“Queering the internet”: The importance of transgender online spaces in South Africa

I started transitioning in 2020 during the Covid19 pandemic. At the time, I was living with my parents and had not come out to them as transgender. Social media allowed me to connect with a network of other trans people in South Africa going through similar experiences. Other trans-feminine people provided resources for starting hormone replacement therapy, while trans masculine people shared their old clothing with me. The community I found was crucial to keeping the fragile pieces of my life together. Without them, the journey to discovering my gender and identity would have been plagued with difficulties.

Online spaces have always served as a medium for transgender people to discover more about their identities. Many sites are trans-friendly, and these sites do not frame trans identity as deviant or sensationalised. In South Africa, it was difficult to escape misrepresentations about trans identity. However, the internet provided a vital space for many transgender people like myself to engage with their gender identity.

A brief history of trans forums in South Africa

“Up until roughly 2007, we were using forum-based spaces to connect with other queer people and other trans folk,” says Dr Nyx McLean (they/them), a research associate at Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies. As a result, forums played a significant role in enabling virtual trans communities.

Gender DynamiX (GDX), a public benefit organisation established in 2005 that focuses on the transgender community, used to run online forums catering for the online community. The forums are defunct now, but the research of Professor Jeanne Prinsloo, Professor Emeritus at Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies, provides a snapshot of the interactions. GDX hosted two forums: Girl Talk for transfeminine people and Boy Talk for trans masculine people.

The content of the forums focused on discussing significant milestones trans people achieve in the process of transitioning, such as starting hormones or successfully changing their name or gender marker. In addition, many of the posts dealt with providing mutual aid resources or simply holding space for the trials and tribulations of the trans experience. 

While the content of the forums was similar,  there was a notable difference between Girl Talk and Boy Talk. Much of this can be attributed to the expectations of performing specific femininity or masculinity. Boy Talk featured short, curt posts that were largely devoid of complex emotions. Girl Talk, however, had more elaborate discussions and debates while having detailed disclosure of emotions. In addition, Girl Talk featured more conversations about the challenges of transitioning and negotiating the transphobic harassment trans femmes experience in South Africa.  

The brief amount of research into the GDX spaces is a time capsule of how trans people used to engage with the internet. The engagement was primarily through a lens of binary trans identity. Girl Talk and Boy Talk featured very little in the way of non-binary inclusion. Noah Lubinsky (they/he), a MA candidate at the University of Witwatersrand who has researched trans identity in South Africa, notes that “a lot of early online spaces were mediated and moderated by medicalisation.” Access to the spaces depended on cis therapists invested in a diagnostic understanding of trans identity. As the spaces developed, mainly due to social media, the medicalisation model began to drop away.

The rise of social media 

The rise of social media ended the dependence on online forums. Facebook allowed for an integration of communities in the sense that you could have different aspects of your life on the same platform. One of the significant benefits of Facebook over an online messaging board was the ability to curate what appeared on your feed. 

However, the biggest attraction of Facebook for members of the trans community was the ability to be invisible. “You could covertly engage with trans communities or content but easily dismiss it when being surveilled by a family member or co-worker,” says Dr McLean. Unlike forums, Facebook proved to be safer in that regard.

The rise of Facebook also disrupted the control that binary trans identity had over online spaces. GenderQueer South Africa, one of the first non-binary Facebook groups in South Africa was founded in 2015. The group was specifically to fill a void concerning online spaces for non-binary people. The group was designed to be a virtual space for non-binary folk to share their experiences in a safe space. 

In the age of social media, non-binary spaces are given more freedom to exist as the hegemonic power relations that previously controlled access are less pervasive. As a result, online trans communities can be a liberating experience as they disrupt the pathologisation of trans identity within the broader media environment.

The public aspect of social media also became vitally crucial for creating the trans community. Dr McLean argues that the public can be a performative space;  it serves as an affirmation of the self. Lubinsky, however, raises a counterpoint that social media played an essential role in changing the production of South African trans content.

Before social media, the tabloid press of the time had an obscene fascination with trans identity. Publications like Golden City Post and Drum Magazine regularly published sensationalist and salacious articles about trans people. “Early trans representation[s] were spectacles for viewership,” says Lubinsky, “trans people would be brought onto shows like The Felicia Show [the South African equivalent of The Oprah Winfrey Show] for the spectacle.”

There are now several South African trans content creators making South African trans content and building a community around that content. For instance, Zoey Black (she/her) creates daily vlogs on Youtube, or Gabe Gabriel (they/them), who does their weekly testosterone shot live on Instagram. “There is a value to trans people living their lives authentically and presenting it online,” says Lubinsky. They emphasise how these public performances allow the broader community to see a trans person living a rich, full life. “It has a lot of value in normalising the conversation about trans identity,” they say. 

An inclusive critique of online trans identity

The physical world informs the digital. It is impossible to separate the two as your lived experiences influence your online personas. For instance, take the 2012 Joburg Pride – it was a space dominated by white people. It did not account for hate crimes against queer black people, which is why queer black people asked for space to acknowledge hate crimes. The white organisers were offended by this request. These tensions translate into digital space.

“The domination of queer spaces by white people has a large effect on how online spaces are constituted,” says Dr McLean. However, we also need to consider the structural inequalities within the digital divide relating to access to technology or having the luxury of time to be online. These all influence who is allowed access to specific spaces. The result is that online spaces tend to be constituted of white middle-class people who view inclusivity as a check-box.

Many online trans support spaces are inclusive on paper as they don’t discriminate against who is accessing the groups. However, these groups often lack actual measures for true inclusivity. “There needs to be more work done to approach these online communities from an intersectional perspective and include a diversity of experiences,” says Dr McLean.

Lubinsky highlights how white trans identity can often gatekeep access to online spaces based on adherence to prescriptive gender norms. “When your identity becomes extremely precious to you,” they say, “You’re at this intersection of whiteness where you gatekeep spaces to validate your identity as an oppressed person.” As a result, there is a tendency to highlight your oppression over and above any joy experienced by others.

Importance of online spaces

Virtual spaces are essential sites of trans community building because of the lack of visibility for trans people. The internet is safer for the trans community as offline spaces are frequently hostile to trans people. In 2021, South Africa experienced a spree of transphobic hate crimes in a year in which the global rate for trans hate crimes increased dramatically.

Trans people are left out of the national conversation in South Africa. For example, they are excluded from the national census due to negligence in developing questions to gather data on trans and queer identity, resulting in legislators and policymakers ignoring the needs of trans people. The online sphere, however, is relentlessly obsessed with transgender people. It is impossible to go a week without a South African public figure tweeting disparaging remarks about trans identity or regurgitating the arguments made by TERFs about trans women and bathroom access.

On the other hand, online spaces also allow trans people to create user-generated content to define their narratives. A critical component of this is the designing of counter-narratives to transphobia. For instance, earlier in May, several public figures tweeted critiques of school guidelines to introduce gender-neutral bathrooms to schools where reasonably possible. The opposition fixated on red herrings about sexual predators, while trans Twitter users in South Africa spoke candidly about their negative experiences with bathroom access. The counter-narrative humanised the trans experience while showing the backlash for what it was: the transphobic ramblings of reactionary politicians.

Through the internet, trans people can create communities in which they can joyfully connect with people who care about them. “Social media enables heightened visibility,” says Lubinsky, “The creation of online communities leads to improved communication of trans issues.”

This increased visibility creates a false perception that trans people are overly represented in society. “There is a belief that there is a surge in trans [people] when we now have access to spaces where our voices and our sense of selves can be presented,” says Dr McLean. However, that is not the case, as trans people are no longer relying on media companies like Netflix to tell their stories, especially given how Netflix has placed transphobic content creation front and centre with the latest Ricky Gervais special.

Dr McLean’s research has shown that many people seek out online trans communities in South Africa for rest. “A lot of people go into these spaces as a space of rest and recovery and to reorganise themselves to face the day,” says Dr McLean. Given the state of the world and local politics, people deserve to have an oasis where they can feel safe and can let adherence to gender normativity go. 

“These spaces give trans people joy, and they deserve to experience joy. People must stop trying to take that away from them,” says Dr McLean.