ABSTRACT
Transgender communities have gained significant social recognition in recent years. Alongside this, violence and hate crimes directed towards transgender individuals have also received increasing social, political and media attention. However, less attention has been paid to the ways that transgender people experience and respond to violence in an online context. This chapter addresses the ways in which transgender people experience transphobia within an online setting. This is achieved through presenting empirical data collected from 31 semi-structured interviews with transgender people who live in the United Kingdom. The chapter begins by providing an overview of how trans people use and engage with social media, highlighting the multi-purpose nature of social media for facilitating networking and research. The chapter then addresses violence directly targeting trans people themselves, and also violence targeting other trans people that is witnessed by a larger audience. It is demonstrated that both types of violence negatively impact trans people, although there are differences in the ways trans people respond to these different forms of violence.
