ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines and investigates some of the dominant ways in which trans women document and discuss their gender transition online. It includes a close reading of the way in which the trans female vloggers express and claim their gender identity and the meaning ascribed to embodiment and bodily signifiers, sexuality, and race. The chapter focuses on the transitioning technologies trans women pursue, why they pursue them, and the way in which this pursuit and the vloggers' virtual presence seem to be informed by economic inability. Erin, Charlotte, Carolyn, and Diamond present themselves as trans women in various ways, ranging from fierce trans advocates to spectacles, guitar-playing heavy metal girls, and news hostesses. These vloggers multiply the category of trans woman, proliferating representations of strong, agentive, and creative trans women as well as self-sexualized trans women. Many of these radical or materialist feminist theorizations of trans women can be read as fierce defences of female purity against trans/male contamination.
