The Promise and Peril of Trans Men’s Online DIY Community Spaces

Abstract

Drawing parallels to the informal education and structure of do-it-yourself (DIY) maker ethos, this autoethnographic article examines how online community spaces, including social media and social networking platforms, serve trans men as personal learning environments in which to form personal learning networks for the purposes of creating DIY maker communities. Members of these communities share resources and information concerning social and medical transition to make their own lives and the lives of others more livable. At the same time, these trans communities paradoxically benefit from and are put in peril by the visibility of members and the sensitive information they share due to the semipublic nature of online social networking.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Prior to the activism of such notable trans figures as Sandy Stone and Lou Sullivan, who challenged the medical establishment’s criteria for gender affirmation health care during the 1970s and 1980s, medical transition was believed to serve only those trans people who identified within a gender binary and also as heterosexual. Today, trans-related health care is understood as beneficial to both binary and nonbinary trans people of any sexual identity.

2 Stealth refers to not disclosing one’s status as a trans person and instead blending into cisgender society, being read and recognized as a cis person.

3 Terminology is troublesome at times because I have always identified as a man, even if that was not the term used. However, until a little after I started medical transition, people read my body and my identification in a variety of ways. I use the term “nonbinary lesbian” instead of “transgender lesbian” here because transgender previously did not have its current use and instead was the term for what is now called nonbinary; and at the time that I was teaching, up until medical transition, I would use the label of “lesbian” to simplify my identification for others.