Out Online: Trans Self-Representation and Community Building on YouTube

Tobias Raun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780367596620
• eBook ISBN: 9781317084662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Trans people are increasingly stepping out of the shadow of pathologization and secretiveness to tell their life stories, share information and to connect with like-minded others, using YouTube as a platform. Out Online: Trans Self-Representation and Community Building on YouTube explores the digital revolution of trans video blogging, addressing 'trans' in its many meanings and configurations to examine the different ways in which the body in transformation and the vlog as a medium intersect. Drawing on rich, virtual ethnographic studies of trans video blogging, the author sheds light on the ways in which the video blog (or 'vlog') as a multimodal medium enables trans people to tell their stories with the use of sound, text, music, and pictures - thus offering new ways to construct and archive bodily changes, and to revise the story endlessly. A groundbreaking study of the intersection between trans identity and technology, Out Online explores the transformative and therapeutic potential of the video blog as a means by which trans vloggers can emerge and develop online, using the vlog as a site for creation, intervention, community building and resistance. As such, it will appeal to social scientists and scholars of cultural and media studies with interests in gender, sexuality and embodiment.

1 Trans Meets Screen Media

DOI: 10.4324/9781315599229-2

This chapter introduces “trans” as a field of study in a broad sense. It draws a short historical overview of the way in which trans has been portrayed in mainstream Western screen media, and how this has gradually changed, not least as a result of the media content produced by trans people online. The chapter also outlines the way in which trans as an identity category has circulated within psycho-medical discourses and how this relates to legislation around juridical gender (re)classification and healthcare practices. This composite contextualization, outlining the tropes of trans representation and the trans labels and understandings within medicine and psychology, provides a point of departure from which to understand the audiovisual claims, negotiations, and contestations that play out in the trans vlogs.

The Power of Representation

Most people's knowledge of trans people is built through mainstream visual representations. Non-trans people create the vast majority of these representations and they feature, with few exceptions, non-trans people in trans roles. In that sense, trans vlogs on YouTube offer viewers a rare chance to encounter trans representations made by, with, and primarily for trans people. Contrary to representations in mainstream media, these vlogs are trans self-representations in which the trans people appearing in the videos have a different level of control over the way in which they are represented.

Prior to the vlogs, one of the first representations of a trans man that I (and many others) came across was in the movie Boys Don't Cry, based on the real-life story of Brandon Teena (Peirce 1999). At the time, it was mind blowing to see a portrayal of a trans man but devastating to see his identity and love project destroyed; hence, the movie made my own future dreams of being a happy trans man seem impossible. What I took special notice of back then was the representation of how dangerous it is for a trans man (especially a non-medically transitioned trans man) to pass as male. In the film, transphobia is exposed in its most extreme and violent rendering, but viewers are also offered another portrayal of trans as a tragic figure—an impossible, always already dead character. My experience with Boys Don't Cry highlights the way in which representations can encourage, as well as discourage, certain identity formations.

Representation carries a special political weight for minority groups and plays a significant role in the formation and visibility of social movements and identities. This has been widely discussed in connection with gay and lesbian representations in popular culture (see, for example, Russo 1981; Dyer 1984; Dyer 1993; Dyer 2002). As media scholar Niall Richardson states:

[I]t is important to remember that for many incipient gays and lesbians, growing up in isolation and having never met another gay person, often the only image of another lesbian or gay is the representation on the film or television screen […] and so their sense of identification, what it means to be lesbian or gay, is often forged through a representation on the screen.

(Richardson 2010: 2)

The same is true for trans people, as psychology scholar Darryl Hill shows in his study. For an older generation of trans people (those who came of age before the 1980s), print media, especially trans autobiographies, played an important role in self-identification (Hill 2005: 37). The coverage of Christine Jorgensen and her sex reassignment surgeries in Denmark in the 1950s also helped create an image of trans (at least trans women) as a possible subject position.¹ As the older respondents explain in research from education scholars Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin, they learned about transsexuality through the media coverage of Christine Jorgensen and Renée Richards, but they did not know how to meet other trans people (Beemyn and Rankin 2011: 55).² These respondents also highlight the importance of having a name for the way they felt (Beemyn and Rankin 2011: 23). After Jorgensen's public broadcast appearance, she received hundreds of letters from trans people who not only asked for advice and help, but also recognized themselves in her. As Hill notes, many of the respondents in his study first saw and discovered trans as an identity through television—for example, on talk shows and in situation comedies (Hill 2005: 38). Hill also argues that it was not until the 1970s, when mainstream television started reporting on sex changes, that trans communities and movements really took hold; this growing awareness accelerated with the Internet (2005: 29).

For any minority group whose representation is sparse and limited, it is important to note what notions and subject positions appear. Not only the general public, but also many trans people primarily gain access to and knowledge of trans people through the screen (Beemyn and Rankin 2011: 44–45). A pressing question is therefore: How are trans people portrayed in mainstream film and visual media?

The Representation of Trans in Mainstream Media

Representation of trans people and trans issues was sparse and selective in mainstream media until the 1990s, despite surges of exposure with Zdenek Kubkov in the 1930s, Christine Jorgensen in the 1950s, and Renée Richards in the 1970s (Stryker, as quoted in Romano 2012: 3).³ Research on transgender visual representation in Anglo-American mainstream media has likewise been limited. John Phillips's book Transgender on Screen (2006) has been the most extensive and substantial research attempt so far, besides unpublished PhD dissertations (e.g., Straube 2014). Phillips and Richardson argue that the representation of trans in mainstream media is a successor to the early media stereotypes of gays and lesbians. As portrayed in the documentary The Celluloid Closet (Vito Russo et al. 1995), people were not allowed to speak about homosexuality due to the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, operating from the 1930s, relaxed in the 1950s, and resolved in the 1960s. Homosexuality was therefore implied in various ways.⁴ One of the (comedic) codes for homosexuality was the portrayal of masculine women and feminine men, premised on the assumption that homosexuals were gender dissidents and failed to perform either gender well (Richardson 2010: 128). The media coded homosexuality as doing gender “wrong,” condensing it in the types of effeminate queen and butch dyke, or illustrating it via regular cross-dressing. This echoes some of the assumptions of late nineteenth century sexologists, who subsumed cross-gender identification under the broader rubric of “inversion” and associated it primarily with homosexuality (Meyerowitz 2002: 14–15). Thus, in sexology, as well as in Hollywood motion picture films, homosexuality and transgender have been intertwined, becoming stand-ins for each other in various ways, with gender dissidence as an expression or effect of homosexuality. Trans representation is also a successor to—and at times convergent with—the cross-dressing man. Films such as Some Like it Hot (Wilder 1959), Tootsie (Pollack 1982), and Mrs. Doubtfire (Columbus 1993) refer to a tradition of cross-dressing in comedy, wherein the masquerade and the reveal evoke a stock set of responses from others within the diegesis (amazement, humor, anger, relief, and so on) (Phillips 2006: 26). Cross-dressing is portrayed in these films as deception—a way to achieve a goal, such as getting a job (Some Like it Hot and Tootsie) or spending time with one's children (Mrs. Doubtfire). Thus, the act of cross-dressing is never in itself the purpose, but something the character does out of necessity. Males in female character are in disguise, and they use this disguise to trick other characters into believing they are something they are not. Cross-dressing serves the purpose of comic relief, as the movie lets the audience in on the joke (but not other characters in the story). The audience's pleasure derives, in part, from watching the deception unfold and the comic misunderstandings that evolve from it, before the act of unveiling in a final revelatory scene (Phillips 2006: 54–55). What are usually cast as particularly comedic elements are scenes that show the character's inability to “do womanhood” properly, as well as scenes containing unwelcome sexual advances or attention from men unknowing of the scam, reconfirming a perception of gender as an inevitably biological fact.

Since the 1990s, there has been an increase in trans visibility within a broad range of screen media, from film and talk and reality shows to the Internet, where so-called “tranny porn” (which in itself is a derogatory term) is said to be the fastest growing type of pornography (Phillips 2006: 2). In 2005, queer studies scholar J. Jack Halberstam wrote about a “recent explosion of transgender films,” with films such as The Crying Game, Boys Don't Cry, By Hook or By Crook, and the documentary Southern Comfort (Halberstam 2005: 96). But, as Halberstam notes, the spectacle of the trans body represents different things to different audiences: The trans body can confirm a fantasy of fluidity in line with notions of transformation within the post-modern idiom, or pose a utopian vision of a world of subcultural possibilities (2005).

Democratization of Trans?

In 2012, the increased trans visibility in mainstream film and media allowed journalist and writer Tricia Romano to identify the spread of a contemporary fascination with trans, which she called a “transgender revolution” (2012). Romano draws a parallel between trans and gay representations: “It seems like trans might be the new gay in pop culture” (2012). As media scholar Helene Shugart argues, the gay man has become “chic” and “de rigueur” in mainstream film and television (2003: 69). Romano seems to suggest that something similar is slowly happening in relation to media representation of trans persons. Lacanian scholar and analyst Patricia Gherovici also notes that trans “has acquired an extraordinary mediatic visibility,” not least in American talk shows since 2005, and has become “quite fashionable” (Gherovici 2010: 34–35, xiii). Talk of a transgender revolution has gained even more currency after trans actress Laverne Cox played Sophia Burset in the popular Netflix series Orange Is the New Black (2013–). On June 9, 2014, Cox was the first openly trans person to appear on the cover of Time magazine, under the headline “The Transgender Tipping Point.” Orange Is the New Black is groundbreaking in many ways, not least in the way it exposes a mainstream audience to very explicit sexual interactions between different kinds of lesbian/queer women and includes a trans woman of color. The series has been celebrated for casting an actual trans person, and for portraying Sophia sympathetically and as sexually attractive. Nevertheless, Sophia is disengaged from the sexual flirtations and interaction that many of the other women in the prison are involved in. This is especially noticeable as the audience is told in the first season that Sophia has an ex-wife (a relationship which, through flashbacks, is portrayed as asexual). Hence, Sophia is—or has been—sexually attracted to women. Sophia functions in the series as an enabling character—a motherly semi-psychologist to the other women in the prison, but deprived of a sexuality of her own.

Recently, other films and series featuring trans issues or characters have attracted a lot of attention and large audiences. Examples include the movie Dallas Buyers Club (2013), in which Jared Leto plays the trans woman Rayon, and the popular Amazon series Transparent (2014–), featuring Jeffrey Tambor in the lead role as a trans woman named Maura. The show also includes trans people Alexandra Billings, Zachary Drucker, and Ian Harvie in supporting/minor roles. Likewise, the film The Danish Girl (telling the story of Lili Elbe), released in late 2015, attracted a lot of media attention. According to Gherovici, this mediatic visibility “tend[s] to be supportive,” although trans “has also not lost its shock value” (2010: xiii). Gherovici optimistically argues that trans “has lost most of its stigma and has become an identity” in the US (2010: 34). Gherovici's overall conclusion is what she labels “the Democratization of Transgenderism.” As she argues, “What was categorized as either pathological or exceptional is now an everyday reality” (2010: 2). Though I agree with Gherovici that trans people are much more present in mainstream media today than they were 30 years ago, we are far from seeing a democratization entailing a non-sensationalized or pathologized screen representation and equal rights.

Throughout the following pages, I will outline some of the most commonly circulating tropes for the representation of trans people in mainstream Western screen media. These are “the deceptive transsexual,” “the pathetic transsexual,” “trans as a metaphor for or an expression of psychopathy,” and “the autobiographical imperative.” The short history and mapping of these tropes serves the purpose of contextualization, shedding light on the broader discourses of trans that the trans vlogs take as their point of departure yet also challenge in various ways. Hence, the increase in trans visibility might help create awareness of trans issues, but it does not, in itself, guarantee democratization, nor does the common outcry among journalists about a “transgender revolution.” Instead, the increased visibility might create the impression that things have changed for the better in a way and to a degree that they have not. Trans people still face persistent discrimination and pathologization, which the trans vlogs speak directly to and against.

The Pathetic Transsexual

Trans people have typically been depicted as and associated with trans women and, at times, confused with transvestites or drag queens in mainstream media. As trans writer, performer, and activist Julia Serano critically remarks, the media tends to not notice or ignore trans men “because they are unable to sensationalize them the way they do trans women without bringing masculinity itself into question” (Serano 2007: 46). Serano seems here to hint at what educator, advocate, and trans issues policy consultant Jamison Green calls the “visibility dilemma for transsexual men” (2006), whereby many medically transitioning trans men are, contrary to many trans women, able to be recognized as their desired gender after a year or less on hormones. This makes it easier for trans men to slide rather undetectably into mainstream society.

Serano argues that media depic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Trans Meets Screen Media
• 2 Looking Man Enough? Embodiment and Narratives of Men and Masculinity among Trans Male Vloggers
• 3 “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves”: Reappropriating Trans Woman as a Category and Spectacle through Digital Storytelling
• 4 Screen Births: Trans Vlogs as a Transformative Media for Self-Representation
• 5 DIY Therapy: Exploring the Trans Video Blogs as Affective Self-Representation
• 6 YouTube Is My Hood: Creating a Sense of Community
• Epilogue: Digital Trans Activism
• Bibliography
• Index