Sarah
Reasoner
WGST
202H
T/R
12:30-1:45
Professor
Currans
Blog
Topic: Transgender Movement
Article
Review #3
Shapiro,
Eve. “’Trans’cending Barriers: Transgender Organizing on the Internet” Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services 16.3-4
(2004): 165-179.
Eve Shapiro’s article,
“’Trans’cending Barriers: Transgender Organizing on the Internet” discusses the
complicated relationship between the transgender rights movement and the internet.
In this piece, Shapiro uses interviews and quotes from transgender activists to
talk about the immensely positive impact that the internet has had on the
transgender movement. She also critiques the internet, pointing out the problems
that it does not fully help the movement to overcome. Overall, Shapiro argues
that the internet’s wide use in the transgender movement is not without
problems, but it has helped propel the movement forward in a powerful way.
Shapiro first lays down a historical
timeline that explains the different stages of the transgender movement. Through
this description, the readers can understand where exactly the internet started
being used by organizations in the movement. Shapiro identifies “three
overlapping waves of organizing which moved the community from a support focus,
to an educational one, and finally toward political organizing and activism”
(168). She says that the internet was one big factor in helping the transgender
movement shift from helping people survive and providing information to a
movement that is trying to achieve social justice. During this political wave,
there was a lot of direct action, such as protests, which, “allowed for a visible
transgender presence” (168). During this wave, activists were also able to push
the trans-rights movement forward by information exchange and organizing on the
internet. Use of the internet in this way created widespread effects which
reached further than any physical organizing could.
The internet helped to overcome many
issues that were faced by the trans-rights movement during the first two waves.
For instance, before the internet, a transgender or non-gender conforming
individual might not have known anyone like him or herself. The internet
provides a space where trans-individuals can communicate safely with people who
feel the same way they do. This allows
trans-individuals to educate themselves and get involved in support groups in
ways that they never could before. Because of this, the internet fostered the
communication and collective identity that the movement needed to grow. Furthermore,
before the internet, medical organizations that performed gender-reassignment
surgeries encouraged those who had undergone the surgery to try and hide their
identity or past life. The internet overcame this problem by providing
anonymity to those who are afraid to ‘come out’ as a trans-individual and also
provides a space for activists to challenge the medical community’s notions
about transsexuality. In this way, the internet has completely changed how the
trans-rights movement is able to organize. It provides information about
transsexuality to anyone who has access to a computer all across the world.
People who are embarrassed or confused about their feelings of gender dysphoria
can search for information on the internet in private, rather than having to
look up information in a library or send a letter to a trans-rights
organization requesting information. The distribution of information in this
way had grown the movement astronomically. The internet has also helped to
overcome the lack of funding that the trans-rights movement has. According to Shapiro,
“(W)ith the Internet limited resources can now be better utilized. Whereas ten
years ago the largest transgender support organization (…) almost closed its
doors due to financial trouble, transgender organizations now can and do
function with much smaller budgets,” (170). Shapiro explains that the internet
allows organizations to be run from activist’s homes and eliminates the need to
pay expenses like upkeep costs for an organization’s headquarters, which can
help to expand the movement in spite of its limited budget. Despite all these
upsides, however, the internet is not without flaws.
One of the biggest challenges the
trans-rights movement faces is their need to reach their most marginalized
populations. For instance, many trans-individuals are homeless, having lost
their jobs or homes because of their identity. These individuals oftentimes do
not have access to the information or resources that the internet can provide
them with because they do not have a computer or internet. In other words, the
poorest and most disregarded trans-individuals are still being left behind as
the movement relocates to the internet. Furthermore, the internet does not
always reach members outside of the community. For instance, bystanders would
have to move through a picket line during a trans-rights protest, directly
exposing them to problems faced by trans-individuals, but those bystanders on
the internet who are not involved in the movement can avoid ever seeing or
reading such content about the trans-rights movement. This prevents the
movement from expanding to include cisgender allies. Finally, the use of the internet in the
trans-rights movement is often criticized for having created, “a false sense of
movement size and safety,” (174). Shapiro explains this by pointing out that
trans-individuals might better be able to figure out their identity through
information on the internet, but that “Basically, society is still limping
along trying to understand what has happened and how should/do they respond,”
(175). In this way, the internet does not fully help society as a whole
understand the movement and be able to react to it appropriately, but it often
creates a false sense that the movement is far-reaching when, in reality, there
is a lot more work that needs to be done. Overall, these problems are still
being addressed by leaders of the movement, but continue to operate through the
internet.
This article, like “Stepping Back,
Looking Outward: Situating Transgender Activism and Transgender Studies- Kris
Hayashi, Matt Richardson, and Susan Stryker Frame the Movement,” helps to
develop my blog topic of the Transgender Rights Movement by addressing positive
influences in the movement and offering a critique of how this could be better
improved. Both “Transcending Barriers” and “Stepping Back, Looking Outward”
emphasize the necessity to reach the most marginalized people within the
trans-rights movement and both articles offer critiques about how the movement
can better accomplish this. In both articles, the information that the authors
use to frame the movement is based on quotes and interviews from activists and
leaders within the movement, making both articles excellent examples of pieces
that frame the movement in new and thought-provoking ways. “Stepping Back, Looking Outward” described
ways that direct action, education, and organization worked to help raise
awareness for the trans-rights movement and “Transcending Barriers” added to
these ideas by describing how the internet has served as a powerful tool for
trans-rights activists. Although I wish
“Transcending Barriers” had done a better job offering solutions to the
problems the movement still faces even with the internet, I would still
recommend this article to people who are interested in seeing the positive
changes and victories of the transgender movement in the past few decades.
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