This article explores the intersection between trans identity and technology as it manifests in trans video blogs on YouTube. Taking my point of departure in eight case-study vloggers I analyse the different ways that the vlog can work as a medium of transformation. The vlogs engender the ongoing process of ‘becoming’ man/woman/trans by inscribing the vlogger in multiple and intersubjective reflections, being visible to themselves and others as an image. I argue that the co-production of trans identity in/through the vlog takes the shape of a mirror, a digital diary or autobiography, and as artistic explorations and communications. The article demonstrates how vloggers take advantage of the multimodality of the medium to tell stories of trans that can animate and motivate others to dare to be visible or claim an identity as trans.
BeemynGRankinS (2011) The Lives of Transgender People. New York: Columbia University Press.
2.
ButlerJ (1990) Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
3.
ColdryN (2008) Digital storytelling, media research and democracy: conceptual choices and alternative futures. In: LundbyK (ed.) Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 41–59.
4.
CromwellJ (1999) Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
5.
FrankAW (2010) Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-narratology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
6.
GauthierDAKChaudoirNK (2004) Tranny boyz: cyber community support in negotiating sex and gender mobility among female to male transsexuals. Deviant Behavior25: 375–398.
7.
HillD (2005) Coming to terms: using technology to know identity. Sexuality & Culture9(3): 24–52.
8.
HwahngSJNuttbrockL (2007) Sex workers, fem queens, and cross-dressers: differential marginalizations and HIV vulnerabilities among three ethnocultural male-to-female transgender communities in New York City. Sexual Research and Social Policy4(4): 36–59.
9.
JonesA (1998) Body Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
10.
LundbyK (2008) Introduction: digital storytelling, mediatized stories. In: LundbyK (ed.) Digital Storytelling, Mediatized. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 1–20.
11.
MarksLU (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
PlummerK (1995) Telling sexual stories in a late modern world. Studies in Symbolic Interaction8: 101–120.
16.
ProsserJ (1998) Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia University Press.
17.
RaunT (2012) DIY therapy: exploring affective self-representations in trans video blogs on YouTube. In: KaratzogianniAKuntsmanA (eds) Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
RoenK (2001) Transgender theory and embodiment: the risk of racial marginalisation. Journal of Gender Studies10(3): 253–263.
20.
ShapiroE (2004) Trans’cending barriers: transgender organizing on the internet. Special issue on Strategies for Gay and Lesbian Rights Organizing. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services16(3–4): 165–179.
21.
StrykerS (2006) (De)subjugated knowledges. an introduction to transgender studies. In: StrykerSWhittleS (eds) The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–18.
