ABSTRACT
What does technology mean in the everyday lives of young trans-identified individuals in the USA? Is technology the collection of products they use to present their gender to the world, or does it refer to the internet – the dominant resource they make use of to learn about non-normative gender practices? In this small study of biological females in their twenties, who identify as ‘differently gendered’ trans individuals, the technology of being ‘trans’ comprises the information they gather so obsessively, the tools they use to construct their outward appearance, their methods of sexual practice, the medical resources they tap into to facilitate their existence in the space between male and female, and all of the practices that have brought them to their current identity. While surgical procedures have been a focal point in discourse about the transgender community by outsiders and much energy has been spent critiquing this surgery-driven conception of transgender individuals, less attention has been given to the consumption of normatively defined masculine signifiers by transmen. 1 In this chapter, we explore the production of trans subjectivities through the use of technologies that code bodies male and masculine.
