https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7665-3070
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ABSTRACT
In recent years, digital platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Instagram have emerged as powerful mediums for digital advocacy within the transgender community in Kyrgyzstan, even amidst the rise in ‘political homophobia’. Simultaneously, both state and ‘non-state’ actors have actively harnessed these digital platforms to craft narratives portraying the transgender community as a symbol of societal moral decline and external influence, often through the practice of digital ‘outing’. Using autoethnographic methods to examine the use of digital space as a medium for practices of injury and repair, this article offers a deeper analysis of the politics of trans visibility in (post)socialist/(post)colonial geographies. It examines the different implications and material consequences of visibility in physical and digital space for trans* folks in Kyrgyzstan.
Acknowledgements
We express our gratitude to Jasmin Dall’Agnola and Marika Olijar who read and offered valuable feedback and support. We thank Cai Wilkinson for editing this special issue for Central Asian Survey. Additionally, we thank our peer reviewers for their suggestions and insights. We give special thanks to Tolkun, Daniar, Daniil and Mars for retelling their stories and experiences with us.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 We use trans with an asterisk as an umbrella term that includes gender variant. We take Jack Halberstam’s understanding of the asterisk as a modifier that ‘refuses to situate transition as a destination’ or a ‘final form’ (Halberstam Citation2018, 4).
2 While working on the final draft of this article on 14 August 2023, Kyrgyzstan amended its ‘child protection law’ which prohibits sharing information on diverse sexual orientation and gender identity. This Amendment mirrors Russia’s 2014 Anti-LGBT law.
3 Healy (Citation2017, 20) in his introduction addresses his use of the terms for identities. He makes clear that he uses ‘LGBT and queer interchangeably to encompass the broad spectrum of practices and identities that deviate from normative heterosexuality’. For Healey, using the term ‘homophobia then becomes an uncomfortable umbrella term that obscures’ specific forms of ‘Othering’. He includes the obscuring of hatred and violence towards ‘lesbians, trans* people, or more complexly queer sexual and gender dissidents’.
4 We use scare quotes at times around the word ‘non-state’ actors because, in many cases, the state can become embodied. At times the people Mars, Tolkun, Daniar and Daniil encounter are not official employees of the state, but embody the state through practice. Therefore, we use scar quotes to imply scepticism about the state as completely detached from civil society, especially in the case of nationalist groups such as Kyrk Choro whose members hold positions in the state.
5 For more information, see Suyarkulova (Citation2018).
6 In research conducted by the Pew Research Center, it was cited that ‘Black Americans are much less likely to have ever traveled abroad (49%) than White (75%) or Hispanic Americans (73%). White adults are also more likely to have been to five or more countries (30%) than Black (13%) or Hispanic (15%) adults’; https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/12/most-americans-have-traveled-abroad-although-differences-among-demographic-groups-are-large/
9 The notion of the ‘queer folk devil’ is an expansion of Stuart Hall’s rendition of the ‘mugger’, which was a racialized figure – a national scapegoat – that was constructed to justify state repression (Edenborg Citation2020, 7).
10 For example, in 2019, at the annual Women’s Day March in Bishkek, a PRIDE flag caused a stir among members of parliament. Parliament deputy, Jyldyz Musabekova, who referred to the LGBT community as a threat that, if unchecked, will eventually turn Kyrgyzstan into ‘Gaystan’, urged the members of the general population to commit acts of violence against the LGBT community. ‘Gaystan’ acts in a similar way to the construction of the threat of ‘Gayrope’ (Gejropa) that sets East against West. Here the state is actively engaged in instrumentalizing LGBT visibility as a threat to traditional family values, rather than a benchmark for progressiveness towards ‘Europeanness’ (Wilkinson and Kirey Citation2010). In addition, the local nationalist group Kyrk Choro added to this discourse by publicly declaring the Women’s Day March as a ‘cover’ for ‘gay pride’.
12 We have chosen to keep the name of the organization anonymous.
14 When we refer to the ‘West’ we are referring to the continental United States and Canada and Europe.