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‘Trans Politics and the Digital’ will feature talks by Genevieve Clifford and Dr Ninian Frenguelli from Swansea University. The event will consist of two talks followed by a discussion, bringing the presentations into conversation with one another and considering directions for future research in this area.
1. Genevieve Clifford - Digital Transgender Materialism: Experiences of digital poverty for transgender people in Wales
The Welsh Government has moved from a solely capabilities-based approach to measuring digital inequality to one that incorporates political, social, and economic factors through the adoption of the Welsh Minimum Digital Living Standard. Though this welcome and mirrors wider work in digital inequalities research (where it is often termed digital poverty), it is the Welsh Government’s selection of households with children as unit of analysis that is of concern, as it risks excluding those who do not fit within cisheteropatriarchal familial structures.
Here I wish to focus on transgender individuals as those likely to be excluded from this research, especially given the prevalence of non-familial social reproduction amongst such subalternised individuals (e.g., in mutual aid or kinship organisations) and the importance digital technologies play in realising transition and the construction of counterpower. This latter point is especially important, a lack of material access to digital technology can mean the lack of self-realisation in times of compulsory computing.
2. Dr Ninian Frenguelli -The radicalisation of “anti-gender” rhetoric on extreme right websites: Antisemitism and transphobia as natural bedfellows
“Anti-gender” movements see “gender” as a threat to society. While the main tenets of “anti-gender” movements — reduced rights for trans people and strict enforcement of gender boundaries — are also held by the extreme right, “anti-gender” movements emerged separately from extreme right movements and are distinct from them. Despite this, the rhetoric of “anti-gender” movements has spread to the extreme right. This talk covers my research into “anti-gender” beliefs within the extreme right using a content analysis of 13 websites identified via hyperlink network analysis of one section of the extreme right ecosystem. My research found that extreme right websites discussed gender very little, but where they did, they used the rhetoric of “anti-gender” campaigns. The extreme right incorporated “anti-gender” rhetoric into their existing beliefs, radicalising “anti-gender” rhetoric to support neo-Nazi and white supremacist narratives. Neo-Nazi groups understood gender as the latest phase in a Jewish conspiracy against the west. This radicalised rhetoric shows the hegemonic capabilities of “anti-gender” campaigns and presents a clear risk to both Jewish and trans people who are targeted by these narratives.