Embodying Multidimensionality: The Reclamation of Black Trans Life Amid Socio-Political Violence

• In Event: 20464 - Queer of Color Critique and Sociology

Abstract

Monica Roberts, a journalist, historian, and lifelong advocate for Black transgender communities, once described how major LGBTQ+ organizations deprioritized the rights of Black and brown transgender people, promising progress at “a later that never came.” This pattern of exclusion from the socio-political canon reflects what Roderick Ferguson (2019) critiques as one-dimensional politics—a tendency within mainstream LGBTQ+ activism to privilege singular, palatable identities and agendas while marginalizing those who exist at multiple axes of oppression. This paper engages queer of color critique (Cohen 1997; Ferguson 2004; Ferguson 2019; Muñoz 1999) to examine how Black transgender women actively resist these constraints and construct alternative modes of political engagement.

Existing sociological scholarship documenting aspects of Black trans life overwhelmingly documents disproportionate experiences of violence, poverty, and social exclusion (Butz and Gaynor 2022; Graham 2014; Graham et al. 2024; Hwahng and Nuttbrock 2007; Westbrook 2023) yet often frames Black trans women as passive victims rather than political actors. This study challenges such narratives by asking: How do Black transgender women conceptualize and respond to socio-political violence in ways that disrupt unidimensional frameworks?

To answer this question, I analyze TransGriot, the pioneering blog founded by Roberts, as both a historical archive and a political manifesto. A thematic content analysis of TransGriot reveals how Roberts not only documented violence but also issued calls to action, articulating a multidimensional trans politics that refused assimilationist LGBTQ+ agendas. This analysis is paired with four years of ethnographic research (2020–2024) with Transgender Advocates Knowledgeable Empowering (T.A.K.E.), a Black trans-led advocacy organization in the U.S. South. Observations and oral history interviews illuminate how Black trans women build infrastructures of survival through programs like the Monica Roberts Freedom School. By foregrounding Black transgender women’s political agency, this study offers a critical intervention into debates on trans visibility, queer necropolitics, and intersectional resistance—repositioning Black trans women as central architects of contemporary queer liberation.

Author

• Kimya Loder, Georgia Institute of Technology