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Defining trans narratives
A major part of my research is exploring how narrative power shapes rights, focusing on how technology is used to frame how we perceive and understand the world. Much of the philosophy and academic discourse I engage with is rooted in the concept that rights are a mediated process, and that to ensure equity rights need to be actionable. This focus on mediation, especially on the need to get others to buy into your personal oppression so that you can then gain rights to prevent future oppression, relies on narrative and the ability to communicate that narrative. A critical aspect to “narrative” is the ability to control and disseminate it, hence why technology is important to that process. For trans people defining what narrative is told to which people is at the heart of many of the problems facing trans rights, especially when trans people are shut out of that conversation to begin with.
Each trans person has their own positionality, their own narrative which they share with the world. How each perceive and understand oppression will be unique as every trans person has their own axis of oppression. The trans community is a broad church covering everything from femmebois to gender queer folk to binary transitioners with a whole nebula beyond the cis city on the hill. To be trans in 2024 is to defy assigned gender at birth convention, yet is also to find yourself in a community that might not…
