ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I depart from the larger empirical study to consider more explicitly the intersection of trans of colour experiences as well as a decolonization of trans voices. Here, I provide a glimpse at moments of trans expression that contribute to trans onto-epistemologies from the pilot phase of my empirical study, from a music video by SOPHIE (a musician, producer, and trans woman), as well as from the ArtHoe Collective Instagram account. These moments contribute to a critical trans reading of verbal, textual, and visual expressions of self that, counter mass media (mis)representations of trans people and make spaces for trans folks to speak back. The heterotopic space of the washroom now extends to other online self-made community spaces built for and by trans and gender-diverse or queer youth of colour. These artists entered their photographic multimedia pieces into a curated collection online under the theme selfie that I conceptualize via a Foucauldian framework of writing of the self. The concept of disidentification also informs my analysis; disidentification complicates trans-ing as neither a rejection of nor complicity with gendered and raced norms, but an active critical stance that has the potential to be rendered intelligible as well as unintelligible in self-publishing accounts of subjectivity. This visual analysis informs pedagogical practices in gender expansive and trans affirmative education frameworks by not only centring trans self-expression but also de-centring gendered and raced norms. Here I want to highlight how heterotopic spaces allow for temporary but productive examinations into self-understandings of gender, where institutional discourses inhibit not only the recognition of trans or gender-diverse youth but also foreclose the available terms of recognition for their own sense of gendered subjectivity with dire consequences for securing livable lives.
