Today’s Gender Is No: Genderbot’s Algorithmic Platform Resistance
Publication: TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies
Volume 48
Abstract
Abstract
Genderbot was a Twitterbot that used a word replacement algorithm to tweet a new, detailed “gender” every six hours. Through its thousands of tweets, this bot formed a shared space on Twitter where trans life was possible—an important, if small, act of resistance within Twitter’s broader trans hostility. This article uses intimacy as a framework to theorize the delegitimization of trans identities built into and reinforced through Twitter’s structure as well as Genderbot’s algorithmic resistance to these forces. Following trans of colour algorithmic operations of the cut, shift, and stitch, Genderbot actively supported trans life as not just possible but pleasurable, making joyful trans relations possible within Twitter’s networked public. Recognizing these relations challenges the “joy deficit” in studies of trans experience and presents the possibilities and limitations of small forms of algorithmic resistance against platforms’ capitalist modulation of identity.
Résumé
Genderbot était un bot Twitter qui recourait à un algorithme de remplacement de mots pour publier un nouveau « genre » détaillé toutes les six heures. Par ses milliers de gazouillis, ce bot a créé un espace commun sur Twitter où la vie trans était possible — un acte de résistance important, même s’il était marginal, dans l’hostilité trans généralisée perçue sur Twitter. Le présent article puise dans le cadre de l’intimité pour théoriser la délégitimisation des identités trans construites et renforcées dans la structure de Twitter, de même que la résistance algorithmique de Genderbot à ces forces. D’après les opérations algorithmiques couper, déplacer et assembler des trans racisés, Genderbot a soutenu activement la possibilité, mais aussi le plaisir de la vie trans et a rendu les relations trans heureuses possibles auprès du public en réseau de Twitter. Ces relations remettent en question le « déficit de plaisir » des études sur l’expérience trans et présentent les possibilités et les limites de petites form
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies
Volume 48 • March 2024
Pages: 155 - 173
Copyright
© University of Toronto Press. The publisher holds the copyright for the article.
History
Received: 30 April 2023
Revision received: 23 August 2023
Accepted: 30 October 2023
Published in print: March 2024
Published online: 15 April 2024
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