Trans Day of Visibility (TDoV)
In light of the intensifying attacks on trans folk, particularly on trans women, it is important to mobilize around occasions like TDoV. It is hard to know where to start in terms of enumerating sites of struggle from established writers suing people for calling out their transphobia on social media, to the mainstreaming and marriage of far right, TERF and white supremacist political movements, to the recent World Athletics ban on trans athletes, to the US legislative bills attacking trans people, and particularly youth, access to healthcare and criminalizing providers and supportive parents, to bans on drag, to the increasing number of violent attacks on and murders of trans people to ongoing anti-trans media bias, as evidenced by an open letter signed by roughly 200 contributors to the New York Times.
At the same time, trans thinkers and activists have been pointing out that visibility is a trap for trans people, for over twenty years. If you are wondering about the problems of visibility, this piece explains the issue from a UK perspective. Here are a few starting places for critically engaging the question of visibility and its impact on trans people's lives.
On this day, we would also like to share research and artistic work by trans scholars and creatives to claim the day and share trans joy!
- Namaste, Viviane. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. 2000.
- Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, Eds. Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. 2022
- Namaste, Viviane. “Undoing Theory: The "Transgender Question" and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” 2009
- Smythe, SA. “Black Life, Trans Study: On Black Nonbinary Method, European Trans Studies, and the Will to Institutionalization.” 2021
- Wesley, Saylesh. “Twin-Spirited Woman: Sts'iyóyesmestíyexwslhá:li” 2014
- Shakhsari, Sima. “The Irony of Rights: Healthcare for Queer and Transgender Refugee Applicants in Turkey”
Looking for trans artists to follow? Recent cultural work by trans people you might want to check!
To jumpstart your search see the list by Wide Walls: 10 Transgender Art Creatives Whose Work You Should Follow
- Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel. We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics.
- Shola von Reinhold. LOTE.
- Cameron Awkward-Rich. The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment.
- Joy Ladin. Shekhinah Speaks.
- Joe Kadi. The Great Loss of the Twentieth Century.
Finally happy- and proud- to share work by two former students in the Gender Studies Graduate program:
- Misha Falk, Trans activism isn’t just about pronouns and bathrooms and Moments of Vast Possibility
- Dr. Avery Everhart. “Bones Without Flesh and (Trans)gender Without Bodies: Querying Desires for Trans Historicity.”