The Trans Humor Interview Project

C. McGhee, University of Michigan

More is currently known about trans/gender diverse (TGD) folk’s struggles than their strengths (Shelton et al., 2018). This “damage-centered research” (Tuck, 2009) has not only flattened the nuances of trans humanity but also presented trans existence as devoid of joy, pleasure, or hope (Holloway, 2023). The second of two dissertation studies, The Trans Humor Interview Project sought to disrupt that narrative. It was grounded in one key observation: despite all the documented hardship TGD people experience, we still continue to exist. If that was the case, there clearly was more to trans-ness than suffering.

The Trans Humor Interview Project was guided by two research questions: 1) What role does humor play in trans/gender diverse people’s lives? and 2) When humor does play a role, what does it make possible? In the Fall of 2023, I virtually interviewed 17 TGD people across the United States. Participants ran the gamut of gender, race, class, regionality, ability, and age. They were excited to speak to me, eager to share. They knew that research like this was uncommon. 700 pages of transcripts and a thematic analysis later, I had developed six themes. For the sake of space, I share the broader takeaways below.

For Question 1, humor helped TGD participants carry on with the work of living. Humor allowed participants to negotiate the internalized and externalized social pressures that aimed to dictate how they lived their lives. For Question 2, humor made an ecology of care possible. An ecology describes the relationships between an organism and its environment, and I saw my participants using humor to render intrapersonal, interpersonal, and societal care possible.

Collectively, the themes developed in this project demonstrate that humor can operate as an infrapolitics of trans care for TGD people (Malatino, 2020; Malatino, 2022; Samer, 2022). Infrapolitics, coined by Scott (1990), specifically describes the forms of resistance enacted by marginalized people that don’t register as such to those in power: resistance that operates in an invisible manner akin to infrared rays. Trans care I define as any act and action that nurtures and sustains TGD life and longevity, from the intrapersonal to the collective.

For trans/gender diverse people, humor can be a care-full form of resistance that flies under the radar. It can allow us to invite in, be recognized, and be met in our whole humanity. While humor is by no means a panacea to all the problems TGD people face – it does not simply make discrimination, violence, and hardship go away – it is important, strategic work. It is work that helps TGD people take care of ourselves in a world that is deeply uninterested in our survival and flourishing. Our humor is powerful. It might even be purposefully downplayed as trivial, underestimated, and undervalued because of just how powerful it can be. For we can actually be quite serious about not being serious. Joy is, after all, a form of resistance.

References

Holloway, B. T. (2023). Highlighting trans joy: A call to practitioners, researchers, and educators. Health Promotion Practice, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399231152468

Malatino, H. (2020). Trans Care. University of Minnesota Press.

Malatino, H. (2022). Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad. University of Minnesota Press.

Samer, R. (2022). Trans comedy as trans care. Feminist Formations, 34(3), 161-170. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2022.0042

Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. Yale University Press.

Shelton, J. M. Wagaman, A., Small, L., & Abramovich, A. (2018). I'm more driven now: Resilience and resistance among transgender and gender expansive youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 144- 157. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1080/15532739.2017.1374226

Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409-427.