About

I believe that the widely cited sentiment that political and visual cultures have reached a transgender tipping point is a reflection less of absolute numbers of increased trans representation and more of the sense of transness as bubbling up and boiling over, as excessive and seeping into every nook and cranny of media.1 This moment might be understood as the riotous state of trans visual culture expanding en masse, with a cacophony of disputes, settling of scores, and hectic jostling of bodies. In 2021, one can hardly watch or keep track of all forms of trans media: it consists of both the undercommons and the commercial mainstream, the opaque and the seemingly transparent.2 I want to claim the current riotous state of trans visual culture then, in the sense of unruly personages in series; unrestrained storylines in film; lively presences on television; loud subcultures on Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, and other social media platforms; and vivid and varied appearances in mass media, indie, arthouse, and grimy lowbrow. The public disorder caused by trans media and visual culture cannot be tamed or harnessed into understanding by any particular methodological or disciplinary approach. Hence, I argue that attending to the formal qualities—and not just the representational quality—of the riotous state of trans media would be a first step in welding trans politics and trans lives to a way of doing media studies.