Jude Hayward-Jansen’s “Let Me See Those Abs: Elliot Page and the Spectacle of Trans Joy” considers Elliot Page’s Instagram account as a joyful homage to trans embodiment and a powerful expression of trans joy. Contextualizing Page’s visual representations of his body within the frameworks of both self-recognition and the politics of joy, this paper explores the myriad ways in which Page celebrates trans corporeality. Drawing upon the activism and writing produced around the concepts of Black and Queer Joy, as advocated by Kleaver Cruz and Aimey Tien, this paper argues that Page not only offers joy as a personal/political alternative to suffering but one that has endless performative iterations.

Mel Monier’s paper, “It Looks Great to be a Pregnant Man: Media Representations of Trans Masculinity and Pregnancy” continues the theme of trans embodiment by illuminating how media representations of pregnant men have shaped transmasculine folks’ understanding of their identities, masculinity, pregnancy, and the possibilities or limitations of their bodies. Tracking the ways in which trans masculine participants engaged with images of pregnant men, this project not only explores the relationship between trans masculinity, pregnancy, and identity, but aims to center trans joy and life. Monier proposes that trans bodies are capable of creating and sustaining life and daring to be visible despite systemic, physical, and symbolic violence. Building upon Anjali Arondekar’s (2014) research on queer historiography and abundance, Monier offers the abundance framework as a new mode of inquiry for studying trans life in digital space.

While Jude and Mel examine the ways in which digital space can foreground representations of trans embodiment, K. Allison Hammer’s “Banning Trans Joy: Exuberant Embodiment in Maia Kobabe’s Genderqueer” explores how the cultural and political circulation of the graphic novel, Gender Queer, has created heightened anxiety about the potential for exuberant trans embodiment. Their paper argues that Kobabe’s pleasure, experienced through cross-identification with gay men, flamboyant styles of dress combining so-called feminine and masculine elements, and the discovery of joy in asexuality, critiques biopolitical governmentality and the colonial categorizations that universalize the abstract citizen as white, male, straight, Christian, and privileged. Through analysis of specific panels in Kobabe’s narrative, circulated online, at school board meetings, and in Congress as so-called proof of the story’s destructive potential, this paper posits that the fear of trans and non-binary joy propels this heightened state of anxiety.

In their paper, “More Humor, Less Shame: Trans and Disabled Access Beyond Narratives of Suffering,” Milo Obourn looks at ways that people with disabilities have been and are expected to narrate their suffering and/or incompetence in order to access governmental support or, since 1990, rights to accommodations under the ADA. Contending that a very similar model is being taken up by trans rights activists, this paper argues that trans rights activists are missing the deep joy and focus on sexuality and pleasure in much disability justice writing and cultural production. Through a close analysis of the Sins Invalid documentary film, An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility, Obourn suggests that introducing a trans-formative justice model that centers critiques of cisgenderism can illuminate possibilities for solidarity, collaboration, and strategy between disability justice and trans liberation politics.

Each speaker will be allotted 12-13 minutes which will allow for at least 15 minutes for unstructured discussion and questions.