Processes of Oppression

One of my favorite parts of my job are the opportunities I have to teach and train. One of the first aspects of therapy I teach people I supervise is the difference between content and process. Content is the overt subject of the conversation. For example, a patient/client might complain that they are always doing things for their partner and their partner never seems to reciprocate the kindness. Paying attention to the content only, I might provide some validation and sympathy. “That sounds so hard, you must resent them.” This is great if you are someone’s friend but it is not entirely therapeutic. A good therapist attends to the what is going on in the background. What are the needs being met by this behavior? What patterns are being repeated? For example, a good therapist might ask questions to see if there is some co-dependance in the relationship. One might explore what unspoken expectations this individual has and perhaps work with them on assertiveness. Perhaps they do not feel they are worthy of the love they want and are subconsciously sabotaging their partners attempts at loving them. A good therapist asks about and explores these kinds of issues. This is the difference between a “friend for hire” and a therapist who actually assist individuals to make meaningful behavioral changes.

There are so many problems in the current discourse around trans people. One of the primary problems is that this discourse is caught up on ancillary, content, issues and ends up talking around the most important process issues. As a result, people often end up talking past each other. People come to this debate with different assumptions and then talk in obtuse ways around the real issues. I suspect that many people are not consciously aware of what the real issues or what their assumptions are.

One of the primary issues at heart in this debate is authority. Right wing radio host Charlie Kirk may have accidently struck this issue when he said the “Transgender thing happening in America is a throbbing middle finger to God.” He went on to state the being trans was “against our senses” and “against the law of nature.”  This is generally how most anti-trans arguments end up: “That just isn’t how we do things around these parts.” From an uniformed myopic stand point, common sense does tell us that people do not choose their gender. Zoom out and take things from an historical/anthropological point of view, and you realize that many cultures have more then two genders and that the gender binary is deeply tied to white supremacy and colonialism (This is an entire topic unto itself if you want to learn more https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/5/3/67 , this article is a good place to start). When a trans person violates gender norms they are defying the authority of the status quo. This is in fact one most powerful parts of being trans. To defy traditional gender norms is to claim ones’ authority for oneself. This is the heart of most “common sense” arguments. In fact, it is the central issue behind all the debates about the validity of trans identities. One side is essentially saying – “you do not have the authority to alter the gender assigned to you by ‘God’ or ‘Culture.’” The other side is saying “it is MY gender and I’ll do whatever I want with it. Who is ‘God’, or ‘Culture’ to dictate my identity?”  The real interesting discussion to be had is who has the authority to assign gender and why. Rather then engaging in this discourse, each side just assumes the “proper authority” and moves forward. One side looks to tradition and scripture, the other to academic and scientific studies. This will sound familiar to those of you who have read my “false-hoods” series. Our inability to agree on which authority to trust leaves us stymied in an intellectual quagmire.  We are essentially playing the same game but with two different rule books, which ultimately ends up looking like one team playing “American football” and the other team playing what the rest of the world calls “football.” Both teams are shouting at each other “what is wrong with you we are playing real football and that makes us right!”

The issue of authority may seem academic but it has very material very sinister real-world implications. Well intentioned people begin to believe that trans people are threating their god’s authority. They also assume that they have the authority and duty to act for God and legislate God’s will. Acting in God’s name removes culpability and the need to respect people’s autonomy. Suddenly, you aren’t violating peoples’ God given bodily autonomy, you are simple protecting your way of life, and safeguarding your children from the evil trans agenda. And “those trannies” aren’t people-they are sinners and servants of Satan out to corrupt your children and destroy Christianity as we know it. Interestingly enough, the anti-trans side seems to never mention bodily autonomy despite the fact that it is one of the central issues at stake. Strangers are legislating what I do with my body and the bodies of my own children. They are dictating medicine to doctors. The worst part of this is that they not only feel like it is their right to do so but their God-given duty. For them, changing one’s gender threatens a critical pillar of society and is a usurpation of someone else’s (usually God’s) authority. They perceive this as an existential threat to their “way of life” and “values.”

Another key aspect of this discussion is choice. The queer community firmly believes that by and large we are born with our gender and sexuality without making a choice. The so called “Gay agenda” or less used “gender agenda” is honestly safety. Queer people seek to find appropriate representation in the media and to create safe spaces for our community, particularly for youth who have been expelled or shunned by their communities. Those who oppose our “life style choices” tend to believe we are choosing to live the way we do. This choice for them is a sin that violates God’s laws. Conversion therapy is based on the idea that one can change their gender or sexuality. Throughout the years the rhetoric has changed into what many proudly believe is a nuanced point of view. Best summed up as “you may not have chosen to struggle with same sex attraction but you get to choose what you do with those feelings.” This mindset still rests on choice and it prefers/demands that people born with divergent gender or sexuality repress these feelings and live a life that contradicts them. For gay folks, this means a life of celibacy and loneliness. For trans people it means living your life without attempting to transition to the opposite gender, living a lonely heart-breaking lie.

 It is only from this perspective of choice that the current dialog around “protecting children” makes sense. Back when I thought I would become a conversion therapist I was of the opinion that I should never work with a gay individual on something like depression because alleviating their depression might remove a “thorn in the side” that may spur them to make a better choice. Similarly, well-meaning parents want to eliminate anything that normalizes queer behavior and identities because they do not want their children to feel like being queer is an appropriate choice. Folks assume that seeing queer people or reading about queer people may somehow turn their children queer. This fear of “catching the ick” has led to a concerted and organized effort to remove queers from the public eye. This takes the shape of banning books, protesting movies and TV shows, and attempting to criminalize drag.

 Opponents of trans rights will often cry that their way of life is being threatened and disappearing.  This is objectively not the case. No one is outlawing or banning the bible or other Christian scriptures and books. No one is impeding their ability to gather and worship and raise their children according to their conscious/values. What is being taken away or challenged is their ability to have their values mirrored back to them in public spaces. Cis-het white able-bodied Christian has been the societal default for the majority of our natation’s history. Now “the Gays” and “the Blacks” are demanding a seat at the table. These minorities have the audacity to assert that they have a right to exist, unmolested, in public spaces, right alongside (“the superior” but we don’t say that part out loud) white cis-het Christian people. This is very threatening to the people who have enjoyed their default status. I actually agree with them that their way of life is indeed being threatened, just not in the way they assert. What is really at stake here is a set of privileges that have been reserved for a handful of people and denied to wide swaths of the human population. People feel threatened because extending privilege to other (lesser) people makes them (the majority) less important/special/privileged.

Ultimately, what we are talking about here is the American class/caste system. Every now and then you read a book that forces a paradigm shift, completely altering your world view. The latest book like this for me was Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste: the origins of our discontents.” In this book, she compares America’s racial relations with the caste system in India and the rigid caste system established by Nazi Germany. The idea came to her on a trip to India when individuals of the Dalit caste (previously known as the untouchables) pointed out to her that as a black woman she was the equivalent of a Dalit in American society.  Ms. Wilkerson’s book focuses on systemic racism; although she does make it clear that gender and sexuality are additional facets of the American caste system. If you are keeping track this makes trans women of color the lowest caste. Many statistics, including the number of hate crimes committed against a group, bare this out.

Taken from this point of view, caste privilege is one of the key processes. When trans people assert their right to openly exist in society, they are demanding class privileges that have not historically belonged to queers, let alone the most overtly aberrant subset of queers. Doing so threatens the privilege of the cis-het white Christian majority and forces them to live side by side with untouchables. If you feel that I am being dramatic please find your nearest queer or BIOPIC friend and discuss the way they are treated by the society we all live in. 

Caste systems are frequently enforced through violence and in the extreme genocide. Genocides against the Tutsi in Rwanda and the Sikh people in Punjab India are the ones that most readily come to my mind. The processes of authority, choice and caste have combined to create conditions here in America that meet the United Nations’ definition of genocide. That is to say there is a concerted and organized effort to eliminate trans people from American public life and force the remaining vestiges back into the closet and/or dark corners of society. Article II of the UN convention on genocide defines genocide as follows:

 

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” (Here is a nifty fact sheet about it https://www.un.org/fr/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf)

Any one of these actions constitutes genocide. Many have argued that every aspect of this definition is happening at the moment. Let’s take a look. The Human rights campaign has been tracking violent deaths of trans people for the past 11 years. They refer to an “Epidemic of violence against the transgender and gender nonconforming communities in America.” This link https://reports.hrc.org/an-epidemic-of-violence-2023#epidemic-numbers will take you to their report. The dangers of intersectionality in the American caste system can clearly be seen when one considers that the majority of these deaths are trans women of color. We have an annual trans day of remembrance for a reason people are targeting trans people because they are trans and then killing them.

As far as serious mental and physical harm goes, consider bans on affirming care. There is so much science connecting gender transition to improved mental health that it is not really considered questionable at this point. I will provide this recent study by Stanford that shows that individuals allowed to transition as teens experience better mental health. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html Denying early intervention and care for transgender people actively creates severe mental harm in that population. It also creates irreversible physical changes in someone’s body that they will spend the rest of their life and thousands of dollars working to reveres. We the trans community consider this serious physical harm. Ironically, many of those who oppose gender affirming care for youth do so because they fear that preventing the genetically encoded puberty will cause permanent and irreversible changes children may regret. It is frustrating how close they are to understanding the issue. Growing through the wrong puberty will create irreversible permeant changes to someone’s body. These folks seem to miss the fact that for trans individuals the wrong puberty is the one that occurs without medical intervention. Ignorant citizens may push for whatever laws they want; however, the purpose of a representative democracy like America is that our elected officials are supposedly better informed and capable of making educated choices. Every transgender care ban is enacted after expert medical testimony describes the detrimental mental and physical effects of delayed treatment. These laws are being enacted by people who know that it will harm people, trans people. The Human Rights Campaign reports that 25 states have gender affirming care bans in place. https://www.hrc.org/resources/attacks-on-gender-affirming-care-by-state-map. This is nothing less than a conscious and inattentional full-frontal assault on the bodies and minds of the trans community.

As far as deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Let us consider the high prevalence of suicide in the trans community. According to the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, 42% of trans people surveyed had a history of at least one attempted suicide. There are laws that tell us where to pee, what sports we can and can’t play, what medical care we can receive, and where the books that tell our stories can be located. Many of these laws force us into unsafe situations. The case of Nex Benedict is a perfect example. Nex, a non-binary teen in Oklahoma, was forced to use the women’s room. Inside the women’s room they were severely assaulted by female classmates who repeatedly banged Nex’s head against the hard tile floor. Nex was expelled for fighting. Despite the fact this was a 3 against 1 altercation. Sadly, Nex completed suicide the next day. https://apnews.com/article/nex-benedict-owasso-suicide-nonbinary-charges-0667b5a694c2773d6ea76face0a22ef1. I personally know people who have been physically assaulted, had milk shakes thrown at them, and been subject to threats and slurs. All for being in the bathroom that aligns with their gender assigned at birth. Another illustrative news story is the case of Natalie Cline, a Utah school bord member who made a social media post questioning the gender of a cis-female high school student athlete’s gender, accusing her of being trans. Later on, the young woman in question was placed under police protection https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/us/natalie-cline-controversy-student-gender-social-media-posts/index.html. Take a moment to think about that and let it sink in. Authorities believed that a cis person needed police protection to prevent the harassment and danger that we trans people face every day we leave our home. Nex was not protected when national pundits specifically targeted their school district with their rhetoric.  It’s not that they don’t know that their laws place us in danger, it’s that the laws are working as designed. These people want to fight the normalization of trans identities. Put another way, they do not want trans people to openly exist in public. These laws are intended to send a message— “you are not welcome here-go back into hiding”. They are intended to place us in danger and make us think twice about being publicly visible. They are intended to create conditions under which trans people will kill themselves, be killed by others or simply disappear. Put shortly, they are intended to cause the destruction of any visible trans people one way or another. At the very least they prioritize the comfort and safety of cis-het people over lower cast trans folks.   

 Preventing births is difficult to discuss because there is no way of knowing which child is born trans. From a certain perspective we can view care bans and other trans limiting laws as intended to stop children from choosing to express a trans identity. People don’t even bother to hide this intent; they make it perfectly clear that they do not want their child to be trans. When one prevents children from transition one prevents the “birth” of a new transgender person. In some cases, laws have gone so far as to forcibly remove transgender children from affirming homes and place them with another group. Laws such as Texas governor Greg Abbott’s orders that parents who allow children to receive affirming care are to be investigated for child abuse https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/28/texas-transgender-child-abuse/ and a similar law passed in Florida allowing trans children to be taken away from affirming parents  https://newrepublic.com/post/172444/florida-passes-bill-allowing-trans-kids-taken-families. Florida’s law also allows removal of children from parents who are trans. Where I to take my family to Disney World the Florida government could legally remove my children from my custody and place them in the foster system. People have told me “but that’s just Texas and Florida.” Cis people seem to look at these things and think – “boy those crazy Texans.” Trans people see these headlines and think “when will these laws come to my state? Am I next?”

Examining all of this together, it becomes apparent that there is a concerted and organized effort in America to eliminate the trans community from public life. Often times when I bring up genocide with cis folks I am told to “get a grip” and “stop playing the victim.” Cis folks appear to oblivious or willfully ignorant to the actual impact of the current culture war. I was recently speaking to a family member about the upcoming presidential election. I had mentioned that I did not have the luxury of a protest vote or a third-party vote. I had to vote for the candidate least likely to take away my rights. The response of my family member, who loves me and claims to support me, was “what rights are they going to take from you? The right to pee in public?”  This is not an uncommon reaction from my cis-het white friends/relations. My BIOPIC friends typically understand and react with a knowing smile that seems to say “welcome to the party we’ve been here since before 1776.”

When I mention genocide in a room of trans folks, I get knowing nods and other signs of acknowledgment. I also run the risk of starting a long conversation or panicking some of the people present. Whether or not you are convinced by my argument, the fear of genocide is and has been a longstanding part of the trans psyche in America. Whether or not you think it is happening to your trans loved ones, they experience it as happening to them and their friends in very personal ways. Understanding that trans people believe and feel every political vote is a referendum on their right to exist is critical genuinely understanding the trans community. Some of the trans people I know lovingly and patiently try to help their families see and understand why they are scared. Other trans folks I know make respect for their identity a pre-requisite for relationships. These folks often have no contact with their families. Family members often miss that trans people are fighting for their lives and the lives of their community. Rather, they see them as bitter, angry, “woke”, social justice warriors who can’t help but “play the victim”. Rest assured, if your trans friend or family member allows you to see their anger, chooses to continues talking to you about their oppression, it is an invitation into their world not a personal attack on you. Your loved one is tying to help you understand the basics experiences of their life and calling out to you for help in what feels to them like a losing battle.   

 

Much Love

--MJ