Digital Me: Trans Students Exploring Future Possible Selves Online

By Z Nicolazzo, Alden C. Jones and Sy Simms

The internet is where trans people have come to become. Creating an identity in digital space can be important for how trans people learn about themselves, their communities, and the possibilities available to them. While the internet and digital space is not the only way of coming to understand oneself in a community, it is a space of liberatory possibility and creativity. There is room to invent what may not yet exist for gender on the edges of what many consider to be “real.” For many, digital life can be the site of play, joy, and connection –even while the internet is not a harm-free space nor universally available. This book seeks to understand the complexities at play in the digital realm and the implications that have for gender, digital life, and higher education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Dec 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781978822795

Book preview

Part 1

Logging On

Introduction

What will be in the times to come?

What will I be in the times to come?

What will we be in the times to come?

Who we are as individuals and as populations is becoming increasingly enmeshed with virtual landscapes. We carry ourselves not only in public, social spheres but also in our pockets, purses, and backpacks, where digitized versions of our multiple selves exist on our phones, laptops, and other varied technological equipment. Beyond being a medium for self-expression, the Internet has become a digital meeting place, providing platforms through which people can come together and cultivate communities. For queer and transgender communities, online spaces have long held promise as sites for developing community. Given the ongoing foreclosures of public spaces to the profusions of queer life (e.g., Delaney, 1999; Hanhardt, 2013), the cultivation and maintenance of online communities act as an underworlding practice (Gossett and Huxtable, 2017), or a way queer and transgender people can build worlds just beyond the grasp of the current social world that regularly threatens their—and ours, as queer and trans authors—existence. For example, speaking of YouTube, Raun (2016) wrote, Although data is scarce, there is little doubt that, today, YouTube provides the most vivid visual culture of trans self-representation, and is the archive that many—trans or not—turn to for information (p. 6). Clearly, the Internet is a potent site from which to not only theorize but also imagine, invest in, and explore the prismatic possibilities for life. For those of us who occupy various marginalized positionalities socially, these possibilities are not idle desires but signal intensely palpable realities to exist in ways we may not be able to in material spaces.

In many ways, the Internet and transgender people hold similar spaces in the social imaginary. Specifically, the Internet and transgender people are both held as unreal, false, or not who we assert to be. The Internet and online spaces are discussed in opposition to that which is in real life, or IRL; in the same way, transgender people—and, in particular, transgender women—are discussed in opposition to who we know ourselves to be. These shared unrealities, then, become an animating feature of this text. We take seriously the online places, platforms, and times through which transgender people have cultivated lives, regardless of how real nontrans people have supposed these spaces/lives to be. Our text asks questions central to the construction of selves as a techno-ontological project. We ask: How does the Internet operate as a site for creation and curation of the self? How does gender move online, and how have trans people imbued online spaces with gender? What are the possibilities of constructing prismatic notions of selves, of developing community for and among trans people in online spaces?

It bears noting up front that this book is not an attempt to create a flat narrative about the Internet being always already a good, liberating space free from reproach for trans people. Indeed, the Internet can be treacherous for many marginalized people, a reality to which trans people are not immune. Not only do individual people target trans people with hateful, toxic, and violent content, but certain platforms like YouTube and Tumblr have also been accused of targeting queer and trans populations through their policies and actions (e.g., Bensinger and Albergotti, 2019; Reynolds, 2018). This, however, does not mean the Internet cannot or does not already hold multiple possibilities for how trans people come to understand themselves and their worlds. As a result, we encourage readers to think about the Internet and its possibilities not through an either/or framework (e.g., either the Internet is wonderful or it is horrid) but through a prism that reflects multiple (im)possibilities. That is, the Internet can be both a space for trans people to explore and understand themselves in safer, unique ways while also being a space framed by surveillance and imbued with toxicity toward those of us who are trans. Moreover, despite the ways toxicity, threat, and surveillance permeate both on- and offline social worlds, the trans participants readers will meet in this book have found ways to harness and (re)craft the Internet in ways that promote their own needs in terms of gender exploration and community building. Their experiences, and how they have used the Internet for their own needs, is what is important in this text, all while recognizing the Internet is far from a benign or wholly supportive space—a reality the participants know well, and many speak of, as is discussed later in the book.

As an ethnographic text, this book is especially interested in notions of place and how place mediates experience. Of importance, then, is the fact that the project described in this book specifically addresses institutions of higher education as a site of cultural production. This book takes seriously the idea that education is a social institution where much of the current (re)learning of gender both congeals and emanates out into the world. There is perhaps a paradoxical relationship that is then created in relation to gender and education, which is that there has been a rapid increase in queer and trans theorizing from institutions of higher education while at the same time, this theorizing has yet to significantly change the course of such institutions (Lange, Duran, and Jackson, 2019; Renn, 2010). Similarly, there has been a significant investment in trans people setting up homes online—sometimes, but not always, as a way to seek life beyond the impossibilities of such in material, offline spaces—while at the same time, such investments may not have yielded the sorts of increased life chances one may hope to see for trans people in sociopolitical spheres. In fact, at the very time we are revising this introduction in the summer of 2022, it may seem as though such possibilities for trans life offline may be constricting for most trans people. This is particularly true for those of us in the United States who experience multiple marginalized subjectivities, including trans people, especially trans women, and most especially trans people and women who experience the ongoing press of dispossession, dehumanization, and palpable harm due to the pernicious effects of anti-Black racism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism. Simply put, possibilities for navigating life as a Black, Indigenous, Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA), or Latinx trans person/woman are always already tenuous due to how structures of violence continue to haunt the past/present/future of the U.S. sociocultural context.

To that end, this book has several questions to address from the outset, including the following: What can a project rooted in higher education do in addressing the (im)possibility of trans life in the social sphere? How does what happens online matter to the increasing of life chances for trans people offline? What might future imaginings of trans life look like in on- and offline spaces, and how is this germane to those invested in creating higher education as a site for the ongoing practice of freedom (hooks, 1994, p. 12)? While we address these questions through the analysis of our data throughout the book, we first turn to elucidating the place of trans people in the two major arenas for this research: online spaces and institutions of higher education. We then introduce the project this book details as well as ourselves as researchers, with particular attention paid to our own investments in being trans online.

Being, Thinking, and Exploring Trans Online

It is no hyperbole to suggest that the Internet is as much a space dedicated to cat memes as it is a space for trans people to find each other, come together, and collectively understand our/their genders. Online environments have become vital spaces for sharing, learning about, and exploring possible gendered futures. Despite the importance of the Internet in the lives of trans people, however, Stryker and Aizura (2013) claimed there has been an unfortunate lacunae [regarding] the relative absence of students of transgender phenomena in relation to … new media (p. 10). In some senses, this absence makes sense; trans people have been more focused on creating lives rather than studying them. Additionally, with the nascence of transgender studies as an academic discipline—to say nothing of other fields’ incorporation of trans-centric frameworks and research—there is still room for growth when it comes to trans-related research.

To that end, this book adds to the work that a variety of trans/gender studies scholars have begun doing to explore how transgender people have developed community with other transgender people through the Internet. For example, Raun (2016, 2018) and Horak (2014) have been instrumental in understanding the depth and extent to which trans people have used YouTube to develop community. Their work shows how the online video-sharing platform has become a staple for trans people, especially trans men, who are seeking transition-related stories and information. Additionally, M. Y. Chen (2017) discussed how trans Asians are using the Internet to find and develop senses of selves, including YouTube as a place through which to do so. Paired with Nicolazzo’s (2016b, 2017b) work, one can understand YouTube as a vibrant platform across which trans people are using tags to find each other, share information, and fill gaps in transphobic medical care. It is further striking that even in empirical research not specifically focused on trans people and their use of the Internet, online spaces and platforms leak into view. For example, in Van Asselt’s (2019) study on trans and queer youth of color in secondary schools, Sam, a mixed-race trans participant, stated: "I’m a weirdo. Like, no matter where I am, I’m probably the minority. I figured that out a while ago.… I have so many weird things that it’s hard to be not the weird one. If I found someone just like me, I don’t even know if I’d like them. My ex Caitlin, we had the sexuality weirdness and we had the mixed-race, we both have that in common, but I got my weird religion, all my hobbies that are strange, like I sit at home and watch YouTube forever (p. 615, emphasis added). While Sam used weird" as a descriptor of difference rather than abjection, they may not have been as unusual as they thought … or at least not when it came to their use of the Internet. In fact, the aforementioned research, the current project, and the theorizing being done by cárdenas (2016, 2022) offers broader possibilities and conceptions of trans people on the Internet that include trans people of color, who are often framed out of such discussions.

Trans people have also made impressive use of social networking like Facebook and Instagram (Miller, 2017; Nicolazzo, 2016b, 2017b), blogging sites (Miller, 2017), crowdfunding sites (Barcelos, 2019a, 2019b; Barcelos and Budge, 2019), dating/hook-up apps (e.g., Scruff; Friedler, 2019), and microblogging platforms like Tumblr (Cavalcante, 2019; Haimson et al., 2019). Far from suggesting the use of such online platforms are without critique, several scholars have pointed to the complex and conflicting nature of trans people’s engagement with them. For example, Cavalcante (2019) discussed how Tumblr acts as both a queer utopia and a queer vortex for trans people. Articulating an important notion we come back to later in this text, Cavalcante (2019) stated: Tumblr creates a kind of vortex for its users defined by short periods of intense social interactions that do not sustain over time, information bubbles, and dark and potentially harmful niche communities. Crucially, the user experience on the site underscores the profound vulnerability of queer individuals and communities in digital, corporatized space (p. 1716). Thinking about Tumblr as a specific online platform, Haimson et al. (2019) also argued it represented a trans technology, or a technology that trans people use to communicate, organize, and access key resources and that became central to trans life (p. 2). Although Haimson et al. (2019) argued Tumblr has ceased to function as a trans technology based on its shifting administrative policies and monetization—something the participants discussed through our project, and to which we come back to as authors when we detail what we call the death of Tumblr—the development and reality of it once having been such is indeed a powerful statement about the place and primacy of online space for trans existence.

In a parallel fashion, Barcelos’s (2019a, 2019b) and Barcelos and Budge’s (2019) work underscores how crowdfunding sites are liberating for trans people, while at the same time reifying oppressive discourses of race, masculinity, and deservingness for biomedical transition services. Given the realities of trans-exclusive health care in the United States, trans people often need to turn to crowdfunding to cover biomedical transition costs. However, through their research, just who gets their campaigns fully funded is often determined through the dominant ideologies of whiteness, masculinity, and notions of who is deserving of such procedures (i.e., those who view transness as moving from one supposedly fixed gender to another). In many ways, these discourses match those Spade (2000) discussed, pointing to how on- and offline cultures may mirror, speak to, and in many ways reinforce each other. Taken together, Barcelos’s, Cavalcante’s, and Barcelos and Budge’s work shows that despite the adaptation of online spaces to fit the medical and community-based needs of trans people, the ways trans people take them up may often reify similar inequities and oppressive ideologies present throughout the social sphere offline. It would, therefore, be foolhardy for readers to understand the adaptation of the Internet as always already good or as free from complications. These spaces, while offering incredible possibilities, are still connected to, influenced by, and mediated through discourses that pervade the material social sphere and, thus, re-present some of the same stratified realities.

One of the main benefits of the aforementioned research is that it stretches previous conceptions of community as occurring just in physical/material spaces (e.g., Putnam, 2001). Due to the ongoing violence and harassment of trans people by nontrans people, the turn to online spaces for trans people has been one that is mediated by need, not just interest or desire. The continued gender-based oppression trans people experience in the social sphere (e.g., Catalano and Griffin 2016; Grant et al., 2011; Hayward, 2017; James et al., 2016; Jourian, 2017b; Nicolazzo, 2016a, 2016b, 2017b; 2021b, 2022; Snorton and Haritaworn, 2013), trans people have oftentimes had to go online to explore their own senses of selves as well as build community with other trans people. As a result, it behooves researchers working alongside transgender populations to follow them online and think about how the Internet—both as a cultural site as well as a method of connection—mediate transgender people’s senses of selves and community.

By recognizing the centrality of the Internet, and by showing the online platforms transgender people use to create and maintain connections with others, the literature has provided a basis from which further exploration is required. Specifically, how transgender people make meaning of themselves as a result of their engagement in online spaces (e.g., how they develop and maintain senses of digital selves), how transgender people make meaning of online spaces in relation to offline/physical spaces, and how transgender people make meaning of their digital selves in community (both with other trans people and other nontrans people) are questions that have yet to be investigated adequately. While research has placed transgender people in online communities and has discussed the central role the Internet has in being able to connect the transgender community, there has yet to be a thorough investigation of how transgender people develop senses of digital selves via their engagement online; nor has there been any discussion about how transgender people think of the multiple selves—digital and analog—they have developed over time, including how these multiple iterations of selves reinforce and/or are dissonant with each other. Trans students exploring their identities through online platforms may engage various performative, paradoxical, disjointed, and multiplicative iterations of who they are and could become in the future, which is precisely what this book seeks to find out. Thus, this book takes seriously the malleability of identity and explores how trans people manifest this malleability as they come to know themselves (through) online (spaces).

This research picks up on the work of Nicolazzo (2016b, 2017b), who detailed what she called virtual kinship networks among trans college students. These virtual kinship networks were connections between and across transgender people in online spaces that allowed the students to navigate otherwise chilly and hostile campus environments. While Nicolazzo was able to uncover this phenomenon in her research, this book takes an in-depth look at how transgender people use the Internet, curating their digital selves in ways that could help them explore various possible gendered futures for themselves.

Schooling Gender

This book focuses on transgender students, as educational institutions and the schooling process are primary locations for the regulation of gender (Marine, 2017a; Nicolazzo, 2017b; Pascoe, 2011; Spade, 2015). According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 54% of respondents who were out or perceived as transgender in K-12 schools were verbally harassed, and 24% were physically attacked, while 24% of people who were out or perceived as transgender in college or vocational school were verbally, physically, or sexually harassed (James et al., 2016, p. 131). The rates of Black transgender people who were verbally, physically, or sexually harassed in college (28%), transgender women who left college or vocational schools due to harassment (21%), and Black transgender people who left college or vocational schools due to harassment (21%) are alarming (James et al., 2016). The Association of American Universities (AAU) also commissioned a study showing over 24 percent of transgender undergraduates and 15.5 percent of transgender graduate students reported being sexually assaulted, while three-quarters of [transgender] students reported experiencing sexual harassment … [and transgender] undergraduates also had the highest rate of stalking (12.8 percent) and intimate partner violence (22.8 percent) (New, 2015, para. 8). All educational institutions, including higher education institutions, are not immune to—and in fact are complicit in furthering (e.g., Nicolazzo, 2021b, 2022)—larger discourses and cycles of harm and violence toward transgender people.

Beyond the violence of schools, the schooling process related to gender provides further rationale for the centrality of educational contexts in this book. As scholars have addressed (e.g., Patel, 2013), schooling is a process through which students are socialized to various norms and standards, including those related to gender (Wolley, 2015). As Nicolazzo (2016b, 2017b) has detailed, higher education institutions are awash in gender-binary discourse, which circumscribes opportunities for transgender students. Moreover, as Nicolazzo (2021a) argued, "Due to the instantiation and perpetuation of the gender binary discourse (Nicolazzo, 2016b, 2017), as well as its collusion with state systems of gender violence, I argue that postsecondary education is also complicit in epistemological trans* oppression (p. 18, emphasis in original). Moreover, because higher education institutions are heralded as the spaces in which knowledge for the consumption and benefit of the larger society are centrally produced" (Patton, 2016, p. 321), it becomes imperative to investigate how gender-based knowledge is (re)produced through higher education contexts, perhaps with unintended—and yet still palpable and deleterious—consequences.

And yet trans students continue to craft the worlds they need to navigate the violence of schools (as a place) and schooling (as a process). Embodying a set of literature Lange, Duran, and Jackson (2019) described as the House of Flourishing, or scholarship that illuminates the success and thriving of queer and trans people in higher education (p. 517), a group of scholars have recently been dedicated to creating a more nuanced narrative about trans people in higher education. In so doing, the scholars that comprise what Lange, Duran, and Jackson (2019) noted as the House of Flourishing look to both how queer people grow, develop, and become successful according to their own terms and standards and how institutions support those conceptions of success (p. 517). Scholars(hip) like that of Catalano (2015a, 2015b), Duran (2018), Jourian (2017a, 2017b, 2018), Nicolazzo (2016a, 2016b, 2021a), Nicolazzo, Pitcher, et al. (2017), and Simms, Nicolazzo, and Jones (2021) make a compelling case for how trans people continue to make the worlds they need and consolidate in communities with and alongside each other in powerful ways, regardless of the chilliness of their educational contexts. That is, while there is no getting outside the violence (re)produced through schools/schooling, trans students continue to cultivate spaces and communities that allow them to practice resilience in new ways and as a means to be successful on their own terms (Barr, Budge, and Adelson, 2016; Bowling, Schoebel, and Vercruysse, 2019; Budge, Orovecz, and Thai, 2015; Budge, Chin, and Minero, 2017; Nicolazzo, 2016b, 2017b).

While a growing body of scholarship is developing around trans and gender nonconforming people in school settings, there is a significant absence of work that stretches conceptions of educational environments to the virtual. There are studies about trans people in school, the schooling process of gender, and the ways these spaces and processes mediate trans student experiences, but there is a noticeable lack of empirical data focused on the interaction between physical and virtual spaces in relation to education. If the material social world is becoming more entangled with virtual spaces and content, it would stand to reason that such a chasm between physical and virtual understandings of education, schooling, and gender is important to address, and not just because there is a gap in the literature. Instead, the (dis)connections between physical and virtual spaces belie misunderstandings about who trans students are and can be and mistake their trans becomings as only occurring in real life or in real time. Indeed, as we detail in this book, trans people are using the Internet to (re)craft themselves in powerful ways that they then take into their physical worlds. Thus, the trans students in the Digital Me project highlight that what education scholars have long held to be school settings, or educational environments, must shift dramatically and must do so by recognizing the agentic power of the