Like woke, transgender people and their variants have been around for decades, even longer. Witness variations in gender in plenty of cultures in many eras. Examples are the eunuchs of Ancient China from the second century AD, two-spirit or third gendered Native Americans and the Chukchi shamans in Siberia – all forms of what we can class under a modern term, transsexualism.
We like to claim continuity with other culture/ era forms of gender fluidity as examples of a long history of sexuality and ideas of sex/gender. It silences the enemies of the LGBTQIA community who sometimes claim it is all a fad or some kind of modern aberration. Listening to some people, it sounds like the transgendered appeared only once Trump became president and therefore it is some kind of fashionable statement by the degenerate Left. If only Trump and his people knew.
Gender reassignment (sex change operations) in its modern form became a reality some time shortly after the Second World War. The area transexual identity was likely established well before through sexology and the study of human sexuality and, by extension, gender identity. For the majority, such an identity would mean prison, forced lobotomies and execution. Nothing thumbs its nose at the patriarchy more than a person questioning their assigned sex and recreating a new identity in either direction along the spectrum of possibilities or just mixing it all up.
Advancements in science equaled better approaches to gender reassignment and the rise of the politics of gender and with it, the emergence of trans identity.
Enough with the background education.
Transexuals are everywhere and were here before 2025. Their very existence created trouble for gender roles (see Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble) and make us question the very roles we are assigned at birth and the constant conditioning of male/female binary performances through clothing, toys, education, work, careers, family structures and the hellish environment we create for each other to conform based on sex chromosomes. The sissy boy and tomboy girl are dammed from the moment of a misdemeanor like playing with the other gender’s toys or preferring the company of the opposite sex or not liking sports or liking sports too much. The queer kid gets it from every direction and becomes hyperconscious of their very character to avoid being bullied into submission. Or worse.
And now the patriarchy and the powers of fascism are in uproar with these queer kids who grow into adults wishing to acknowledge their true gender identity and throwing all into chaos. It suddenly becomes a movement that threatens family, church and state and thereby must be suppressed. Of course, the He-Men in power overstate the number of people identified as transexual to a degree that we are lead to believe there are dozens in every street or school or government agency or Democratic Party chapter. Estimates are under 3 million in the United States. Hardly a force of compulsory gender reassignment the hard right would like us to believe is grooming our children and setting some opaque agenda of which I am still see the notes.
And the equating of genderism with the darker recesses of sexuality such as child sexual grooming and abuse is, well, we know a dog whistle when we hear it. No matter how many times you try to explain that trans rights are a human right, you get howled down as a PDF. Pity the poor Drag Queen and her trans sisters, brothers and the non-binary, OUR trans sisters, brothers and OUR non-binary family who are at the forefront of a battle against ignorant hostility; the very visible persons of genderism always cop the flak.
Meanwhile, hopefully it is a minority of the LGB letters of the rainbow community who are joining in the pile up against our TQI family members. These are weak individuals and groups who think they are merely protecting the slack we have been given the last decades in the form of decriminalization, equal rights and marriage equality but not understanding the broader histories we share as sexual minorities. We will be divided and conquered if we’re not careful. I have to hand it to the reactionaries; they sure know how to create hate and spread misinformation.
I have deliberately left out the feminist-driven backlash against the trans community as I am still trying to understand the semantics and hollowness of an argument that, based on science, ignores the social constructs of gender. Again, I point you towards Judith Butler.
That battle will be another blog.
Add comment
Comments