The return of the trans underground

In the aboriginal 1970s, agelong earlier societal media and much than a decennary earlier the earliest net forums, a pistillate named Peggie Ames became a quality rolodex for trans women successful New York state.

Born successful Buffalo, Ames spent years moving for cheery rights organizations successful the agrarian and suburban areas of Western New York. In the days earlier the internet, it wasn’t casual to conscionable different trans folks extracurricular the densely populated boroughs of New York City. But Ames had built an extended societal web of trans women and cis allies done her enactment with the Erickson Educational Foundation, which funded probe connected trans aesculapian care, and the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, a section offshoot of the pre-Stonewall-era cheery rights group of the aforesaid name.

After she was forcibly outed successful 1973, Ames became 1 of the comparatively fewer openly transsexual women with a nationalist illustration astatine the time. In the pre-internet days, this made her idiosyncratic that trans women turned to successful the hopes of reaching others similar them. By the extremity of the decade, Ames estimated that she knew astir 100 different trans radical successful the Western New York country alone. As a nationalist figure, she saw it arsenic her work to assistance link the scattered members of her community.

Ames was 1 of respective trans women who ran underground trans societal networks similar this successful the ’70s and ’80s. It worked similar this: A well-connected and much publically disposable trans pistillate would person letters from different trans radical from astir the country. She would past excavation done her small achromatic publication and constitute backmost to the sender, including interaction accusation for different trans radical she had antecedently connected with. At a clip erstwhile galore trans radical were inactive closeted and isolated, these advertisement hoc pen pal networks were a lifeline.

This exemplary of trans activism seems quaint compared to the Extremely Online communities of today. Even the presumption trans radical usage to notation to themselves person changed — archetypal adopting “transgender,” with immoderate much precocious reclaiming “transsexual” to stress the worldly conditions of surviving successful a trans body. 

This intentional usage of “transsexual” is, successful part, a rejection of the utopian, assimilationist individuality politics that dominated the second fractional of the erstwhile decade. With an detonation of online societal media, argumentation wins, and glossy mag covers featuring stars similar Laverne Cox, the 2010s saw trans individuality and visibility go the governmental spearhead of a supposedly inevitable progressive displacement for LGBTQ rights, promising an extremity to the centuries of favoritism and closeted shame that had preceded it.

Of course, we each cognize what happened next.

The obsessive run to blame trans radical for the sidesplitting of Charlie Kirk is conscionable the latest and astir utmost section of the anti-trans backlash that has been intensifying for years — creeping from the fixations of D-list celebrities and doxxing forums like Kiwi Farms to a mainstream fascist question supported by the highest levels of government. In conscionable a fewer abbreviated decades, trans radical went from surviving successful comparative obscurity to a scapegoat of the reactionary right, absurdly blamed for weapon unit they’re statistically improbable to commit and subjected to bad-faith media “debates” and discriminatory laws challenging their close to beryllium successful public. For many, it’s an intolerable situation: erstwhile believing the arc of past to beryllium bending successful their favor, countless trans radical present unrecorded retired their lives publically online astatine the precise infinitesimal that an unhinged authoritarian surveillance authorities has declared them nationalist enemies and targeted them for elimination.

At the aforesaid time, societal media — once hailed arsenic the instrumentality of 21st-century revolutionaries — has been transformed into a limb of surveillance and distraction. Instead of organizing and gathering governmental powerfulness successful our communities, galore of america find ourselves doomscrolling done blistery takes connected algorithmic hamster wheels owned by billionaire reprobates similar Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

AI-powered societal media surveillance has been supercharged nether Donald Trump, and fixed his administration’s crusade against trans people, it’s not hard to bash the math. According to nationalist records, the Trump medication has contracted with astatine slightest 4 different AI-driven surveillance companies that analyse societal media posts and assertion the quality to execute “sentiment & emotion analysis” for national agencies similar ICE. Even offline, the emergence of facial recognition combined with transphobic policing of nationalist spaces similar bathrooms creates caller risks for trans radical and anyone else whose quality doesn’t conform to gendered norms. And of course, immoderate trans idiosyncratic posting oregon simply existing online ever risks breaking containment and drafting the attraction of the right-wing Griftosphere, resulting in doxxing oregon worse.

Still, I don’t spot this arsenic a infinitesimal to despair — it’s simply a motion to alteration tactics.

The much I work astir radical similar Peggie Ames, the much I deliberation it’s clip for america to inquire whether the nationalist net has outlived its usefulness arsenic our superior instrumentality for governmental activism — trans oregon otherwise. I don’t mean that we should each propulsion distant our phones and spell backmost into the closet, but alternatively reconsider the logic that truthful overmuch of our lives needs to unfold implicit nationalist networks. If queer and trans folks are going to survive, we’ll request to erstwhile again clasp the underground, and larn erstwhile to beryllium disposable and erstwhile to unopen the fuck up.

In Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices, Toby Beauchamp outlines the agelong past of authorities surveillance arsenic a instrumentality for policing the bodies of trans and gender-nonconforming people. The word “going stealth” is the long-standing signifier of trans radical selectively obscuring their transsexual presumption — not arsenic a signifier of deception but successful bid to regain immoderate level of power implicit their lives and safety, knowing that cleanable obscurity is usually impossible. Beauchamp illustrates this signifier arsenic a effect to a nine wherever suspicion and guilt are often preemptively assigned to radical whose bodies are perceived arsenic disabled, non-white, oregon gender-transgressive. (He recalls however successful the contiguous aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting, for example, constabulary were called to analyse a “suspicious” idiosyncratic connected a schoolhouse field adjacent Detroit, Michigan, who was described arsenic a antheral wearing a blonde wig and makeup.) More recently, the Trump medication ramped up its efforts to nullify sex marker changes connected IDs similar passports, making it truthful the accusation connected a person’s documents doesn’t lucifer up with their appearance. The extremity of this is crystal clear: to marque a person’s transsexual presumption legible, and frankincense taxable to favoritism by agents of authorities unit successful airports, bathrooms, and anyplace other policing is present. 

These are conscionable a fewer examples of wherefore trans radical often conception their full lives astir navigating the state’s gaze. And it shouldn’t beryllium surprising, fixed this reality, that much trans radical are present choosing to instrumentality backmost power and clasp lifestyles that deprioritize online visibility successful favour of idiosyncratic safety.

This attack doesn’t person to beryllium each oregon nothing. In a recent essay, trans writer Margaret Killjoy coins the word “demiground” to picture what a post-internet hybrid activism mightiness look like. The thought of this paradigm is to compartmentalize your online / offline beingness into aggregate discrete boxes, each with varying degrees of visibility and measured risk. Your “A” beingness includes each your societal media with your astir “palatable” / non-spicy persona, providing screen for your “B” and “C” lives, which prioritize in-person connection and unfold with antithetic levels of nationalist obscurity (and sometimes legality).

The extremity isn’t to retreat from online spaces and springiness fascists what they want, but to make a much disciplined level of power implicit your integer footprint. “In bid to populate the demiground, we request to marque it arsenic inviting arsenic possible,” Killjoy writes. “It needs to beryllium wide that not lone is determination governmental worth successful being obscure to the state, but that it is besides a amended and much fulfilling mode to live.”

This thought is not new, and has been wide practiced by radical who unrecorded successful a precarious narration to authorities violence, similar enactment workers. I’ve seen this “hybrid” attack manifesting successful my ain queer and trans societal circles arsenic an insistence connected moving much discussions to end-to-end encrypted platforms similar Signal (or for little risky chats, server-based platforms similar Discord, which tin beryllium taxable to court subpoenas). But much important than the tools themselves is the mindset that determines however and erstwhile they’re used. It mightiness beryllium a bully thought to regularly cheque successful with your radical via encrypted radical chats, Discord calls, oregon adjacent Bluesky. But we can’t ever fto them capable successful for clip spent organizing face-to-face with neighbors. 

In different words, we should beryllium reasoning of online tools arsenic a means of facilitating — and not replacing — the benignant of transportation and section organizing that assistance queer and trans radical survive.

While talking astir immoderate circumstantial efforts successful item would interruption the aforementioned aureate regularisation (Shut The Fuck Up), suffice it to accidental that the dicier the governmental concern gets for trans radical and different marginalized folks, the much endurance enactment volition request to beryllium carried retired successful the underground. Localized networks that assistance trans radical entree aesculapian care, combat discrimination, and relocate distant from states hostile to their lives already exist. By taking an “if you request to know, you know” attack to these activities — particularly erstwhile they beryllium successful grey areas of the law, similar abortion — we tin make societal buffers that defy the regard of the authorities and the insatiable viral hunger of firm net platforms.

The indispensable activism being done successful the underground and its assorted levels of online / offline assemblage is not meant to beryllium glamorous. It’s not “content” to beryllium shared by influencers arsenic a slickly edited TikTok, oregon an edgy tweet, oregon an Instagram descent deck. It’s the un-monetizeable and profoundly unsexy enactment done by radical similar Peggie Ames, who saw it arsenic her work to assistance radical similar her link and signifier extracurricular of the spaces that scorned and rejected them. As a trans lesbian, Peggie had struggled to beryllium accepted by galore cis feminists, and was expelled from respective lesbian groups successful the Buffalo area, wherever her mannerisms and much “traditional” benignant of feminine formal were ruthlessly scrutinized arsenic “evidence” that she was truly a man. At the aforesaid time, her idiosyncratic connections and agelong past of activism made her a benignant of section personage successful the LGBTQ community, giving her a unsocial accidental to assistance unite the disparate trans assemblage successful the days earlier the internet.

This is not to understate the relation that online communities — and societal media successful peculiar — played successful uniting galore trans people. Once isolated and confused, the emergence of the net empowered trans younker and adults to sanction and explicate long-suppressed feelings by talking to others similar them. While right-wing reactionaries manufactured motivation panics astir a “social contagion” turning our kids trans, it wasn’t the fig of trans radical that had grown — it was the scope of light-speed connection networks that tin amusement them they’re not alone. 

Even still, online societal networks are conscionable a tool, and tools request to beryllium perpetually reevaluated to marque definite they’re inactive serving our needs. The advertisement hoc networks created by trans women similar Peggie Ames whitethorn not beryllium a blueprint for trans liberation successful 2025. But they are a reminder that queer and trans radical person ever recovered ways to past successful the underground — and the assorted shades of grey that beryllium successful between.