Transphobia Speaks in the Voice of Surveillance Capitalism
<p>Around the year 2000, after my gender transition, when I was in college, I was put in touch with an older woman who was pursuing her graduate degree in social work. She was cis, though I didn’t know that word at the time and she probably didn’t either. Her thesis topic was “how transgender people use the internet to find support.” At this time, <em>How will the internet change everything, and by the way, what is the internet?</em> was a hot topic that inflected academic and popular discourse.</p>
<p>She interviewed me for her research, and I remember telling her: “Well, there are these things called chat rooms and message boards, and if you like the conversation you’re having with someone, you can move to this thing called email.” I suspected her other interviewees had responded similarly and that my response was thus disappointing to her, in no small part because it would yield a very boring thesis for her advisors. This, incidentally, was long before the tropes of <em>Explain transsexualism </em>and <em>Explain the internet</em> were replaced by the trope of <em>Trans people are finding support online — should they?!?!</em></p>
<p><a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/transphobia-voice-surveillance-capitalism-357dcae607d3"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>