for Trans Day of Visibility 2025
Trans+ visibility does not equal trans+ liberation.
Whilst visibility can and does mean representation and community for so many trans+ people, visibility is also not the antidote to exploitation or oppression.
Trans+ people are seen as a “threat” precisely because they disrupt the capitalist division of labour rooted in the White supremacist gender binary. Migrants too are seen as a “threat” because of racial capitalism, including Islamophobia. Ultimately, both communities are seen as “undesirable”, “surplus” populations undeserving of dignity and rights.
Our political class will only afford visibility to trans+ people and migrants who adhere to respectability politics, who are politically useful, or who can serve as an effective distraction/scapegoat for capitalist austerity.
Visibility within this current system therefore, does not change the exploitation and oppression faced by trans+, migrant and trans+ migrant communities. Visibility within a capitalist systems, does nothing to address the prevalence of trans+ and migrant communities subjected to surveillance or incarceration, nor the destitution faced by trans+, migrant and trans+ migrant communities due to barriers in accessing healthcare, housing and employment.
Visibility doesn’t address these issues, only liberation does. Only in dismantling the racial capitalist logic of dehumanisation and commodification can we address the exploitation and oppression faced by trans+ and migrant, and all other marginalised communities.
For more information about the limitations of visibility:
- Trans visibility does not equal trans liberation, Kai Cheng Thom (2018, them)
- Trans representation isn’t trans liberation, Kai Cheng Thom (2025, Xtra Magazine)
- TDOV: Visibility is the beginning, liberation is the goal – and we can only achieve it together (2022, Mermaids)
Organisations to follow:
Find out more about our work on transness and migration here.