‘When you are someone that falls outside of categories in so many ways, a lot …
Painfully relatable and distant in equal meaure
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Travis considers their nonbinary experience through the lens of various phrases which have stuck in their memory.
This was a difficult one for me, fam. Travis's experience is like mine and nothing like mine. They have suffered so much more of the UK's transphobia while I hid until I was in San Francisco. Most of the phrases in this book aren't ones that have been said to me, but I still hear them loud & clear — even if I have plenty of space to retreat from them.
The thing that hit me hardest was the concept of trans & queer identity only needing to be what it is because society imposes narrow restrictions. If society didn't attempt to control & constrain us in these ways, we wouldn't need to define our identities how we do. What would queerness be like in a society which did not impose a value judgement about the relative genders in relationships? What would queerness be like in a society which already centered gender on experience and choice? What would it mean to be nonbinary in a society which didn't hinge on binary gender and use that to empower and punish.
There’s something about identities which exist in great part in opposition to oppression.
One of my favorite speculative fiction collections is Luminous by Greg Egan. It includes the story Cocoon which (spoilers for a book published last millennium) concerns a gestational medical technology which has the side effect that the child would be cishet. The point-of-view character discusses it obliquely with his left-handed husband: how would the husband feel if there were never any more left-handed people. The husband says it wouldn't mean anything to him one way or the other.
Left-handedness is disfavored in our society. You need to work harder not to smudge your RTL handwriting and it's more work to use scissors and can openers. But it's not an identity. The disadvantage of left-handedness is so mild that it fades into the background of life's ups and downs.
There's a world in which the things we …
There’s something about identities which exist in great part in opposition to oppression.
One of my favorite speculative fiction collections is Luminous by Greg Egan. It includes the story Cocoon which (spoilers for a book published last millennium) concerns a gestational medical technology which has the side effect that the child would be cishet. The point-of-view character discusses it obliquely with his left-handed husband: how would the husband feel if there were never any more left-handed people. The husband says it wouldn't mean anything to him one way or the other.
Left-handedness is disfavored in our society. You need to work harder not to smudge your RTL handwriting and it's more work to use scissors and can openers. But it's not an identity. The disadvantage of left-handedness is so mild that it fades into the background of life's ups and downs.
There's a world in which the things we bucket as queer are more like being left-handed. Sure, if you're trans, you might have to see doctors more often than most people, much like diabetics. (Let's imagine that healthcare is also not a nightmare.) Being homosexual is a statistical inconvenience: more of the people who share are gender with you are attracted to other genders than to yours.
There's no world in which being Jewish is like being left-handed. Judaism exists as an identity regardless of how long it's been since the last attempted genocide. Judaism has a culture which heavily values ensuring that there are more Jewish people in future. I might not pursue my Judaism In the same ways if the Nazis hadn't tried to exterminate my grandfather's entire generation. But I'd still be Jewish.
Is queerness more like Judaism or left-handedness? Of course, I’m tempted to say that queer people would still gravitate towards each other in the absence of oppression. Gay bars exist for statistical reasons around dating as well as for culture and safety. Being trans is associated with various other neurospices, so maybe we’d still find each other? Maybe we'd have more community than diabetics, but would we have as much community as people who have chronic pain? I can't imagine having the level of solidarity we have in this world.
And for some reason that makes me sad and wistful? Of course I want an end to queer marginalizaion and oppression. But does achieving that goal inherently put our culture & community in jeopardy?
I feel as though I should have something insightful to say as a conclusion. I don't. I don't know what this means for us and for society. This is not something I enjoy thinking about. But I think it's something to account for as we work to imagine better worlds.
