LGBTQ studies

This dissertation traces the emergence of the "transgender predator" discourse on social media. Taking its cue from the 2019 British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal case Yaniv v. Various Waxing Salons, in which a white Canadian trans woman named Jessica Yaniv unsuccessfully filed a series of complaints against a number of racialized cisgender aestheticians claiming that they denied her body and Brazilian waxing services, I examine Canadian socio-legal discussions regarding trans women's access to spaces and services designed for cisgender women. Second, I focus on the realm of YouTube in which Yaniv v. Various Waxing Salons was marketed as the case of a transgender predator by another trans female YouTuber named Blaire White. I locate Yaniv-related content within a larger genre of "predator-hunting" in which self-proclaimed vigilantes lure and "hunt" putative child predators through sting operations and publish their expeditions as online shaming content on YouTube. By analyzing the visual and verbal discursive elements of the genre of predator catching/exposé, I suggest that "transgender predator" functions within the axis of surveillance regimes and monetized humiliation-entertainment, rather than merely being motivated by the goal of protecting cisgender women and children. Lastly, I turn my attention from "transgender predator" to another type of pejorative construction about trans people represented in the stand-up comedy of Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. I argue that, as opposed to comedy's previous engagement with trans subjectivity in which the comedic element was revealed through the tropes of deception and bodily incongruity, in the works of Chappelle and Gervais, transgender subjectivity is used to make social commentary about the supposed decline of, what are deemed to be, Western values of reason, rationality, and freedom of speech.

Author Keywords: predator, stand-up comedy, surveillance, transgender, vigilantism, YouTube

Generativity, or a connection to and concern for future generations, is often premised upon the hetero-nuclear family structure and an elimination of disability, excluding queer and disabled individuals. In this thesis, I extend ideas about queer and crip futures by theorizing an alternative model of generativity that centers queer, and disabled experiences. I argue that queer crip intergenerational relationships contribute to and expand current understandings of generativity in terms of individualism, embodied knowledge, and temporalities. To do so, I used the arts-based participatory methodology, cellphilming. I worked with a group of eight queer, and disabled individuals across the life course in Fredericton, New Brunswick to create short films about aging, queerness, disability, and futures, and analyzed the films thematically. In the context of an ongoing pandemic and heightened backlash against LGBTQ+ rights, I present intergenerational relationship building as a way forward to overcome alienation and imagine a better future.

Author Keywords: aging, cellphilm, disability, generativity, intergenerational, queerness