Title: Transgender Experiences of Digital Poverty in Wales

Abstract: I present in this session a paper based around the literature review I have undertaken for my PhD, which centres transgender experiences of digital poverty in Wales. I begin with extant knowledge of digital poverty generally, highlighting a distinct lack of transgender (and even just queer) experience. In lieu, I deconstruct Ruiu and Ragnedda’s (2024) three-tier hierarchy of determinants: individual, circumstantial, and structural. I work with this understanding by investigating how transgender people can be represented within it, but criticise its hierarchical nature. I outline the benefits of this “collapsed” determinant model against a more positivistic trichotomy of cause, effect, and intervention. Here, I also focus on Welsh Governmental policy, noting a lack of specialism at the intersection of transgender and digital poverty.

Further, interrogating “trans digital” and “trans poverty”, I question whether poverty can be meaningfully separated from digital poverty in an increasingly digital society, with trans people needing to be online to find community, to participate in wage labour (or state welfare, where available), and to seek healthcare and leisure. However, transgender political economies make this increasingly difficult, amidst a backdrop of regressive legislation in the UK and elsewhere, hostile actors and the wider “enshittification” (Doctorow 2022) of the Internet.

We find queer resistance to the hostile/indifferent state in the acts of transgender refusal undertaken by general and technology-oriented mutual aid organisations, like Trans Aid Cymru and Trans Tech Tent in Wales (Clifford 2023); and queer hope expressed through the communicative and epistemic power of online technologies. This analysis forefronts the dual nature of technology to provide both harm and joy specifically for trans people.

To conclude, I will present my proposed PhD research methodology. Following the talk, I invite audience members to reflect on positions, theory, and approach presented. I hope the core categorisation of factors (and the perils of said categorisation) is of interest to theoretical computer scientists, digital humanities practitioners, and social scientists alike!

References
Clifford, Genevieve. 2023. ‘Trans-Forming Technology: Exploring Transgender Technologies in South Wales’. Master’s Dissertation (Social Research Methods), Swansea, Wales: Swansea University.
Doctorow, Cory. 2022. ‘Social Quitting’. Medium. 17 November 2022. https://doctorow.medium.com/social-quitting-1ce85b67b456.
Ruiu, Maria Laura, and Massimo Ragnedda. 2024. Digital-Environmental Poverty: Digital and Environmental Inequalities in the Post-Covid Era. Palgrave Studies in Digital Inequalities. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.