Negotiating trans visibility: identity, hostility and self-representation among trans influencers on YouTube

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how trans influencers narrate and negotiate identity and visibility on YouTube, a platform where trans people may find recognition and community but also encounter hostility. The study focuses on four trans influencers whose YouTube content addresses transition, gender identity, public visibility and experiences of transphobia. Using thematic narrative analysis, the thesis explores how their narratives construct meanings around visibility, passing, hostility, community and self-representation. The analysis shows that online trans visibility is deeply ambivalent. YouTube enables trans influencers to build community, produce self-authored representations of gender and offer recognition to other trans people. At the same time, visibility exposes them to transphobic hostility, audience expectations and pressure to perform gender roles in ways that are recognisable and acceptable to cisgender viewers. The thesis identifies five central themes: passing and gender legibility; transphobic hostility as anticipated and structural; community and strategies for managing visibility; identity as an ongoing process; and the conditions under which visibility can become partly self-determined. The thesis argues that trans influencers do not simply become visible online; they actively negotiate the terms of that visibility. Their narratives position visibility as both a source of empowerment and a site of vulnerability, responsibility and resistance.