Data and the lives of trans people go hand in hand, for better and (often) for worse. From surveillance systems that attempt to normalize and control trans bodies (Beauchamp, McKenzie) to activists’ efforts to use data infrastructures or data-driven epistemologies and forms of knowledge to resist cultures of exclusion (Hicks, Keyes), there is a long history of overlapping between trans people and practices, cultures and logics of data. This story continues today, with supporters and opponents of trans lives deploying and manipulating dialogic systems to provoke and manifest their worldviews (Doğan & Stevens; Attard-Frost; Guyan).
Yet, interestingly, critical data studies as a space has little to directly say about trans interfaces with and relations to data. This special theme corrects for this absence by providing a venue dedicated to the theme of trans data, inviting papers that consider any and all of: the role of data within trans lives and social movements; data practices and rhetorics as tools of oppression aimed at trans people, and; and efforts by trans people to resist not only oppression, but data-driven understandings of trans lives and needs.