Tender and transformative care. Reflections on the liberational potential of t4t friendships

Abstract

Throughout my research on and engagements in trans for trans (t4t) organizing, the careful, consistent, everyday practices of trans care which are necessary to render trans life livable, such as continuously checking in with trans friends; accompaniment for doctor’s appointments; and sporadic decompressing after experiences of violence, continue to resurface as central. At the core of these practices, which I conceptualize as mundane trans care, are interpersonal, intra- and intercommunal relationships. My interest in these relationships is fueled by the devastating experience of losing a close trans friend and kin, and because I believe they are crucial to mundane trans care and to coalitional trans organizing more broadly.

Inspired by Edda Gaviola’s (2015) reflections on “the political friendship between women” and V. Jo Hsu’s (2022) “t4t lovepolitics”, and by thinking through writings on trans care that tend to both the upsides, pleasures, and messiness of t4t (Malatino 2020, 2022; Marvin 2022), this article is curious about the potential of t4t friendships for the cultivation of tender and transformative care in t4t organizing. Anchored in the collage of materials in my ongoing collaborative (auto)ethnographic research on t4t organizing, I ask: How is care cultivated in t4t friendships? How can t4t friendships be generative of collective trans liberation? And how can we make the careful construction of vulnerability, accompliceship, and tender, transformative care in t4t friendships spill into t4t organizing?