End the Trans Wars: Compassion Builds Bridges | Trans Sandwiched #19

Today, I want to continue to reflect on my own experience of living for more than a decade as a trans person in society. This time, I want to talk about the need to build bridges between trans people and the rest of society, and the important role of compassion in this process.

One thing I often say is that, in culture and politics, we must always avoid tribalism. In recent years, I have become concerned that the discourse around trans issues has become similar to the wider political environment, with increasing tribalism, black-and-white thinking, and echo chambers. The main reason why I have started speaking up about trans issues again after not talking about them for a decade is because I want to counter this trend. I want to build bridges between the trans community and different parts of the wider society, to increase mutual understanding, so that our views of each other aren't dominated by stereotypes and biased perceptions. I believe this is the key to building trans acceptance, because it is what I have found in my own life experience. Most people don't have a problem with trans people, but they might not understand us very well. This can lead to difficulties when we ask for accommodations to be made. But the thing to remember is that, most people aren't actually against us. Rather, it's a problem of understanding.

When I say I want to break the echo chambers and build bridges, I mean that I want to do so on both sides of the divide, i.e. the trans community as well as society at large. In recent years, trans representation in mainstream media has improved, and most people out there probably have at least a rudimentary understanding of trans people. This stands in contrast to when I first came out in 2006, where the first reaction from people sometimes ranged from an awkward curiosity to not knowing how to respond at all. However, the kind of trans representation out there is often stereotypical in one way or another, and does not reflect the diversity of trans people out there. This must change, and I am hopefully helping to change it. On the other hand, the trans community increasingly has its own echo chamber, and it too must be challenged. For example, it is common for trans activists to paint an overly negative picture of various people or groups out there who might not always understand or support us, and this overly negative attitude often goes unchallenged in the trans echo chamber. The problem with this is, if you start out by deciding that some people are the enemy and their attitude is not changeable, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the trans community will never gain any more allies than we currently have.

Bridge building is not always an easy exercise, especially when there are already a load of stereotypes, emotions and historical grievances built up on both sides. I believe the key ingredient for successful bridge building is compassion. The ability to see the other side as human, and the ability to stand in their shoes. This, of course, must go both ways. To increase compassion, we must challenge the stereotypes and tribalist attitudes that stand in the way of recognizing each other as human. This, again, is a core part of my mission, in the work I am doing.

Trans people often have difficult lives, and bear the psychological scars of struggles related to both innate gender dysphoria and social discrimination. In particular, many trans people feel like they are constantly worried about potentially losing civil rights, and recent events in several places have shown that this fear is not unfounded either. I hope that wider society can see the trans community's tendency to overreact to certain things in light of this context, and be more forgiving and less judgemental.

On the other hand, many people out there still have a lot of gaps in terms of understanding trans lives, our experiences and our needs. Making demands of others and expecting that they be accepted by everyone almost overnight is unrealistic. We need to understand where other people are coming from, and allow them the time to go through the process of understanding on their own terms.

The Many Ways Queer Theory Hinders Trans Acceptance | Trans Sandwiched #18

How queer theory basically puts LGBT people on another planet.

Welcome back to Trans Sandwiched by TaraElla. Today, I want to go deeper into the ways queer theory actually hinders mainstream society's understanding and acceptance of trans people. As I previously described, queer theory is anti-essentialist in a fundamentalist way, and insists that all categories of gender and sexuality are entirely socially constructed. As such, its mission is to challenge, and actively 'deconstruct' in a postmodern sense, all stable meanings of terms like 'male' and 'female'. While some may say that queer theory is about questioning established norms around gender and sexuality, it actually goes much further than that. The problem with queer theory is not with rejecting rigid binaries and categories. The problem is that is takes its anti-essentialism way too far, to the point that it simply can't accept any essential core meaning in terms like 'male' and 'female'. This means that, ultimately, no shared meanings are possible, which severely hampers meaningful conversation and understanding.

Queer theory's refusal to accept at least some level of essential meaning for 'male' and 'female' hampers both trans people's formation of a stable identity in themselves, as well as our communication with broader society. Many trans people, like myself, understand our identities as not feeling comfortable living as 'male' and more comfortable living as 'female', and vice versa. For me, I formed this view from a very young age, and it has been a stable part of my reality. Even non-binary people often form their identities in relation to not fitting with 'male' and 'female' as pre-existing concepts. If 'male' and 'female' were empty categories that meant nothing at the core, statements like these wouldn't even make sense! By rejecting all essential meaning for 'male' and 'female', queer theory invalidates the stable self identity of trans people. Instead, it reduces trans identities, and indeed all LGBT identities, to opposition to stable meanings of 'male' and 'female'. Not only is this not our authentic sense of self, and not how most of us arrive at our own understanding of what being trans is, it also has important harmful consequences for trans understanding and acceptance in wider society.

Queer theory robs trans people of an important way to build understanding and find common ground with the mainstream. Fundamental understandings of 'male' and 'female' are part of the common shared meanings of society going back to before civilization. This understanding isn't always best reflected in rigid categories, but the basic archetypes of 'male' and 'female' are basically eternal. The old-school trans narratives that were rooted in our relationship to the widely understood archetypes of 'male' and 'female' thus provides a way to build a bridge between mainstream understandings and the trans experience of life. Even such oversimplied statements like 'a woman trapped in a man's body' were often useful to help people understand us. In a way, this is similar to how gay and lesbian people gained understanding and acceptance through the marriage equality campaign. Through striving for marriage, which has a widely understood meaning, gay couples were able to demonstrate their shared values and shared humanity with mainstream society, thus building a bridge between mainstream understandings and the gay experience of life. Queer theory activists are now trying to deny trans people the same opporunity to build bridges with the mainstream, because of their ideological commitment to anti-essentialism and deconstruction. This, in my opinion, is unfair and cruel!

Another particular concern is that, in reducing LGBT identities, particularly trans identities, to opposition to stable meanings of 'male' and 'female', it distracts from the actual experience of trans lives. Instead of discussing the challenges faced by trans people in our everyday lives, with a particular focus on the needs of people living with gender dysphoria, and how trans people can be accomodated, queer theory makes the trans discourse all about opposing stable meanings of 'male' and 'female'. Queer theory activists are essentially turning trans people into a chess piece for their radical objectives, and in the process displacing the meaning of trans identity from one based in lived reality to one based in ideology.

Queer theory activism has already had harmful effects in the real world. For example, the media discussion of trans people rarely focuses on gender dysphoria and the needs of trans people anymore. There is also not much talk about the validity of trans identity from a scientific or empirical point of view. Indeed, I think the way mainstream media portrays trans lives nowadays sometimes makes being trans look like a lifestyle choice. All this allows the pseudo-scientific talk of anti-trans activists, including gender critical feminists (sometimes known as TERFs), to sound 'more scientific' than us, and hence more credible to many observers.

This, in turn, has led to a false narrative of trans identity being able to be 'resolved' by reducing gender stereotypes, as if issues like physical dysphoria did not exist at all. This narrative is now suprisingly prevalent, especially in certain circles, like IDW fans, and 'anti-woke' socialists. I think this just shows how queer theory and gender critical feminism ultimately have the same aim, i.e. gender abolition, and they are just using trans people in a different way to achieve their aim. Different methods but same goal. One might even observe that queer theory and gender critical feminism are actually playing out a false dialectical narrative that ultimately moves towards the 'abolition of gender' and the necessary erasure of trans people and gender dysphoria in the process. If one takes this view, the dominance of queer theory on one side of the trans narrative, and gender critical feminism on the other side, is indeed a scary situation for trans people, and one that we must urgently seek to change.

We Don't Need to Erase Differences to Gain Acceptance | Trans Sandwiched #17

Why History Has Made Queer Theory-inspired LGBT Activism Obsolette

Welcome back to Trans Sandwiched by TaraElla. Today, I want to explore the likely historical motivations of queer theory-based activism, and why the experience of the past two decades has proven these motivations to be misguided.

Queer theory is a set of philosophical theories about gender and sexuality that is rooted in the idea that both gender (male and female) and categories of sexuality (e.g. straight, gay and bi) are entirely socially constructed. According to queer theory, the deconstruction of these categories is key to liberation of humanity, especially LGBT people. I have previously criticized this view, on the grounds that the total denial of stable identity categories ultimately denies LGBT people a clear and understandable identity. This makes us less able to effectively promote understanding and argue for acceptance in wider society. My concern is that queer theory-based LGBT activism essentially makes LGBT identities not understandable for mainstream society, which I strongly believe is bad for us.

I think that, to understand where queer theory-based LGBT activism is coming from, and why it is so ill-suited to the needs of LGBT people today, we need to understand its historical context. Queer theory was born in the 1980s-90s, and was highly influenced by postmodern thinkers (particularly Michel Foucault) who wrote their works even earlier. Thus, the historical context in which queer theory arose was one that was highly hostile to all things LGBT. You have to remember that, for example, homosexuality remained an offense in parts of America until 2003. Even outside America, things weren't much better, with parts of Europe and Australia banning homosexuality well into the 1990s. Until quite recently, LGBT acceptance was often a very difficult and hopeless campaign.

It was in this context that the queer theory idea of erasing the distinction between 'categories' of sexuality like straight and gay looked like the way forward for some. This was to be done by promoting a variety of philosophical theories and practices to 'deconstruct' gender. I think the logic is basically that, if there was no difference between male and female, it would logically follow that there was no difference between straight and gay, and any discriminatory laws and practices would become untenable. Of course, back in the homophobic 1990s, those interested in anything 'queer' were in the very small minority, and queer theory did not have any impact on wider society. Still, the idea lived on.

Meanwhile, the history of the past two decades has shown us that LGBT acceptance can come about, even without erasing differences that are scientifically established as well as objectively evident. Today, more than 60% of the population in most Western countries support gay marriage. The fundamental difference between male and female, and hence between straight and gay, is still widely acknowledged, yet this has not hindered the acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships at all. In other words, there was no need to erase our differences all along, they simply needed to be accepted. Promoting understanding, not erasing differences, is the key to LGBT acceptance.

In a way, queer theory-based activism has a similar difference-denying mentality to the 'stealth model' that was historically standard for trans people, and both were ultimately rooted in the same unaccepting social context. The difference was mainly that the 'stealth model' required only effort from the trans person, and some cooperation from government policies. Therefore, the 'stealth model' was at least sustainable until there was widespread awareness of trans people. On the other hand, the queer theory model would require a very fundamental change in the worldview and culture of the whole society. Moreover, the queer theory model would also require widespread challenge to established science to succeed. This, I believe, is the biggest fault in the queer theory model.

Anyway, the point is, the aforementioned models of LGBT identity only make sense if one believed that the unaccepting social context couldn't be fundamentally changed. And history has already proven this to be wrong. Therefore, I think it's time we moved on from a difference-denying mentality, towards a truly open and proud mentality.

Let's Build Bridges & End Tribalism | Diary of a Trans Popstar

Music: Listen To My Heart by TaraElla