| Summary: | This essay offers reflection upon recent transformations in thinking about and understanding the in_visibility of gendered, embodied selves which is a more digital and a more diverse version of the ‘in/visibility’ of my 2015 text, The Politics of In/Visibility: Being There. Both iterations include the interrelationship between visibility and invisibility. In this essay, using Laura Mulvey’s conceptualization of the gaze, looking and being looked at, and Judith Butler’s analysis of the impact of trans politics, I address changes which have arisen since I first worked on in/visibility through two recent developments: The first is #MeToo as a highly effective social media platform, where politics conducted online has had actual, material, embodied effects on people’s lives; the second includes the impact of trans politics in challenging everyday assumptions about gender and especially the binary logic and embodied properties of sex, citing the example of sport, where bodies matter. Sport has always been divided into men’s and women’s competitions, at least since women have been allowed to participate at all. Recent changes, subverting traditional patriarchy and the binary logic of sex have been contentious, but also offer exciting new ways of exploring in_visibility in relation to bodies, representational systems and subverting inegalitarian, traditional systems, both actual and virtual, which act oppressively and restrictively.
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