The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

Avery Edenfield, Utah State University

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Institutions relentlessly fail transgender people (e.g., Gill-Peterson, 2018/2024; Lombardi, 2002; Mendoza, 2024; Rubin, 2015; Spade, 2015). For some, technologies that provide a way of navigating devastating institutions can be life sustaining—in a very literal, material way. Yet, as Barbara Deming titled her (1974) book, “We cannot live without our lives.” Sustaining “bare life” (Agamben, 2017) is not enough; technologies that may enable trans people to thrive beyond survival include identifying supportive medical practitioners, navigating sex work[1] safely, and charting their transition journey inside, outside, or alongside medical institutions (Edenfield, Holmes, & Colton, 2019). And yet, while digital technologies grant access to resources otherwise unavailable, because of the affordances of the internet (e.g., virality, circulation, remixing, and anonymity), increased access may also contribute to a state of “hypervisibility” (Malatino, 2020, p. 5), that is, a visibility disproportionate to the number of people with trans experiences. In a context of hypervisibility, especially for Black and Brown trans feminine people, daily conditions can become deadly, leading to trans lives being “recurrently and brutally utilized as a political issue to consolidate horrifyingly ascendant forms of ethnonationalism” (Malatino, p.5, 2020; refer to Gill-Peterson, 2024). Gill-Peterson notes violence against trans femmes historically has been used to shore up the State and quell decent among all femmes (pp. 36, 37, 57, 147-148). In fact, trans misogyny took center stage in the 2024 election. Denigrating ads targeted Democratic support for trans rights. According to Crary’s (2024) reporting, an ad stating “Kamala is for they/them” ran over 15,000 times (para. 9). The Human Rights Campaign claims MAGA politicians spent $150 million on anti-trans ads. PBS News states that from “Oct. 7 to Oct. 20, Trump’s campaign and pro-Trump groups spent an estimated $95 million on ads, more than 41 percent of which were anti-trans,” (Why anti-transgender…, 2024). This kind of national attention increases the precarity of trans people, a population already a targeted for violence. For example, the Human Rights Campaign has called the staggering statistics of anti-transgender hate crimes as an “epidemic” and a “national embarrassment” (quoted in Alfonseca, para. 4).

To avoid deadly transphobia and hypervisibility as much as possible—in short, to stay alive—folks who are gender atypical develop delicate bricolages of care for mental and physical preservation for themselves and others; in fact, they have done so for some time (e.g., Gill-Peterson, 2024; Griffin-Gracy & Meronek, 2023; Manion, 2020; Malatino, 2020; Snorton, 2017; Stone, 2017; Stryker, 2008). According to research by Strohmayer, Clamen, and Laing (2019), to avoid contributing to conditions of hypervisibility, some of life-preserving designs must be analog, portable, and easily masked or discarded if a situation requires it. In short, the design might be ephemeral.

Some aspects of trans care have always been ephemeral. In this manuscript, I argue for a recognition of the deep necessity of ephemerality through one delicate, community-built archive—The FTM Newsletter. I end with notes for researchers on embracing ephemerality when studying such delicate care– conducting research without contributing to further hypervisibility. Finally, I frame the newsletter as an entry point into understanding ephemerality, foregrounding the ethical imperative for researchers to engage responsibly with the work of trans labor-of-living—particularly those whose positions within the “matrix of domination” (Collins, 2000) render them most vulnerable.

 

FTM International and the FTM Newsletter

 The FTM Newsletter were published by “FTM International,” a support group for trans masculine (FTM[2]) individuals founded in 1986 by Lou Sullivan. According to the GLBT Historical Society, which houses an analog collection,

FTM International (FTMI) is the largest and oldest continuously running organization serving the transmasculine community and their allies. In addition to its role as a peer support and networking group, FTMI campaigns to end shame and fear surrounding trans issues and to end economic marginalization of trans people. FTM International Records.

According to Dragushan (“The FTM Newsletters,” n.d.)., newsletters were life-altering, providing vital sources of information and connection for an isolated and small community. Produced and photocopied by hand, newsletters were mailed discretely in brown paper packages across the United States from Sullivan’s home address in San Francisco. This discretion was key to circulating care among/between communities. In “Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts,” José Esteban Muñoz described queer archives as “makeshift and randomly organized, due to the restraints historically shackled upon minoritarian cultural workers” (1996, p. 7). Further, Muñoz notes:

Queerness is often transmitted covertly. This has everything to do with the fact that leaving too much of a trace has often meant that the queer subject has left herself open for attack. Instead of being clearly available as visible evidence, queerness has instead existed as innuendo, gossip, fleeting moments, and performances that are meant to be interacted with by those within its epistemological sphere—while evaporating at the touch of those who would eliminate queer possibility. (p. 6)

Until recently—especially because of the affordances of the internet—queer transmissions needed to be covert. And yet, Malatino (2020) describes trans archives such as the performances of the FTM Newsletter as “proof of life,” evidence that “trans lives are livable because they have been lived” (p. 7). Like Virginia Prince’s Transvestia magazine, The Digital Transgender Archives, and the Queer Zine Archive Project (archive.qzap.org), these texts represent multimodal artifacts that are “materially consequential” in trans lives (Mendoza, Haywood, Pouncil, & Sanders, 2024) for the present and the future. The first FTM Newsletter featured the following welcome message:

Greetings! This is the first issue of FTM, a newsletter for the female-to-male transsexual and crossdresser. In addition to supplying newsworthy articles related to FTM's, the newsletter will provide an 'open forum' in which you may send us any information you would like to share, such as apartment share rentals, support groups, reactions to current issues/ concerns within the gender community, or article on a related subject, send them to [redacted]. 

This opening describes the purpose of the newsletter beyond sharing news on sustaining trans life. Many issues included articles intended to help navigate the world as a trans masculine person. For example, Issue 04, June 1988, features an article, “On Buying Shoes” by “Hal,” which includes a conversion chart from women’s sizes to men’s. Issue 11, March 1990, includes a therapist’s discussion on transitioning from boyhood to manhood. Issue 15, April 1991, warns readers about increasing federal scrutiny on testosterone.

One of the most profound examples of the FTM Newsletter as ephemeral care is a recurring feature, “Get-Togethers,” which recounts a recent embodied gathering and invites new participants for the next one. Below is an example of one such recollection.

We all remember our first steps during our transitions, our need to talk to others who felt the same way, and the joy of learning we weren’t the “only ones.” The FTM Get-Togethers give us an opportunity to meet and learn from others who understand, and to be there for those who seek answers and advice… Get-Together #3 is planned for Saturday, Sept. 19, …. A special slide/ tape show on Bay Area women who passed as men in the early 1900’s, entitled “She Even Chewed Tobacco,” 11 will be presented at 8:30 p.m. For more information on Get-Together # 3, call Lou at [redacted]. 

An isolated transgender man far removed from San Francisco could have no way of attending such gatherings. Referring to Muñoz’s queer performance—legible to those within and unavailable to those without—these gatherings represent queer care, temporal and fleeting, yet life-sustaining to those who are touched, by attending or reading about them (again, evidence of life). These accounts are ephemeral artifacts of trans care, now only partially preserved through community activism rooted in sustaining trans history and present—for, as Malatino notes, if they lived, we can too.

 

Evaporation of Caring Resources

These publications served distinct purposes before and after the Internet. Mascara and Hope is a digitized zine that frequently travels DIY transition spaces. This zine “published by no one in particular” instructs people on how to navigate hostile gender clinics. Though written specifically in UK contexts, the tips resonate globally.

Mascara and Hope has a continued presence because of its persistent virality. However, digital resources can and do disappear. Any poster on Bulletin Board Systems, IRC, Gay.com, Myspace, Twitter, or Tumblr, understands the provisional nature of that resource. For queer and trans folks, especially those at the intersections of race, dis/ability, and immigration vulnerabilities, the disappearance of such contemporary materials may be a deep loss. For example, YouTube has consistently deplatformed trans and queer accounts. Are and Briggs (2022) examined the disparate impacts of deplatforming marginalized creators from TikTok and Instagram, pointing to censorship of nudity as having a significant impact on wellbeing. According to Maurer (2022) social media is a significant source of community connections, and, further, deplatforming can be a loss of support and revenue.  

In 2019 and in a 2020 SIGDOC presentation with Itchuaqiyaq and Davies, I argued that analog forms of information have continued importance to folks on the margins. Following Strohmayer et al., (2019), we argued that physical media can be safer as they can be more discreet and disposable. We demonstrated that apps designed to keep sex workers safe (again, many trans femme women find employment in sex work) may have unintended consequences such as masking data tracking, outing a user as a sex worker to a questioning police officer, or even illuminating a user’s face on a dark street. The ability to toss a resource quickly can make the difference between being arrested—with all the material consequences of incarceration—or not. Physical media allows for quick disposal and discrete passing through hands. Physical media not yet living online is less “sniff-able,” (Jordan & Edenfield, 2025) in the case of digital sex work safety, which, again, is a trade available to many trans femmes. 

And yet, analog forms of trans care circulate and disappear. For example, as part of my research, I was given a PDF of an individual’s care packet that prepared them for surgery. A resource like this could be passed around to those who did not receive such a document or even used to persuade a doctor to follow the same care as lack of consistency is a considerable problem in trans care.  

As further evidence of the ephemerality of trans care, I obtained a recorded training (title redacted) introducing medical providers to the basics of transgender care. In this training, a doctor explains to providers why judging by appearances can be deadly: if a bearded cowboy came to you complaining of abdominal pains, you may not think of ectopic pregnancy, but missing this diagnosis could have deadly consequences. Further, the video in its entirety could be a valuable resource for persuasion in clinical and nonclinical settings, and even informative for a person seeking to DIY their care. This move is a rhetorical one Colton, Holmes, and I have discussed as “tactical referrals” (2019). However, to my understanding, this training has not been made widely available as it only exists in personal archives.

Countless queer and trans liberation zines cannot be found online. Rather, they are only sourced from the authors, info shops, or otherwise passed around hand to hand. While Anarchist Archive, Queer Zine Archive Project, and other queer archives have captured objects and made them widely available as archives of survival, it is important to remember that not every object can or should be digitized as doing so may contribute to further trans hypervisibility.

 

Ephemerality as Research Concern

For researchers considering working with trans archives, first, as Itchuaqiyaq (2021) argued, not everything researchers learn should be shared. Researchers must resist the rationale that everything must be preserved. Some texts serve a purpose and then evaporate—even if it is special and life affirming. Acceptance of the fleeting nature of things is a queer virtue. We live with queer failure (Halberstam, 2011), with the provisional All. The. Time. Second, if a resource is not already digitized, before doing so yourself, pause and query the communities who rely on that resource. Understand that publishing hidden resources can make survival strategies legible for law enforcement, legislators, and other transphobes with deadly agendas. Throughout it all, community-engaged scholars must always keep in mind the very real danger of hypervisibility. 

 

Acknowledgements

 I want to thank Cara Haderlie for her careful research assistance on the FTM Newsletter archive.

 

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