Queer(y)ing How We See

Seeing someone whose appearance does not align with (often racialized) gender norms can prompt transphobia, a reaction that is as much about what we feel as about what we (think we) know. In this essay, I use what Donovan Schaefer calls “cogency theory” to diagnose, if you will, and ultimately to disrupt transphobic seeing. I find cogency theory helpful because it undoes modern presumptions that knowing (aligned with secularism) and feeling (aligned with religion) are polar opposites; presumptions that, as I describe herein, the practice of photography and its role in modern life also disrupts. I close by experimenting with two examples of art photographs featuring gender nonconforming subjects – one with religious overtones, one without – as resources for disrupting transphobic seeing.