the ideal worker still linger. The second theme Work Factors was about work characteristics that influenced the management of caregiving fathers’ work, careers and caregiving commitments. Participants’ access to flexible working arrangements was highly dependent on the extent to which their employer valued them both professionally and personally. Work-life balance decisions and experiences were clearly impacted by their organisations’ generally strong work-family cultures. Caregiving fathers appeared to exist in a paradox where they were not discriminated in hiring and progression opportunities, although taking advantage of progression opportunities necessitated the relinquishment of their flexibility to some extent. Overall, these fathers found that benefits associated with their caregiving roles outweighed any negative impacts, and highlighted the value of acknowledging individuals’ self-direction in their careers, the role of social forces in shaping these, and that career success can be subjectively determined.Item Chinese women's experiences in the context of the two-child policy : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand(Massey University, 2020) Zhu, MinjiaIn December 2015, a new family planning policy that allows all Chinese married couples to have two children became a law in China, which represented the end of China’s decades-long controversial one-child policy. This universal two-child policy was implemented to help address the aging issue and the looming labour shortage in China through the regulation of Chinese women’s reproductive decisions and freedom, where women’s bodies and fertility have always been linked to economic development and national survival. Within the operation of gendered institutional power relations, Chinese women’s social roles are defined as mothers and wives by the foremost focus on their reproductive functions for the interests and needs of the state. Similar to the one-child policy, women’s interests have been marginalised in the formulation of the two-child policy and their voices were and are ‘missing’ on China’s mainstream media after the policy’s release. This research listens to the ‘missing voices’ from Chinese women about their experiences of being a woman in China’s family planning programme, explores their stories with the two-child policy within a variety of social power relations, and asks how their lives have been affected as they become the recipients of political agendas in the gendered social hierarchy. Ten young Chinese women residing in New Zealand volunteered to participate in conversational interviews that were focused on Chinese women’s experiences and stories in the context of the two-child policy and the changes that this new policy initiative may have brought to their lives. The interviews were voice-recorded, translated and transcribed, and analysed using feminist standpoint epistemology and Braun and Clarke’s (2006) method of thematic analysis in a narrative inquiry. Four main themes were identified throughout the participants’ narratives, where almost all of the Chinese women in this study have experienced the privileges of living as an only child while also embedded in the stories of son preference in their families or the society. In the context of the two-child policy, even though all participants believed that this policy would be likely to position Chinese women at a more precarious and disadvantaged status in the workplace, most of them would still choose to accept the state narrative. The analysis showed that Chinese women face both new and recurring challenges of a resurgence of tradition in their lives. The women talked about their acceptance and willingness to have two children despite their recognition of the impact of the policy for their future educational and employment in the future and the complexities of son preference. Within the context of the one-child policy, the two child policy is recognised within the narratives as reproductive freedom. There were, however, some counternarratives that resist the state call to reproduce.Item Negotiating heteronormativity to challenge gender inequality : what's happening on Instagram?(Massey University, 2019) Marshall, KaylaGender is performative and embodied. Heteronormative performances and embodiments (re)produce gender inequality in part by maintaining the cultural stigmatization of femaleness and femininity, and the hegemonic function of maleness and masculinity. Those who choose to transgress heteronormativity threaten its cultural legitimacy as the only ‘natural’, ‘normal’ and ‘correct’ way to do gender. In doing so, they also challenge broader processes of gender inequality. In this thesis – through a critical, feminist, and social constructionist lens – I present a visual narrative inquiry into the ways in which female bodybuilders, male bodybuilders, and transgender men perform gender through representations of their bodies on the social media website, Instagram. Female bodybuilders, through representations of their muscular bodies on Instagram, present narratives around female strength, independence, and empowerment that challenge feminine expectations around female weakness, passivity, and subservience. Male bodybuilders, by objectifying their bodies, by being emotionally expressive, and by being emotionally intimate with other men on Instagram, present inclusive masculinities that challenge hegemonic masculine expectations around dominance, stoicism, and rationality. Through their visibility and advocacy on Instagram, trans men present gendered narratives that challenge the heteronormative assumption that all men are born with stereotypically male bodies. These trans men also challenge male hegemony through relatively soft expressions of masculinity. However, I also reveal how the gender-transgressive narratives presented by these groups remain heavily constrained by heteronormative surveillance, through which others heavily police their bodies and encourage them to limit their transgressions through various heteronormative bodily conformities. I argue that these bodily conformities function in part to negotiate, or preserve, the transgressive identities of female and male bodybuilders and trans men on Instagram. Through their exposure to heteronormative surveillance on Instagram, these individuals learn that, in order to have their transgressive identities recognized and validated by others, they must maintain some degree of heteronormative bodily intelligibility; otherwise, their transgressions are dismissed. This is counter to past assertions made by many gender scholars, who have claimed that the gender-conformities of these groups negate or outweigh their resistance. My conclusions take into account the relational and negotiated nature of gender; how our experiences of gender depend on, and manifest through, our interactions with others. Ultimately, I reveal contemporary ways in which cultural understandings of gender are diversifying through online social practices, while also revealing how bodily expectations in particular remain heavily involved in the (re)production of gender inequality. This thesis has important implications for the feminist quest towards eradicating dualistic understandings of gender and the power differentials that exist between the cultural categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’; ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’.Item The impossible feast of the uncanny technowoman : a plural feminist cyborg writes of the possibilities for science fiction and potent body politics : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū Campus, New Zealand(Massey University, 2019) Connor, GenevaThis research embodies Donna Haraway’s (1991) feminist cyborg as a potent political figure for women and their bodies in the 21st century West. The violences done to women all too often define them (Malabou, 2011), confining them to the heterosexual matrix characterised by their objectification and ‘excesses.’ The multiplicities and pluralities of ‘woman’ disrupt traditional psychological science that counts and categorises. Re-routing psychology through the hybridity and non-fixity of the science fiction genre, new possibilities for psychological knowledge production emerge, including figures (such as cyborgs), art installations and hyperdimensional arachnids through which to think new thoughts (Haraway, 2016). Through the figure of a feminist cyborg, ‘woman’ can be understood as politically potent through her multiplicities, partialities, simultaneities and contradictions. After rendering Haraway’s feminist cyborg through the science fiction genre, the thesis takes on a creative form to re-think the notion of apocalypse, re-theorise the uncanny, then explore a potently networked series of figures, internet users and movements (such as Human Barbies, internet folklore, pro-rape forums) that structure women’s bodies in ways that re-assert the heterosexual matrix, as well as in ways that re- build women outside of the heterosexual matrix. Re-figuring ‘woman’ outside of the heterosexual matrix could perhaps open new spaces in which to think women’s body politics differently in perpetually networked, ever-expanding technoworlds.Item 'No longer bulletproof' : Aotearoa/New Zealand men discuss aging and masculinity : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2020) Lindsay, SamuelResearch on men has proliferated within in recent decades. However, much of this research has focussed on younger masculinities. While research on older men has also increased in recent years, there remains a lack of research on the ways in which masculinities are impacted by aging – particularly within a A/NZ context. This study took a social constructionist approach to exploring the ways in which A/NZ men make sense of masculinity as they age. Twenty-six men between the ages of 65 and 90 were interviewed and interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Analysis revealed a range of themes related to the operations of gendered power such as the invisibility of masculinity, egalitarianism, and a backlash against feminists. The men also reiterated dominant themes related to active aging, enjoyment, disengagement and decline, provision, masculinity as limiting, and increases in wisdom and insight. The ways in which themes of masculinity intersected with those related to aging were discussed with participants. The themes were related to theories of gender as performance, hegemonic masculinity, masculine capital, and selective optimisation and compensation. Implications, limitations, and suggested future directions are also discussed.