To be a scholar or an artist, in many ways, is to practice some form of visibility by trying to build a body of work that is representative of you, your ideas, and your expression. As a scholar and an artist, I recognize that in 2026, being visible feels fundamentally incompatible with being a full, happy, and secure human.

Personally, when I experience any type of visibility, I feel an intense pressure for me and my work to be seen as good, important, and respectable. But the reality is that narratives of goodness, importance, and respectability are just that – narratives, which like reputations are socially and politically constructed. And because they are constructed, they can also be wrenched from you and blown apart at the whims of social and political forces.

This is apparent when we look at the news today – where we see artists and scholars, especially minoritized ones, attacked, held to different (and often impossible) standards, and picked apart for not being as good, important, or respectable as they or others have built them up to be. It is a tough situation – that to exist in institutions or pursue work under capitalism, we often have to build ourselves and our work up as good, important, and respectable – only for that to become a card that can be pulled out from under us to take us down. While any scholar or artist could have this card pulled out from under them, it happens disproportionately to minoritized scholars and artists, who also paradoxically often face greater pressure to justify their work as important.

I care more about being a full, happy, and secure human than about being a scholar and artist who is visible. Therefore, as I have encountered a small but slowly growing amount of visibility in my little corner of impact, I have felt a lot of distress and turmoil about what to do. In this way, trying to make an impact seems to inevitably get tied up into narratives of goodness, importance, and respectability that I or others create for me, which stand at odds to my happiness and security, because this narrative can be yanked out from under me for any number of real, unreal, or in-between reasons. Like other transgender scholars and artists living in this political climate, I am particularly vulnerable to this sort of attack. Every step I take towards visibility, therefore, feels reluctant and uneasy to me.

Over the last three years as I have thought deeply about these issues, I have found myself landing on a few key strategies for navigating these tensions. I will focus here on three.

First, I have come to believe it is possible to take active steps to avoid imposing (or letting others impose) narratives of goodness, importance, and respectability onto you or your work. For example, if you want to compliment me, call me creative or interesting or passionate. Labeling someone as good or great is almost second-nature in our day-to-day lives when we speak of the people we care about; however, it is actually an extremely loaded statement. By using these and related words, we are positioning someone within a moral hierarchy and positioning ourselves via proximity to them. It is not a neutral act. Becoming more aware of how I talk and write about myself and avoiding simplistic narratives wherever possible is another concrete thing I can do. Because just as there are parts of me and my work that are good/important/respectable, there are also parts of me and my work that are not. In this way, speaking and writing about my experiences in ways that do not resolve me into a clean narratives (e.g., good person, the victim) but acknowledging the murky middle in which real life tends to fall.

Second, I believe it is important to treat the benefits of visibility as temporary, transactional, and politically and socially loaded. If a bunch of people tell you that you or your work is good, important, or respectable, it doesn’t mean that it is anymore valid than if no one was telling you this. It simply means that you or your work has resonated with some space within capitalism and the other systems in which we currently live. This might sound jaded, but treating visibility as either random or socially/politically loaded, likely temporary, and capable of vanishing in an instant for legitimate, illegitimate, and other reasons empowers one to use visibility while they have it as a tool for good. This requires shifting from a fear of losing visibility to a desire to maximize making an impact with it under the recognition that I will most likely lose visibility and reputation. Most importantly, I must treat visibility as a tool, not a truth, so that when/if it comes crashing down, it is simply loss of a tool, not my own sense of identity and worthiness.

Third, having watched many people who are visible have their reputations and careers implode on social media, in the news, and elsewhere, what has become clear to me is that it often hurts badly. For minoritized scholars and artists, what hurts the most is not more privileged people turning on you; it is people from your community turning on you. This feels more true, because the others’ views often relate to hate, bias, and discrimination. However, the reality is that under capitalism and within the scarcity of the systems we live under, minoritized people turn on minoritized extremely frequently. A visible minoritized person’s demise is often something that other minoritized people can capitalize on by filling their space or through gaining attention by discussing and parsing the situation. For this reason, I think it is essential to accept that when you lose visibility or something happens that makes it feel like the world is closing in on you, some people from your community will inevitably turn on you. It is not an “if”; it is a fact. Therefore, in these situations, I think as much as possible it is essential to not take abandonment by people in your community personally; it is just what happens in these situations. Focus instead on the people you actually know, stay grounded in real relationships, and allow the situation to pass so that people (minoritized and otherwise) who want to leverage the situation will move on. Additionally, even with a healthy mindset, having your reputation challenged is extremely difficult to experience on a human level. It is okay to let your world collapse and to seek whatever emergency support you might need. That does not mean you failed; it’s just what you have to do. Many people who go through these experiences do in fact come out on the other side as healthier and stronger people.

I want to conclude on the idea that respectability has rarely saved or truly benefited queer, trans, and other marginalized people. It typically benefits those who are deemed respectable, and respectability can be taken away for numerous reasons, especially if you challenge the status quo. I don’t want to be viewed as good, important, or respectable, but I do want to make some positive impact in this world. Unfortunately, those two wishes seem to be in tension with one another – a tension that will likely require a lot of active effort to work through. This statement is a start.