Paper short abstract:

A look at informal infrastructures of queer erotics and their disappearances in urban landscapes as they relate to trans masculine desires in Germany, America, and South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

This article proposes a theory of “trans infrastructuralism.” Through narrative and phenomenological description, trans infrastructures illuminate the enabling conditions for emergent, material, and intersubjective forms trans masculine desire. We argue that the reproduction of intimate affects remains paradoxically obscured by the physical presence of public infrastructure. This is paradoxical because being intimate or maintaining intimate queer loving located an interstitial relation that contradicted the intended uses of public works. The odd intensities that emerge in the trans ordinary can therefore range – from techno-social objects that comprise trans people who seek gender-affirming medical care to the important spatial relations that serve to propel new socialities. This article redescribes these semi-public, and public geographies, as necessary heterotopias. This is a critical redescription of contemporary life for trans people.