I started transitioning in 2020 during the Covid19 pandemic. At the time, I was living with my parents and had not come out to them as transgender. Social media allowed me to connect with a network of other trans people in South Africa going through similar experiences. Other trans-feminine people provided resources for starting hormone replacement therapy, while trans masculine people shared their old clothing with me. The community I found was crucial to keeping the fragile pieces of my life together. Without them, the journey to discovering my gender and identity would have been plagued with difficulties. Online spaces have always served as a medium for transgender people to discover more about their identities. Many sites are trans-friendly, and these sites do not frame trans identity as deviant or sensationalised. In South Africa, it was difficult to escape misrepresentations about trans identity. However, the internet provided a vital space for many transgender people like myself to engage with their gender identity. “Up until roughly 2007, we were using forum-based spaces to connect with other queer people and other trans folk,” says Dr Nyx McLean (they/them), a research associate at Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies. As a result, forums played a significant role in enabling virtual trans communities. Gender DynamiX (GDX), a public benefit organisation established in 2005 that focuses on the transgender community, used to run online forums catering for the online community. The forums are defunct now, but the research of Professor Jeanne Prinsloo, Professor Emeritus at Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies, provides a snapshot of the interactions. GDX hosted two forums: Girl Talk for transfeminine people and Boy Talk for trans masculine people. The content of the forums focused on discussing significant milestones trans people achieve in the process of transitioning, such as starting hormones or successfully changing their name or gender marker. In addition, many of the posts dealt with providing mutual aid resources or simply holding space for the trials and tribulations of the trans experience. While the content of the forums was similar, there was a notable difference between Girl Talk and Boy Talk. Much of this can be attributed to the expectations of performing specific femininity or masculinity. Boy Talk featured short, curt posts that were largely devoid of complex emotions. Girl Talk, however, had more elaborate discussions and debates while having detailed disclosure of emotions. In addition, Girl Talk featured more conversations about the challenges of transitioning and negotiating the transphobic harassment trans femmes experience in South Africa. The brief amount of research into the GDX spaces is a time capsule of how trans people used to engage with the internet. The engagement was primarily through a lens of binary trans identity. Girl Talk and Boy Talk featured very little in the way of non-binary inclusion. Noah Lubinsky (they/he), a MA candidate at the University of Witwatersrand who has researched trans identity in South Africa, notes that “a lot of early online spaces were mediated and moderated by medicalisation.” Access to the spaces depended on cis therapists invested in a diagnostic understanding of trans identity. As the spaces developed, mainly due to social media, the medicalisation model began to drop away. The rise of social media ended the dependence on online forums. Facebook allowed for an integration of communities in the sense that you could have different aspects of your life on the same platform. One of the significant benefits of Facebook over an online messaging board was the ability to curate what appeared on your feed. However, the biggest attraction of Facebook for members of the trans community was the ability to be invisible. “You could covertly engage with trans communities or content but easily dismiss it when being surveilled by a family member or co-worker,” says Dr McLean. Unlike forums, Facebook proved to be safer in that regard. The rise of Facebook also disrupted the control that binary trans identity had over online spaces. GenderQueer South Africa, one of the first non-binary Facebook groups in South Africa was founded in 2015. The group was specifically to fill a void concerning online spaces for non-binary people. The group was designed to be a virtual space for non-binary folk to share their experiences in a safe space. In the age of social media, non-binary spaces are given more freedom to exist as the hegemonic power relations that previously controlled access are less pervasive.