What Do Trans People Believe?
On trans ideology, or lack thereof.
This week, I’m gonna EXPOSE TRANS IDEOLOGY!!!
All the conservative hullabaloo about a “trans agenda”, “gay agenda”, “gender ideology”, etc. certainly implies that the LGBTQ community is a cohesive group, complete with a singular message about what trans people ought to do and what it means to be human. From the outside looking in—and primed by decades of propaganda about what the “true” goals of the LGBTQ community are—it may seem like we have an internally-consistent ideology.
Well, I can tell you as a “voice on the inside” that this isn’t really the case. Many of us agree on some tangible political goals—that you should respect someone’s chosen pronouns, that transition-related health care should be accessible to anyone who needs it, that trans people shouldn’t be discriminated against in the workplace, so on and so forth (although even then you will find some defectors).
However, much of the “underlying philosophy” of transness is left up to the individual. What does it mean to be trans? What does it mean to be cis? What does it mean to be neither? When do you “become” the gender you’re aiming to be? Which came first; cisness or transness? And from a political perspective, how do we go about meeting the above goals? Should we be advocating for better treatment within the American health care system, or building up alternative networks so we can survive without them? Since trans people are not currently accepted by the dominant culture, should we be trying to gain acceptance among the dominant culture, or should we be trying to radically change it? If we’re trying to radically change the culture, what is our end game; a tertiary gender system (men/women/non-binary people), a society where gender still exists somewhat as we know it today but where transitioning simply isn’t a big deal, or some form of gender abolition? What does “gender abolition” even look like?
If you ask these questions to 5 different trans people, you will get 7 different answers. And maybe that’s okay; we’re all allowed to have our own unique relationship to our own experience of gender. At the same time, the trans community is in crisis right now, and part of that is a crisis of identity: Who are trans people? What do trans people believe? What are our traditions? What is this “trans narrative” we’re hearing so much about?
Let’s discuss. But first, what does it take to have a “tradition”?
This incredible TikTok video, produced for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, sparked a conversation among a few of my fellow trans content creators. Feel free to watch it below and then come back (~7min), but the part I’d like to focus on is summarized below.
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This video touches on a lot of interesting things, but I want to focus on The Art of Traditioning. Do transgender people have “a tradition”?
In the above creator’s words, in order for a tradition to take hold, there are 5 things that must be in place.
A Formative Narrative
A Celebration of that Narrative
Governing Laws & Values
A Method of Disseminating Information
A Method of Practicing Laws & Values
The video gives an example of the Jewish community’s formative narrative (as described in the Torah/Talmud), celebrations (Jewish holidays), laws & values (those associated with the faith), and methods of dissemination information and practicing those values (going to Temple, Jewish schools, story-telling, community-building, etc.)
For all the accusations about transness being “like a cult” or “like a religion”, trans people (as a collective) lack many of these qualities, for a variety of reasons. Let’s break down three reasons that come to mind, for me personally, after talking to a few of The Elders about this question.
Problem 1: Trans people have always existed.
This is the coolest thing about trans people, but also the thing that makes us hard to talk about. If we’re being truly anti-colonial in our thinking, we need to consider that many societies (across the world and across history) have had some sort of gender-bending afoot. The designation of “trans/transgender/transsexual” is new, and comes with the baggage of a Western, medical view of gender that doesn’t map perfectly onto these diverse value systems. Short version: it’s inappropriate to point at another culture’s gender traditions (e.g., Hijra, Māhū, Muxe), and say “trans!”
Moreover, even within the imperial core, some trans people root their beliefs about transness within their own spiritual beliefs. Christians may believe they are joining their god in the divine act of creation. Fair enough. Atheists may have a differing view, that transness is merely a random occurrence, dealing strictly in the world of the biological and sociological. Also valid. Some trans people may know that they are trans but not even have a logical justification for it; “I am a woman simply because I am.”
There will probably never be one singular “trans narrative” that applies to all trans people around the world. Perhaps there shouldn’t be.
The goal of making a coherent, universal Gender Theory is such an obtuse and impossible task that thousands of gender scholars working overtime for decades have not been able to crack the case. Much simpler is the (incomplete, yet) dogmatic and practical “women have vulvas and men have dicks”, in a similar way that “God did it” is a more satisfying answer than “we exist because of a complex and ever-unknowable series of chemical reactions that resulted in molecules knowing how to replicate themselves, followed by millennia of iterative evolutionary steps that granted us the cognitive ability to eventually produce apple pie”.
You would think that “what is a woman?” would be a simpler philosophical question than “why are we here?”, but in fact, the opposite is true. So much for “gender ideology”; trans people can’t seem to make up their minds at all!
Problem 2: Trans people are not geospatially connected to one another.
Usually (though not always), communities of people are linked by their physical space. If you’re Black, you probably have Black parents/guardians who raise you and teach you about what it means to be Black from a young age, and you may even live in a neighborhood where there are other Black people around who you can also relate to and seek mentorship from. (Side note: this is what makes transracial adoption so potentially violent, and what makes the conservative appropriation of the term “transracial” as a means to demoralize trans people especially annoying.)
Not so with being trans. For all intents and purposes; trans people seem to appear in the world at random, with roughly the same odds as rolling a nat 20. You can be a trans person born in New York City, with plenty of resources to pull from and community members to seek out, or you can be a trans person born in rural Minnesota, in which case you’re probably going to be the only trans person you know. As a result, many trans people have no community, making it pretty difficult to settle on a particular “trans ideology”.
Alternatively, many trans people’s primary community space is online, which to put it lightly, changes a lot about how we communicate and relate to one another. Online-only communities tend to breed the most toxic human habits—dogmatism, absolutism, elitism, fatalism, and just plain being mean to one another. These are the behaviors that, I assume, conservatives are referring to when they claim that “transgenderism” is a “cult”; black & white thinking, the idea that all cis people are evil, a tendency to cancel one another for the slightest wrongdoing, all the thigs you expect to see on Twitter dot com. (These are problems, to be sure, but I personally don’t find a bunch of anime-pfp teenagers going head-to-head on the bird app to be as politically influential as, say, the hundreds of anti-trans bills that have come out in 2023 alone.)
Having no trans people around you makes you feel lonely, isolated, and misunderstood. Having no in-person trans elders keeps you from knowing your history. Having no younger trans people to mentor prevents you from gaining a sense of responsibility to your community. All combined, it allows you to develop an adversarial and toxic “trans ideology” where (for example), “non-binary” trans people (or “binary” trans people, whichever one you aren’t) are somehow your enemies, and not people with whom you share needs and goals.
This brings us to…
Problem 3: Trans people are people.
…and people are flawed. With no Centralized Trans Authority (CTA?) to tell us what our value system is, we fall back on whatever value system is available/easiest/most profitable to us. Some trans people are phenomenal advocates for white trans people, but are lacking in their anti-racist education and are not in community with trans people of color, resulting in a distinctly different “trans narrative” than one which is anti-colonial. Some trans people are good at advocating for trans and non-binary people of color, but have a negative view of sex work and will think of themselves as “above” those who pursue that field, even out of survival. Some trans people are just straight up conservatives, whose ideology is fully aligned with patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, ableism, et al. except minorly tweaked to include some amount of trans acceptance. This could honestly be its own entire newsletter, but suffice it to say, the idea that us trans people are a monolith moving as one to enact our vision for the future is laughable, and boy would some actual cohesion in the trans community be really nice for everyone involved.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of why the trans community is suffering. I also don’t want to distract from the fact that all of this was done to us. As it turns out, it’s incredibly difficult to develop a cohesive movement and ideology when you’ve been systemically disadvantaged, erased from history, and in many cases just straight-up murdered for generations. American trans people lack elders not because of some internal moral failing, but because in the 1980s our government decided that HIV/AIDS was “God’s way of clearing out the f*****s and tr*****s, so we should just let it rip!!”
I hope this serves as a starting point for you to see the state of the trans community, and what we might be able to do to help/repair it. If you’re cis and reading this, the best thing you can do is to make us feel less alone, be patient with us as we grow into our new identities, treat us as human beings (imperfections and all), and act wherever you are to make your spaces more inclusive to us. (It would be nice if you showed up to a few town hall/school board meetings, too.)
If you’re trans and reading this, I hope this wasn’t too pessimistic for you; in fact, I think these 3 items could be the basis for a new, inclusive philosophy of transness…
Here’s my attempt at A Trans Tradition:
A Formative Narrative: Trans people have always existed, and our rich history has simply been erased by colonialism. Nonetheless, we will never go away, for we represent balance, fluidity, transformation, self-actualization, and resilience in defiance of all we have been through.
A Celebration of that Narrative: Coming together as a community to celebrate someone’s coming out, someone’s legal name change, someone’s first doses of HRT, and someone’s anniversaries of any of these. Trans Day of Remembrance, Trans Day of Visibility, attending Pride events, and pilgrimages to queer cultural centers like Stonewall.
Governing Laws & Values: We resist capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and everything else that marginalizes the weak to benefit the already-powerful. Trans people are meant to bring balance to all systems of power, including gender. All trans people, everywhere, are connected to one another across space and time, as long as they hold true to this mission and commit to divesting from systems of domination to the best of their abilities.
A Method of Disseminating Information: Talking to our elders, zines on safe sex, spreadsheets of which doctors to go to and which to avoid, tweets about how to shave to avoid razor burns, transition timelines, and archival projects about our own history.
A Method of Practicing Laws & Values: Mutual aid, centering & loving Black & Indigenous trans folks, walking each other home, protecting trans kids, lending each other hormones when we run out, t4t love, mentoring trans youth, holding each other to a high standard, and calling each other out/in when we promote racism, sexism, etc.
We have been blessed with so much. It’s about time we honor that.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been going through a sort of spiritual rebirth. I’ve been an agnostic/atheist since I was a teenager, but as I’ve learned more about trans history, I’ve become obsessed with all the things that connect us. The things that connect me to my trans ancestors; my trancestors, if you will.
I’m captivated by the work of trans artists, especially on the wild west of obscure Instagram posts. In particular, (at)grlofswords has a beautiful collection of works that are in great alignment with my still-shifting Philosophy Of Transness.
I don’t know what the future of the trans community looks like. But I’m optimistic, because I know that there will always be poets.
With love,
-Anna
