On Trans and Class

On Trans and Class

an Essay by Khari Eventide

I’ve been talking about this issue before on various social media platforms, about my frustration with being called “binary” for being a trans woman. I’ve ranted about it, but now I want to take a deep dive into this topic through an essay, to talk about how I desire to classify trans people, why that is a good thing, and what the downsides are of splitting them into different classes. Establishing my view on these first, will allow me to then, later on, go more into detail about parts of my political ideology – Trans-Anarchism.

Definitions and Present Ideas

Since this essay will discuss trans people, let me first explain to everyone how distinctions within those sub-groups are established in the present time. First of all a little guide on terms though:

In this society, sex – as the biological construction of primary of secondary sexual characteristics is different from the term gender – the performed and felt personification of that sex. In how that person feels inside about the implications of their gender and how to act about it (felt), and then about how that feeling is expressed to the outside and how that identity is used interpersonally, called the performed gender. (For further points on this, check out Judith Butler’s work). It should be noted here that in most societies, especially the western industrial societies, one comes about these two terms by birth. One of the first few things done when assisting in child birth as a doctor or nurse, is then the determine the primary sexual characteristics of a baby and put them into one preferably two categories: Girl or Boy. Occasionally though, this neat system is disturbed by some babies not fitting these two categories. This may be because the primary sexual characteristics aren’t fully developed, they possess a mixture of both characteristics or in further tests it is found that their secondary sexual characteristics do not fit those neat categories of XX-Woman or XY-Man either. When that happens, depending on the society, they might either be allowed their own sex or they are forced into one of the previous two anyway. Why that is and how different mechanisms are used to reproduce and reinforce a structure of two sexes is interesting to discuss, but not here. The only thing to put at the end here, is that it is then generally assumed that the gender of a person matches that assigned sex.

Trans people then are generally defined as people whose gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender they were consequently expected to feel and perform based on that original sex and what was deemed the right gender for them based on those characteristics.

To shorten it down. They were assigned a gender at or around birth, but they disagree with that assignment and instead feel and desire to perform another gender.

Trans- is a prefix originating from Latin and means to go “across”, “beyond” or “through something”. (Dictionary.com, trans-)

Cis people on the other hand are generally fine with the sex and gender assigned to them at birth. The casual layman might desire to just describe them as “normal”, but this is never a useful classification in sciences. If there is a viewable and describable spectrum of characteristics, you seek to define every single one of them, as opposed to counting which characteristic appears with the greatest frequency, deem it normal and reduce all remaining ones as not-normal.

Cis- is a prefix originating from Latin and means “to stay on one side” or “be near a side” (Dictionary.com, cis-)

Trans Diversification and the History of Transition

Now you might think that this concludes the list, however in the group of Trans people, there seems to be a divide on what kind of trans person you are. Non-binary and traditionally trans (here is places sometimes called transtypical, as a reference to how the norm in neural construction is called neurotypical).

Traditional trans / transtypicals supposedly being those people that walk a path laid out for them by laws and traditions about what they have to do, to both be able to identify as trans people, be legally recognized and / or be allowed to legally identify as a gender that breaks with the one assigned at birth. Since historically trans people struggled with being accepted by both law and society, certain steps have been initiated by them to convince the law and society of the legitimacy of their gender identity.

Speaking from a solely scientific perspective, why would they have to legitimize themselves? Well because both the law and society at large historically lack in recognizing the gender expressed by trans people. Both historically and psychologically people in the industrialized western culture are more likely to both acknowledge, read and recognize someone’s gender as it is expressed to them if it fits their own view of how that gender should look like, and whether or not the trans person in question sufficiently worked towards deserving that label. Legislature in many industrialized western countries then worked out a way for trans people to legally switch from either (there only being two legally recognized genders at this point, whether or not there are more does not matter in this case) gender to the other. This structure of “legal transition” was of course designed by the collective views of the legislature writers on how certain genders have to look like. And for fairness sake it should be noted that those views change, and so do the laws, for instance during my time of transition the recommended and acknowledged path of transition consisted of the following:

→ Presenting yourself with your issue to a psychiatrist

→ being observed for over a year in which you were required to live as the gender you identify as, meaning you had to look very traditional in regards to that gender. (So wearing gender specific clothes, outwardly identifying as your preferred gender to the public world, acquiring mannerism that they psychiatrist in question deemed in line with the gender in question etc.) Being successful in this endeavour meant being rewarded with a hormone prescription.

→ Taking the hormones dominant in the gender you identify as (estrogen for women, testosterone for men)

→ Legally changing your name after at least a year into hormone replacement therapy.

→ Surgically either removing your reproductive organs or undergoing genital reconstruction surgery.

→ Being able to identify as your chosen gender in your ID, certificate of birth

Now during my time of following this strict path, medical sterilization as as a requirement for legally changing the gender marked in your ID and certificate of birth have left the law, and similarly the list mentioned above is likely different for many other trans people depending on their country of residence and point in time. The above example is taken from my personal transition, in place from around 2006 – 2014 in Germany.

Allow me to use this example of legal transition to further illustrate how trans people were legally and culturally not just incentivised but also forced to present themselves a certain way and undergo certain medical procedures solely to be able to change the gender marker in their ID and certificate of birth, in short legal recognition. This completely leaves out the structural enforcements in society experiment throughout a person’s life. Often requiring to go quite over the top on patterns recognized in certain genders in order to avoid being recognized as a transitioning person in public, and to avoid ridicule once found out to be a trans person. This explains why so many trans people, especially in past times, often go very overboard on expressing stereotypes about the gender they identify as, cause it increases the chance of someone reading them as their expressed gender immediately and not further investigating on it, or questioning the trans person in question. This goes doubly so by trans women (people assigned male at birth, desiring to transition to a feminine of center gender identity) who don’t just have a particularly hard time cloaking their non-feminine characteristics but have – through homophobia and misogyny existing in society – an especially big stigma attached to their transition and identity. In many countries being “found out” to be a trans woman goes as far as being the possible victim of violence from beatings to outright murder, especially when coexisting with other marginalized identities. For instance black trans women run one of the highest risks in America to become the victim of a crime out of all measured demographics¹. Keep this in mind when considering how and why trans people often go seemingly overboard when transitioning, it’s their recognition in society and them having to constantly justify themselves to both society and psychiatrists that forces them to do so. Which is then also further engrained by the social expectations placed on women in society in general.

This is also to push back on the claim by many so called Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (short: TERF) trans women would inherit these stereotypical characteristics either because their own view of gender perceives a given gender (especially women) to always look like that or because they outright seek to push a given gender (usually women) back into those traditional gender roles. It simply ignores the societal and legal structures forced on trans people (especially trans women).

However, while this set out path is usually described as painful and harmful by trans people, processes of transphobia both externally administered and further internalized by the victims makes many people favourable towards keeping it that way. Expecting trans people to go through these legal and medical means of transitioning, requiring them to specifically transition medically and rejecting to recognize them at all if these processes are not desired is what is currently known as transmedicalism. In short the idea that one can only be a ‘real’ trans person, if they legally and medically transitioned or at least plan on doing so (as many are kept from doing so based on their financial situation).

The Non-Binary Movement

From that position onwards, additional groups formed, often in opposition to this perceived norm of what makes a trans person. Whether or not it is understood to be a structural problem as opposed to a personal one. Meaning people specifically identified as someone / something other and those “transtypicals / traditional trans people” in opposition to them, rather than an opposition to the structures making them that way. This isn’t overly surprising however, as recognizing structural patterns is not an easy feat for any given person, especially one not experienced with analysing structures (such as social scientists, political scientists, anthropologists or historians). So to them, transtypicals are presumed to identify with a binary view of gender, while they themselves either cannot find their own gender identity on that binary set of nodes or do not desire to do so to begin with. These people in question and the movement resulting from their numbers thus first started identifying their classification as “Genderqueer” and later as “Non-Binary”, though both essentially meaning the same group of people. The term used is usually dependant on the micro-community in question, regional comparisons and the community’s academic area of origin. Especially language plays a bit role here.

At first these movements would for the most part elect to name their own gender, not recognized by law or society at large otherwise. Names like “Bigender”, “Agender” and “Genderfluid” popping up. Now one might criticize the validity and function of some of them like Bigender, that would seem to be somewhat irrational in it’s construction, but the point of the matter wasn’t to find a good name and actually scientifically describe the own identity, at least not in a self-serving way. Subconsciously the idea was more to a) understand the own difference and distance felt from other people and b) justify that perceived difference to the rest of society. Because the same structures of expected justification that go for transtypicals are also in place for non-binary people. That is likely why more recent generations have further reduced the frequency of describing their own gender in the form of a single describing name, and switched mostly to just identifying as “Non-binary”.

This might be a more rational choice than the individual might realize, as deep philosophy on the meaning and origin of gender always come past thinkers like Judith Butler, and end up in some nagging hole akin of “If I cannot define what does and does not make a woman a woman, then how can I claim to be or not be one myself?” the same process may be repeated for any other gender and afterwards might be followed with “Is gender even a thing?

And more importantly, am I crazy?”.

Gender and the Spectrum, Point of View

It should be said then, that science has already more than started to dive into the ideas and identity of trans people, and while I absolutely do not seek to take too close a look at this, after all this is merely an opinionated essay, not an academic paper, please still allow me to assume, even if just for this essay, that gender is generally not understood as a purely binary thing but more as a spectrum of unique experiences, perspectives and living realities. A person’s gender might then be as varied, different and unique as the person’s existence itself.

This is the perspective I hold, and the one I will fully assume and explore in this essay. Again please keep in mind that this is my subjective analysis and not an academic paper.

If we all agree gender to be a non-binary spectrum (which non-binary people have to do in order to rationalize their identities), almost like a cloud or how I like to view it – a big scatter plot with either only one axis or infinite (neither matters, it’s arbitrary). In that people will generally place themselves all over the place. And where we have big clusters you will find popularly referenced gender descriptions like “man”, “woman”, “agender”, “genderfluid” etc. As mentioned above, these axis are arbitrary in both their numbers, dimensions and amounts. But if viewed like that, no gender really seems more legitimate than any other, what about those clusters then? What makes these clusters appear at all then if it is so arbitrary? My answer to that is Pragmatism (Materialist), Popularity and Psyche.

1) Pragmatism / Materialism

1.1) Pragmatism (Symbolic)

The history of the world is big, the history of gender studies is small though. Throughout more savage times and eras of early societies working according to your abilities was important, so men with their higher potential for muscle growth would likely do the hunting, and they would leave women behind in their caves. Is that exactly how it started? I don’t know, I’m not an anthropologist, but something along those lines started it, and kept up the societal view of gender roles, of what a woman’s job in society is, and what in turn a man has to do. And how neatly these rules will guide society into the future and all that. To this very day these rules of gender roles are in effect to varying degrees and intensities all over the world. All societies had them to some degree, many cultures recognized more than one gender and sex but in the end they all got crushed by logic and reason, which is lying-to-yourself language for “we crushed different tribes, cultures and schools of thought with the collective power of either the French or British Empire, then colonized these society till they could no longer be recognized as who they once were, and then our Christian missionaries went in to crumble and murder away the last remaining pieces of culture they still had. So it is mostly Western European Christian colonialism and imperialism that we can thank today for forcing everyone into these strict gender roles.

We are then so used to everyone being either a man or a woman, that doctors and legislatures have went out of their way to correct any form of dissidence from those two neat categories. For instance in either denying the existence of Intersex people or outright medically and surgically changing their appearance on birth, sometimes whether or not they had the consent of the parents. Not to mention the consent of the child. And many of these surgeries in the name of Binary Sexes are done to this day, including in Frankfurt, Germany.

So it is no well kept secret that law, society at large and every other major structure figuratively scream as people try to escape it’s confines. This is even reflected in the individual, as having people wonder what kind of gender you might be seems to give them literal physical pain like headaches and an upset stomach if they cannot determine your sex or gender. That is how strong the power of these structures is. The only way to allow transgression then is to build some kind of structure to move between those two rule sets. But only if you work really really hard for them. Then you might be allowed to switch society’s view of you from male to female, or man to woman. But only then, and only that far, as any other transgression is punished even further.

It is then no wonder that the individual cis person, tends to just go with whatever gender they have been assigned as at birth, cause “seems fine, whatever” and because dissident thought is suppressed so heavily. And then you have trans people generally defaulting to either of those two identities cause whichever one you choose is likely both as far away from the one you currently seek to distance yourself from as possible (remember in this also the desire to not be recognized or read by that gender anymore) and often the gender closest to being accepted nicely when showing the behaviour and characteristics you find more natural to yourself. Or speaking more practically:

• Imagine talking about a trans person that was assigned male at birth, and they seek to identity as not that, nor do they want to falsely be recognized as that gender. Additionally they might be very feminine and express characteristics often seen by society to be “what women do”. It then might seem quite understandable that this person – as they live in a society that expects people to either be a man or a woman – might elect to identify as a woman, as that is the counter opposite of a man (it has to in a binary system). Additionally, expressing your gender identity in a feminine way, is then read as to be expected for women, resulting in both a bigger chance to be recognized as not-a-man and not further be questioned or being required to justify their behaviour and forms of expression.

It is as such a pragmatically rational decision to identify as a woman if you were assigned male at birth and seek to change that perception (or the opposite if you were assigned female at birth) of yourself through society in the future. At least in a society enforcing binary gender roles.

This is then further enforced based on the person’s class and standing. As a trans person in academic confines that additionally is not required to work or not required to work with people has greater means to possibly divert from these rules than someone who has to do physical labour or any other economic background keeping them back, as well as unsupportive, religiously dogmatic or otherwise politically inclined families that might require them to do the pragmatic thing or walk the more binary-reinforcing path to ensure their survival as a form of compromise.

1.2 Pragmatism (Matertial) / Materialist Perspective

This is a short extra note on the material acquisition of the “Means of physical transition” if you allow me to call them that. This describes the idea that someone might decide to outwardly identify or express as a certain gender, even if it might not be what they internally feel due to the access to medical procedures, legal rights and medicine only granted to recipients if they identify a certain way.

A concrete example of this is trans people choosing to identify as women (or men respectively) and conforming with society’s expectations of these gender roles to appease psychiatrists, doctors and legal workers and receive access to the aforementioned procedures.

Now this of course strongly depends on the countries and their legal system in question, as well as which state of time one talks about (as laws change). So a trans person in Germany in the early 2000s might have a stronger reason to conform to a doctor’s idea of gender roles if whether or not they will receive access to medical procedures is down to the doctor’s whims, than for instance a Dutch trans person might have in 2019 where this is not the case, since the legal system there might guarantee these medical procedures to anyone desiring them.

Example:

Kim A. (16), living in Germany around 2005 desires to medically transition. They might not describe their own gender identity as necessarily “woman”, nor do they desire to conform to society’s expectations of gender conformity for women, in this case for instance a desire to apply make-up, wear dresses and skirts and keep their hair long, this might also go in line with behavioural expectations like in general quiet feminine submission compared to loudmouthed masculinity or abrassive behaviour. Kim A. does not want to comply with this expected behaviour, but feels like she is required to do so, since her psychiatrist expects her to “prove” her “woman-ness”, and his appeasement is what is ultimately required to receive the hormone supplements Kim A. desires.

Then a similar things happens with a legal agent as she desires to change her name. The law of that country at that time, requiring the recipient to choose a new name that is clearly discernable as female (or male respectively) on a glance. So instead of a neutral name like Kim, a more clearly discernable name on the basis of sex/gender like Maria or Karen is required.

At each point, the trans person in question might be forced to submit to society’s expectations of a binary gender spectrum with binary gender-roles. This of course becomes one of the biggest predictors for why someone might choose to conform with the gender roles “woman” and “man”, simply to gain access to the means to physically transition they desire.

2) Popularity / Compromise

This part will be a bit shorter. The popularity in this case describes what a person might feel when they start exploring their needs and perspectives. Since one must – as mentioned in the section on pragmatism – continue being a part of society, people are very likely to cling to whatever name or designation comes the closest to how they feel and seems to be respected well enough to consider a possible compromise. Which is why next to man and woman, agender is such a popular designation. It is very popular and does well to describe the given gender as anything “not man or woman” well enough for most people, and with that rising popularity more trans people might be inclined to compromise or identify wit that specific term. That goes doubly so with the aforementioned designations man and woman, as outlined in the section on pragmatism.

3) Psyche

This is then the most important part. The thoroughly experienced gender identity of the self, and also the hardest to grasp, describe, measure and display as it is simply too abstract of to completely understand. So let me just describe what I mean with this section. The idea of the psyche describes the values and characteristics the individual might ascribe to either gender identity and sex. For instance a person assigned male at birth might harbour internalized and externalized hatreds for specifically women or people identifying as such, and describe the idea of “being a woman” with being weak, easily scared or a sense passivity. While they might ascribe strength, beauty and dominance to men. Our industrial western culture tends to value the latter characteristics over the former, further compartmentalizing the individuals possible identification and idolization of one gender over another. Similarly a non-binary identifying person might feel similar about either gender presented to them by society and thus deem to not present as either man or woman. Further on there be a desire to either conform to or rebel against identified norms of society, further playing a role in the exploration of one’s own gender identity. One might also have made bad experiences with one gender that will push them towards another, or they feel alienated by individual members of a specific gender identity.

Either of these elements can play a role in how or why one might be more swayed towards one designation of gender identities over another, or more inclined to not compromise at all on it. Especially because what is recognized to be typical for one gender over another can also vary from culture to culture.

This section also encompasses the likely internal and impossible to measure desire in people to identify as trans, or to feel a certain way. The “trans-ness” if you will. What force in the person’s psyche makes them feel so strongly about their own gender and self that they desire to either feel very strongly about how others read their gender identity or that in extension they seek to change the look and feel of vital characteristics of their body, this drive me might never understand, and can only accept for what it is, as a true justification for it (outside of mystical justifications given such as being magically born in the wrong body, that is mostly used by people to get questioning people of their backs) might be impossible to formulate. And that we just have to accept.

Alienation of people from their own body or parts of their identity happens in all kinds of ways all over the world for varying degrees of reasons. From the person not liking their own nose one might reduce to societal standards, to people genuinely feeling like they should not have for instance two arms (body integrity dysphoria) that cannot be reduced to such societal factors. The spectrum of this is huge and cannot be completely understood, at least not with our current methods. The only viable way to test for it then can only be to ask the person in question for what they desire to happen to reach their own happiness and allow them to express their bodily autonomy.

In extension to this point, I am advocating for full bodily autonomy. Meaning full access to and financial support via health care for acquiring, the means to undergo procedures to medically and surgically change one’s body in any desired way. Be it through hormones of their choosing or surgeries like facial feminization, mastectomy, hysterectomy, vasectomy, mammoplasty or further on genital reconstruction surgery, even the amputation of certain body parts. All of these should be available to people, no matter how they choose to identify or express themselves. Psych evaluations, (to check if informed consent can be given for such procedures) might be required and is more than acceptable. However forcing an individual to undergo years of therapy for the chance to do so, is not acceptable.

Distinctions and Class Consciousness

To close out my perspective on Trans identities and how they come to be, I will further add, that given the points as I laid them out, and how we moved on to understand gender as a spectrum that – outside of pragmatism and structural expectations – is quasi infinite I want to emphasize that No gender is inherently more or less binary than any other. The “Non-binary” and the transtypical movements furthermore describe the exact same feeling and process.

Either the system is non-binary or it isn’t, the two groups cannot rationally be measured on different scales. Any actual distinctions applied merely seek to do a process “othering” because of certain factors. Some of these include the following:

• Transtypicals were pressured or sometimes even forced to commit to the path laid out by society and law and as such internalize certain hatreds about their own identity and then further gatekeep other trans people for not allowing for themselves to be traumatized in the same way they have been. Imagine being assigned male at birth and all you ever wanted was to get rid of your penis, yet you were forced to jump through thousands of hoops and crawl through the system for decades only to correct this one thing about yourself. And then someone else comes in, someone younger than you, not yet traumatized and mentally unwell, stepping up to their doctors and being allowed whichever procedure they want, not being required to take hormones they might not want, not required to undergo surgeries they do not desire for this one actual procedure they do desire. A certain animosity towards that person is very understandable. Whether or not it is fair and righteous.

• Currently non-binary identified people tend to hear how they are not “true trans people” for not compromising with either man or woman as identities and for how they do not go through the same medical procedures as them. Further gatekeeping them, which results in animosity between these individuals that then underlies confirmation bias and frequency illusions, where it is then seen everywhere. Not to mean that this not found on a very regular basis as an opinion spouted by transtypicals.

• Some currently non-binary identified people choose to not identify as trans people publicly, being then often seen within their communities as cowards or trans-trenders, implying that they only voice these expressions of gender identity to fit in between more trans groups or to to seem more interesting. While these people most likely exist (especially in trans people dominated groups of younger people) statistically alone, their number is – again through cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and frequency illusion – highly blown out of proportions.

• Certain cis-woman feminists, especially those with a less than optimal track record of supporting trans people in general and trans women specifically, in recent years ended up identifying as non-binary trans people. Furthermore talking for trans people’s interests, including those of trans women. That process is also understood by trans people as highly harmful, especially by those with previous clashes with feminist individuals or specific subsections of feminist thought. This is further compounded by the difference in power and voice in society between these groups (especially as trans people are marginalized quite heavily) and further stain the already strained relationship between trans people of all identities (especially trans women) and feminism (especially white western schools of feminism such as Second Wave Feminism and Marxist Feminism)

• Some non-binary identified trans people going for pronouns and gender designations either interpreted as slurs or as inherent ridicule. For instance the neutral pronoun “it” or equivalents (like the German “es”, often the only neutral pronoun available in some languages has in the past been used to denigrate and dehumanize trans people, as those pronouns are used traditionally to describe children, animals or inanimate objects. Using those pronouns reminds many trans people of having been called by others in the past, which triggers deep seated trauma. While the people using the pronoun in question merely looked for an alternative to “he” or “she”. A struggle further driving a wedge between people.

• Additionally, same point as the one above, some non-binary identifying trans people, especially in the past, elected to identify under names and designation such as “girlfag”, “guydyke”, “bigender”, “xenoatypial” etc. that is seen by many as an attempt to ridicule their identity rather than someone seeking to find a fitting description for themselves.

The list goes on, but various of these examples might suffer, as mentioned under some of the examples, from cognitive biases that will screw with how frequent these issues actually are.

What is however quite frequent, and currently used as one of the main designations to split these two groups, is calling transtypicals “binary trans people”. As to imply they are binary as opposed to non-binary. However that would further imply that they are measured on a seperate scale than other groups, and even worse of all, it implies that these trans people either consciously or subconsciously reinforce the gender binary as flaunted by society. This narrative is however extremely harmful to the wider movement and seeks to further marginalize especially trans women who are already among those most targeted by popular society. Please stop calling some trans people “binary”. You are harming the overall movement.

We are further driving a wedge between trans people that may or may not even be different from one another at all (my opinion which could be read on one of the previous pages) and in that are weakening the movement with our many quarrels, instead of understanding ourselves as one group – one people. We are all trans people, we all seek various changes to how we are perceived, changes to how we are treated, changes to our bodily composition, changes to society’s expectations of gender. And we will only effectively get them if we unify under one banner to fight for the same rights:

• We demand complete autonomy over the assignment of our gender. Only we know who or what we are, and not politicians or psychologists.

• We also demand to be allowed to decide what we are called, how we identify and how you talk to us. You ever having heard of our gender identities is not a factor. It doesn’t matter, you don’t have to understand us, you just have to accept and support us however we are and want to be.

• We demand complete autonomy over our bodies and them being intact. The forceful mutilation of the bodies of intersex people against their will both in adulthood and in a state of infancy has to stop. No parent or doctor knows how any given person is supposed to look like.

• We also demand complete and full access to whichever medical and surgical procedures we deem fit for ourselves and our own happiness. (Means of Physical Transition)

These must be our goals. Not whom of us is more or less binary on a scale with infinite characteristics. We must unify in this Trans-Anarchy, for the power over our bodies and lives is paramount.

FAQ / Expected Questions

This is colourcoded in its text form for easier readability:

Questions in red

Answers in green

Q: You seem to imply that medical procedures are only done by trans people to attain legal recognition, leaving out that many if not most of them might desire to do them because they seem right for them / cause they just desire to have these procedures done to them.

A: I actually do not, or at least doing so is not my desire. I am however not recognising those medical procedures as specific to trans people or generally classify them as a "trans procedures". In my political view of trans-anarchism I seek for us to be granted complete autonomy over how we want our bodies to look like. Meaning we should be allowed to have these medical procedures whether or not we identify as trans. To see it another way, some people decide to get surgery that changes how their nose might look like, not because they are trans-nose-ists or something, but because they desire for their nose to look differently (whether or not we want to discuss societal factors like beauty standards when discussing this).

Similarly I see autonomy for people on the basis of sexual characteristics. If someone feels, like having breasts is weird to them, then they should be legally allowed to have them surgically removed, whether or not that is tied to any gender identity or not.

So in that sense I am uncoupling these medical procedures from being specifically a "trans procedure".

Q: Don't say Transsexual, that makes it seem like it's a sexual thing.

A: Apologies, but I hear this claim a lot and it makes me more furious every time. It has a banality quite hard to recreate anywhere else. The medical term given to people who, at birth, show neither characteristics understood as being typical for either "XX-Female with female typical primary and secondary sexual characteristics and hormonal substantiation" or "XY-male with male-typical primary and secondary sexual characteristics and hormonal substantiation" are classified as Intersexual or shorter Intersex people. And that one isn't about fucking either. It understands the sexual term as the biologically inherent sex. And those older designations for trans people understood them as people of one sex that would seek to switch to another sex. Trans-sex or Transsexuality. It makes etymologically speaking complete sense, and the only reason to reject that term is either because you reject that narrative for either some or all trans people or because you personally hate how it sounds. Or because you are an idiot and that is how it was explained to you. In any way, the implication that the term is bad because it has "sexual" in the name is quite banal and uneducated and I'd prefer if you stopped saying that.

Q: You are wrong, binary trans people are completely different from non-binary people in that transtypicals are defined as people that only seek to reach a gender in it's traditional gender role and expression, while non-binary people are not.

A: Fuck off TERF. Nobody likes you and your highly reactionary views on sex and gender. And if you personally are a trans identifying person, please rethink the fact that you hold transphobic views, and please also reflect on your really odd views on what does and does not make a man or a woman. Wherever you might have picked up at that idea I do not know (likely from trans-exclusionary “feminists”, and specifically Janice Raymond) it has no basis in reality. Like everyone else, trans people are very diverse.

Q: But what if someone just decides to be a woman tomorrow, come into the woman's bathroom to rape and molest women?

A: When that theoretical scenario actually happens one day, compared to the millions of trans people that exist and are held down by current laws, then I might actually discuss this scary scenario. But right now, all that this is, is a fear. And an irrational one at that, as there is no precedence for this to be a thing, other than you being able to concoct it in your mind. And even if it was, there would have to be a really high amount of cases for this to play a role.

Something to keep in mind, in other societies, even among western industrial societies like the United Kingdom, bathrooms might not be split at all. In certain societies they are just always unisex, and that is fine too.

“It is then no wonder that the individual cis person, tends to just go with whatever gender they have been assigned as at birth, cause “seems fine, whatever” and because dissident thought is suppressed so heavily.” (S. 6)

Q: Isn’t the thing there that most cis people don’t even know about Transgender topics, like White people don’t understand racism due to underexposure?

A: Yes exactly, that is essentially what I wanted to say when I wrote “Dissident Thought” in my Essay. I apologize since I did not make this point very clearly at all, I should have gone into more detail. So please allow me to clarify here.

I do understand that many trans issues are not understood by Cis people because they are not experienced or even noticed by cis people on a regular basis. I do not specifically mean to speak about that though, but instead about the treatment of gender non-conformity and how it shows in society. Generally children show little of that division into binary groups early on, and while they will most likely start comparing one another to notice differences between primary sexual organs (as they do already), they are unlikely to extrapolate a system of binary gender roles and gender expressions from this to set for society. No, early on they are told “There is boys and there is girls, you are either of those and there is roles and expected behaviour attached to either of them, you are furthermore expected to comply with these expectations.” either explicitly or implicitly through parents and society. It starts very early with how we tend to colour their clothes in either blue or pink, how people already act in society, the haircuts we tell stylists to give them, the clothes we buy them, and more.

The then resulting knowledge and understanding, that a break from these gender conformities is possible, then often comes about either by experimentation (which children do in spades already) and then finding a liking to it strongly enough that it is kept, or by direct representation through gender non-conforming people. Which works okay enough if that gender non-conformity is expressed through the lens of what I call “gender expression”. Meaning non-traditional behaviour, clothing or styles but keeping the gender identity, as in for instance butch women and feminine men. It should be noted here, that this gender non-conformity through outward expression is already suppressed in society. Furthermore then, is gender non-conformity through not identifying outwardly and inwardly with the gender assigned at birth and furthermore expected by society. This form of expression, which I implicitly deem as “being trans” is more or less kept a secret in society. Not necessarily by people outwardly lying about it, but by the reality of society not liking to talk about it, shaming it and harassing people for being trans. There has been a big debate a few years ago in Germany about changing educational books for schools to mention gender non-conformity, intersexuality, homosexuality and trans people explicitly, which was fought tooth and nail. This is an example of an explicit rather than an implicit act of “suppression of the understanding of that more than gender conformity in both expression and gender identity (trans) can exist.” Which as a concept I furthermore reduced to “dissident thought”. As in any thought that breaks with wider society’s explicit and implicit expectations of gender conformity and gender identity.

This suppression being less successful these days, can be observed through more and more people coming out as trans or expressing themselves outside of expected conformities. Through the Internet, knowledge of the existence and life of trans people reached more people, resulting in more people coming out, which in turn – through creating direct representation through cultural osmosis – result in further people coming out in either a similar or different form of expression as to reflect the distance and similarity to those people

found through representation.

By the parts of society in positions of power, as well as people old enough to have lived under the implicit indoctrination of their own previous generations societal expectations of gender, this is experienced as a stark contrast, almost a betrayal or to evoke a sharp right wing rhetoric that seems to be growing throughout the world – degeneracy. A “dissidence” against their own expectations of how the world and people in it should behave. Resulting in push back, or reactionary movements that seek to reinforce the gender expectations of the societies in their generations, usually with more power due to number of previous generations and their standing in society, meaning perspectives and positions that break with their views are further punished, or describable as “dissident thought”.

That is what I meant, more so than whether or not people not overly invested in that form of expression hold an understanding for the issues and challenges of people that do.

1Addressing Anti-Transgender Violence, Human Rights Campaign, Trans People of Color Coalition, https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/HRC-AntiTransgenderViolence-0519.pdf