Crossing over, coming out, blending in: A trans interrogation of the closet

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the discursive and material impact of ‘coming out’ on trans (sexual/gendered) identities and bodies. By drawing on the lived experiences of local trans subjects, the centrality of disclosure within larger lbgti discourses on liberation is troubled. Trans lives often run against the grain of a clear demarcation of a public inside and outside and, as this paper demonstrates at the hand of autobiographic narratives and photography, the very position of being trans(sexual/gendered) escapes the delineations of visibility and readability that discourses surrounding the closet largely maintain.By pitting the secrecy of passing (as a cisgendered subject) against the disclosure of ‘coming out’ as trans, the identities of trans men and women are discursively constructed (be it in academic discourses or even in the popular media) as necessarily visible and knowable. This idea is undermined by the actual fact that the successful gender transitioning of a trans subject largely renders their transness invisible. At the same time, emphasis on trans visibility may present a positive move towards lobbying for the equality and freedom of trans people. Yet, the notion of ‘progress’, of a move from concealment to open celebration, can in effect give rise to a teleological conception of full public disclosure that ignores the complexities of trans lives, and the extreme conditions of precarity that they are often subjected to. This paper argues for a conception of ‘being trans’ as something that is neither completely open and visible, nor totally secret, but rather as something that is wrought by continuous processes of concealment and exposure.