Navigating Safety and Technology: The Everyday Safety Labor of Transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the United States

Paper Title

Navigating Safety and Technology: The Everyday Safety Labor of Transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the United States

Publication Info

• Topic area: Intersection of technology, safety, and lived experiences of TBIPOC individuals.
• Keywords: TBIPOC, safety labor, intersectionality, transphobia, safety technologies, digital harassment, mutual aid, community care, transmisogynoir, HCI.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing safety technologies and interventions fail to address the unique and intersectional safety challenges faced by transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (TBIPOC) in the U.S., often overlooking emotional, psychological, and systemic violence.
• Significance: TBIPOC individuals face disproportionately high rates of violence, including gender-based violence, systemic discrimination, and online harassment, necessitating tailored safety solutions that address both physical and emotional harm.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research in HCI and CSCW has explored safety technologies but often centers white and/or cisgender users, leaving a gap in understanding how TBIPOC individuals navigate safety and leverage technology. This paper builds on intersectional frameworks to address this gap and inform inclusive safety design.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The concept of safety labor, defined as the emotional and cognitive work TBIPOC individuals perform to manage misrecognition, assess risk, and downplay discomfort, is introduced to frame their safety strategies. The study also identifies community-driven technological practices and offers recommendations for designing inclusive safety technologies.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduces the concept of safety labor to describe the hidden emotional and cognitive work involved in navigating safety.
  2. Provides insights into TBIPOC individuals’ lived experiences with violence and safety across physical, emotional, and digital domains.
  3. Highlights community-based safety practices and the role of technology in fostering mutual care and collective responsibility.
  4. Offers design recommendations for safety technologies that center TBIPOC needs and experiences.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with TBIPOC individuals to explore their safety practices and experiences with violence.
  • Used reflexive thematic analysis guided by intersectionality to identify patterns and themes in participants’ narratives.
  • Examined how participants use technology, such as location-sharing apps and group chats, to build informal safety infrastructures.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Participants frequently downplayed verbal, emotional, and psychological violence, viewing it as normalized and inevitable.
  • Safety strategies included carrying weapons, using buddy systems, sharing locations, and curating online spaces to avoid harassment.
  • Passing as cisgender provided temporary safety but imposed significant emotional labor and psychological costs.
  • Technology, such as phones, safety apps, and group chats, played a critical role in enabling community-based safety practices.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Unlike traditional safety technologies that focus on physical alerts or emergency responses, this study emphasizes the importance of addressing emotional labor, systemic violence, and community care in safety design.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Semi-structured interviews with 22 TBIPOC participants (50% trans women, 50% nonbinary, 10% trans men) aged 20–44, recruited through snowball sampling and LGBTQIA2S+ networks.
  • Data analysis focused on intersectional experiences of violence and safety, incorporating participants’ narratives and systemic contexts.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited representation of trans men and Latine individuals highlights the need for future research focusing on these groups.
  • Future work should explore co-design approaches with TBIPOC communities to develop tailored safety technologies.

Summary

This study examines how TBIPOC individuals navigate safety in response to intersecting forms of violence, introducing the concept of safety labor to describe the emotional and cognitive work involved in managing risk and harm. Through 22 interviews, the research highlights the role of technology in enabling community-based safety practices, such as location-sharing, coded messages, and curated online spaces. The findings emphasize the need for safety technologies that address emotional labor, systemic violence, and collective care. By centering TBIPOC lived experiences, the study provides actionable insights for designing inclusive, justice-focused safety solutions that redistribute the burden of safety labor from individuals to community-supported systems.