%0 Journal Article %A Webster, Lexi %T “I wanna be a toy”: Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users’ biographies %D 2018 %J Journal of Language and Sexuality %V 7 %N 2 %P 205-236 %@ 2211-3770 %R https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.17016.web %K corpus linguistics %K sexualisation %K Twitter %K gender-variant %K transgender %K socio-cognitive %I John Benjamins %X The paradigmatic transgender woman is often negatively oversexualised, pornographised and fetishised in mainstream conceptualisations and discourses. However, self-sexualisation by transgender individuals is often portrayed as a (sex-)positive social phenomenon. Little research has been conducted that analyses the self-sexualisation strategies of the multiple instantiations of gender-variant identity, including transmasculine and non-binary social actors. This paper uses a corpus-informed socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies to identify differences between the self-sexualisation strategies and underpinning cognitive models of different gender-variant user-groups on Twitter. 2,565 users are coded into five categories: (1) transfeminine; (2) transmasculine; (3) transsexual; (4) transvestite; (5) non-binary. Findings show that transvestite- and transsexual-identifying users most closely fit the pornographised and fetishised conceptualisation, whilst non-binary users are the least self-sexualising user-group. %U https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jls.17016.web