Abstract
The subreddit r/transgender_surgeries offers a platform for transgender and gender diverse people to seek and share information on gender transition. Through a rhetorical analysis of the discourse present throughout this subreddit, we found that the subreddit users construct a counternarrative of resilience. By utilizing tools of narrative identification pertaining to the medical processes of gender transition, the subreddit users co-create a space that seeks to redefine the hegemonic narrative of transgender identity. This counternarrative of resilience is revealed through an analysis of the broad corpus of discourse on the subreddit page. Examining the textual and metatextual levels of meaning through the use of Leximancer allows scholars to understand the larger discourse present in the narratives expressed by participants in the subreddit. Leximancer concept mapping directs scholars to thematic discourses, by which the larger rhetorical analysis is able to reveal the overriding shape and direction of subreddit's users. The focus on positivity and community allows the group to act as a site of resistance from cissexist restrictions and definitions of trans bodies to subvert social and medical somatization and gatekeeping. However, this group's discourses often mirror and fall prey to hegemonic discourses of gender and transition.
