What are the common misconceptions about being transgender? What should politicians do for transgender people? These questions and others are addressed in a series of videos developed by Transilience, a two-year project that aims to strengthen the resilience of transgender young adults. Working with trans people in Belgium, Transilience is situated in a country that is characterized as LGBTQ-friendly; i.e. where trans people’s legal rights are relatively extensive. Binary registered sex can be changed without limitation based on self-determination, anti-discrimination legislation is in place, and an increasing number of hospitals offer gender-affirming health care. Nevertheless, the presence of anti-transgender mobilizations is growing and these not only target trans identities but attempt to restrict access to necessary gender-affirming health care. These mobilizations spread disinformation and contribute to the vulnerable position trans people hold in Belgium. Many are confronted with transphobic violence and long waiting lists for gender-affirming care. How, then, can we resist this transphobic surge? Should trans activism focus on actively resisting anti-trans mobilizations? Or should it instead turn towards trans communities and focus on care work tailored towards them?
The Transilience project aims to transcend this dichotomy and is oriented towards trans people, their communities and the broader public. The project organizers work together with transgender people between 16 and 25 years old that are waiting for or currently receiving gender-affirming care. Together, they co-create ways to strengthen their resilience and to sensitize the broader, cisgender public towards transgender experiences. Especially for those on the waiting list for care, the long periods of standstill in their transition can be transformed into empowering trajectories that explore different ways of being in a trans body. The project provided trajectories on social, mental and physical resilience, resilience at school, and imagining resilience through digital storytelling. These trajectories were composed after consulting trans youth on their needs and views around resilience, alongside literature review, and can be detailed here.
The trajectory on mental resilience used conversation techniques and artistic expression to teach participants to more constructively cope with stress. The physical resilience trajectory focussed on body-oriented work, including self-defence techniques. Fostering social resilience was oriented towards exploring ways to affirmingly express gender through voice training, makeup, and clothing. These trajectories open the possibilities of embodying transness while navigating gender dysphoria when waiting for (the effects of) gender-affirming care. They facilitate the exploration of gender expressions, while providing information about hormone replacement therapy or surgical procedures. The trajectory on resilience in school was aimed at developing inclusionary practices, together with cisgender students and teachers, by co-writing a gender manifesto. Lastly, the digital storytelling trajectory focused on debunking stereotypes of transness by developing short videos that positively imagine trans experiences. These videos address experiences of the difficulties that cisheteronormative society poses for those living in a trans body, and serve an educational purpose by informing others of the varied micro-aggressions trans people suffer from. Besides these tools, Transilience developed training guidelines for trans-sensitive working practices.
Transilience assumes a holistic model to approach resilience in trans people, encompassing and touching upon different aspects of trans lives. This not only allows resilience to be fostered in individual trans persons, but also for kinship to build among the participants. The project ultimately hopes to overcome the current polarization on transgender topics by strengthening wider communities of trans and cis people.
Transilience focuses on different aspects of trans lives, as they have become more visible. In the wake of the so-called trans tipping point, (media) attention for trans people is growing. This increases representation but, at the same time, negative voices take up space to deny the existence of trans identities, attempt to restrict access to gender-affirming health care, and denounce anti-discrimination legislation. In this double bind of trans visibility, anti-trans discourses touch many aspects of trans lives. These discourses go further than the public and political sphere, with trans people reporting that anti-trans mobilizations affect their communities and private sphere. To secure and further trans people’s safety and wellbeing, it is not only necessary to directly resist anti-trans activism, but to shift our attention towards trans people themselves; fostering relationships of care for trans people and their cisgender communities. In this way, both the Transilience and CCINDLE projects aim to strengthen marginalized communities by co-creating inclusive spaces.
More information about the Transilience project can be found on their website. All the videos can be watched on the Transilience YouTube Channel, in Dutch with English subtitles.
Author: Rylan Verlooy, University of Antwerp. 2nd October 2024