Bhanji, Nael

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

This thesis considers the fanfiction genres of slash-fiction, and Alpha/Beta/Omega fiction through an analysis of fandom's embedded gift economy structures. Previous research on fanfiction and fandom structures have often characterized the gift economy nature of these spaces as countercultural and as separate from the frequent exploitation inherent in economic-based systems. There has been less attention paid to considering the potential disruptions that can come with unregulated and large-scale sharing. This thesis undertakes a critical discourse analysis of Alpha/Beta/Omega slash-fiction with a focus on commodity fetishism to reveal how the subgenre's relationship with the fanfiction gift economy complicates and at times counters the conception of these spaces as a 'queer utopia.' The purpose of this research is to dismantle traditional archetypes within Alpha/Beta/Omega fanfiction by exploring how male Omegan characters become fetishized cultural commodity objects internally through interactions with Alpha characters and externally through the desires of fanfiction readers and writers.

Author Keywords: Alpha/Beta/Omega, Commodity Fetishism, Fanfiction, Gift Economy, Queer Theory, Slash-fiction