Experiências de afirmação de gênero de pessoas trans brasileiras no Youtube

Abstract

This study aims to understand the works of gender affirmation processes of Brazilian trans people that share their experiences through videos created and shared on YouTube. This is a qualitative study that used Netnography as an investigation method and for the purposes of data analysis. Aiming at understanding and discussing the specificities of the data collection, postulates from poststructuralism, Queer Theory, Feminism and Transfeminism were used in this study. The data collection took place in the virtual field, more specifically on YouTube, during the second semester of 2017, in which began the writing of the Field Journal, where the contents of the videos were registered, as well as impressions along the data collection process, that eventually resulted in the analysis of 29 videos from 8 different subjects. As inclusion criteria for choosing the videos, it was considered content from Brazilian people as long as they appear on YouTube’s search area when terms such as trans, transsexual, and transgender were typed; had shared content within at least 30 days; and identified oneself as trans, transgender, transsexual, trans man, or trans woman in at least one video. The videos analyzed in this research were publically shared by trans people, they are of general access to the population, and had previous visualization consent from their creators; therefore, this study did not demand the elaboration and application of the informed consent, or the approval or registration in the CEP/CONEP. The video analysis emerged the discussion of the spectacularization of trans identities and the gender performative affirmation processes, as well as the deconstruction of trans bodies in the virtual space. We also noted the emphasis of gender technologies such as surgeries and hormonal therapy in the videos of Brazilian trans people, thus creating success formats, a YouTube trans normative with its own segments. The discussion fostered in this study points to gender performativity on YouTube, to the importance of social media in the trans population’s representativity and visibility, and to the establishment and reproduction of singular video formats with trans themes on YouTube Brazil.