Identity or Solidarity? Trans Affective Publics and Identity Frames of Violence

Abstract

<p>Transgender Day of Remembrance is a key political day of action for the trans movement, both in the USA where it was invented, and elsewhere. I attend to the frames used about violence circulating in—and intensifying—what I call trans affective publics at and around Transgender Day of Remembrance by people and organizations in a “glocal” manner. I address both looser and stable frames of violence around Transgender Day of Remembrance, the most important of which are what I call identity frames of violence. I argue that these identity frames attach transness with vulnerability to violence in a global and unifying way, bypassing intersectional reasons behind the violence, and that frames of violence solidify through circulation. I address the adaptation of these frames in Europe and Finland, as well as alternative rhetoric about the violence, which shakes these solidified frames. I propose that this alternative framing appeals to a reflective form of solidarity, inviting coalition politics between trans and sex workers movements as well as (other) feminists and a re-thinking of both the causes of violence and the “we” to which one is invited to feel responsibility to act in solidarity, in opposing exclusions and oppression.</p>