Unit III Paper Curran 1

In regards to the realm of Internet activism, the methods by which these systems accomplish goals are often criticized as being ineffective as it does not employ direct action, like protests and sit-ins, which regionalized activist movements have a history of. As a result of this, online activist movements are often dismissed as being irrelevant or unimportant to activist movements as a whole. On a large scale, both inside and outside of activist movements, activism that takes place in geographically specific, physically tangible movements are given more precedence in deciding what the movement looks like, what the issues at large look like, what ways they should be handled, and how the movement operates on a whole. The physically tangible, both in regards to organization, with protests, sit-ins, or group organizations, and goals, like with the changing of local legislation are deemed as more important and useful than what is accomplished by online activist movements.

However, to discredit online activism because of its inherent physical intangibility and to set precedence over it with geographically specific movements is to do a disservice both to the history of activist movements, and to how they will progress in the future. We can see this with

Tumblr’s online rights movement, #TransLivesMatter. While transgender rights has a long history, it has come under public attention once again recently with the rise of figures like actress and the suicide of Leelah Alcorn at the end of 2014. While these issues have surfaced in all realms of transgender activism, the dismissal of #TransLivesMatter ignores how it reflects the history and methodology of modern transgender activism and how beneficial

#TransLivesMatter can be to the movement as a whole. The suicide of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender woman and activist on , sparked the #TransLivesMatter movement to begin with and without this, the recent focus on the controversy behind would not have its focus or even have come to the same light as it has now. Unit III Paper Curran 2

Because of this, it is important to recognize how #TransLivesMatter reflects the history of transgender activism and what this means for the future of transgender activism. As the internet has become an increasingly pervasive force in the way people socialize and get information, it only makes sense that activist movements once bound to and divided by geographic regions would begin to adopt the Internet as a platform for widespread communication. If we truly want to understand how activist movements operate and how the

Internet has facilitated discussion and attention to issues for marginalized people, then it is important to take note of the importance of online activist movements, specifically

#TransLivesMatter, in spreading information, connecting people, reflecting the history of activist movements, and allowing for the progression of activist movements. This paper will analyze how #TransLivesMatter reflects the history of modern transgender rights activism through several defining categorizations or focus areas of the movement.

The first categorization of #TransLivesMatter and the transgender rights movements to be analyzed is the militancy of transgender rights activists. Many activist movements, from the civil rights movement in the United States to socialist workers’ movements across the world, have had a basis in militant activism. The transgender rights movement is no exception to this.

According to Paisley Currah, this militant type of activism began in the late 1950’s and notes this by saying “The Compton's Cafeteria Riot of August 1966, was part of a wave of increasingly militant resistance on the part of transgender street people that included street-fighting outside

Cooper's Donut Stand in Los Angeles in 1959 and Dewey's Lunch Counter sit-ins and picketing in 1965.” (96). Militancy in the transgender rights movement, like many others, was a response to growing hostility to members of the transgender community. As a result, transgender people began responding in groups that eventually led to geographically specific movements and Unit III Paper Curran 3 organizations. One of the earliest examples of this is the Gay Liberation Front, beginning in response to the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in . While primarily a group for gay men and lesbian women, the Gay Liberation Front included transgender individuals and had goals overreaching the boundaries of gay and transgender rights when forming, which is noted by

Lionel Wright when saying “The name was consciously chosen for its association with the anti- imperialist struggles in Vietnam and Algeria. Sections of the GLF would go on to organize solidarity for arrested Black Panthers, collect money for striking workers, and link the battle for gay rights to the banner of socialism." (Wright). The militancy in transgender rights movements in their beginnings arose from members being militant in their other views, whether they are social or political.

Like previous transgender rights activist movements, #TransLivesMatter has also developed a militant nature to some degree. While not divided into formal groups or organizations like the Gay Liberation Front, for example, the community behind

#TransLivesMatter is home to members who’s activist issues extend beyond the range of transgender rights activism. In fact, many are interested in the same issues that the Gay

Liberation Front also took up in the late 1960’s, from the rights of labor workers and unionization, to race issues, and supporting of socialistic government ideals. This kind of attention to issues outside of the realm of transgender rights has been a defining characteristic for the movement since it’s beginnings and as a result, #TransLivesMatter is an important force to the spreading of transgender rights and activism as it can reach more people than geographically- bound movements, while retaining much of the ideology and rhetoric of the individualized movements that helped to enable the formation of the online activist movement

#TransLivesMatter. Unit III Paper Curran 4

By the same hand, #TransLivesMatter also enables the progression of transgender activism, particularly its militant aspects. Before the advent of the internet, transgender activist movements were heavily confined by geographic boundaries, meaning those in metropolitan areas large enough to contain a prominent group of transgender people were most often the only ones to have any exposure to or experience in the transgender activist movement. By its nature, the more militant side of transgender rights activism was even less actively available to people.

To be involved in militant transgender rights activism not only meant you had to be in an area with a strong enough presence of transgender people, but there usually must also be a population of transgender people actively involved in other intersecting issues, such as racism or worker’s rights. Due to these constraints, early activist movements were restrained by most often only being available to people with some degree of academic and socio-economic privilege.

The dissemination of activist movements into the realm of the Internet, beginning in the late 1990’s worked to help open up movements to people who typically would not have had access to these resources before the Internet. As the Internet and computer technologies have become more prevalent in most people’s day-to-day lives, this has only become more of a resource for people interested in activist issues. #TransLivesMatter is no different from this, and has a particular advantage in that it has become prevalent since the end of 2014. Being embedded in a time period where the Internet is more accessible to people than it was even ten years ago means that #TransLivesMatter has more of a potential to reach people than before. With this comes the ability to spread awareness of transgender rights issues as they apply to militant activists. This access to activist ideologies in one uniform place creates an increased ability to disseminate information to both current activists & experts on transgender rights issues and individuals who do not have experience in these areas. As a result, #TransLivesMatter as an Unit III Paper Curran 5 easily accessible platform for transgender rights activist issues helps to ensure the further spreading of activist ideologies in a manner that helps the transgender activist movement to progress, but also allowing the movement to be secured to the founding ideologies of the movement.

Another important part of the history of transgender rights activism is working to raise the publicity of transgender voices into mainstream culture. This has been a key element in all activist movements, from Martin Luther King Jr rising out of the south as a minister to discuss issues of racism in America, to Laverne Cox becoming a large proponent for transgender rights issues after coming into the view of the public with her role on the TV show Orange is the New

Black. Movements most often choose to adopt these spokespeople or public figures after they have already received attention by the public, as it is easy to work with someone already accepted by a wide audience. We can see this with Laverne Cox, who after her growth in popularity from her career as an actress was able to do a tour across North American colleges and universities lecturing about being transgender and transgender rights issues. While it is easy to forget, this is the work of many activists. LGBT college groups across the country helped

Laverne Cox to have access to speaking at their colleges, and this in it’s own is an act of transgender rights activism.

The experience of the first widely public proponent for transgender rights in the United

States, Christine Jorgenson, is a little unusual, however. Rather than adopted by a movement after being widely accepted in the circle of activists, like with Dr. King, or after receiving prominent public attention for their career outside of activism, like Laverne Cox, Christine

Jorgenson was picked up by the media simply for being transgender. Jorgenson was an American soldier during the Second World War and had undergone several surgeries as part of gender Unit III Paper Curran 6 reassignment in Denmark before returning to the United States (Whittle). After this, Jorgenson became an advocate for transgender people and transgender rights as noted in this obituary for her:

Her very public life after her 1952 transition and surgery was a model for other

transsexuals for decades. She was a tireless lecturer on the subject of transsexuality,

pleading for understanding from a public that all too often wanted to see transsexuals as

freaks or perverts ... Ms. Jorgensen's poise, charm, and wit won the hearts of millions."

(Whittle).

While unusual, the selection of Christine Jorgenson as a new story eventually lead to her publicity as an advocate for transgender people and transgender rights issues. This ability to take her position in the public eye and use it to promote and advocate for the rights of transgender people, rather than sinking back against the pressures of mainstream media set the stage for other transgender rights activists and advocates later in the 20th century.

The ability to promote and have figures in the eye of the public and mainstream culture is important to any activist movement as it allows dialogue across the boundaries of the activist subculture and the mainstream culture. Sommerfeldt notes how these subcultures, or counterpublics as he calls them, allow for dialogue with the public sphere by saying:

When counterpublics attempt to participate in the public sphere, they are assuming a

“publicist orientation,” one that tries to change people’s minds and shape the dominant

public’s discourse (Asen & Brouwer, 2001). In their struggles to insert their issues into

the dominant public sphere, counterpublics are attempting to enlarge the “discursive

model of public space” (Benhabib, 1997, p. 85). Counterpublics, such as activists and

social movement organizations, have been recognized to use public relations and issues Unit III Paper Curran 7

management practices to engage public spheres and affect issue outcomes (e.g., Crable &

Vibbert, 1985; Smith & Ferguson, 2010; Weaver & Motion, 2002). (Sommerfeldt, 282).

Without these public figures who are able to transcend the boundaries of the counterpublic and the public sphere, many activist movements would be slow moving or even ineffective as these people play a large role in the publicization of issues related to activist causes and movements.

They are valuable within the activist movement, as they allow movements to have uniformity to some degree and connect movements across geographical and inter-movement ideological boundaries. They are valuable outside of the activist movement as well, as they provide the public with information and resources on these issues.

#TransLivesMatter has been able to promote transgender figures into the realm of the public sphere since its recent inception at the tail end of 2014. The example which first comes to mind is Leelah Alcorn, whose suicide was the basis for beginning the and subsequent movement on Tumblr. While Alcorn’s suicide has prevented her from beginning a public figure in the same way that Laverne Cox is a figure for the transgender rights movement today, she has drawn noticeable attention to transgender rights issues since her suicide began reaching the news.

Due to the fact that Alcorn’s family was altogether unsupportive of her transition and even sent her into often controversial conversion therapy for being transgender, her untimely passing has raised media attention to these issues. In the days following her suicide, news circulated around

Tumblr’s transgender rights community of what had happened. Response to this, and other events like the murders of Jennifer Laude and Lamia Beard, launched the #TransLivesMatter movement on Tumblr. Within a short matter of time all three of these stories begun to gain attention in the eye of the public sphere. Since then, Leelah Alcorn especially, as well as Jennifer

Laude and Lamia Beard, have become figures representing the plight of transgender people in a Unit III Paper Curran 8 society where transgender people are marginalized, persecuted, and even brought to their own death for existing as who they are.

The ability to promote transgender figures into the public sphere in order to discuss issues relevant to transgender people and create a dialogue between the public sphere and the transgender rights movement, or the counterpublic, is a key part of representation for transgender people. While mainstream culture and the media has slowly been moving away from dangerous stereotypes of transgender people, such as Hannibal Lecter, a deranged serial killer whose murdering and mutilating of women is explained as a result of the emotional trauma of being denied for gender reassignment surgery, there is still progress to be made. One of the most important aspects of this is providing representation to transgender people of color. Jen Richards notes that this lack of representation is a catalyst for further marginalization of transgender people by saying:

This lack of funding, the ongoing violence, and the media’s lack of interest is all the

more egregious given the frenzied speculation around Bruce Jenner and the

countless stories on the increase of positive trans visibility due to the show

Transparent, both of which center the experiences of wealthy people who have

spent most of their lives as straight white men. (Richards).

Representation of all people affected by in our society is not only doing justice to all the people who have been affected by this, but it also is important in showing mainstream culture just how far-reaching transphobia is in our society. Through #TransLivesMatter’s ability to be reached by anyone who can connect to the Internet, it plays an important role in diversifying representation of transgender people. Unit III Paper Curran 9

Tied in with representation, one of the most pertinent issues in recent years for the transgender rights movement as well as other activist movements, is focusing on intersectionality, or the idea that gender, race, class, disability, and other characteristics that have been marginalized by society create overlapping systems of discrimination and oppression. To at least some degree, intersectionality in the form of supporting and understanding other activist movements has been part of LGBT rights activism for a long period of its history. Lionel Wright notes this by saying "Referring to the organizations of the black civil rights movement, Frank

Kameny noted: ‘I do not see the NAACP and CORE worrying about which chromosome and gene produced a black skin, or about the possibility of bleaching the Negro.’” While at the beginning intersectionality may not have been a direct focus in LGBT activism, there was acknowledgement of other intersecting movements and how their ideologies and methods could be applied to transgender rights activism and LGB activism.

However, intersectionality has not always been the focus of LGBT activism and in some areas of the movement, it has been completely ignored. Paisley Currah contends that much of the LGBT activist movement has ignored the importance of intersectionality by focusing on stand-alone issues, such as gay marriage as opposed to issues that affect a wider range of LGBT people. Referring to gay marriage as a stand-alone issue, Currah notes its problematic nature by saying “While this strategy may secure rights and benefits for some LGBT families, it has left us isolated and vulnerable to a virulent backlash... The struggle for marriage rights should be part of a larger effort to strengthen the stability and security of diverse households and families." (99).

To focus solely on the issues that affect a portion of LGBT people is to do a disservice to the people who are already marginalized by society for other intersecting elements such as race, class, or disability. Unit III Paper Curran 10

A lack of focus on intersectionality has effects beyond that of proper representation for transgender people of all walks of life, as it can also be dangerous to those who are affected by the issues that are ignored or belittled when intersectionality is not focused on. Richards argues that there is a potentially deliberate misrepresentation of how transgender rights issues affect other marginalized people when she says “Gay and lesbian stories often cite anti-LGBT statistics to promote various agendas, but fail to make explicit the grotesquely disproportionate impact on black and Latina trans women particularly.” Statistically speaking, this includes nearly 90 percent of LGBTQ homicide victims being women of color in 2013, with 72 percent being transgender women according to National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. What is even more alarming however is that 67% of the anti-LGBTQ homicides in 2013 occurred against transgender women of color (Richards).

One of the largest issues faced by transgender people due in part to a lack of focus on intersectionality and inclusivity is trying to maneuver through mainstream society and culture while still representing their cultural and gender identities. Levitt and Ippolito comment on this in their work Being Transgender: Navigating Minority Stressors and Developing Authentic Self-

Presentation with the following: “Individuals who display bicultural competence learn to communicate with those in the dominant culture (in the case of transgender people, the gender normative population) yet to navigate the social and institutional structures of a minority culture as well (e.g., queer communities)." (59). While for transgender people who may fit into dominant culture otherwise, by being white or able-bodied for example, this is enough of a challenge already, it is even more difficult for those who exist in other minority cultures as well. A black transgender person would not only have to communicate with the dominant culture regarding gender, while navigating the queer minority culture, but also have to communicate with a Unit III Paper Curran 11 dominant white supremacist culture while navigating the minority culture of being black. This pressure to communicate with dominant cultures while navigating minority cultures becomes exceedingly more pressured as a person fits into more minority cultures while within a society that marginalizes and discriminates against these cultures.

In #TransLivesMatter brief history as an online activist movement, it appears that there has been a significant attempt to address these issues of intersectionality and inclusivity in the larger contexts of transgender rights activism and LGBT rights activism. When looking at the community of #TransLivesMatter and the information that has been posted under the hashtag, there has been significant posting about multiple issues that affect transgender people navigating multiple minority cultures. This includes information on the murders of transgender POC such as

Jennifer Laude and Lamia Beard, discussions on being disabled and transgender, and other relevant issues. While the issue of focusing on intersectionality and inclusivity for all transgender people is a complex topic and there is no readily identifiable or easy solution for solving the issues that occur when there is a lack of focus on intersectionality, it appears that

#TransLivesMatter is entering the necessary dialogues to confront these issues and begin progressing towards a movement that is truly inclusive.

As an online activist movement, #TransLivesMatter has worked to disseminate information on transgender rights activism and the issues involving to people who otherwise may not have had the resources to access information on transgender rights activism before. This alone helps to dispel the criticisms by people that online activist movements are ineffective due to the inability to have direct action. However, the dialogue #TransLivesMatter creates between previous generations of the transgender activist movement, current transgender activism, and the people who may make up the next generation of transgender activism is the greatest service that Unit III Paper Curran 12

#TransLivesMatter does for transgender activism. The ability to have these dialogues and improve on the way the transgender activism works and what ideologies it chooses to adopt helps to strengthen the movement as a whole and to bring more people into this. We can see this by how #TransLivesMatters online presence is active in adopting public figures for the movement. This in turn helps to reach out to more people and to get more involved in the movement. When a movement like #TransLivesMatter works to include the defining elements of the movement its involved in’s history while adapting these processes and ideologies to improve how they reach out to people, like with the increased focus on intersectionality and inclusivity, the movement becomes strengthened and more effective than it has before. At the same time, the ability to recognize that progress can always be made in a movement is equally important in leaving the future of the activist movement open to people. These ideas, which

#TransLivesMatter all employs, is what makes it as an online activist movement so effective, far- reaching, and progressive in regards to the history of transgender rights activism and LGBT rights activism as a whole. Without these, transgender rights activism would suffer as a whole and it is with the power #TransLivesMatter maintains that ensures the continuation and sustainability of the movement. Unit III Paper Curran 13

Works Cited

Paisley, Currah. “Stepping Back, Looking Outward: Situating Transgender Activism and

Transgender Studies – Kris Hayashi, Matt Richmond, and Susan Stryker Frame The

Movement.” Sexuality Research & Social Policy 5.1 (2008): 93-105. Electronic.

Levitt, Heidi M, and Maria R Ippolito. “Being Transgender: Navigating Minority Stressors and

Developing Authentic Self-Presentation” Psychology of Women Quarterly. 38.1 (2014):

46-64. Electronic.

Richards, Jen. “Op-ed: It’s Time for Trans Lives to Truly Matter to Us All” The Advocate.

February 18th, 2015. Electronic.

Sommerfeldt, Erich J. “The civility of social capital: Public relations in the public sphere, civil

society, and democracy” Public Relations Review. 39 (2013). 280-289. Electronic.

Smith, Lance C, and Richard Q Shin. “Queer Blindfolding: A Case Study on Difference

“Blindness” Toward Persons Who Identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender”

Journal of Homosexuality 61.7 (2014): 940-961. Electronic.

Sullivan, Nikki. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York: New York University

Press, 2003. Electronic.

Whittle, Stephen. “A brief history of transgender issues” The Guardian. June 2nd, 2010.

Electronic.

Wright, Lionel. “The Stonewall Riots – 1969: A Turning Point in the Struggle for Gay and

Lesbian Liberation” Socialism Today No. 40. July 1999. Electronic.