“For the first time in my life, I wish I was not a Kentuckian:” trans liminal performance as worldmaking in rural U.S. places

As of this writing, over 500 bills in the U.S. target LGBTQ+ rights (ACLU). This substantial increase in legislative threats and the anti-trans rhetoric that characterizes Donald Trump’s Presidency indicate an exigency to forge new paths of queer resistance. In this essay, I examine the liminal performances of trans rhetors in rural/conservative U.S. state legislatures. I argue that liminal performance as a worldmaking tactic disrupts repressive social hierarchies by calling forth a rhetorical collectivity to witness the farce of rigid identity binaries and to imagine worlds otherwise. Liminal performance opens tangible opportunities for subversive and generative queer praxis.