Social Cognitive Theory and Queer Identity's Online Spotlight
Identity Formation, Sex-Ed, and Community
Welcome to Dilemmas of Meaning, a journal at the intersection of philosophy, culture, and technology. This is the third entry in the Identity Series. But it stands on its own, and asks one central question: Why does the internet become a site of refuge and source of representation for queer people? It also highlights the labor queer communities do to create knowledge sources for each other, how technology has facilitated this, and what still needs to be done.
Once you’ve started the process of figuring out your identity, the ease with which you can learn about similar experiences and thereby gain crucial self-knowledge differs for many people. Since education on marginalized identities is difficult to access or non-existent, queer people—or people who would otherwise come to know themselves as queer—have been largely cut-out from society’s identity-forming resource. With political systems precluding queer people from accessing crucial self-knowledge, and society’s prejudice making public exploration of gender and sexual identities difficult (or dangerous), many have turned to online spaces to overcome structural inequality. Although this essay series typically problematizes technology’s impact on identity, the systemic reality for queer people leaves few places to turn but to virtual spaces. With many anti-LGBTQ laws—such as the many in the US like Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, Hungary’s efforts, or Uganda’s new law—hindering queer people in learning about their experiences in real life, there is a positive element of online learning warranting discussion.
By focusing on the significance of agency, we can foreground the possibilities of queer self-transformation and self-realization as supported by technology. Agency is essential to the discussion as without it, “there is little room for trans people to legibly exist outside of our initial assignment,”1 Noah Zazanis writes. A focus on agency reveals how queer people can alter the conditions of their existence by creating and choosing new environments for identity constitution. Out of the heteronormative conditions queer people find themselves, they forge new ones. Marx stressed this, saying people make their history not “under self-selected circumstances, but under the circumstances existing already.”2 Concomitant with oppression is the seed of self-transformation. The power of reshaping material reality is displayed by queer people’s utilization of online spaces to make visible identities that society has tried to keep hidden.
Illuminating Identity
For the ensuing discussion, understanding how queer identities are constituted is necessary. Without getting too technical, queer self-transformation is grounded in theory that rejects a view of bodies as a matter of pure ontology. Gender identity “is an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts,”3 as Judith Butler writes. Gender identities exist as we make them exist. Recognizing gender as malleable, a vessel taking the shape of the information one pours into it, opens the door for having agency in deciding who one is and who one becomes. However, since one is limited to the available knowledge, to constitute and perform new identities requires making new knowledge.
One theory that elucidates the process of identity formation is social cognitive theory (SCT), as advanced by Kay Bussey and Albert Bandura. According to SCT, Zazanis explains, “processes of gender identity construction rely on a reciprocal relationship between personal, behavioural, and environmental factors.”4 The three environmental factors SCT delineates are:
Modelling, examples of appropriate gendered behavior
Enactive experience, adjusted behavior as one engages with and judges responses as they learn and grow
Direct tuition, the social environment’s regulation of gendered behavior, i.e., norm setting
Understood together, SCT provides a cohesive illustration of queer identity constitution and reaffirms the agency people have in shaping their environments. Everyone—queer, trans, cis—experiences these environmental factors; however, the impact of the dominant factors varies depending on who you are. To fill the void of queer identities in a heteronormative environment, queer people create their own environmental factors that allow for identity cultivation outside of the prescribed norm.
Social Cognitive Theory Online
Modelling shows how a people of a certain community act. It has a powerful element of reflecting self-efficacy. As Zazanis writes, “the availability of trans models serves to build an internal sense of self-efficacy around transition [… it] proves that transition is possible.”5 The online community of queer people thus helps queer people realize that how they feel, who they are, and who they wish to become is both valid and that their efforts to make it real are not futile. While models provide this, they are not there to be imitated. Once one understands the rules and structures of the modeled behavior, “they can generate new patterns of behaviour that conform to the structural properties but go beyond what they have seen or heard,”6 writes Bussey and Bandura. Models are thus not taken as wholesale; they provide sites of agency where one can choose which aspects they will integrate into their identity. Modelling is, therefore, an essential learning process that provides a foundation for identity constitution and empowers the agent with this knowledge to construct themselves as they wish.
In a very powerful way, by modelling for burgeoning queer and trans people the possibilities of self-expression, they “actively participate in the reproduction of trans identity.”7 Briefly, given the bigoted panic in response to such a notion, it would feel irresponsible to not extinguish the reactionary fires by making clear that reproduction does not mean conscription. To say that queer people participate in the reproduction of queer identity is merely to say that acts of gender create the idea of gender.8 Without people acting according to one identity, the identity does not exist—whether trans or cis. Ironically, cisheteronormative social reproduction functions more akin to conscription. Indeed, despite bigots viewing queer identities as a contagion, cisheteronormative identity is “enforced through the violent regulatory practices of the state.”9 Modelling is an instantiation of gendered acts, and that queer identities are socially reproduced merely underscores how all gender categories are socially constructed.
Enacted experience is fostered through continued engagement with other queer people. With the increased access and ease of connectivity provided by the internet, queer people can more easily learn “what constitutes appropriate patterns of behavior.”10 Outside of trans-inclusive circles, trans enacted experience is exemplified in punishment for gender nonconformity, while the cis parallel is “discouragement from gender transgression.”11 Whether on Discord, TikTok, or Twitter, these spaces allow experienced and burgeoning queer people to come together and learn from each other in a way that provides an intervention against society’s heteronormative prescription.
How norms are instructed and set is termed direct tuition. A guide for trans people on how to pass is one example of tuition. YouTube is a valuable resource of tuition, with many videos from trans people explaining their experiences with voice training, documenting steps of their transition, or answering questions. These videos serve as a mix of modelling and direct tuition. Importantly, “just as cisgender society provides direct instructions for ‘appropriate’ gender conduct, trans circles provide instructions on how to be trans.”12 What’s thus central is that these norms are instituted in and by the communities themselves.
Despite the possibility that the education gained from online queer communities could perpetuate gender and sexual essentialism or amplify the perspective of elites, queer people lack the luxury of waiting for the ideal society—one without structural prejudice—to gain crucial self-knowledge. Indeed, while “never to be assumed as unified […] [c]ommunities of this kind are the product of careful development in less than ideal circumstances.”13 There is neither an authoritative voice nor a “singular understanding of what being trans means.”14 There are many different circles under the umbrella of ‘queer community;’ and, many of the circles would disagree with the tuition another provides. What’s important is both that these different circles exist and are made accessible online, and that they have members willing to perform the essential labor that provides queer people with identity-forming knowledge. That there are differing perspectives has its pros and cons; however, it underscores the agency of queer people to choose their learning environments. Indeed, SCT shows how queer people can make their identities shine out from the shadow of heteronormativity, a light which social media can amplify.
Online Education, Support, and Community
Social media has become a primary space for queer people to organize, connect, and express themselves. Posts show the full spectrum of queer life. While some will discuss negative and traumatic experiences, they also show many positive queer experiences—the community, love, and felicity. It also destigmatizes through showing neutral experiences, the banalities of living queer people experience like anyone else. However, while online anonymity enables identity exploration without the burdens of in-person prejudice and potential violence, hate is nevertheless, unfortunately, similarly pervasive online. From the comfort of social media, individuals are able to engage with other ways of being, different possibilities of being, and explore their identities in a space they have relatively more control over.
Manduley et al. examined this phenomenon by looking at how social media became a main site for queer sex-ed. The sex-ed they look at is by-and-for, meaning it is education by queer people for queer people. Aside from the benefits of general medical well-being, sex-ed matters for queer identity constitution as it aids understanding of experience, challenges stereotypes, and serves self-efficacy. Online sex-ed programs empower queer people by providing a knowledge source that can replace that of society.15 Education helps dispel dominant myths and structures of queer identities. Indeed, in this social context—pervaded by notions of queer promiscuity, where medical professionals routinely pathologize queer identities,16 and when most US states do not educate on same-sex relationships (or “require that teachers only portray LGBTQIA+ people negatively”17)—queer people having agency in their sex-ed is essential for accurate, positive, and healthy sexual identity constitution.
The online world gives people a starting point to figure out who they might be. In a study exploring how social media is a de facto, informal teaching and learning environment for queer individuals, Fox and Ralston write:
Online information seeking was crucial because many participants felt their identities may be stigmatized; the affordance of anonymity was critical to accomplish their learning goals.18
Online spaces helped subvert the concepts of selfhood and identity learned from society’s heteronormative knowledge resource. By interviewing queer people, they show how beneficial the internet can be in making queer experiences more visible. One participant realized: “what I’m feeling is what a lot of people are feeling […] it’s not just some weird thing with me like I’ve been taught it is.”19 “Unless people look it up on the internet they might go their whole lives without hearing about that,”20 several asexual participants expressed, due to the overwhelming absence of offline examples of asexuality. In a powerful display of self-efficacy, a trans participant noted: “if they can do it, I can too.”21 Their study provides many more qualitative examples, but what’s crucial in their conclusion is that learning about queer experiences online became a powerful site for self-transformation that individuals could not find in their lives offline.
Crucially, Fox and Ralston’s study shows that their participants “learning labels and language was an important stage in recognizing and accepting their LGBTQ identity.”22 That access to information enables and empowers queer people to understand themselves is a key insight. Briefly, consider Miranda Fricker’s concept of hermeneutical injustice, which simply means that an unfair treatment of knowledge prevents one from interpreting their experiences. She writes, it is “the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to hermeneutical marginalization”23 and is “a kind of structural discrimination.”24 I’ve argued elsewhere how essential language can be for circumventing these structural impediments to self-knowledge.25 As Jules Joanne Gleeson writes, “communities with a sense of affinity for each other are able to build up their own language for describing experiences and bodies.”26 Therefore social media, by making models and educational information on queer identities more accessible, better equips queer people to forge their identities with their own language. In many a way, queer people are able to move the heteronormative ideals aside and jump into the driver’s seat to embark on meaning creation that is all their own.
Who built the roads?
While agency has been highlighted to understand queer identity constitution is practiced on social media, it is nevertheless a concern how much agency is possible on social media platforms. Reminiscent of my essay on Elite Capture, Manduley et al. echoes Táíwò, writing that we need to pay attention to “who is sitting at the table, and who makes up the audience, and who is being ignored.”27 Indeed, which models become most prominent, and why, is a concern. Will mostly white, passing, and wealthy people become the go-to models and teachers of trans behavioral practices online? While this is not to claim any one representation of queer identity is problematic (that is discourse for another time), it is to caution against social media’s tendency to render what are diverse and multifarious communities as monolithic. Indeed, as social media rewards those who cultivate a large audience, it is a concern who is cherrypicked by the system to become the one representing the many.
While people have the agency to pick and choose which information from their environmental factors they input, they are still limited to what information is available and accessible—which is determined by the platforms. Indeed,
social media is not a neutral set of platforms; there are corporate interests at play that impact free speech, user privacy, transparency over terms of service, and […] corporate interests affect how users can represent themselves and how that connects (or does not) to their offline lives.28
Agents’ free and equal choices online do not occur in a free and equal environment. We must be aware that the labor queer people provide online, while truly powerful and beneficial, is done on platforms with an unequal dissemination of information. Indeed, these companies often act counter to queer interests; they harbor hate speech whilst censoring activists.29 Therefore, while online spaces have a demonstrable benefit for queer people in figuring out their identities, social media companies’ presence in these spaces cannot be ignored.
As intimated earlier, I wish to dispel any concerns of coercion. The environmental factors discussed are not coercive in general. By foregrounding agency, identity constitution is shown to be a self-generated activity supplemented by community-built knowledges. However, social media’s ability to give certain models precedence over others is coercive as it can suggest that one queer experience is more desirable than another or present a “singular aetiology of the trans experience.”30 Concerns about coercive information (not to mention the right-wing manufactured hysterics of a ‘gay’ or ‘trans agenda’) are reconciled when you juxtapose the structural power of medical institutions and educational apparatuses with online queer communities. As Gleeson puts it, “‘trans women’ on the internet are unlikely to wield the power available to doctors.”31 Indeed, to conclude, consider this excerpt from Imogen Binnie’s novel, Nevada:
Because even on the off chance that somebody finding a trans community to talk to about these things was not, actually, trans […] maybe hearing somebody say, like, You are trans, would spur some useful thinking. Like, if you’re going to decide on your gender for the rest of your life based on what a couple idiots on the Internet tell you, you probably have problems beyond a false diagnosis of transsexuality. Plus, nobody said you had to commit the rest of your life to anything.32
While this series is poised to critique the influence of technology on our identities, it would be shortsighted to not mention the beneficial role it can play in aiding queer identity development. From sex-ed, destigmatization, and representation, queer people are performing the crucial labor that society neglects to do. While social media platforms control what information is available, that there is any information at all is due to the labor of queer and trans folks. By recognizing how essential this work is in aiding queer identities, we also see how much the state, technology, and society has failed.
This is thus the dilemma: The potential pitfalls of online queer education outweigh the alternative of leaving people with no place to turn to for self-understanding. While my perspective is realist, I nevertheless recognize that it should be better. That so many communities are built online to foster queer self-discovery is beautiful, but their requisite virtual refuge only underscores the true problem: a prejudiced society. Since social media platforms exist within society along with its biases, it leaves the virtual communities that queer people are forced to build similarly vulnerable to hate. While there is relatively more control in online spaces—such as moderation and blocking—the bar is low when a space that can easily be bombarded by trolls to fire off hate-speech is the preferred environment to make a genuine attempt to educate our peers and figure out who we are.
Turning to online spaces should be a benefit without the asterisks. It should be a supportive environment celebrating marginalized identities, rather than an ongoing battle against the regulatory state, against platforms whose moderation coincidentally fails to keep communities safe, and against a society that sees queer problems only as queer problems. Too often is solidarity reduced to an online aesthetic. Queer and trans people prove how the online space has potential to move beyond aesthetics and become a powerful site of praxis. If we are committed to a society without structural prejudice, the resistance to heteronormative ideals shared by queer communities must become shared by all.
Zazanis, “Social Reproduction and Social Cognition: Theorizing (Trans)gender Identity Development in Community Context,” in Transgender Marxism, 34.
Zazanis, 38.
Ibid., 40.
Bussey & Bandura, “Social Cognitive Theory of Gender Development and Differentiation,” 686.
Zazanis, 41.
Butler, 522.
Zazanis, 39.
Bussey & Bandura, 685-686.
Zazanis, 39.
Ibid., 41.
Gleeson, “How do Gender Transitions Happen?” in Transgender Marxism, 76.
Zazanis, 41.
Gleeson, 73.
Ibid., 77
Ibid., 4.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Fricker, Epistemic Injustice, 158.
Ibid., 161.
Gleeson, 79.
Manduley et al., 165.
Ibid., 161.
Ibid.
Zazanis, 41.
Gleeson, 79.