Category: Human Rights

So much contemporary discourse frames transness as being an aberration, but what if it was being cis?

To be cis and straight

To be “gender conforming” is to adhere to a specific set of unwritten rules of a particular culture.

It’s one narrow interpretation about:

• What gender you’re allowed to love
• What qualities in a partner you’re allowed to value
• What gender you’re allowed to be friends with
• What clothing you’re allowed to wear
• What name you’re allowed to go by
• What pronoun you’re allowed to go by
• What haircut you’re allowed to have
• What occupation you’re allowed to do
• What field you’re allowed to study
• What hobby you’re allowed to partake
• What sport you’re allowed to enjoy (eg. women’s hockey)
• What toys you’re allowed to play with (eg. dolls)
• What movies/books you’re allowed to love (eg. romantasy)
• What intonation you’re allowed to speak in (eg. gay accent)
• What words you’re allowed to use (eg. using “like” as filler)
• What colour you’re allowed to like (eg. pink)
• Whether you’re allowed to cry
• Whether you’re allowed to be assertive
• Whether you’re allowed to show affection with friends
• Whether you’re allowed to be emotionally vulnerable

Answer in one specific way to all of these and you’re gender conforming. You’re cis. You’re straight.

It’s not universal, of course. These answers vary culture to culture or even within the same culture at different points in time. They’re just rules made up by people.

The lie

We’re told is that being trans is a special case that deserves exclusion. Exclusion from bathrooms. Exclusion from library books. Exclusion from public office. Exclusion from care like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy – care rendered to gender conforming individuals. Exclusion from the mouths of teachers who want to use the right name and pronouns. Exclusion from being able to update identity documents to reflect the correct gender.

I say that the special case is hitting yes on everyone of those made-up rules. It’s not bad to be that person who is all yes. It’s not anything – it’s who they are. But we’re being fed this message that it’s bad to say no to any one of these made-up rules. That it’s undesirable and should be prevented to the point of inflicting harm on the person.

This hinges on portraying gender diversity as a myth, yet we can see this diversity all around us if only we would only look. Being cis is not a fixed superior state of being, that supposed ideal is as made-up as the ever-changing rules it adheres to.

It’s everywhere

This lie of being cis as the only correct way to be has found new champions in the past decades as conservative strategists tried to find ways to force women back in the kitchen. Manufacturing a panic around trans people is a proxy issue for them to deny any agency around these made-up rules.

But the lie has spread and has reared its head in legislative chambers and from reporting by major outlets like the New York Times. The harm being done to gender diverse people is immeasurable.

I firmly believe that if these rules didn’t have so many hammers, you’d see a lot more people signal preferences other than the one proscribed to them by this violent culture.

Transphobia is versatile: it can be a social lubricant for the boys, a wedge issue for strategists, filler for opinion writers, and an engagement booster for has-beens.

What it’s not is a deeply held belief; it’s merely a vehicle for emotionally stunted individuals to satisfy their needs. Akin to child bullies, they turn to who already gets picked on.

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I don’t know what my gender is and I don’t care that I don’t know. I also don’t care that I have loved people of all genders.

Others do. They care very much and they make that my problem. Passerby get agitated that they can’t tell what gender I am. To the point of shouting at me, groping me, picking a fight, pulling at my clothes, following me, ogling me, chasing me, mocking me, telling me that I should kill myself. They also get agitated when I hold hands or rest my head against a loved one they perceive to be the same-sex: more faggot this and faggot that, more ogling, more following, more uttering that we should be killed.

These fuckers turn outings into minefields and even though it happens a lot less now, that it keeps happening at all makes it so I never feel safe except when with 3+ friends.

And that’s just on account of the randos. Then there’s the opportunists who notice that queer and trans people are in the crosshairs and jump on the bandwagon to boost subscriptions or votes. I end up hearing their bigotry out of the mouths of people I cross and plastered on social media. These grifters are also the reason the US and UK have joined the ranks of Russia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia as jurisdictions I can no longer enter.

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Yesterday in the United-States, Robert Kennedy Jr (the conspiracy theorist Trump put in charge of the Centre of Disease Control) and Dr. Oz (the TV personality at the center of a pyramid scheme Trump put in charge of Medicaid and Medicare) made the following joint statement:

Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men. … It takes organized efforts to deny these fundamental truths. Sadly, we’ve seen such efforts succeed from time to time. The denial of fundamental truths can destroy nations from within. At the root of the evils we face, such as the blurring of the lines between sexes and radical social agendas is a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived. This ideology does not just deny biology, it declares war against it.

Allowing trans people to exist is to “destroy nations from within”, “at the root of evils”, and a “hatred for nature”. What followed were directives to weaponize the state to prevent trans kids from receiving health care. The administration also made moves to block the sale of binders for trans people of all ages.

This is on top of a slew of other measures with equally inciteful wording aimed at eliminating trans people from society.

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