A Unifying Force
What is the one thing on which, despite their own completely contradictory ideologies, transsexual fundamentalists, gay elitists, radical feminist lesbians and rightwing conservatives can find common cause?
A thorough loathing of trans people in general, of trans women especially (though not solely) and in particular of trans women who identify or who are identifiable as trans.
Of course, some might pretend to despise “the movement” and not the people… but such borrowing on the part of allegedly enlightened individuals from the rhetoric of the religious right is telling in itself.
And this is why I will never drop my own affiliation with trans identity, regardless of my own privileges: because it pisses people off. Anti-trans postures are one of the last truly universal, acceptable prejudices - witness the widespread mockery of the “man in a dress” icon. And by the same token, being trans strips away all the superficial differences between opposing ideologues of all kinds and collects them all neatly in the same tiny, airless box - the one labeled “Don’t Complicate Our Lives” - where we can point at them and laugh while we go about the business of living in a much more interesting world.
I am reminded of Katherine Hawkins’ mother, who announced to the crowd “My daughter got rid of all her ambiguities and contradictions — and dumped them right onto us.”
Maybe the real label on the box is “The fears I hold about my own queerness.” So much easier to simplify by try to break the mirrors rather than come to grips with our own human reflection.
I think it’s bigger than that, Callan. I think it’s more than queerness, and one’s willingness to own it. I think it’s about a basic mental type that cuts across social, political and gender types… the pinched, authoritarian martinet who can’t stand anything in their little universe being out of place. It’s what makes them all basically the same, regardless of whatever little identity fortress they huddle in.
And that’s what’s interesting about being trans… it apparently challenges everybody.
‘Their little universe’ is a wonderful key phrase to sum up the delusion of any fundamentalism. Pity they don’t see that “the” universe not only doesn’t need to recognize their possessiveness, but continues to function without even considering it.