gender liberation

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WE ARE REVOLTING: my first Trans Pride

There are a couple of looks I am very familiar with as a trans person.

One is primarily a look of confusion. It is the kind of look you might expect to receive if you were wearing a boot on your head. You have disrupted the everyday order of things, and people don’t know how to respond.

One is primarily a look of disapproval, communicating a barely-contained sense of disgust or revulsion. It is the kind of look you might expect to receive if you have smeared shit all over your face and are walking down the street as if nothing is wrong. You have disrupted the everyday order of things, and people are very unimpressed, but perhaps aren’t quite yet ready to shout or spit at you. But you imagine that they would quite like to.

I’m very used to these looks because I have received them a lot over the course of my life. More often when I was younger, my face and body as yet unchanged by oestrogen. But I still receive such looks now and again to this day, particularly when I put less effort into conforming to stereotypical expectations about how a woman should look or carry herself. Perhaps I have put on less makeup, or I am wearing baggy clothes, or I haven’t brushed my hair for a couple of hours.

Other trans people – particularly other trans women, and especially trans women of colour – are less fortunate than me. People don’t just look at them. The looks are merely where it starts. Then people shout at them, or spit, or throw stones. People pinch their arses or grope their breasts. I hear these stories from my trans friends pretty regularly. It’s like everyday sexism with the volume turned up.

Other trans people – particularly other trans women, and especially trans women of colour – are less fortunate still. People stalk them. People assault them. People rape them. People kill them.

They do this because we are revolting.

It starts with a look. Call it the cis gaze.

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Today I saw so many looks of confusion and disapproval. I felt the revulsion. It was visceral. It was contained. It could not harm me. I was amongst hundreds like me.

Today I took part in a Trans Pride march for the first time.

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Waiting for a bus before the march. Photo by Sophie Wilson.

Trans people have, of course, taken part in LGBT Pride marches for as long as they have existed. Trans Pride marches, however, are a relatively new phenomenon. The first Trans Pride in the UK took place in Brighton in 2013.  I attended Trans Pride Leeds, which is in its first ever year.

I have previously marched in LGBT Pride parades in Birmingham and London, and attended Pride parties in Coventry and Leamington Spa. On these occasions, people throng the streets. There is a sense of celebration. There is a giant street party. People come out to see the happy gays. They mostly look on with enjoyment. It is a family affair.

At Birmingham Pride one year, I was stopped by a “community safety officer”, who objected to my placard. It was not family friendly, he said. If I didn’t destroy or cover it up, he would call a police officer and I would be arrested. At London Pride one year, some people sought to control entry to a women’s toilet, ejecting at least one trans woman in the process.

Trans people are not necessarily welcome at LGBT Pride events. Or, if we are, we are not as welcome as many of our cis gay, lesbian, bi and queer siblings. Or, if we are, we are not seen or celebrated in the same way. We are not as safely contained.

But: there are a lot more cis gay, lesbian bi and queer people at LGBT Pride than there are trans people. We disappear into the crowd. We cause less confusion. We bring less disapproval. We do not so easily revolt.

This is why Trans Pride is important. This is why Trans Pride is necessary.

 

 

Photo by Kayleigh Brooks
Photo by Ruth Pearce
Photo by Natacha Handley
Photo by Ruth Pearce

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Today is Trans Day of Visibility, apparently. In the UK, trans people are more visible than ever.

Visibility has brought new dangers. We are currently subject to an unprecedented hate campaign in the media, spearheaded by “respectable” publications such as The Times and The New Statesman. On the Internet, we have attracted the dangerous attentions of a resurgent neo-nazi movement, their anti-trans campaigns bolstered by useful idiots who claim to oppose trans rights in the name of feminism.

Visibility has brought new opportunities. We see more of one another. We are more organised than ever. We have grassroots organisations in every city. We are producing art, music, plays, and films that speak to our own interests and concerns. We are marching in protest, we are marching in Pride. We seek gender liberation.

It will be a very long, very hard fight, but we are going to change the world.

We are revolting.

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Today I saw so many looks of confusion and disapproval. I returned the gaze. I held my placard high. I shouted, joyously. They could not harm me. I was amongst hundreds like me.

I could not, would not be shamed, for I felt the power of Pride.

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Trans Pride placards. Photo by Natasha Handley.

 

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In a gender liberated world…there would be no moral panic over trans parents or trans children

And so the Bizarrely Busy Month of Trans News rolls on.

On the subject of trans parents, the Daily Mail has effectively outed a trans father; on a slightly brighter note, Green MP Caroline Lucas has tabled an Early Day Motion condemning the ongoing media witch-hunt that’s currently targeting pregnant trans guys. Kudos once again to Trans Media Watch and Jane Fae for their ongoing work on this. Meanwhile, bookmakers Paddy Power are under fire for a transphobic advert, and today saw a five-year-old trans girl splashed all over the tabloids (including front page stories in the Metro and the Sun).

Paddy Power will no doubt defend their advert (basically a “spot the tranny” competition themed around Ladies’ Day at Cheltenham) on the grounds of humour: it’s just a laugh, right? Meanwhile the tabloids will continue to defend their almost fetishistic obsession with the private lives of trans people on the grounds of “public interest”. Both actions serve to dehumanise and objectify trans people even as they build public interest in the queer freak show we supposedly offer.

This is all, of course, of massive concern to the so-called trans community. But we’re not the only ones who are affected.

In today’s front-page article, the Metro quotes “social commentator” Anne Atkins (who?) Atkins – clearly a great expert on gender diversity – says:

“Between the ages of about five and eight, I wanted to be a boy more than anything in the world. Acute though my longing was, it was relatively shortlived. I am grateful to say that there was no one around at the time to diagnose me with GID [Gender Identity Disorder]”

If I had a pound for every well-meaning cis friend who’d told me this at the beginning of my transition…well, I wouldn’t have a huge amount of money, but I’d definitely be able to afford a better toaster. But my problem with this isn’t one of cis privilege. It basically runs as follows:

What’s intrinsically wrong with a kid spending part of their childhood as a “boy” and part of their childhood as a “girl”?

What’s intrinsically wrong with the idea of a man having a baby?

What’s intrinsically wrong with (or, for that matter, funny about)  gender being complex or fluid or aligned with their body in a non-normative fashion?

I’ve not come across a single answer to any of those questions that isn’t inherently sexist in one way or another. We shouldn’t have to subscribe to an ideology of gender difference that necessitates people being placed in boxes that restrict their self-expression. We shouldn’t have to rely on old-fashioned gender roles. At the same time, we shouldn’t have to demand that “gender” be obliterated altogether. Why can’t five-year-old Zach live as a girl? Why couldn’t Anne Atkins live as a boy for a few years before settling into womanhood?

In a gender liberated world, gender expression would be free and fluid. Adults could be men, women, genderqueer, polygendered or non-gendered as they desire. Children could be children, and explore gender as one set of social possibilities amongst many. And everyone benefits, not just trans people. We’d all have more space to be ourselves.

If you think this is hopelessly utopic and ultimately impossible, try dropping by spaces such as Genderfork and Wotever, where users/attendees are pioneering gender liberated approaches to language and social interaction.

We don’t need to do away with gender, but at the same time we don’t need to subscribe to fixed, binary ideals of gender in order to live in a decent world where people value one another’s work and care for one another.

In a gender liberated world, neither the media nor the medical world would care about five-year-old trans girl, a pregnant man or a trans person at Cheltenham because it simply wouldn’t be a big deal.

The trans girl could live out her childhood as she desired and privately transition physically – or not! – at an appropriate point in her teens. The man could access appropriate care during his pregnancy without fearing the consequences of doing so. And at Cheltenham…well, isn’t the very concept of “Ladies’ Day” totally regressive?

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Mission Statement

In the light of certain accusations that have been levelled at trans activists in the wake of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ upcoming conference (“Transgender: Time To Change“), I feel it’s important to clarify my position on trans activism. This post relates directly to the aforementioned conference, but also more generally to the kind of activism I promote on this blog.

I believe that trans activism is for everyone. Trans activism is about promoting gender liberation for all. I feel that Leslie Feinberg sums this up particularly well in hir introduction to “Trans Liberation: beyond pink or blue”:

The sight of pink-blue gender-coded infant outfits may grate on your nerves. Or you may be a woman or a man who feels at home in these categories. Trans liberation defends you both.

Each person should have the right to choose between pink or blue tinted gender categories, as well as the other hues of the palette. At this moment in time, that right is denied to us. But together, we could make it a reality.

Trans activism therefore incorporates and complements transsexual activism, but is noteably distinct. The goals of trans activism also complement those of feminism: we fight not for gender equality, but for gender liberation.

We fight to free individuals from the constraints of necessary gender categories and gender roles with the proviso that an individual be free to define their own gendered experience. If someone wants to wear dresses, or trousers, or make-up, or grow a moustache, or armpit hair, then cool. Be free, and liberated. Express yourself.

As a trans activist, I believe that individuals have a right to transition. A transition may be social or physical. It may involve new clothes, hormones, surgery…one of these things, or none of these things. It has to be contextual and right for the individual, and move at a speed that is right for them. Transsexed people often have deep-seated reasons for feeling extremely uncomfortable with their sex characteristics, and a transition can alleviate this. A a trans woman, I have benefitted a great deal from my transition. I am fortunate enough to live a more fulfilling life.

I do not feel that my experiences in any way put me at odds with feminism. I oppose outdates stereotypes of the woman as passive and ornamental. I support my sisters’ fight for equal rights and gender liberation: for equal pay, for body sovereignty, and against sexist, patriarchial institutions. I do not dress in a particularly feminine fashion: this is what works for me. I know some trans women who are very butch, and others who are high femme. As a trans activist, I believe in their right to express themselves.

However, I feel it is important for trans activism to also recognise the right not to transition. Transition is not right for all gender variant people. The important thing is that we are all free to express ourselves, regardless. No-one deserves to be pushed onto a particular gender path by overzealous medical institutions, feminists or trans communities with a point to prove.

I oppose the ethos of “Transgender: Time To Change” because I feel that the attitude of individuals such as Az Hakeem and Julie Bindel fly in the face of trans liberation. Transition should be available to all who need it, when they need it, be this in the form of medical intervention or appropriate counselling (not pathologising “talking therapies”: the same kind of interventions that have enabled the “ex-gay” movement). It is also disappointing when such organisations fail to listen to those expressing disappointment at their actions.

I also feel that gender variant individuals – particularly children – should be free to celebrate and explore their gender variance without being treated as mentally ill “fantasists” (Hakeem’s word). Currently, gender variant individuals are either told that to buckle up and be a Real Girl or Real Boy, or otherwise pushed towards transition. This is not real choice, nor is it gender liberation.

In a gender liberated world, we would all get to decide what it means for us to be female, male, androgyne, genderqueer, polygender, genderfluid etc, without the patriarchy telling us how to control and moderate our gendered behaviour. In a gender liberated world, there would be free access to transition, but no-one would be forced into transition as the only medically sanctioned option for gender dissent.

This, to me, is what trans activism is about. The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the few radical feminists who (bewilderingly) support them are denying gender liberation and upholding outdated oppositional binaries without understanding the freedom, fluidity and thoughtfulness of the contemporary queer movement. Trans activism stands in opposition to this, and dares to imagine a world of gender freedom.