Monday, 1 June 2015

"I see one of me over there": Transgender visibility and representation online

Warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.

Raven is a transgender woman who has been making videos on YouTube since 2011. Under the username Raven Ovah, she posts videos on LGBTQ issues, advice on dating and being yourself, makeup and hair tutorials, and more.

Raven first started making videos to give other transgender women the benefit of her experience in sex and relationships. “When it comes down to girls like me, men use us as experiments,” she says frankly. “They don’t take it seriously; because we’re looking for relationships, and they’re just looking at us as a fetish. So they don’t think that we are serious when we want to have a relationship with them. They use us for sex, and they’ll do anything to get it.

“So I started doing videos to get the girls more aware, so no-one had to go through what I went through.”

In spite of the serious subject matter, Raven’s videos were intended to be light-hearted and fun. Over the months and years that followed she talked personal issues and romance, shared her coming-out story, and started to address issues from the queer and transgender communities. All of her videos have a focus on independence and learning to do things for yourself, because “You never know when you might need to do things on your own.”

She started making videos which discussed the murders and suicides of transgender people, both of which happen at horrifyingly high rates (warning: article contains graphic language and discussions of violence) within the transgender community. A diverse audience of all genders and sexualities, including young people, began following Raven’s videos, and Raven took it upon herself to use her videos as a platform to reach out to them.

“My whole goal is just to stop the younger transsexuals committing suicide,” she says. “They’re being bullied, they’re being attacked, you got older people who are attacking them, making fun of them. They feel like they’re alone, so my whole goal was to make sure that they knew we were out there, to make myself more visual. I’m letting them know that I’m here too, that we can hold hands, and we can do this together.”

One of Raven's recent videos in which she discusses the suicide of Cameron Langrell and gives advice on standing up to bullies

Raven believes that being visible as a transgender person and giving these messages to young people is a “very important thing.”

“You have to let people know they’re not alone,” she says. Transgender young people who see another trans person making YouTube videos are likely to think, “‘I see another one of me over there.’ ‘I see me. I’m not alone.’

“It’s a good feeling,” she concludes.

Raven’s thinking reflects a general trend in the transgender community over the past few years towards increased visibility. This has been aided in part by the rise of affordable technology which can take good-quality photographs and videos, and by an increasingly visual social web, which combines popular image-sharing platforms like Instagram and Tumblr with multimedia support on social networks like Twitter. And of course, by YouTube. Hashtags such as #thisiswhattranslookslike and #tdov (Transgender Day of Visibility) are allowing transgender people to share their experiences visually and verbally through social media, and celebrate their community, in a way that lets them control the narrative for a change.

The International Transgender Day of Visibility (known as “TDoV” or “DoV” for short) was founded in 2009 by Rachel Crandall as a transgender holiday which celebrates living members of the transgender community, unlike the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is marked in late March and early April every year with members of the transgender community sharing photographs of themselves, sometimes discussing transition or sharing other details of their lives. In a recent Trans Day of Visibility post, one Tumblr user wrote,

“visibility and representation are incredibly important, especially in spaces like this that [are] heavily media based and communities for younger people. if it wasn’t for tumblr and other trans and non binary people sharing their stories and their existence i dont know whether i would have opened up and explored my gender in the way that i have”

http://hhobbess.tumblr.com/post/115175683313/hobbes-21-she-they-pronouns-for-trans


Much like Red Durkin’s #RealLiveTransAdult hashtag, transgender visibility campaigns are a way of showing transgender people that there are others out there like them, that they aren’t on their own, that they have friends and role models. Philip Wythe, writing in their column ‘Nothing, if Not Critical’ calls Transgender Day of Visibility “vital for trans representation”.

“On social media, the International Transgender Day of Visibility gave us the opportunity to vocally share our lived experiences and celebrate our community’s history… to cultivate our own stories, share our struggles and talk about our hopes and fears.”

Raven says that she keeps making her videos because of the young people online who come to her for advice, and the community that has formed around her vlogs. “I look down at my comment box, and there’s a bunch of us down there talking. They’re not just hitting the Like button, they’re actually saying something back.”

Alongside YouTube, Raven tries to keep up a presence on as many social media channels as possible so that her viewers can reach her wherever they need to. She believes that social media is a powerful way to connect with transgender young people.

“[Social] media is good because it’s in your house. You don’t have to go outside. You can escape society and their judgement and close your door, and you’ve got a little light, and you can burn it while you sit talking to people.”

Saturday, 30 May 2015

For transgender young people, social media is a double-edged sword

Trigger Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide.

The number of young transgender people known to have taken their lives this year has already climbed into the double digits. Social media and online communities have been key to spreading the news of their identities and raising awareness of the issues that surround these tragedies; but can they be harming as much as they are helping?


“Fix society. Please.”

These three words were the last sentiment expressed in Leelah Alcorn’s suicide note, which was posted to her blog on Tumblr after she took her own life in the early hours of 28th December, 2014. Leelah was a young transgender woman whose gender identity was rejected by her conservative Christian parents; she despaired of ever growing up into the adult she wanted to be.

Her words acted as a rallying cry for thousands of activists, supporters and onlookers. Her suicide note was reblogged over 200,000 times before her Tumblr account was deactivated at the request of her parents, and copies of it were shared and quoted after the original disappeared. Her death was widely reported on by international media and sparked off vigils and marches, celebrity responses and YouTube videos; inspired fanart and a game jam, and led users to make and sell accessories and T-shirts to raise money for transgender rights organisations.

At the heart of it all was social media. Tumblr had allowed Leelah to be her true self online; on her blog, she identified herself as a “transgender queen of hell”. It gave her the chance to speak out after her death, and allowed her words to be shared on a phenomenal scale. As one Twitter user wrote in the days following Leelah’s death:

“[Leelah Alcorn’s death] was a bit of a cultural phenomenon in that it got a lot of people talking about these issues that weren’t talking about it before,” says Greta Martela, the founder of Trans Lifeline, a transgender crisis hotline.

“I think it’s pretty clear that it is the most reported suicide of a young transgender person; I don’t think you can dispute that.”

What was it about Leelah’s story that sparked such a response? “I think it’s because… that family was kind of a typical American family, right?” Greta replies. “I think that’s why it got so much attention, because it really was the demographically typical family. Also I think it was probably a good story, and Leelah’s writing was very powerful. So I think it’s a number of things.”


Her words galvanised the online community, who were determined to see her dying wish to “fix society” and for better treatment and rights for transgender people be carried out. The hashtag #JusticeForLeelah began gathering momentum on Twitter and Tumblr. Other memorial and awareness campaigns included #RIP Leelah and #Pink for Leelah, which urged people to start a conversation about transgender issues by painting a fingernail pink. Transgender comedian Red Durkin, responding to the despair Leelah had expressed in her suicide note over ever growing up into a happy, functioning trans adult, started the hashtag #RealLiveTransAdult on Twitter, prompting other transgender adults to share their stories and successes, however small. The hashtag has since inspired a series of articles on Mic.com, profiling and interviewing "real live trans adults" in more depth.


Little by little, the movements have begun to see an impact. The most promising change has come from Leelah's Law, a campaign to ban the psychologically harmful practice of "conversion therapy" on LGBTQ+ young people, which caused Leelah herself such distress. It elicited a response from the Whitehouse, and has been drafted as a resolution which could become a bill and pass into law with enough support. On a public awareness level, the media also seems to be improving its standards of reporting. Sarah Lewis, a volunteer for The TranScience Project, says:

“We suspect, although haven’t crunched the numbers yet, that the number of transphobic slurs in general media went down after Leelah's suicide. The media has a huge influence [on society’s treatment of transgender people] – the way they portray a story or identify a subject is crucial to the public's perception; “If the BBC misgenders Manning then so can I” type stuff.”

A double-edged sword

In spite of these positive changes, the situation for transgender young people is still dire. A study conducted by Pace, a mental health charity for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, revealed that in England, 48 per cent of transgender people under the age of 26 had attempted suicide, and 59 per cent had at least considered it. Rates in countries such as the United States and Canada are similarly high.

On 15th February 2015, seven weeks after Leelah Alcorn took her life, a 15-year-old transgender boy by the name of Zander Mahaffey committed suicide, and published his suicide note on Tumblr in the same fashion as Leelah. Coming so soon on the heels of Leelah’s death, Zander’s death was also met with an outpouring of support from the online community. As with Leelah, the determination to commemorate Zander as he would have wished to be remembered stemmed partly from his family misgendering him after his death and refusing to use his preferred name and pronouns. However, for his friends online, the tide of activism and defiant memorials could be bewildering and unsettling.

Lenasai, an internet friend of Zander’s who set up a memorial blog for her friend after his death, recalls,

“I was impressed to see how the community responded on Tumblr (and the message even spread to my college campus, even though I live many miles away from where Zander lived!) Seeing renewed support for other trans victims of suicide like Leelah was also reassuring.
“The only problem I had was with Tumblr’s reaction to trans suicides in general. There is a sense of glorification of these suicide victims after they died (which was not our intent when we asked people to spread the word about Zander.) … There’s definitely a fine line between respectfully honoring a person and glorification of their death.  We got a lot of fanart drawn of Zander, sometimes alongside Leelah.  I think most people did a good job of honoring their deaths respectfully, but then there were the people that started to call Zander a “space prince/king” and stuff like that.  It made me uncomfortable because nobody said stuff like that about Zander while he was still alive. 
“When people react to a person’s death by portraying them as royalty or as a martyr ... that’s when things get a little iffy.”
http://t-o-m-m-y-c-a-t.tumblr.com/post/111996690658/his-name-was-zander-her-name-was-leelah

Tumblr artwork depicting Zander and Leelah together


The mass mobilisation of supporters via social media can be a double-edged sword when it comes to transgender suicides. Debates have raged on the topic of honouring the memories of transgender suicide victims, with detractors arguing that it leads to copycat suicides, and supporters arguing it is crucial not to erase them in death as well as life. The argument has been complicated by incidents such as Damien Shrum’s attempted suicide: four days after Zander Mahaffey’s death, Damien uploaded a suicide note to Instagram, and tried to kill himself. He had previously posted an homage to Leelah and Zander on his Instagram account, pronouncing Zander’s thoughts about gender and suicide “identical to mine”.

The note prompted an anonymous call to the police, who reached Damien in time, and he was placed into psychiatric care. However, the damage on social media had already been done, with thousands of over-eager supporters already memorialising Damien as if he had died. For his family, this was an additional stress in an already harrowing time. Damien’s sister took to Tumblr to set the record straight about what had happened, writing of her “sickness and disgust” at the “proportions the internet has blown this to.”

“I would say in general, spreading a person’s suicide note is not a good thing to do. When you share suicide notes, you’re sharing something often written in a very troubling time in a person’s life. I think that’s what can lead to the glorification of these suicides,” Lenasai says. “If a suicide victim left a message they wanted to be shared, a good alternative would be to share the general message that person wanted to have shared instead of sharing the actual suicide note.”

Safe spaces online

The safety of an online space can be crucial for transgender people, particularly young transgender people, who often turn to the internet to access advice, information and resources that they wouldn’t find offline, and to connect with a community of others like them.

“I think trans people are generally more technically savvy than the general population,” says Greta Martela, noting that Trans Lifeline was conceived of and put together through social media, mostly Facebook. “[It’s] how people are finding resources, how people are staying connected.”

Recognising this, Lenasai set out to create the #MyNameIs Project. In the wake of the death of a trans person, it has become customary to use the hashtag “#hisnamewas” or “#hernamewas” in order to reiterate the person’s chosen name and pronouns. It can often be an act of defiance and solidarity in the face of family and media misgendering them. Lenasai was one of the people who started the hashtag #HisNameWasZander following the death of her friend; but she wanted to see the trend replaced with something more positive, something to help transgender young people before they reached the point of suicide.

http://ripzander.tumblr.com/post/112004386548/lenasai-i-try-so-hard-with-the-handwriting-but


“The goal was to create a safe, positive space for transgender youth,” says Lenasai. “The project was intended to be viewer-driven, with individuals submitting stories and messages of encouragement. At first, there were a ton of people willing to contribute! Unfortunately, that number died down quickly, and now the project is mostly run by myself. I think perhaps the idea didn’t quite work out the way I had originally planned it to, so I changed the focus to reblogging positive posts, which is pretty much what I wanted to have on the blog, anyway.”

She says that there is “definitely” a need for more safe, positive spaces for transgender youth online. “There are so many trans kids who face harassment just for being transgender, both online and offline.  As long as this kind of harassment exists, we need to increase efforts to create safe spaces for these kids.  At the very least, if they know there are other people who support them, their lives can be made just a little bit easier.”

Unfortunately, a desire to be seen as helping in the midst of a crisis can lead some well-intentioned people to overlook the seriousness of mental health and suicide, in the same way that memorial posts can cross the line into glorification. A well-meaning young person, inspired by the support being offered on Tumblr by transgender people willing to lend an ear to anyone who was contemplating suicide, set up a blog called ‘Trans Youth Support’ which aimed to match up transgender “mentors” with young people in distress.

However, the idea of trusting vulnerable young people’s mental states to untrained, unknown and randomly chosen volunteers drew widespread criticism, and the creator hastily cancelled the project with profuse apologies. “I apologise. I’m young (that doesn’t excuse me) and I rushed into this headfirst,” they wrote. The blog is currently on hiatus with the prospect of being revived by a new moderator who identifies as non-binary and has experience with transgender activism and mental health issues.
http://transyouthsupport.tumblr.com/post/111510470138/first-of-all-im-really-sorry

The danger that social media can pose to young transgender people is never more evident than in stories like that of Cameron Langrell, who skipped school to avoid bullying only to be bullied on social media, and committed suicide just days after changing her gender on Facebook; or Kyler Prescott, who was bullied on the social app Kik. Recently, transgender users on Twitter also found themselves the target of transphobic tweets after Twitter's Promoted Tweets system allowed several highly abusive messages to be broadcast from an account imitating a prominent feminist.

However, there is hope yet, as social networks like Tumblr are acknowledging their responsibility to the vulnerable and marginalised users who congregate there, and working to make their online spaces safer ones. Tumblr recently launched #PostItForward, an initiative which encourages those with mental and emotional health issues to share their stories and share positivity in an attempt to reduce stigma around these problems and promote well-being. It was launched with the support of major celebrities like Pete Wentz, Elizabeth Banks and the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, who raised issues such as bullying and sexual assault in their videos. Tumblr has also used the project to reiterate the supportive services it already provides, and connect users with advice and positivity blogs.
http://postitforward.tumblr.com/post/118812723463/did-you-know-that-certain-searches-on-tumblr-will

Liba Rubenstein, Tumblr’s director of outreach, causes, politics and advocacy referred to Leelah Alcorn’s story when speaking about the new initiative, suggesting that Tumblr is not ignoring the fact that it has been the epicentre of a number of recent tragedies, and is making efforts to improve the situation. Greta Martela, although not a Tumblr user herself, also acknowledged its extreme importance to the transgender community and credited it for a lot of the progress made in transgender awareness in recent years.

“Tumblr is important for trans people; I don’t even have a Tumblr account, I’m not a Tumblr user, but I’m aware of so many people from Tumblr, and I’ve seen so much stuff from Tumblr that has been reblogged or reposted to other social media.

“Without that community, I don’t think there would be the level of awareness that there is now, among younger people – the millennial generation, and younger; I think we have to give credit to a lot of youngsters for forcing some social progress on trans issues.”