idk what you mean by this. Perhaps I'm not paying attention?

As POC online I blend in since without irl shots you can't know what I look like. IRL I'm stealth as much as possible because I don't trust people

What do you mean by "in the community", are you talking about IRL spaces or the internet, are you talking about support groups or pride organizations, are you talking about famous trans people that you know from TV and books?

Go watch the film Tangerine, there is plenty of trans people of color represented in that film, for example.

If there is a lack of representation, I would guess it's an issue of compounding oppression - the people who are most visible are also probably more likely to be privileged in various ways (economic class, racial privilege, able bodied, etc.). Privilege makes moving through the world easier and it makes it easier to take opportunities that come by. When you're poor you don't have time to focus on things outside of your immediate survival, you're a lot more likely to not go to that pride parade or go to support groups in between the work shifts you have and so on. You're certainly less likely to be a famous actor, or get a book published.

I notice the most influential voices in trans spaces are often middle class white people. The memoirs and books that become notable and recommended are often by people with some combination of privileges.

Despite this, some of the most famous trans women I can think of are POC, e.g. Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, so it's obviously not an absolute rule.

For representation on this space (lemmy) in particular, it's hard to know what percentage of ppl here are poc. You rarely know what race, nationality, etc, the person behind a comment or post you see is.

Maybe we should make an anonymous demographics poll or smth to help ppl feel less alone.

Assuming we're talking specifically about platforms like Reddit and Lemmy here, and as far as non-US people go, in my country most people are still sharing forwards from Grandma on Facebook. When I first joined Reddit, I'd barely ever come across someone from the same country as me and it's only in recent years that more people have been joining. If I want to find people like me that actually live in the same borders as me, I have no choice but to use Facebook unfortunately.

Even with the fairly large South Africa community on Reddit, it was more people that want to talk about braais and post pictures of Table Mountain at sunset than anything else. Like everyone there is putting on a big show for the rest of Reddit and trying to attract tourists. Just more fuel to make me feel even more like an alien in my own country.

So this is just how it is. Platforms like this are just used more by Americans and Europeans than anyone else. And if a community for your country does start up, it'll be all the averages and normies first before there's any noticeable amount of a specific demographic.

Racism, whiteness, a strict adherance to the 'western' gender binary, colonial mindsets by white trans people and cultural appropriation.

I think that probably has a lot more to do with the demographics of reddit and other reddit like platforms. The predominant demographic seems to be white, college educated, american men. Most of the content reddit aggregates seems to appeal to that demographic and reddit's founders seem to be mostly part of that too.

Black, and other minority trans or LGBTQIA2S+ are much less likely to use this platform, or appear in the same physical spaces. There was a lot of work done in the US to try and insure that would happen. This country is very racist and discriminatory. Those practices extend to urban planning and most other things too.