Warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.
Raven is a transgender woman who has been making videos on YouTube since 2011. Under the username Raven Ovah, she posts videos on LGBTQ issues, advice on dating and being yourself, makeup and hair tutorials, and more.
Raven is a transgender woman who has been making videos on YouTube since 2011. Under the username Raven Ovah, she posts videos on LGBTQ issues, advice on dating and being yourself, makeup and hair tutorials, and more.
Raven first started making videos to give other transgender women the benefit of her experience in sex and relationships. “When
it comes down to girls like me, men use us as experiments,” she says frankly. “They don’t take it
seriously; because we’re looking for relationships, and they’re just looking at
us as a fetish. So they don’t think that we are serious when we want to have a
relationship with them. They use us for sex, and they’ll do anything to get it.
“So I started doing videos to get the girls more aware, so
no-one had to go through what I went through.”
In
spite of the serious subject matter, Raven’s videos were intended to be
light-hearted and fun. Over the months and years that followed she talked
personal issues and romance, shared her coming-out story, and
started to address issues from the queer and transgender communities. All of
her videos have a focus on independence and learning to do things for yourself,
because “You never know when you might need to do things on your own.”
She
started making videos which discussed the murders and suicides of transgender
people, both of which happen at horrifyingly
high rates (warning: article contains graphic language and discussions of
violence) within the transgender community. A diverse audience of all genders
and sexualities, including young people, began following Raven’s videos, and
Raven took it upon herself to use her videos as a platform to reach out to
them.
“My
whole goal is just to stop the younger transsexuals committing suicide,” she
says. “They’re being bullied, they’re being attacked, you got older people who
are attacking them, making fun of them. They feel like they’re alone, so my
whole goal was to make sure that they knew we were out there, to make myself
more visual. I’m letting them know that I’m here too, that we can hold hands,
and we can do this together.”
One of Raven's recent videos in which she discusses the suicide of Cameron Langrell and gives advice on standing up to bullies
Raven believes that being visible as a transgender person and giving these messages to young people is a “very important thing.”
Raven believes that being visible as a transgender person and giving these messages to young people is a “very important thing.”
“You
have to let people know they’re not alone,” she says. Transgender young people
who see another trans person making YouTube videos are likely to think, “‘I see
another one of me over there.’ ‘I see me. I’m not alone.’
“It’s
a good feeling,” she concludes.
Raven’s
thinking reflects a general trend in the transgender community over the past
few years towards increased visibility. This has been aided in part by the rise
of affordable technology which can take good-quality photographs and videos,
and by an increasingly visual social web, which combines popular image-sharing
platforms like Instagram and Tumblr with multimedia support on social networks
like Twitter. And of course, by YouTube. Hashtags such as #thisiswhattranslookslike
and #tdov
(Transgender Day of Visibility) are allowing transgender people to share their
experiences visually and verbally through social media, and celebrate their
community, in a way that lets them control the narrative for a change.
The International
Transgender Day of Visibility (known as “TDoV” or “DoV” for short) was
founded in 2009 by Rachel Crandall as a transgender holiday which celebrates
living members of the transgender community, unlike the Transgender
Day of Remembrance. It is marked in late March and early April every year
with members of the transgender community sharing
photographs of
themselves, sometimes discussing transition or sharing other details of
their lives. In a recent Trans Day of Visibility post, one Tumblr user wrote,
“visibility and representation are incredibly important, especially in spaces like this that [are] heavily media based and communities for younger people. if it wasn’t for tumblr and other trans and non binary people sharing their stories and their existence i dont know whether i would have opened up and explored my gender in the way that i have”
Much like Red Durkin’s #RealLiveTransAdult hashtag, transgender visibility campaigns are a way of showing transgender people that there are others out there like them, that they aren’t on their own, that they have friends and role models. Philip Wythe, writing in their column ‘Nothing, if Not Critical’ calls Transgender Day of Visibility “vital for trans representation”.
“On social media, the International Transgender Day of Visibility gave us the opportunity to vocally share our lived experiences and celebrate our community’s history… to cultivate our own stories, share our struggles and talk about our hopes and fears.”
Raven says that she keeps making her videos because of the
young people online who come to her for advice, and the community that has
formed around her vlogs. “I look down at my comment box, and there’s a bunch of
us down there talking. They’re not just hitting the Like button, they’re
actually saying something back.”
Alongside YouTube, Raven tries to keep up a presence on as
many social media channels as possible so that her viewers can reach her
wherever they need to. She believes that social media is a powerful way to
connect with transgender young people.
“[Social] media is good because it’s in your house. You
don’t have to go outside. You can escape society and their judgement and close
your door, and you’ve got a little light, and you can burn it while you sit
talking to people.”
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