Transphobia Speaks in the Voice of Surveillance Capitalism
It believes it knows, and can shape, who we are and what we’ll do
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, How will the internet change everything, and by the way, what is the internet? was a hot topic that inflected academic and popular discourse.
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 Explain transsexualism and Explain the internet were replaced by the trope of Trans people are finding support online — should they?!?!
I was about 20, and I didn’t know how to help her ask a different question. I was not myself a social…
