The Transgender Flipping Point: How Trans Instagrammers Flip the Script on Identity

Since Time magazine’s now iconic 2014 cover story featuring trans actress Laverne Cox proclaimed the contemporary moment ‘The Transgender Tipping Point’, there has been much debate about recent proliferation of representations across all media sectors. Trans scholars, culture producers, artists, and activists have argued that this is not only a misconception, but it occludes corpus visual made by for producers reflecting wider diversity experiences do readily reflect dominant cultural paradigms. Defined as self-image with hand-held mobile device shared via social platforms, selfie facilitated self-imaging becoming ubiquitous part globally networked life. Beyond this, selfies image-making practices enabled otherwise representationally marginalized constituencies to insert self-representations into culture. A close look at prolific practice Black British, gender-non-conforming, trans-femme performance artist Travis Alabanza reveals their use Instagram be critical intervention In complex, expansive, intersectional identity, Alabanza’s oeuvre produces new exemplars defy stereotypes erasures produced while simultaneously challenging our previously held conceptions identity self-portraiture. work decolonizes relationship between subject portrait, encouraging viewers consider complex dialectical images, aesthetics, communication performativity, gender, racialization, class, subcultural affiliations.