April 15, 2021

Blogging, TikTok, and the cis/trans binary

I still don’t think I quite have the hang of blog posts, especially when it comes to topics I usually write extensive, formal essays about. Not to mention the fact that these topics also hold immense personal meaning and affect my day-to-day life. When you’re trans, you’re expected to be an expert on all-things-transgender, and subsequently educate everyone around you. Sure, I happen to be interested in researching transness, but not every trans person is.

And just because I’ve researched it extensively, doesn’t mean I don’t get things a little wonky sometimes, or that my opinion is infallible. There are parts of my MA thesis that, less than a year later, I would write differently. That’s the point, though, right? I acknowledged that at the time. I wrote it as part of the process of growth and development of my research. And it has! It’s grown and developed already. Which is why you have found me here.

Anyway, all of that is just to say I want to start giving blogging a shot again!! What better way is there to train myself to write more informally (and so, hopefully, more accessibly!) than by spilling my unpolished thoughts about TikToks I found that have consumed my every waking moment for days?

Take this one, for example:

(Please note that Billie uses ey/em pronouns)

It took a little while for my brain to digest fully what it was Billie was saying. Generally when I hear someone talk about transness as something new, they’re implying it’s a trend or a fad, and trying to invalidate trans people with their ‘superior’ Western ‘intellect’/’infallible’ scientific ‘facts’. But transness as we know and understand it is new. It was only in the early 20th century that the term ‘transvestite’ was developed by Hirschfeld, which was the “first time in European sexological thought” that gendered behaviour was conceptualised as separate from sexuality (Hines, 27). From the work of sexologists like Harry Benjamin, Robert Stoller, John Money, and Anke Ehrhardt emerged the “divergent terms ‘transvestism’ and ‘transsexualism’ (28). It’s only incredibly recently that, in the ‘West, “an understanding emerged of the possibility that the sexed body may be distinct from how a person presented, or felt, their gender” (28).

I had seen in some online spaces the mentioning of genders outside or beyond the cis/trans binary, which had confused me at first. It makes sense, though, of course, especially when you consider transness as a reaction to the man/woman gender binary. There are sociocultural genders that don’t exist within the sex/gender or cis/trans binary. Hines talks about the research of Kai Pyle on Two Spirit people, or Poiva Junior Ashleigh Feu’u on Fa’afafine cultures, for example (27). Transgender discourse has largely been Western-centric, and so limited and warped.

It’s crucial that I make it clear that none of this invalidates transness, trans people, or any trans person’s experience. It is merely to say that the cis/trans binary is another Western, colonial (and implicitly white) construction. Someone may not be male/female or man/woman, and also not cis/trans. Often, people not literate on trans issues presume that ‘trans’ is synonymous with ‘transition’ (implicitly medical), when really that isn’t the case. It’s more about transcendence of a binary, and transgressing an oppressive gender system. Pronouns, gender expression, whether or not you medically transition and in what ways, etc, do not make one trans or determine your gender – it’s something far deeper than that. Gender abolitionists (which, I guess, includes me!) look to a future where neither the man/woman nor the cis/trans binary exists. Ultimate transcendence!

[Edit 20/02/21: Upon further reading, ‘decolonising/indigenising’ gender is a more apt term for my approach, rather than ‘abolishing’ gender. ‘Abolishing’ gender implies the erasure of the sociocultural genders that I had just been excitedly writing about, and still prioritises a Western understanding of gender binaries. Apologies for the confusion!]

This video vocalised thoughts I had been having all throughout the process of writing my MA dissertation. (If you’re new here, I’m a scholar of Old English and Old Norse literature. You can read my dissertation here!) It never felt right to call Loki or O∂inn trans, and Billie’s videos showed me why. I would still argue that neither of them are men/male, but neither are they trans. They are both outside of the man/woman binary, but they are also outside of the cis/trans binary. This is another reason why ‘third gender’ rhetoric is unhelpful and inaccurate when talking about figures in Old Norse mythology such as Loki, O∂inn, or even the valkyries. It assumes the man/woman gender binary is universal across time and space, which has been proven to be untrue (Hines, 26).

Can it be argued that Loki and O∂inn have sociocultural genders that we have since lost the terminology for? Do Loki, O∂inn, and the valkyries share the ‘same’ gender, or are they three distinct genders? Do O∂inn and Loki share a gender, indicated by their sei∂r practice? How much did Christianity influence the perceptions of gender of the people transcribing the texts?

Lots of exciting questions, not a whole lot of answers…yet. But hey, that’s what the blog is for. I’m excited to see what comes next, and I’m excited about listening to and learning from other trans people. It can be draining to dip your toe into the world of discourse, especially when it’s your own existence and humanity being debated – but that’s why I was so thrilled to come across Billie’s TikTok. Eir passion and enthusiasm sparked my own, and now this blog post exists! I highly recommend checking out eir other posts (linked below).

And hey, if you like the work of any trans creators, please feel free to leave some recommendations in the comments!

Useful links & sources!

Click here to learn how to use neopronouns like Billie’s!

Make sure you follow Billie on TikTok, and find eir Instagram here!

Hines, Sally. “Sex wars and (trans)gender panics: Identity and body politics in contemporary UK feminism.” TERF Wars: Feminism and the fight for transgender futures. The Sociological Review Monographs Series, Sage, 2020, (pp. 25-43).