Marginalization of Transwoman in Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl.

This study concerns the portrayal of marginalization experienced by transwoman and the main character struggle to call for her existence in the society in Meredith Russo’s debut novel entitled If I Was Your Girl as the focus subject to analyze. Concerning this matter, this study is intended to examine the characters’ utterances and author’s narrations which are portraying both social orientation of the main character as a transwoman and social inclusion as the reaction of transwoman existence. In addition, to this study also examines the main character struggle to call for her existence in order to have a normal life as heterosexual and be accepted in the society.
To analyze the issue of transwoman, queer theory proposed by Teresa de Lauretis is applied to criticize the basis of marginalization practice done by society to the main character as a transwoman. Furthermore, this study uses Qualitative research design by giving a brief description dealing with the focus issue. To analyze the data, the writer adopts Miles and Huberman technique to collect the data, simultaneously doing data collection, data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification.
The results of this study recognize two dominant cases, those are: (1) Marginalization of transwoman is established by heterosexual, originally promoted by patriarchy and transphobia. Therefore, the main character experiences marginalization which is portrayed delicately, straightforwardly and even brutally. (2) The main character struggle to call for her existence in the society. By reuniting transgender community as a transgender movement, the main character camouflages, living like a normal woman and as well learning how to live normally by having a trans-mentor.

Key Words: Transwoman, Marginalization, Transgender Liberation, Social Inclusion, Discrimination