katrina-linden:

jenroses:

kwrpwr:

queeranarchism:

Trans history: whatever happened to the other T?

I don’t know how universally relevant this is (I guess no part of queer history ever is) but I wonder how many trans people know the history of T&T groups.

Like, in the 90′s and 00′s in the Netherlands almost every trans related groups was a T&T ‘Transsexual and Transvestites’ group and that seemed to also be a quite common thing in other north-west European countries for as far as I can see. Maybe beyond Europe too? I’m not sure.

People who called themselves transsexual and transvestites at the time felt that they had many experiences in common that made organising together valuable and many agreed that there was a large grey area of overlapping identities. With very little information available, a lot of trans women identified as transvestites first, before identifying at trans women (in that period often using the term Male-to-Female transsexual and transwoman without the space between the words).

Then, in about 2007-2012, things changed. Transgender became more popular than transsexual and crossdresser largely replaced transvestite. In those early days, the term transgender was often understood to include crossdressers. The transgender umbrella is from that time:

Back then, the word transgender was seen by many as the umbrella term that would unite all the struggles against gender roles. But that grouping together was far from uncontroversial and a lot of heated debates took place over how broad or narrow the transgender umbrella term should be. Some feared too wide an umbrella would take attention away from transsexuals, others feared it would be confusing, some groups that had previously only had transwomen and transvestites did not appreciate the new presence of transmen and transmasculine people in their transgender community, some felt that it was very important to distinguish binary-identified transsexuals from all sorts of weird non-binary identities.

Those who took part in the debates probably remember the specific standpoints in more detail. For me, I just remember how in 2008-2012 all the T&T groups started changing their names to ‘transgender groups’ and then slowly but surely focussing more on only those transgender people that wanted some kind of transition, physical or social. Eventually, transvestites (or crossdressers, as the common term was by then) disappeared entirely from the transgender groups and a lot of transgender people forgot about the earlier wider meaning of transgender as an umbrella term.

Within that same period, there started to be a LOT of new and fairly positive media attention for transgender issues, specifically transition related atttention. The media was no participant at all in the ‘what does transgender mean’ question but the questions they did ask were ‘are you on hormones yet?’ and ‘did you have the surgery’? Since that was a lot better than ‘so are you mentally ill because you want to be a woman?’ a lot of people who fitted the hormones + surgery narrative eagerly accepted this ‘positive visibility’ and did not question the narrow focus. This further cemented the view that transgender meant transition.

And the transgender activists? Well, let’s just say many of them, knee deep in a struggle against terrible health care and cruel human rights violations, leaped at the opportunity to seize the momentum and finally make some changes and many didn’t really give much thought to the slow disappearance of transvestites from the newly named ‘transgender’ community.

So where are we now, in 2018?

The transgender community seems to have largely forgotten about their T&T history. The terms transvestite and crossdresser both seem to be in decline, as are the communities that meet around those identities. Younger people who don’t fit the gender binary but also do not desire social or physical transition, are now more likely to identify themselves as some kind of genderqueer and nonbinary or just ‘not into labels’ or just to wear whatever they want and rock it. Some of them find their way back under the transgender umbrella after all. Which I guess is some kind of a happy ending.

But then theres the question of recognizing our legacy. I don’t think a lot of these young people realise that, had they been born 20 years earlier, many of them would probably have found a home in the transvestite community. I don’t think a lot of young transgender people recognize older transvestites as their elders, who paved the way for them. I often get the impression that they view the dwindling groups of 50+, 60+, 70+ transvestites with an element of disdain, as people who held on to a regressive binary identity, instead of as like – their badass grandfather-mothers who build parts of trans history.

I encourage everyone to think of the above next time you see someone shitting on crossdressers. We’re stronger together than we are divided.

 on the one hand this sounds super duper familiar in the whole “umbrella” discussion.

On the other hand, I know that in a lot of ways the words fell out of use because they are so firmly rooted in the idea of an enforced gender binary. My kid wears skirts sometimes and calls himself a nonbinary boy, and the message he gives other kids who say “you’re wearing girl stuff” is that “No, I’m wearing my stuff.” 

Transvestite and crossdressing imply this violation of norms that we’re working really, really hard to break into tiny pieces. The bias in the words is rooted as much in sexism as anything. Anyway. It’s one of those things where I think shifting away from the words has been a conscious and deliberate attempt to shift away from the stigma around those words while normalizing the idea that it’s okay for people to wear what is comfortable for them and makes them happy without so much focus on what is expected.

That said, I know that there are plenty of people who still firmly identify in those camps and I think that supporting the reclaiming of those words is not an inherently bad idea. 

And viewing anyone with disdain is a really fucking great way of being an asshole. It’s possible to be respectful even when the landscape changes profoundly, as it has, not just in the last 50 years, but in the last 5. Anyone young coming into this… I don’t think you can fully comprehend just how MUCH things have changed, how quickly. 

Honestly our society is changing faster right now than I’ve ever seen it, in broad swaths of sea change unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in my lifetime. I suspect in my parents’ lifetime, and they were 18 in 1968 and marched on Washington then and it was a VERY fast change in the 60s and 70s. We’re moving faster than that, now. 

Cultures rooted in defiance of societal rules will fade from existence as those rules do. That being said, we still need to remember and acknowledge our history

This seems like a warped conclusion, since the T&T breach took place as transgender identities received more visibility and mainstream acceptance while absolutely nothing got better for transvestites in that same period.

In the last decade violation of gender norms has become more accepted in very specific ways, tied to either youthful experimentation, artistic performance or the idea of a fundamental born-this-way gender identity that needs to be expressed.

If you’re not a teenager, not a dragqueen on stage and don’t fundamentally reject the identity of ‘cisgender man’, your ability to find acceptance for your violation of gender norms is pretty fucking bleak. If anything, societal ideas of what a cisgender man is like have become more rigid in the last decade as a result of the conservative backlash.

So the next generation is less likely to call themselves ‘transvestite’ and more likely to focus on genderidentity not because one is inherently better or more progressive than the other, but because one is receiving more accepted space and positive representation than the other.