Trans (on) YouTube: Localizing transnational narratives on two Polish trans YouTube channels

Abstract

This article explores genres and narratives of gender transition on two Polish YouTube channels (forming one collective) to illustrate negotiations between transnational and local understandings, performances, and interpretations of (trans)gender identity. “Trans YouTube” is a valuable performative and discursive space, allowing (especially young) trans creators to maintain, present, and communicate the desired sense of self. The article explores multilingual and multimodal practices on Polish trans YouTube and discusses their role in localizing the transnational LGBTQ+ discourse within the local socio-cultural context. Applying the perspective of translation studies and exploring the role of translation (and non-translation) in localizing the transnational concepts of gender and sexuality makes it possible to trace the process of trans-creating the new language of the Polish trans community, a language that emphasizes trans social media users’ agency and is capable of expressing their individualized and localized gender transition experiences.

The YouTube video starts with a head-and-shoulder shot of a young woman with blondish hair and a fringe, wearing eyeliner, subtle lipstick, and a pink top. She announces in Polish that she will discuss her “transition goals” (using the English term; i.e., ideas and expectations that most trans people have about their appearance post-transition). Some people want to look like Marilyn Monroe, she says, and the actor’s photo appears on the screen. She then jokes that she wants to look like herself—but z cyckami (“with tits”) and her selfie emerges, with outlines of breasts digitally drawn in neon yellow. Są różne typy osób i każdy jest (…) (“There are various kinds of people and everyone is […]”), she says, whereby we hear a click of a mouse followed by a computer-generated, American-accented voice pronouncing the word “valid.” She keeps playing the word back, while the spelling of “valid”—surrounded by a decorative pink frame—hovers across her face.

Does “valid” not have an adequate Polish equivalent? Another creator, when talking about nonbinary identities being equal, tries several expressions in Polish (tak samo […] ważne? […] wartościowe?) to finally settle on “valid” in English, somewhat uncomfortably. I feel that this moment captures the “invisible labour of translation” (Bassi, 2020) unfolding in real time: a Polish YouTuber translating the transnational discourse around binary and nonbinary trans identities—not only into the Polish language but also the specific, national, socio-cultural context. This is expressed perfectly by the Polish term tłumaczyć, meaning both “to translate” and “to explain.”

In this article, I explore genres and narratives of gender transition on two (men’s and women’s) Polish YouTube channels (forming one collective) as an illustration of negotiations between transnational and local trans discourses. Applying the perspective of translation and localization allows me to trace the process of trans-creating the new language of the Polish trans community. The scene opening this article is multilingual, shows familiarity with the transnational gender discourse, travels globally through the medium of English, and exemplifies the labor of localization, illustrating perfectly what my research is all about. The scene also contains elements that are both common on YouTube (head-and-shoulder shot, home-made film quality) and very innovative and creative (playing back computer-generated speech in a DJ-like fashion). My research moves in these spaces between the platform’s conventionality and individual vloggers’ creativity.

As explained in the Materials and ethics section, I have decided against revealing the channels’ names or sharing links to their videos. To ease the reading, I will use TM (for trans men’s channel) and TW (for trans women’s channel).

Theoretical framework

My research draws on theories of queer studies and translation studies, which have only recently started recognizing their commonalities—most notably, a concern with otherness—and forming transdisciplinary alliances. Important here have been the collections edited by Baer and Kaindl (2017) and Epstein and Gillette (2017). Seminal for conceptualizing trans(gender) and/in translation is the special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly edited by Gramling and Dutta (2016). The editors define translation as a “being-in-relation […] a moving copresence […] one embodied language does not replace another but befriends it, critiques it, touches it, transfuses it” (p. 333). I hope to show that this description fits the practices discussed here.

This article is concerned with transnational narratives of sexuality, gender, and gender transition, and their localization into Polish. Such narratives form part of a “global gay culture” (Altman, 1997) or a “transnational queer culture” (Leap & Motschenbacher, 2012), which combines the globalization of gay/queer English with “other components of North American, urban gay culture: the politics and symbolics of the Stonewall riots, the imperatives of the coming-out experience, and ideas of gay community” (Boellstorff & Leap, 2004, p. 2; see also other contributions to their volume). Bassi (2017b) talks about “internationalization” of identity labels (“lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” “trans[gender],” etc.) and the key terms of gay and trans rights movements, such as “coming out,” “homophobia,” or “hate crime.” Like many other languages, Polish has adopted some of these terms in their original form (e.g., “coming out”) or with morphological, phonological, and/or orthographic modifications (gej, lesbijka), and calqued others (transpłciowy/a/e “transgender [m/f/n],” przestępstwo z nienawiści “hate crime;” for a discussion on “queer,” see Szulc, 2012). Whether such adoption processes are seen as a form of neocolonialism (casting “non-Western peoples as passive victims of US cultural and economic imperialism” [Binnie, 2004]), or an expression of linguistic and political agency (Baer, 2017) depends to some extent on how truly transnational, as opposed to Western/American, these terms are.

English-speaking YouTube channels that disseminate and solidify trans discourses are, of course, run not only by American, British, Australian, or Canadian creators but also by non-native speakers. Among the most popular trans YouTubers are native speakers of Swedish (Mathilda Högberg, Mia Mulder) and Dutch (Nikkie de Jager)—still, however, hailing from countries considered “Western.” Also, discourses of transition had developed before the Internet grew popular (e.g., Borba (2017) writes about “discursive colonization” of transition in Brazilian gender clinics, which he attributes to the global circulation of American diagnostic manuals and the way they guide “clinical gaze”), Either way, “globalized queerness” can be considered a “homogenizing force” that might invalidate, exclude, or erase local queer knowledges (Levy, 2024). In this light, as Levy observes, “localizing queerness is to make queerness open, mutable and different everywhere” (2024, p. 38); it is a process of blending “global and local features founded in notions of sincerity and authenticity” (p. 48); a “homecoming” (p. 16). Exercising subjectivity in “shaping topics, conversations, and self-doubts into videos” (p. 137) is what Martino et al. (2021) call “desubjugation” of trans and nonbinary youth. Localization is thus understood as “a common global project” (Gouadec, 2007), whereby the “localized text is not called on to represent any previous texts, it is instead part of one and the same process of constant material distribution, which starts in one culture and may continue in many others” (Pym, 2004, p. 6).

I suggest talking about “invisible labor of localization” rather than “translation,” as the former is a broader concept that includes the latter. I see localization as a type of trans knowledge production practice that Polish YouTubers engage in. Targeting Polish-speaking audiences at varying levels of familiarity with trans issues, they find themselves constantly moving between not only patterns of languaging (using language) but also global and local as well as “expert” and “lay” discourses, when redeploying “travelling theories, tropes and terminologies” in their gender transition narratives (Bassi, 2020, p. 367).

In the videos I study, speakers do not codeswitch from one language to another for longer stretches of talk; rather, they seamlessly incorporate various languaging patterns in a way that does not interrupt the flow of the narrative. The term translanguaging, to my mind, perfectly fits such multilingual practices, characterized by fluidity and dynamism in transcending boundaries between “named languages, language varieties, and language and other semiotic systems” (Wei, 2018, p. 9). Translation, on the other hand, involves expressing a concept from a source language using the target language’s resources. This kind of translation requires “a particular form of literacy that combines the ability to speak about one’s inner world with intercultural skills” (Bassi, 2017a, p. 61), and “the ability to fit one’s story into a foreign format” (Bassi, 2017b, p. 239). Thus, translanguaging and translation can be considered mechanisms at work in the process of localization.

Trans community, activism, and research in Poland

The situation of trans people in Poland has had a different history than that of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. During the (nominally) communist People’s Republic (1947–1989), homosexuality was considered a moral vice, while transseksualizm (“transsexualism”) was seen as a medical condition people had no control over. This does not mean trans people were accepted in society: they were feared and despised, their stories spectacularized by the press (Janion, 2017). Nevertheless, medical transition was possible in Poland during the 1960–1970s (free of charge on the national health service) and legal transition was relatively uncomplicated (Dębińska, 2020, p. 16).

Since the democratic transformation, Poland has been pulled in two different directions: (1) towards a “reinvention” of traditional national and religious values on the one hand (Kulska, 2023)—leading, among others, to the radicalization of anti-abortion legislation and the creation of “LGBT-ideology free zones” (Korolczuk, 2020); and (2) towards emancipation of women and the LGBTQ+ community on the other, resulting in a vibrant gay and lesbian and, since around 2007–2008, trans culture and activism (see volume edited by Kulpa & Mizielińska, 2011). The trans community has been more visible after a famous TV presenter Piotr Jacoń came out as a parent of a trans child (Jacoń, 2021). Trans people, however, still struggle with extremely complicated legal transition procedures (which infamously involve suing one’s own parents), lack of national standards of trans-specific healthcare, and high risk of discrimination, exclusion, and violence. It is worth mentioning that in Poland—contrary to global trends but in line with other ex-communist European countries—trans men outnumber trans women, which might be attributed to the prevailing strict gender norms and misogyny (Kłonkowska, 2015).

Transness as a social (rather than medical) phenomenon has been addressed by a handful of Polish scholars within the last decade, mostly from the perspectives of social sciences. The first significant work in this area was that of Bieńkowska (2012), followed by work of Kłonkowska and colleagues (e.g., Kłonkowska, 2015, 2017; Kłonkowska & Dynarski, 2020; Kłonkowska & Bonvissuto, 2019, 2021). A significant shift in conceptualizing trans issues can be illustrated by comparing books by Bieńkowska (2012) and Dębińska (2020). While Bieńkowska (2012) uses the now widely rejected term transseksualizm and seems to define transness as a medical disorder (always quoting other scholars’ definitions, though), Dębińska (2020, p. 9) uses the currently most accepted term transpłciowość, understood as a gender identity and political category.

In her “ethnography of a category” (following Valentine, 2007), Dębińska (2020) sets out to compile a history of the discursive construction of trans identity in Poland. She traces social, medical, political, and media developments contributing to this process, offering valuable insights into two aspects relevant here: the role of Poland’s post-communist transformation and its positioning along the “West/East divide,” and the understanding of testimony as labor.

Dębińska (2020) considers LGBTQ+ categories, including trans identity categories, as “products of Western social processes” (p. 10), based on Western concepts of gender and sexuality, admitting that the construction of those concepts in the first place was intricately intertwined with the colonial project of European empires. The history of constructing transness as a medical and identity category reinforces the division between the “West” (with its modern LGBTQ+ identities, politics, and activism) and the “Rest” (p. 11). Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, ostensibly belongs to the traditionalist, homo- and trans-phobic “Rest,” and is expected to follow the example set by the West (p. 17).

Dębińska’s (2020) other argument concerns narrating gender transition as a kind of labor, which consists of reflecting on one’s perception of gender, and making sense of one’s gender-related experiences, allowing for the emergence of biographical narratives that would have never been sayable without the formation of a community of narrators (and their publics); taking control over these stories takes time and effort, and requires learning to narrate them in a “socially intelligible way” (p. 97). Dębińska does not mention translation, but she does refer to “borrowing” political activist discourses from the West, a process that, as already mentioned, should be seen as a more agentive and conscious act of “localizing ” (p. 10).

Dr YouTube: a case study

Materials and ethics

There is just a handful of Polish trans YouTube channels. They are typically small—with 3–30 videos and between 100 and 5,000 subscribers. An exception is a channel by a trans woman (who used to have a successful gaming channel before transitioning) with 115,000 subscribers. It is possible that the existence of a collective of trans creators partly contributes to this: new creators might prefer joining a group that already has a large audience.

This research analyzes multilingual and multimodal practices in videos posted to two YouTube channels (TM and TW) run by this collective. Both channels follow the same principle: each member is given a day of the week to upload a video on the week’s assigned topic. Topics revolve around social, medical, and legal transition in Poland; the content targets less experienced trans people (especially youth), people questioning their gender, and cis allies. The two channels form one community: they share a fan page on Facebook, organize live streams, and participate in offline events together.

TM was established in May 2017 and currently (June 2024) has over 500 videos and 14,000 subscribers. TW took off in February 2022 and now has almost 70 videos and 1,920 subscribers. The most popular video on TM has 167,000 views, and the second most popular has 68,000. The most popular video on TW reached 44,000 views but was removed in summer 2023 when its creator left YouTube. Each video typically receives several comments; the comments section is moderated.

Over the years, there have been around 20 people contributing to the two channels for varying periods of time (some have only uploaded one video; one member of TM has been active since the beginning). They are typically in their late teens or early twenties at the time of joining. They are all ethnic Poles and native speakers of Polish. Some post under their real names while others use nicknames under which they are also known offline and in other online spaces.

All creators have transitioned socially, having been out to their families, friends, teachers, and/or colleagues for at least several months (which is a requirement for joining the collective); they are all seeking or have undergone legal transition and some elements of medical transition (most commonly hormone therapy). The language of their narratives reflects these experiences, which does not mean the channels exclude or ignore nonbinary identities. While the division into a “(trans) men’s” and “(trans) women’s” channel appears to adhere to the gender binary, and almost all collective members identify as either men or women, they take great care to foreground the existence and validity of other ways of being trans, for example: “na testosteronie […] faceci to mogą zaobserwować/i trans i cis/i ogólnie transmasc “this can be observed on testosterone [by] guys/both trans and cis/and transmasc people in general” (TM).

Table 1 illustrates possible topics by listing the 30 most popular videos for each channel and their number of views (as of November 2023). The table does not provide actual video titles; each topic is listed only once (if it appears again, it is skipped).

Table 1.

The most popular video topics on the two channels

	Topic—TM	views	Topic—TW	views
1	being trans in school	166,000	being trans in school	3,800
2	how to make a testosterone injection	45,000	introductory video [new collective member]	2,700
3	how to know you’re trans	34,000	trans woman at work	2,500
4	how to choose a name	27,000	transition vs. family relations	2,300
5	visual transition	23,000	tucking, clothes and trans confidence	2,300
6	message to parents of trans kids	20,000	how I got diagnosed	2,300
7	safe binding	15,000	passing	1,900
8	how to transition in Poland	14,000	stereotypes about trans people	1,700
9	Q & A	13,000	periods in trans women	1,700
10	voice dysphoria	12,000	coming out	1,600
11	stereotypes about trans people	12,000	childhood memories, biography	1,500
12	introductory video [new collective member]	11,000	gender euphoria	1,500
13	coming out	11,000	fear of transition	1,500
14	surgery	10,000	being a trans woman in Poland	1,500
15	fashion	10,000	religion	1,300
16	my mastectomy	10,000	body silhouette	1,300
17	periods	10,000	being trans/gender concepts	1,300
18	stupid questions cis people ask trans people	10,000	do trans people hate cis people?	1,200
19	trans men’s relationships	9,700	gender dysphoria	1,100
20	questioning your gender	9,100	how to know you’re trans	1,100
21	nonbinary identities	9,000	proving your gender	1,000
22	religion	8,900	public toilets/TERFs	1,000
23	coming out in school	8,800	height in trans women	1,000
24	sex	8,800	ways of taking hormones	1,000
25	using k-tape	8,400	before I knew I was trans	1,000
26	the gender tag	8,200	trans myths	1,000
27	relationship with your body	8,000	hair in trans women	1,000
28	vlog from a live meeting of the collective	7,900	changes on estrogen	1,000
29	three years on testosterone	7,900	relations with cis people	below 1,000
30	public toilets	7,700	Q & A	below 1,000

I have decided not to reveal channel names and to protect the identity of their authors, even though their material is public and some of them are widely known as activists, also offline. While they can close the channels down if necessary—which makes YouTube an “unsteady,” but also “participatory and interactive” archive (Raun, 2015, p. 702)—I have little control over the purposes my research may be applied to once it is published. The current worldwide anti-trans political trends, and the uncertainty of how they might develop further, justify taking substantial care not to cause harm in the future.

In this work, I am positioned as an ever-aspiring ally: even though my relationship with my gender is far from straightforward, I am not trans. I have established contact with the collective and ensured they are comfortable with my research. I see my work as operating on a sort of license granted by my trans collaborators that can be revoked at any time.

Trans YouTube and its conventions

“Trans YouTube” is a performative and discursive space where “physical and media worlds mesh as transformations are happening and identities emerge on-screen and are taken into the offline world” (Raun, 2020, p. 222) and where bodily changes facilitated by hormones and surgery can be documented and archived. It “houses one of the most vivid visual cultures of trans (self-)representations and has become a place that many turn to for information and support” (Raun, 2015, p. 701). There is a growing number of publications dealing with trans YouTube, mostly from a digital ethnography perspective and with a predominant Anglo-American focus (Horak, 2014; Jenzen, 2017; Martino et al., 2021; Raun, 2015, 2020), none of which deal with Polish content (but see Szulc, 2020, on digital gender disidentifications among Polish LGBTQs in the UK) or take a linguistic approach. Some research is available on trans YouTubers from Brazil (Bonocore Morais et al., 2023), Spain (Tortajada et al., 2021), and the Philippines (Castañeda, 2020), among others.

In general—TM and TW included—most trans YouTube videos take the form of a short talking head (head-and-shoulder) film, which, due to its strong cultural association with TV news, positions the vlogger as an authority or expert figure (Dame, 2013). At the same time, the fact that these videos are usually shot in a private, personal location, such as the vlogger’s bedroom, and contain “formal markers of amateurism,” generates “impressions of authenticity and intimacy” (Horak, 2014, p. 575). The vlogger is thus an expert and a trustworthy friend at once: most vloggers address their audience directly in the second-person grammatical forms (in Polish, plural second-person forms are usually used) and create the impression of a two-way conversation, by using formulaic greetings, asking for advice, and posing questions (p. 575). While there are rare exceptions, such as short feature films, it is safe to assume talking-head vlogging to be the overarching genre that most trans videos follow: “creating and posting video blogs is so ubiquitous in many trans communities that trans vlogging has become a genre in itself” (Raun, 2015, pp. 701–702).

O’Neill (2014) and Horak (2014) offer slightly different typologies of trans YouTube narratives, including transitional videos, DIY gender advice videos, anti-bullying and celebrity videos (O’Neill, 2014, pp. 40–42) as well as autobiographical narratives, explanations of terms/concepts relevant to trans experience, and commentaries (Horak, 2014, p. 574). Such typologies point to the existence of formulaic or conventional types of videos which have become established, recognizable, and reproducible. According to Horak, “genre conventions help amateurs enter the field and attract new viewers” (p. 573), while being flexible enough to allow for individual experiences and ways of expressing them to emerge.

Let us unpack some of these categories. First, O’Neill’s (2014) celebrity videos (vlogs by creators with celebrity status) are practically absent on Polish YouTube. There are no Polish trans YouTubers able to claim such status (except for the gamer mentioned above). The fact that anti-bullying videos are almost completely absent is more surprising. This might be due to the principle of having a specific topic each week, although some recent topics, such as “a message for myself from the past,” “hate speech,” or “public toilets and dressing rooms,” have provoked some discussion on bullying. Another explanation might be that bullying has not really taken root as a discourse in Polish youth culture (yet). This does not mean that bullying does not exist as a social phenomenon, but that the discourse around it has not become so central as in English-speaking cultures.

On the Polish channels, contributors often ask for topics to cover, comment on received feedback, and refer to each other’s videos; it thus appears unnecessary to distinguish a commentary or response type of video, since all films contain both monologic and dialogic elements. Videos fully devoted to commentary do not exist on the two channels unless we count Q&A live streams and uploads here (which are untypical).

It follows that within the genre of Polish trans vlogs, we can distinguish the following types of narratives:

1. Autobiographic narratives (e.g., “how I got diagnosed,” “childhood memories/biography,” “before I knew I was trans”), including timeline videos (see below)

2. How-to narratives/tutorials (e.g., “how to make a testosterone injection,” “how to choose a name,” “choosing a doctor,” “dealing with dysphoria”)

3. Educational/informational narratives (e.g., “questioning your gender,” “nonbinary identities,” “what it means to be trans,” “TERFs”).

O’Neill (2014) defines timeline videos as documenting physical transition step-by-step, “in real time” (e.g., in the form of monthly body appearance or voice updates). While being “overwhelmingly present on YouTube” generally (Raun, 2020, p. 218), they are extremely rare on the Polish channels, for a few reasons. First, the channels’ format of weekly topics do not allow for such regular updates; second, their members are at various stages in their medical transition. Transition timeline content may appear if the given topic is conducive to it (e.g., if the topic is “surgery,” contributors might present the results of their surgeries) or during the so-called free-topic weeks. Topics in Table 1 containing timeline narrative elements include “visual transition,” “my mastectomy,” or “three years on testosterone.” While the subtle changes the contributors are going through may not be addressed explicitly, they are still visible—and documented—in the videos they have posted over the years (especially on TM, which has existed for six years), realizing the archiving function of trans YouTube.

Tutorial-type videos are the least common, and few feature vloggers presenting, rather than verbally describing, how to do something (make an injection, use k-tape, etc.). Tutorials such as step-by-step demonstrations, trans product reviews, or surgery reports involving live footage, all known from English-speaking trans channels, are missing. This overview of narrative types reveals some major differences between the narrative types on the Polish channels and the ones claimed by scholars to dominate trans(-national) YouTube; the collective nature of the channels studied, discussed in more detail below, may be one of the reasons for these differences.

Tracing the invisible labor of localization

If the topics discussed above seem familiar, that is because they are the “staples” of gender transition narratives, following the milestones of a trans life story, set out by British, American, and Canadian pioneers of trans YouTube. The discourse around trans issues in Poland in the 1990s was dictated by sexologists and highly medicalized (Dębińska, 2020); this started changing with the arrival of the Internet, offering an alternative discourse of trans identity, with websites and blogs and then YouTube channels in English. The first Polish trans YouTubers had no other role models and drew a lot of inspiration from these pioneers, which they have mentioned repeatedly in their videos, including Ty Turner (who started on YouTube in 2008), Chase Ross (2010), or Miles McKenna (2012). The first collective members were among the trailblazers of non-medicalized, non-essentialist discourse on trans identity in Poland, often having to make terminology decisions that would influence the language used to discuss trans issues today.

Some early videos on TM reveal traces of this invisible labor. A good example is provided by the terms dysforia and euforia płciowa (“gender dysphoria” and “euphoria”). Even though these terms appear self-evident today, they were absent from the Polish trans blogosphere that preceded YouTube (Chojnicka, 2023). Euphoria was an unknown concept, while dysphoria was referred to using the medical term—dezaprobata płci—popularized by the sexologists, or in the English spelling, marking it as foreign. With the shift from text-based blogs to multimodal social media, dysforia and euforia płciowa established themselves firmly within the Polish trans discourse.

Slightly different evidence is provided by early videos on using public toilets/dressing rooms. At a time when these topics were more commonly discussed by the U.K.- and U.S.-based trans YouTubers, with moral panics over trans women entering women-only spaces, lack of awareness of the existence of trans people among users of public spaces in Poland made them relatively safe. The inclusion of these topics might thus mirror transnational trends rather than respond to a local need (this situation has, unfortunately, changed dramatically in the last few years).

Another example are videos under the heading zaimki (“pronouns”). Polish is a highly gendered language, with nouns, adjectives, most forms of verbs, and even numerals taking gendered endings. In English, in contrast, the discussion on correctly addressing and referring to trans people is limited to the use of pronouns (“he” vs. “she,” as well as the nonbinary “they” and some less widely used neopronouns). Under the influence of the ubiquitous online discourses in/on English, zaimki has become a shorthand for the much larger and more complex system of gendered forms in Polish.

Several topics in Table 1 represent the practice of non-translation (translanguaging): “the gender tag,” “coming out,” “passing,” “binding,” “tucking,” and “TERFs” are English terms woven into Polish narratives. The first is a platform-wide tagging project initiated by Ashley Wylde (see Martino et al., 2021). The video in question was clearly not meant to contribute to the tagging project, as the tag is missing, and the narrative is in Polish. While the title and use of formulaic project questions connect to this transnational practice, the need of the vlogger to present the questions in Polish to then answer them makes the labor of localization visible.

The other expressions belong to a considerable list of the channels’ translingual practices. While “passing,” “binding,” and “tucking” represent staple terms of transnational discourse that lack Polish equivalents, “coming out” can be expressed with a Polish term (wychodzić z szafy, “to come out of the closet,” itself an older translation from English). While wychodzić z szafy belongs to the mainstream gay and lesbian discourse, popularized, among others, by the magazine Replika, “coming out” is used consistently by trans YouTubers, suggesting that they might feel more affiliated to the transnational trans community than the Polish “LGBTQ+” community.

The last two examples of narratives have, in contrast, probably developed locally. The first one concerns surgeries relevant to trans men, colloquially referred to using the numeral nouns jedynka, dwójka, trójka, best translated into English as “the first” (chest surgery), “the second” (various types of hysterectomy—removal of the uterus) and “the third” (genital reconstruction, bottom surgery). This system illustrates not only the typical order of surgeries but also their popularity. As hysterectomy does not appear to be very common among English-speaking YouTubers, this element of medical transition might have arisen as a local rather than transnational healthcare standard.

Connected to this is the other example, involving a creator reading their autobiography, which was assigned by their doctor, out in front of the camera. Delivering a written autobiography, which needs to follow a specific script to be “accepted” and allow access to hormone therapy and surgeries (Dębińska, 2020), is often still a requirement in medical transition in Poland. Narrating the text which might have taken hours to write could be a way of making the exercise worthwhile, while also providing a template for those seeking guidance on how to compose their own texts.

Individualizing collective narratives

So far, the two channels have been presented as a collective effort, with the assigned topics imposing certain narrative restrictions and with the informational/educational content being prioritized over the creators’ individual transition timelines and experiences. In stark contrast to many English-speaking trans YouTubers using the platform to document their own transition while also revealing other aspects of their private lives (unrelated to transition), the Polish channels focus on presenting generalized transition pathways available in the country and downplay private aspects of creators’ lives.

Still, each contributor is free to decide how much of their personal journey to reveal. Their own stories thus function to illustrate the informational content rather than being the main purpose of vlogging. Similar messages reiterated by many contributors construct transness as an aspect of social life rather than a rare illness and construe a predictable and manageable transition pathway. They also emphasize authority and expertise of the YouTubers, often more knowledgeable than the doctors who wield the gatekeeping power not only over medical but also legal transition (“irreversible changes” are usually required by courts, giving doctors unbalanced power over this aspect of transition). A whole support network, with Facebook pages, by-invitation-only groups, and Discord servers, has arisen around the creators, and the exchange of information within this community is so reliable, quick, and effective that it has arguably contributed to positive changes in trans-specific healthcare in Poland (decreasing the number of tests and diagnostic procedures required by doctors).

This does not mean that there is no space for the creators’ personalities: all contributors have an individual style. This includes intros (collages of photos or video fragments accompanied by a soundtrack), ritualized greetings or ways of ending videos, idiosyncratic linguistic features (including multilingual practices), or multimodal elements. The contributor mentioned in the Introduction, for example, stands out with her self-depreciating sense of humor and the practice of inserting sound effects (e.g., laughing or clapping) into the videos to mark off her jokes. Another YouTuber presents himself as especially gloomy, sullen, or melancholic, performing a “rough masculinity” which, as he admits, helps him feel he passes. In a recent video, perhaps to soften up this harsh image (commented on by viewers), he makes coffee “for” and has a chat with an imaginary audience member, upholding throughout the illusion of a two-way conversation by consistently using singular second-person forms and prolific dialogue markers (e.g., wszystko ok? “everything ok?;” dawaj, pytaj “ask away;” nie wiem co ci powiedzieć “I don’t know what to tell you”).

One long-standing collective member is especially popular due to his sense of humor. For example, he has a ritual of ending each video by showing off his naked, post-surgery chest and exclaiming cycki! (“tits”), which is notable as all men on the channel (including himself in more “serious” moments) avoid using this feminine-marked term. He is also extremely prolific in creating neologisms, many of which involve translanguaging. For example, to say “thank you” he has used the following terms: dzięksy, dziękz, dziemkować, dziena, dziemki, podziękował, semkju, sękju/senkju, fękju, danke, dankę, tankz, and spasiba. Notably, some of his inventions have been established in the discourse of the channels’ network and even offline trans communities (e.g., transiątka “little transes” (-iątka is a diminutive suffix). This sort of linguistic creativity is rarely present on the YouTube channels by English native speakers, suggesting that it is motivated by multilingual awareness brought about by English L2 users moving between transnational and local discourses and narratives.

Let us finish with a brief discussion of another video from this YouTuber. The topic was testosterone, and he created a persona of a nerdy, tense, jittery doctor with a fake mustache, a surgeon’s overcoat, and a clipboard, who delivered a hilarious lecture on the expected effects of testosterone therapy. A completely changed pitch and tone of his voice, formal linguistic features associated with being an educated professional, medical terminology, and visible discomfort the doctor exhibits when referring to genitalia, coupled with the utter chaos of the creator’s teenage bedroom, combine into one of the most popular (6,400 views, over 80 comments) and unforgettable videos on the channel. I would claim that the “doctor” was not brought in to grant legitimacy and authority to the material: medical expertise is actually mocked and ridiculed here, while the collective members “just being themselves”—against the backgrounds of messy bedrooms, while hiding from family members or trying to prevent cats and/or dogs from destroying their cameras—are the ones in possession of trustworthy knowledge and expertise. Although this remains the only full-length parody video on the channel, most collective members occasionally employ parodic elements, showing that a trans life, while difficult at times, is not by any means as “tragic” as the anti-trans rhetoric claims it to be.

Conclusion

Despite trans YouTube “operating according to strong generic norms” (Horak, 2014, p. 582), with the talking-head video format clearly predominating, significant differences have been found between Polish vlogs and the transnational “standards.” While the latter tend to center documenting and archiving personal, individual experiences, Polish YouTubers prioritize the collective building of knowledge and providing information on transition pathways in the national context. The collective members’ transition timelines are not thematized explicitly, but the archiving potential of YouTube is employed to document subtle changes they go through over time. Each contributor adds a personal touch to the collectively produced knowledge by framing it in their individual way, employing various multimodal and multilingual resources, including neologisms, parody, and humor, among others. A question remains whether these differences are a function of the channels’ collective nature or reflect deeper cultural disparities as to what is sayable within a gender transition narrative.

While many of the discussed genre and narrative patterns reveal how “travelling theories, tropes and terminologies are redeployed in monolingual contexts” (Bassi, 2020, p. 367), and how they require the labor of localization to be locally intelligible, some narratives may have developed locally. Localizing transnational discourses does play an important role in constructing socially intelligible Polish gender transition narratives, but these discourses are also often negotiated, challenged, or rejected.

The channels’ collective nature and the backgrounding of personal gender journeys might work as a way of rejecting Western individualism. The “community” is not (only) built around the experience of trans identity shared by disconnected individuals across the globe, but (also) around social, cultural, and medical systems that shape trans people’s lives in Poland and their struggles to exist within them. The lack of product reviews in the videos—in contrast to occasional tutorials on how to make one’s own binder or tucker—might signal the rejection of commodification of LGBT identity commented on by both Bassi (2017b) and Levy (2024). Whether transnational tropes are accepted or rejected, they remain a point of orientation that local narratives build on, engage with, “make home with” (Levy, 2023); in Gramling and Dutta’s (2016) words, they remain in dialogue, move together.

Polish trans YouTubers are shown to possess intercultural skills necessary to narrate their experiences in transnational formats, an awareness of transnational discourses of gender, and the ability to translate them both into the Polish language and into narratives legible to their audiences. They weave a collective narrative of a livable trans life, while their changing bodies, voices, and unique linguistic practices reveal traces of their own individual stories.

Data availability

As explained in the Materials and ethics section, this research uses data from the YouTube platform which is publicly available without any restrictions. For ethical and security reasons, links to the data are not provided, but the channels in question can be easily found. Channel creators are in full control of the data, and it can happen that the videos I mention are removed at any time. No data have been downloaded for this study.

Funding

This research has been funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 programme. Grant number: 882747—TRANSlation–H2020-MSCA-IF-2019.

Conflicts of interest: None declared.