Trans Liberation Is Liberation for Us All

Can someone get Mace to take a WGS class

We hosted a discussion of the election results on campus a few weeks ago, and I was on the panel. I shared with the audience that the incoming Trump administration would, at the very least, do nothing to protect LGBTQ and women’s rights, and most likely, would actively work to attack them. During the Q&A, a student athlete spoke up, very concerned about trans athletes’ participation in women’s sports.

I pointed out that this is a classic talking point for TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), and has a long history going back to the second wave of feminism, when feminists who were accustomed to defending the rights of women on the basis of sex (gender essentialism) were threatened by AMAB folks attending things like all-women music festivals. These women had deliberately built spaces exclusively for women, and they saw trans folks as a threat to the project of building what for them were safe spaces.

Many feminists, even then, rejected these anti-trans positions and now the most common position for feminists, especially in the academy, is a trans-inclusive position (not to say people are doing this perfectly). Most scholars operate under the paradigms developed by gender studies scholars like Judith Butler (and many others) who understand that biological sex (how your body is, think genitals, sex hormones, chromosomes) is not the same as gender identity. Historical and cultural evidence upholds this understanding of gender identity, because we see how much gender varies over time and across cultures. Gender is culturally created—this is why the men who signed the Constitution might not be allowed in a bathroom on Capitol Hill these days, with their wigs and makeup, high heels and flouncy coats.

Nancy Mace is trying to revive this dated and dangerous gender essentialism, which fits perfectly with the patriarchal projects of the Christian Nationalist forced birthers and the pronatalist, eugenicist politics of apartheid-raised Elon Musk. She claims to be defending women’s rights as she attacks the first openly trans House representative from Delaware through her cruel bathroom bill, yet she supports the abortion bans killing women and the incoming rapist administration.

I didn’t get into this with the student during the Q&A and instead invited them to take my Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies class next semester, when we’ll cover all this in more detail. I told the audience to consider what these politicians will actually do to help girls and women, and suggested that the attack on trans people is a smoke screen to pass laws and enforce policies that support the patriarchy.

Today the Post and Courier published a feature story on queer and trans youth in South Carolina. It’s a great read, and lists a number of organizations working to help trans people in the state (consider donating). South Carolina has passed health care bans that essentially block gender affirming care for all people, both for minors and adults. The state has already worked to attack kids through bathroom bans, book bans and directing teachers to not use preferred names and pronouns. These policies actively harm children. It’s horrifying to watch the government subject these kids to these policies, not to mention how much it infringes on the rights of their parents to seek the best care for them. These are the actual attacks on parental rights.

Excellent reporting by Kathryn Casteel and Kenna Coe.

We need to defend these kids, and we need to defend the rights of all queer people. But women especially need to be invested in trans liberation. It is no coincidence that the same people who want to end women’s right to vote are also attacking trans people. Trans folks make visible the constructed nature of the heteropatriarchal gender system: behind the blonde Ballerina Farm prairiecore is the revocation of bodily autonomy and the expectation that women do not exist for themselves but only to serve others. Trans folks reveal that the gender system is constructed so men never have to clean a toilet, or change diapers, or cook entire holiday meals because girls and women are just “naturally” better at it.

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To truly embrace trans liberation means to divorce the gender system from its association with mythical two-sexed bodies, and to see it for what it is: the mechanisms of the patriarchy. We can reinvent gender to suit us, but we have to do so in a trans inclusive way or we’re all still trapped in a gender prison, making less money, dying of preventable causes, subject to violence at home and in the streets. Trans liberation is the only way we’ll all be free, boys and men included.