A common talking point of reactionaries and social conservatives is the idea of a “trans ideology” indoctrinating the youth into wanting hormone therapy and identifying as a different gender. This idea of a trans ideology is obviously a pale boogeyman to anyone really paying attention, and frankly isn’t particularly “ideological” in the conventional sense, acting as more of a loose conspiracy centered around trans people than indicating any specific set of values or goals. Is the idea of a trans ideology without merit entirely though? Or can the reality of trans existence and cis discomfort be built into something more than a vague collective suffering?
To truly begin to realize a trans ideology, we have to start by dissecting what it is about trans existence that attracts so much cis attention in the form of broad conspiracies and vitriolic hatred. Mainly, I will be centering trans existence as a destabilizing effect, something that calls into question cis people’s ingrained assumptions about themselves and their world.
This happens on a few different axes, a prevalent one being calling into question deeply personal understandings of gender, which elicits an immediate backlash. This specific kind of backlash/destabilization can be seen prominently on display with Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism, these women turning their backs on complex analysis of gender as socially constructed in order to avoid the difficult question of if maybe “basic biology” wasn’t quite enough to get them ready for a mature analysis of sex and gender.
Another of these axes is the destabilizing of sexuality, the calling into question the rigid boxes that have been constructed for people to fuck and romance and die within. This destabilization frequently produces violent attacks from cis men worried about being gay for their attraction to trans women, and remains a difficult barrier even within queer/lgbt+ cis communities, where the boxes are simply more plentiful and remain rigidly defined and defended against all reason.
Finally we lie on the destabilizing of social convention, the trans challenge to conventional beliefs about appearance, dress, and so-called “common sense”. This destabilization manifests particularly in cis disgust for those trans people who either do not, or, worse yet, do not want to “pass” as cis. The existence of non-normative expression and the taking of pride in being non-normative shatters expectations that the non-normative must be ashamed of their non-conformity.
Taking from these basic phenomena we can determine that any trans ideology must be an ideology of destabilization, of negation of categories, normative structures, and rigidity. In short a defiance and opposition to the societal constructions confining us. This ideological framework must also oppose the internal transmedicalist movement, which seeks not to confront cis discomfort, but rather wishes to appeal to it, to placate it. This current is of course unsuccessful in its goal of avoiding attack, and simply paints a “not like other girls” image on top of open and vitriolic transphobia. This behavior is of course a result of the violent internalization of cisnormativity that is difficult to truly escape, but which must be unequivocally destroyed if we wish to fight for real change.
Now we’ve determined our trans ideology to run counter to normative forms, but what does this trans ideology truly seek out in society beyond intellectual attacks on abstractions? What can we seek out, knowing that we are ever-constrained by the assimilationist mainstream and capitalism? The answer is nothing of course, to free ourselves from the rigid orthodoxies of normative gender and sexuality we must also shatter the chains of capital and rip down the bourgeois state around the ears of those who seek to keep us the perpetual Other. This overarching goal cannot be overstated, as capitalism has provided the neat and tidy boxes we are made to squeeze ourselves into, and capitalism and the state enforce our adherence to them.
This creation of boxes is inherently helpful to the capitalist system, as it allows them to maintain an Other among the proletariat, a target, that ensures they can keep the working class bickering among themselves about their boxes instead of identifying the fact that the boxes are the problem, and not the people in them. This kind of acceptance of box abolition is precisely what the bourgeois fear the most, because they know as well as we do that if the boxes were to vanish tomorrow, a united working class would realize their true enemy. This centers class consciousness and revolutionary left theory and praxis as the root of this trans ideology, to abolish boxes, we must also abolish capitalism and the state.
But why oppose assimilation? Should we not be proud of the strides we have made in integrating ourselves? I say no, assimilation must be opposed. Assimilationism stands as the lgbt+ liberal mainstream, seeking entry into the very oppressive social structures we have outlined as oppositional to the project of trans ideology. We cannot allow this movement, blinded to the inherent failure of their approach for the poor, the non-white, and the non-conformists, to dominate in our queer spaces with their empty rhetoric of “progress”. We reject the progress of assimilation and the assimilationist project as hollow and foolish, incapable of creating real change and sucking in attention and resources like a black hole. This assimilation is a further enforcement of normativity, seeking not to abolish boxes but to give some boxes access to new forms of oppression. This is why a trans ideology must oppose assimilation.
We arrive then at our trans ideology as revolutionary and abolitionary, an analysis of society springing from refusal to cooperate with the normative forms placed on us, an ideology to politicize trans non-normativity in an anti-assimilationist and productive fashion, if we can embrace it.
