“Technology is anything that extends your agency,” posits Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone, a foundational trans research pioneer and digital efficiency artist included in Trans Applied sciences, a brand new guide from MIT Press written by trans tutorial Oliver Haimson. Know-how, then, is a close to boundless technique to intervene within the challenges of daily life, to make it higher. However what occurs when these in energy attempt to dictate these phrases, and try to make use of expertise to strip particular person company?
As an professional in trans research, social computing and social media, and what is named human-computer interplay, Haimson poses the idea of “technological trans care,” or the act of trans communities and allies “creating innovative technological mechanisms to help address the needs and challenges that they and their communities face.” And if this sounds extra related to our present political actuality than ever earlier than, you would be proper on the cash.
Haimson is an assistant professor on the College of Michigan College of Info, director of the Group Analysis on Identification and Know-how (CRIT) Lab, and a Senior Fellow on the Middle for Utilized Transgender Research. The genesis of Trans Applied sciences got here from the intersection of those scholarly and lived experiences: The repurposed and self-constructed on-line worlds that trans communities trend for themselves with a purpose to navigate a hostile social actuality. Boards, Tumblr blogs, Discord servers, and even wholly authentic platforms current the complexities and ambiguities of the trans expertise in a digital atmosphere typically fixated on strict gender binaries.
However, in making an attempt to doc these digital environments, Haimson shortly realized the time period “trans tech” may lengthen far past these networking instruments. Of their analysis, for instance, Haimson’s workforce discovered that almost all of trans applied sciences had been created for useful resource gathering and the sharing of neighborhood information — contemplate digital companies like anti-trans laws trackers, databases of LGBTQ-inclusive healthcare suppliers, or maps of queer-friendly companies and job boards. Different examples expanded to hotlines, peer help networks, plug-ins, and even video video games. There’s additionally expertise that is not precisely “transed,” as the educational explains, however that inherently impacts trans folks, like biometric instruments (Face ID and filters), ride-sharing apps, and on-line credit score platforms.
“Most technology responds to fairly mundane problems,” writes Haimson. “Problems that are rarely critically related to their creators’ identities and life chances. With trans technology, though, technological innovations are frequently created in direct response to the oppressive conditions trans people face in the social, legal, and medical spheres: transphobia, violence, antitrans legislation, difficulty identifying supportive resources, and lack of access to medical care.”
Haimson describes trans tech as encompassing each expertise designed with trans folks on the heart, in addition to advances that reply to an more and more bigoted use of expertise’s energy (e.g., the present iteration of X as a locus of transphobic sentiment). With its earliest definition conceived of in 2019, an extension of decades-long queer idea and follow, trans expertise is bearing added significance in 2025, when the world appears to be taking a rightward shift and misinformation is extra weaponized than ever.
Central to the guide’s introduction, Haimson lays out this politically life-threatening actuality: In 2023, the interval that outlined the tail-end of his workforce’s analysis, 420 trans folks had been reportedly murdered amid rising violence, financial instability, and well being precarity — take into account, these numbers are sometimes vastly undercounted. Within the yr between the guide’s closing edits and its upcoming launch, these statistics have not a lot improved. In 2024, 350 trans and gender-expansive people had been murdered globally and 533 anti-LGBTQ payments had been launched in U.S. state legislatures, alone. President Donald Trump usually takes purpose at “gender ideology extremism” and is shifting to erase LGBTQ sources, data, and historical past from federal web sites.
Trump’s technological allies have provided little resistance; extra typically, help. Elon Musk, multi-billionaire and now chief of DOGE, has taken over federal applied sciences within the identify of an anti-woke, anti-fraud agenda. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, repealed his firm’s DEI commitments and hateful conduct insurance policies — a transfer that can definitely result in an increase in on-line hate and harassment. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has funneled money into Trump’s push for energy.
Mashable spoke to Haimson within the weeks earlier than Trans Applied sciences’ debut, because the federal authorities slashed gender-affirming care and inclusive hiring practices — together with a devastating pause on federal tutorial funding through the Nationwide Science Basis, of which Haimson’s workforce receives help — and simply as federal courts started slowing down the brand new administrations’ anti-trans orders.
Might trans tech be one other software to battle again?
Mashable: You started your analysis and the intensive interviewing course of that makes up the majority of this guide in 2021, following a surge of anti-trans laws. How did that affect this work and what has modified?
Haimson: Once I was first writing the guide as all of this anti-trans laws was taking place throughout the nation, beginning in Texas and Florida and Idaho, trans folks had been indignant. I used to be capable of speak about all of those trans applied sciences that happened in response to that local weather.
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We’re on this new second, the place persons are feeling very scared, very indignant. I believe that plenty of the issues I discovered that had been taking place a pair years in the past, the place folks had been creating these actually essential applied sciences to reply to that second, we will see once more. The one factor that’s fairly totally different now’s that we have at all times considered how we are able to enhance mainstream platforms, like Instagram (owned by Meta). ‘How can we make that extra inclusive?’
Meta appeared on board with that for many of the years I have been doing analysis on this house, after which it was only recently that Zuckerberg got here out and altered his orientation completely. In order that’s not a precedence for mainstream platforms — they haven’t any intention actually of together with trans folks anymore. That makes me really feel like this second for trans expertise is so essential. It is so important to have these different applied sciences, as a result of we will not depend on mainstream platforms, and we will not even attempt to make them higher as a result of they don’t seem to be on board with inclusion anymore.
The guide defines two methods of trying on the design of trans tech: technological inclusionism, or the method of marginalized teams making an attempt to suit into and enhance present tech, and technological separatism, or tech designed outdoors of the mainstream for trans communities, particularly.
There are such a lot of circumstances the place persons are creating these trans applied sciences, taking this separatist strategy the place they’re creating it particularly for a marginalized group, however then it connects to a mainstream platform. As an example, I talked to lots of people who’re creating browser extensions. For instance, [extensions] that will take any occasion of your useless identify that you just’re not utilizing anymore and you do not need to see, and it could change it within the HTML code in a browser, so you’d solely see your present identify. That is one thing that is becoming in with, often, Chrome, which is a really mainstream platform. It is a manner that we are able to regulate one thing like Google Chrome to be extra inclusive, however on the similar time it is its personal expertise that is actually simply designed for this group.
Credit score: C.D. Rom / Kat Brewster / MIT Press
One premise of this guide is that trans-exclusionism is baked into many mainstream platforms — however that’s due to human intervention, not the pure final result of technological progress. Are you able to clarify extra?
Towards the tip of the guide, I quote from Stone’s [The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age] the place she stated it is pure to be trans in digital areas. She was scripting this within the Nineteen Nineties and speaking about how digital areas had been typically a lot extra comfy for trans folks or for people who find themselves exploring their id in numerous methods.
[Editor’s note: The full quote is “Transness is natural online, while physical spaces can feel unnatural. Technology is like water to us — we need it to survive; we can breathe here.”]
I do not assume that Mark Zuckerberg would actually take into consideration [his technology] like that in any respect. Zuckerberg famously stated that every individual solely has one id, and so that’s the reason Fb desires you to make use of your actual identify and why you should not have a number of accounts. All of that stems from his elementary perception that every individual solely has the one id. These kinds of values are embedded in and baked into these mainstream platforms due to somebody like Zuckerberg — who has a comparatively easy id, who does not expertise intersectionality in the best way that lots of people who’re utilizing his platforms do.
Coming from his personal perspective, he has created this big firm that billions of individuals internationally are utilizing that has this basically flawed assumption.
They need to place it as tech is impartial. These of us who take into consideration expertise in a extra vital manner positively contemplate tech to not be impartial. It is actually influenced by the people who find themselves creating it and the values which can be embedded.
Now, the trade’s favored phrase is “tech for good,” or, commonest lately, “AI for good.” I really feel like this has a totally totally different that means for designers of trans applied sciences, versus enormous tech giants like OpenAI.
Earlier than AI, we had ‘knowledge science for good.’ I’ve accomplished work in that house, too. And the problem right here is that, even when your intention is to do good with this rising expertise, plenty of instances persons are simply sitting at their pc, or with a small group of additionally very extremely educated, very technical folks, and deciding what ‘good’ means, what the issues that have to be solved are. One of many large issues that I am arguing within the guide is that it actually wants to start out extra with communities.
It seems to me then that Massive Tech’s leaders are taking a really slim view of what expertise means and the way it can serve folks. How does that match into different modifications within the trade, like Musk’s reimagining of the federal authorities as a tech startup through DOGE?
Musk has at all times taken a really individualist strategy. ‘What’s my good concept?’ “What do I want to see with this technology?’ He wants a rocket to go into space, so that’s what he’s going to do. It’s the opposite of taking a community- based or needs-based approach, which I argue is so important. He would never go out and try to see what people in the U.S. actually want and need. He’s really just interested in two things: What he wants, and what’s going to make money — or “effectivity.”
We’ve seen what happened to Twitter when he turned it into X. He made it very, very efficient by firing pretty much their whole content moderation staff, who were trying to make it a more safe and positive platform for a lot of people. A lot of marginalized groups have gone elsewhere. And so, if we take that as a metaphor for what’s going on in the U.S. more broadly right now, I don’t think it’s going to have very good outcomes.
Fundamentally, do you believe that the creation of trans technology can be a form of resistance as the state directly attacks trans communities?
Trans technology is huge for being able to resist what’s going on politically. Think about the language of the executive order that said there’s only two genders. They’re trying to impose that across all of the federal government and anyone who’s funded by the federal government. That covers a wide range of organizations and technological systems in the U.S. But what they can’t touch is people’s own identities and the language that people are using to think about themselves, to think about their own genders and the people around them. That’s something that nobody can take away.
As long as we’re building technologies outside of mainstream systems, [the U.S. government] also can’t touch that.
People are frustrated and scared and everything is so chaotic. But there is a really optimistic side of me that sees that all of these people’s anger and frustration is going to lead to really incredible outcomes that can actually help their communities.
“Trans Applied sciences” was a collaborative undertaking, with extra help from researchers Kai Nham, Hibby Thach, Aloe DeGuia, Samuel Mayworm, Denny Starks, Kat Brewster, F. Ria Khan, and Mel Monier. The guide is offered on February 25, 2025.
