Towards trans prosperity

Historically, cis suprematism has worked as a mechanism to westernise bodies and knowledge, installing regulations that reinforce patriarchal domination practices and global subalternisation, such as the exploitation of cisgender women for consumption and sociability, as a transactional currency or as a device to mitigate disputes over the advance of colonial forces, as in the case of indigenous societies in African, Latin American regions and Asian territories, and to erase pre-colonial non-binary gender expressions. 

Currently, trans, gender diverse and intersex people’s lived experience is marked by colonial powers, which have mutated their original forms. For the Argentine activist, psychologist and travesti epistemologist Marlene Wayar, this translates into what she calls as the ''trans genocide'' a process of annihilation of trans subjectivities, due to the effects of legal isolation, medical pathologisation, and religious demonisation; this triangulation has materially informed economic injustice in trans communities and, consequently, the precarisation of trans lives, which is adjacent to the pervasive effects of cisgender fundamentalism (the dehumanization of of those rendered as ‘others’ through the lens of biological and behavioral essentialism) and what could be described as a necropolitical ciscoloniality project. 

Unlike the mainstream cis LGB movements, the global trans movement is a class struggle movement, working to mitigate the effects of communal poverty. Poverty as a collateral effect of colonialism serves as a filter regulating the conditions of social mobility, intergenerationally and also, in inter-identitarian traditions. Accessing rights constitutes a gateway to economic justice, which enables the possibility to move away  from the necropolitical conditioning and restricting agency on the basis of gender, race and sexual orientation in capitalism. Following the words of Rasheeda Phillips, U.S. based artist, political organiser and member of the Black Quantum Futurism collective, in order to move towards freedom, we must understand the conditions of confinement, as well as strategising to subvert these time-constrained consequences.

In the face of this maelstrom, how can we imagine the future, predict it and enunciate it from our trans-eco & technofeminist alliances? How can we articulate our alliances in the present time and strengthen them to build foundations facilitating equal access and opportunities? How can we intentionally honor those bodies that have historically been subsumed by coloniality and strive to connect our movements? How do we collaborate to place trans voices at the centre, to take them to the next level? 

In trans remembrance month celebrated in November, GenderIT honours the contributions of trans populations who write about their present time. This edition encompasses the fused multiverses coexisting among trans populations, across the Latin American Global South, also known by the Kuna peoples as Abya Yala. From visual arts to political science, this writing collection maps and highlights best practices engaging with technology as a tool for political emancipation, autonomy and self-determination. The solutions to our problems are multilateral; possibility isn’t a straight line, and it  is vital to connect and allow for multiple perspectives. 

In the inaugural text, Ventura Profana, a Brazilian artist and writer, narrates an Afrofuturist manifesto in ''Theology of Transmutation,'' which engages trans epistemology and theological studies to examine the colonial legacies and historical choreographies of the white supremacist matrix; Ventura explores the historical instrumentalisation of Christianity as a device for the maintenance of whiteness. In her artistic practice, involving digital collage, she poetically rehearses the vibrancy and technological prosperity of Afro-Travesti worlds.

• Sol Ámbar Sánchez Latorre, sociologist, writer and activist, writes about the progress of juridicial processes in Colombia, expanding on the scope of communications and digital media facilitating political mobilisation for trans, travesti and non-binary people; in her writing, she interrogates the realm of representation and exposes the ways in which violence is replicated.

• Ari Vera Morales, Mexican trans activist and ILGA World board member, narrates the processes of capacity building which enable the labour and technological inclusion of trans and gender diverse people in Mexico, and how transnational companies have formed alliances to offer clear paths towards financial autonomy and education in digital tools. 

• Vita Evangelista, a non-binary new media artist, essays a poetic reflection on geolocation, the city of São Paulo, and their experience as a migrant. This autoethnographic essay, deployed between art and queer theory, explores the micro-scenarios of late capitalism in São Paulo as symptoms of cross-cutting regional politics.

• Finally, Tatiana Buelvas Valdiris, an expert consultant in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, writes from the perspective of cis-trans alliances, and how civil society organisations, the private sector, and academia can establish connections to enable labor inclusion and leadership. 

Building socioeconomic infrastructures and developing communal agency is possible as long as we engage in feminist conversations. To activate thriving temporalities and envision the future, we need to be able to render the present time and build it in alliances, which translates into caretaking, capacity building, and creating professional pathways engaged with diversity. Technology is the way.