Moments of shame in the figural history of trans suicide

Abstract

ABSTRACT This is an article about trans suicide – a longstanding consequence of a necropolitical order that perpetuates the disposability of trans life as a strategy of social subjugation and institutional maintenance. Although having become a more widely publicized crisis in recent years, trans suicide is not a new problem. Evidence of trans suicide dates to the early twentieth century, verifying its status as a malady that victimizes both youth and adults, stretches beyond American borders, and populates a range of discourses since well before the popularization of more contemporary identity categories, such as ‘transsexual’ or ‘transgender.’ In this article, I trace the historical circulation of trans suicide, with a primary focus on its movement across U.S. public culture. I show how trans people have long shaped meanings of trans suicide using a variety of communication channels. I argue that recurrent public renderings of trans suicide accrue force as potent articulations of trans shame, which arise directly from embodied experiences of gender dysphoria and other often hidden intersecting systems of oppression that make trans lives less livable. Thus, the figural history of trans suicide is a multi-generational structure of feeling constituted by an ongoing series of moments of shame that have shifted in tandem with evolutions in media culture and changing norms of trans visibility. These moments of shame open possibilities for challenging transnormative logics of representation and dismantling the necropolitical foundations of anti-trans death worlds.