Brazil holds the world’s highest LGBTQI murder rate. Here, a LGBTQI person is brutally murdered or commits suicide every 19 hours. Every. 19. hours.

Among such crushing hostility, it would appear there should be little room for LGBTQI artists to exist at all. The reality, however, is quite the opposite: the queer music scene of Brazil is exploding.

The current aural landscape is comprised of incredibly diverse performers whose work ranges from rap, rock and R&B to soul, indie music, Brazilian funk and even K-pop.

Together, artists like Gloria Groove, Linn da Quebrada, and Pabllo Vittar have founded a brand new paradigm in Brazil’s music scene. The moment they dared to go up on the stage, a revolution began. And there’s no turning back.

“You Either Resist Or Die”

Refusing the second option, five rappers from the edges of São Paulo decided to found Quebrada Queer; they self-describe as the first LGBTQI cypher in Latin America.

Cyphers — singing as a group — have become very popular in Brazil’s music scene. For Quebrada Queer members, rapping as a cypher is their weapon against invisibility and prejudice.

“Once we gathered, we became the first openly gay rap group in Latin America,” says Guigo, a member of Quebrada Queer. “We are queer, black, peripheral artists, singing one of the most homophobic music genres of all. And that means resistance and representation.” 

Only a month ago, Quebrada Queer (‘quebrada’ is São Paulo slang for ‘periphery’) launched its very first single, “Pra Quem Duvidou” (which means, “For those who doubted”). Turning the traditional rap aesthetics upside down, the music video has already amassed over half a million views on YouTube.

“It’s fucking cowardice/To say it’s opinion, when it’s homophobia!/ (cut this shit) They threaten to kill my fellows/ When did it all get lost?/Can you see how contradictory it is to kill in the name of God?” demand the lyrics of “Pra Quem Duvidou”.

Guigo believes it’s time to kick in the doors that have always been closed; being celebrated in these traditionally excluding systems, however, is a whole different story. But Quebrada Queer is ready to fight: “We want to make sure that future queer artists will be welcomed with a red carpet,” says Guigo.

“Half Drag, Half Rapper”

This is how Gloria Groove defines herself. And it is this exact same duality that deftly puts Gloria — a 23-year old queer singer — beyond any stereotype: “When I sing, I can be girl and a boy. This makes my music unique.”

Groove is exemplary in her versatility, signing a whole range of genres from Soul to Trap, to R&B and Brazilian funk music. In her latest R&B single, “Apaga a Luz” (“Turn off the light”), Groove explores her vocal duality, singing both as a “male rapper” and a “female queer”.

Launched in 2016, Groove’s very first hit, “Dona” (“Owner”), is a sarcastic criticism to how queer people are portrayed in society: “Oh My Lord / What animal is that? / Nice to meet you, my name is art, darling”.

Groove is considered one of the most influential queer musicians in Brazil: her hottest hits, such as the Brazilian funk track “Bumbum de Ouro” (Golden butt) and the Reggaeton-like song “Muleke Brasileiro” (Brazilian dude), are present on every dance floor across Brazil — not just within the LGBTQI community.

But behind all the humor and glamour involving Groove’s music, her lyrics are an effort to shed light on the oppressive and dangerous reality of being queer in Brazil. “My music hopes to signify the existence of thousands of LGBTIQ people—our music becomes a platform of love and self-acceptance.”

Gender Terrorist

Linn da Quebrada is another performer who is busy proving rap can be queer as hell.  Once a Jehovah’s Witness, the singer believes she has broken free from an “overdisciplined, self-repressed body,” to finally belong to herself.

The 28-year-old artist — who helped to found an NGO for trans people in São Paulo — calls her last album, “Pajubá” (2017), the “transgender Lemonade”. Highly politicized, the afro/Brazilian funk/vogue album “Pajubá” sounds as rough as the battlefield they find themselves warring on.

“Transvestite faggot/ of a single breast/ the hair dragging on the floor/ And on the hand, bleeding, a heart,” says “Bixa Travesty” (Transvestite Faggot), one of the most lacerating songs from the album, depicting the everyday violence against trans people in Brazil.

Calling herself a “Gender Terrorist,” Linn da Quebrada believes this boom of queer musicians in Brazil can work as a fundamental game changer: “Haven’t we been harmless for too long? Maybe it is time for us to scare those who are afraid of losing their position of power.”

Trans Pop Star Changing The Course Of History

Coming from one of the poorest states from Brazil (Maranhão, in the Northeastern region), Pabllo Vittar has taken LGBTQI representation to a whole new level. This month, Vittar became the first Brazilian artist to put land all the songs from one album — “Não Para Não” (Don’t Stop), Vittar’s second and latest album — on Spotify’s Top 40.

Having debuted in the music market with a well-humored parody of Major Lazer’s “Lean On,” Vittar’s career skyrocketed in late 2017, when she recorded with Brazilian singer Anitta and Major Lazer himself.

A constant victim of fake news (rumors ranged from Vittar being the new owner of Apple to the artist being canonized by the Vatican!), Vittar says the album aims to soften the dark days in Brazil.

A couple of weeks ago, Vittar broke professional relations due to political reasons. She was the sponsor of a shoe brand whose owner publicly supports Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right newly-elected president known for controversial LGBTQI-phobic statements.

Hacking The Process With Art

Like Vittar, Rico Dalasam doesn’t hesitate to speak out against political regression now, when Brazil’s democracy is under serious attack. Along with Brazil’s most prestigious rappers, Dalasam, an openly gay and black artist, recently signed a petition against Bolsonaro, which alleges the presidential candidate represents a “mortal threat” against poor, marginalized people from Brazil.

Having recorded “Todo Dia” (Everyday) — one of the greatest hits from Carnival 2017 — with Pabllo Vittar, Rico Dalasam currently sings about being a black, gay, peripheral man in society.

For him, Brazilian queer music arises as an art of emergency, from the need to narrate a silenced story: “queer art is unbeatable, it is relentless in the pursuit of finding a way out, in hacking this oppressive process,” he says.

Queer Invasion Of The Indie Scene

Following quite a different path from pop star Pabllo Vittar is the “As Bahias e a Cozinha Mineira” band. More popular in the alternative music landscape, “As Bahias” stands out for their politically engaged rock and MPB (a generic term used to refer to Brazilian popular music) songs. The band is composed of three cis male instrumentalists and two transgender vocalists, Assucena Assucena and Raquel Virgínia.

Placing the trans issue at the core of their lyrics wasn’t exactly what Assucena and Virgínia had been looking for. However, the transgender vocalists couldn’t see any other option: “being silent about this issue would feel like denying something that is in eruption inside me,” says Virgínia.

Having started her career in music as a cis man, Liniker self-identifies now as a trans black woman and activist of the LGBTIQ rights. One of the most prestigious singers from the contemporary R&B and black music scene in Brazil, Liniker highlights the importance of taking sides. “This is the moment we have to resist through art. We can’t stay in the margins any longer.”

Find more amazing queer artists who are transforming the music culture of Brazil right the hell here:

Lia Clark

Aretuza Lovi 

Mulher Pepita

Johnny Hooker

Jaloo

Peggie Ames is, quite possibly, the most important transgender activist you have never heard of. Ames, who died in 2000, dealt with issues that remain relevant within contemporary feminist and LGBTQ social movements. She played a significant role in the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier (MSNF), Buffalo, New York’s first gay liberation organization, though her membership was viewed with suspicion by some members of the gay community. Ames identified as a lesbian and experienced rejection by portions of Buffalo’s lesbian feminist community who saw her womanhood as suspect. Most importantly, she created a blueprint for trans activism in rural communities and mid-sized cities.

Ames was assigned male at birth when she was born in 1921, in Buffalo, New York, and her journey to self-identification was similar to other trans women of her era. From childhood she sensed she was “different.” She dressed in her mother’s and sister’s clothes and borrowed their cosmetics when alone. She enrolled in college and joined a fraternity in an attempt to fit in with her male peers. She married and had a child before being drafted into the Air Force during World War II. Honorably discharged a year later, she completed dual degrees in Business and Psychology at the University of Buffalo, opened an insurance business, and had three more children. All this time, she dressed as Peggie in secret, fearing discovery by her family and friends.

In the Cold War era, gays and lesbians were persecuted within the federal government and American society, and trans issues were virtually unknown outside of medical circles where they were highly pathologized. Ames found a role model in Christine Jorgensen, the first trans celebrity who brought the concept of “sex change” to the forefront of American consciousness. Ames followed her story in the media and observed that, although the well-dressed and witty Jorgensen was celebrated by some, many saw her as little more than a freak. Therefore, she hid her true self in what historian David Serlin refers to as “the Cold War closet.” She did not even learn the word “transsexual” until 1973.

That year, on a day when she was home alone, she fell asleep on the living room sofa, and her wife returned to find Peggie, not the husband she thought she knew. Now that Peggie was “outed,” Ames decided to live full time as who she was. The couple initially discussed living together platonically as two women, but Ames’ wife, a deeply religious woman, could not reconcile the fact that Peggie identified as a lesbian. Her children took the news even harder, effectively cutting her out of their lives and denying her access to her eight grandchildren. Ames’ second-eldest son, Daryll, committed suicide after community members harassed him about Ames’ transition, and he left behind a note citing her as the reason he took his own life. It would be years before Ames’ eldest son and her daughter, Marsha, would make tentative contact.

Ames and her wife divorced in 1973, and she struggled financially for the remainder of her life. To support herself she opened a furniture refinishing and antique restoration business that she operated out of her barn, and taught adult education courses on woodworking. The rural community of Clarence Center treated her much as her family did. In a letter, written to a lover in 1974, she described the harassment she faced:

Boys ran by the house last night screaming, ‘Peggie, you fucking faggot.’ The police won’t come. Last year the state trooper laughed in my face. Everyone tells me the only solution is to sell. They just want to get rid of this pest, this insidious blemish on their lives and community, this freak, this fucking faggot, this queer who is infecting their lives like poison like cancer. It is becoming too much.

Yet, Ames pressed forward with her transition. After consulting with doctors at the Harry Benjamin Foundation in New York City, she underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1974, which at the time cost around $8,000. She saw the same doctors as tennis player Renée Richards, one of the first out trans athletes.

Ames understood the importance of advocacy to fight gender and sexual discrimination. In 1970 she joined the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier. MSNF incorporated as a non-profit organization in May of 1970 largely to address the targeting and closure of gay bars by the Buffalo Vice Squad. MSNF took the name of an earlier homophile organization, founded in Los Angeles in 1950, though in belief and practice they were more similar to the gay liberationist organizations, such as New York City’s Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), that emerged in the post-Stonewall period.

Ames was elected secretary of MSNF — a somewhat unusual position for a trans person to hold within a gay liberation organization at this time — in 1973 and 1974 and was praised for the efficiency and skill with which she performed her duties. Buffalo was, in the words of longtime gay rights activist Madeline Davis, “a Rust Belt city on the edge of the Midwest.” MSNF’s membership was comprised of both college-educated professionals and blue-collar workers. The group, as such, was less concerned with the politics of respectability present in other post-Stonewall gay rights organizations in large cities and could therefore make room for a white college-educated trans woman such as Ames to occupy a position of leadership. Gay liberation organizations in large cities, such as the GAA, whose membership was comprised primarily of white college-educated men, often espoused a militant politics of liberation but did not allow gender non-conforming people to represent the organization in the press, and were reluctant to fund their causes.

Ames also participated in MSNF’s peer counselor training program, organized panels on transsexualism for Buffalo’s annual Gay Pride Week, and joined MSNF’s Speakers Bureau. In a 1978 profile of Ames written for the Courier-Express, a Buffalo morning newspaper, she estimated that she had lectured to around 12,000 people on the topic of transsexualism, primarily medical, nursing, and Psychology students at the University of Buffalo and other area campuses. According to Carole Hayes, a feminist psychologist who, from 1977 to 1979, taught an adult education course at the State University of New York at Fredonia called “Changing Lifestyles,” Ames was a brilliant speaker and often began her lectures by throwing a bag of rocks on the table to get the audience’s attention. “I need you to listen and understand what I’m going to tell you,” she would say, “because I have rocks thrown at me just for being who I am.” Students often wrote in their course evaluations that Ames’ presentation was the most informative and impactful part of their semester. Contemporary trans people still navigate medical gatekeepers to access transition-related care, but educational efforts by activists such as Ames brought about vast changes in the attitudes of medical professionals towards the transgender community.

Ames’ advocacy also had national reach. She was an established contact person for the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) and later, when the EEF folded in 1977, the Janus Information Facility, based out of the University of Texas. Established in 1964 by the independently wealthy trans man Reed Erickson, the EEF became the leading organization to fund research into transsexualism and to provide information and support to trans people in need of guidance. Trans people, particularly those from the Western New York area, who called the EEF for support were often referred to Ames for peer counseling or transition-related guidance. She maintained an extensive “pen pal” network with other trans women and (cisgender) lesbians whom she met via her EEF contacts, as well as through a lesbian correspondence service called The League.

Educational efforts by activists such as Ames brought about vast changes in the attitudes of medical professionals towards the transgender community.
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By the late 1970s, Ames estimated she knew around 100 other transsexuals in the Western New York area, but she was one of few willing to be out in public. Though she faced great harassment for doing so, her physical presence helped to dispel common prejudices towards trans women. In her personal writings, she noted that while she admired Jorgensen and Richards, she had to forge her own path because, living in a rural community, her life was different from theirs in significant ways. Whereas Richards became a reluctant spokesperson after being outed by the press, Ames realized that staying quiet or closeted would do little to advance acceptance in her community.

Despite Ames’ activism, she was rejected by many members of Buffalo’s gay and lesbian community. Buffalo lesbian feminists, particularly the younger, more radical, lesbians associated with the University of Buffalo’s College of Women’s Studies, saw her as a threat to the local progress of women’s liberation. Ames was expelled from two Buffalo lesbian organizations. Gay Rights for Older Women (GROW) wrote her a letter stating they feared her presence would create an unsafe space that would compromise the organization as a whole. The women of GROW had trouble relating to Ames’ transsexual history and regarded her enthusiasm and outspokenness as evidence of her “maleness.” “Peggie just wanted to talk and talk about herself,” said Madeline Davis, “and many of the women saw that as an example of her ‘male energy.’”

Ames’ treatment reflected broader attitudes held by many lesbian feminists at the time. In 1973, Beth Elliott, a trans lesbian feminist folksinger, was forced to leave the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference (WCLFC), which she helped to organize. A radical feminist organization called The Gutter Dykes distributed leaflets proclaiming Elliott was really a man. Robin Morgan, the conference’s keynote speaker, amended her talk to address the ensuing controversy over Elliott’s participation, arguing that trans women reinforce patriarchal gender roles by taking on stereotypical signifiers of womanhood. Morgan further called Elliott “an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer — with the mentality of a rapist.” The anti-trans contingent of the WCLFC then insisted that a vote be taken as to whether Elliott could stay. When a majority of attendees voted to allow her to remain at the conference, the faction created such a fuss that Elliott gave a shortened musical performance and then left voluntarily.

Ames was also rejected by Buffalo lesbians due to her preference for a “high femme” 1950s style of dress at a time when feminists were challenging gender roles by eschewing traditionally feminine garb. Ames’ skirts, hot pants, makeup, and open-toed heels were construed as evidence that she did not fit into the feminist movement. But Ames, who transitioned at age fifty-three, was simply, finally, living as herself and exploring the woman she was not allowed to be during the first four decades of her life. Her age made her ever conscious of her desire to experience life to the fullest. Though some members of GROW perceived her femininity as antiquated and oppressive, her feminism may have been ahead of its time due to her stubborn insistence of trans women’s inclusion.

She noted that while she admired Jorgensen and Richards, she had to forge her own path because, living in a rural community, her life was different from theirs in significant ways.
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Gay men, too, regarded her as a curiosity, and many did not understand the relevance of trans issues to gay rights. Ron Brunette, a former member of MSNF, speculated that Ames was tolerated, in part, due to her friendship with Jim Haynes, a prominent and well-respected gay rights activist and founding member of MSNF, and his partner, Don Licht. “The atmosphere around her was mixed as people did not want to offend Jim Haynes,” Brunette said. “[Haynes’] friendship with Peggie created a shield that helped her. Was she accepted by most… No. Most accepted her because of Jim.” Ames also speculated that many gay men simply saw her as a drag queen, and while this false association produced a degree of tolerance, it ultimately erased her identity.

Ames was, however, able to form a relationship with Luella “Lu” Kye, a lesbian from Fredonia, New York, who she met at an MSNF meeting around 1974. The two began a romance that lasted for several years and they remained in touch until the late 1970s. “Everyone knew Lu was gay, but she didn’t care what anyone thought,” said Carole Hayes, a friend of Kye’s who invited Ames to lecture in her course upon Kye’s recommendation. Hayes further indicated that as a butch woman living in a rural community, Kye may have been more sympathetic to the ostracism Ames faced. Her acceptance of Ames also illustrates that some working-class lesbians living in areas without a “gay scene,” and who were not conversant in mainstream feminist thought, accepted trans women within their circles. Ames, in fact, listed Kye as a resource for local transexuals on a guide she prepared for MSNF’s Health Committee in 1976.

Despite the mistreatment Ames faced by both straight society and Buffalo’s gay and lesbian community, she was privileged in ways not shared by many of her contemporaries. She was white, college educated, and middle class for the first half of her life. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, economically disadvantaged gender non-conforming people, were routinely targeted by law enforcement and marginalized within organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and the GAA. The multiple forms of “otherness” they embodied made them disrespectable in the eyes of the state and of white gay activists in a way Ames was not.

Ames’ work still resonates today. When MSNF disbanded in 1984, other organizations, such as Evergreen Health Services (formerly AIDS Community Services) and Gay and Lesbian Youth Services of Western New York (GLYS), more explicitly addresses trans concerns, and continue to do so to this day. Though Ames mostly withdrew from public advocacy after the early 1980s, she continued to educate and provide support via her correspondence, which allowed her to remain engaged while minimizing discrimination. The “pen pal” networks Ames, and other trans activists, created in the 1970s and ‘80s laid the foundation for the national and international communities trans people formed with the popularization of the internet in the 1990s, which contributed to a new wave of transgender activism. Ames’ belief that trans women should be included within feminist organizations and activism also anticipated the development of a unique trans-feminist perspective articulated by writers and activists such as Emi Koyama and Julia Serano in the late ‘90s and early aughts.

The ‘90s also saw the creation of the first transgender organizations in Western New York such as the Buffalo Belles and the Spectrum Transgender Group. In 2001, Camille S. Hopkins, the first out trans employee to work for the City of Buffalo, joined the organizing committee of Buffalo’s inaugural Dyke March, and was invited to speak at the end of the march. When Hopkins learned Ames’ story while being interviewed for an independent documentary film about the creation of the Dr. Madeline Davis LGBTQ Archive of Western New York, it provided her with a source of pride, inspiration, and strength. “I just wish I could have given her a hug,” Hopkins said, reflecting on the fact that, unlike herself, Ames was rejected by Buffalo’s lesbian community and had few role models to look to.

Ames’ life and work, most importantly, illustrate that effective activism in mid-size cities and rural towns, where people are more closely knit, involves creating change through building human relationships—such as those formed by her lecturing, correspondence, and work as a counselor—over large-scale direction action protests and civil disobedience. It’s a principle that remains true today.

Ames never did leave her historic nineteenth-century house, built in 1835, despite the pervasive mistreatment she faced. In refusing to be cast out, she turned the rocks, the tools of oppression, thrown at her into tools of education and change. “Three words that come to mind when I think of Peggie Ames are ‘Brave,’ ‘Strong,’ and ‘Stubborn,’” said veteran Buffalo gay rights activist Carol Speser. Ames dealt with many hardships, but was never solely a victim, paving the way for the work of future generations of trans and gender-nonconforming people. Though most, until now, have not heard her name, Ames was a mapmaker, not just a traveler on an already established path, and she is certainly one of the unacknowledged mothers of today’s Transgender Rights Movement.

In 2011, RuPaul’s Drag Race season 3 saw need enough to include definitions for slang terms like “fishy” across the bottom of the screen. Watching this season for the first time in 2018, I almost burst out laughing. The thought that a viewer wouldn’t know what “fishy” meant seemed absurd.  But that’s what Drag Race, and other touchstones of queer culture, do: introduce its viewers to a slew of slang terms that quickly become ubiquitous. In 2016, Bernie Sanders accused the DNC of throwing shade, and the phrase “Yass, queen” has permeated from Broad City gifs to Target merchandise. Queer slang has never been more visible in, and interactive with, mainstream Western culture.

Slang used in gay and queer spaces, while yet to be officially named, is considered an “anti-language”—the vernacular used by an “anti-society,” or a marginalized group within a society. Anti-languages generally aren’t full languages of their own, but “provide… a new and different reality in which [members] can construct and portray alternative (i.e., non-normative) identities without fear of censure or reproach” (Levon, 2010).

Queer anti-language in particular is hard to pin down, because slang terms are generally learned from exposure to queer communities, rather than being inherent to them (like a native language). But what we’re here to talk about is when an anti-language like this comes into contact with the mainstream it initially branched away from. Let’s watch the sauce, shall we?

It May Die Out

If you’ve ever looked into the history of queer vernacular English, you’ve probably stumbled across Polari. It was a British vernacular used by performers, thieves, people of color, and, in particular, gay men. It’s also the darling of Lavender linguistics, as one of the best-known instances of queer anti-language. Adapting words from romance languages, Yiddish, and London slang, certain phrases could signal your place in an anti-society, while straight people who overheard you would remain none the wiser.

Polari was necessary because being openly gay was a crime. But the rising homophile movement of post-WWII British civil rights exerted pressure on queer people to abandon identifiably gay characteristics like the use of Polari. Homosexual sex between men was decriminalized in 1967, ostensibly removing the need for covert language among gay men. (So often a chance at legal recognition comes with increasingly conservative politics—what of arguments to segregate trans people from the queer community after the legalization of same-sex marriage?) But the final blow came with the radio show Round the Home, where millions of listeners were treated to an education in Polari that evaporated both the vernacular’s secrecy, and the use of Polari itself.

Anti-languages like Polari fulfill two purposes: creating a community of people in the know, and keeping out people who threaten that community. Once the threat wanes, so does its use, though Polari echoes in both queer spaces (“trade,” for example, was one of its gifts dating back to the 1600s) and beyond (in words like “scarper” and “naff”). Given that shows like Drag Race and Queer Eye are being renewed into infinity, however, the likelihood of this slang dying out altogether is “nada to vada.”

Anti-languages like Polari fulfill two purposes: creating a community of people in the know, and keeping out people who threaten that community.
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Its Meanings May Change

As a niche vernacular becomes accessible to more people, its definitions tend to the general. Where “trade” under Polari meant “sex,” I first encountered it to mean “a straight-presenting man who may have (possibly paid) sex with a man or with a trans woman.” The associations with “macho” presentation were on display in the Drag Race’s Trade challenge (where we learned that some of these girls simply do not know the meaning of the word). A drag queen would seem to be the antithesis of all that is trade, yet during the same season Kameron Michaels is identified as “the trade of Season 10.” All of these meanings have to do with sex, and often with masculinity, but the flexibility for a single syllable to indicate anything from “the sexual act” to “an attractive man” indicates that the ongoing process of meaning expansion. More people are exposed to queer slang means more meaning expansion.

On the other hand, the interaction of queer slang with mainstream English may multiply the meanings available to them both. As Milani (2015) found, when an anti-language (in this case, Tsotsitaal, associated mainly with black South Africans) is exposed to the mainstream, their coexistence can yield new and “highly hybridized linguistic combinations” that didn’t previously exist, or weren’t previously possible. (Think of how “realness,” handed down from ballroom queens of yore, can now be comprehensibly appended to just about any word) Just like connections via the internet have engendered a proliferation of queer slang and in-jokes, the bigger the number of people using the language, the more different uses of it there will be.

Sometimes, an anti-language becomes so absorbed by a mainstream one that it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. Just like (probably British) people use “scarper” and “naff,” unaware of their origins in Polari, the incorporation of queer slang terms into mainstream English language obscures their origins. Even innocuous terms like “hot” and “hunk” came to us via the Harlem club scene—the ordinariness of a word seemingly inverse to our familiarity with its history.

In Indonesia, this phenomenon is occurring without the corresponding visibility of queer folk that we see in the West. There is limited understanding or presence of queer people in mainstream Indonesian society, possibly as a result of the lack of legal protection for them and anti-LGBT+ rhetoric among politicians and religious conservatives.

However, a vernacular known as bahasa gay is much more widely known, especially in Indonesian popular culture (Boellstorff, 2004). This is partly attributed to television personality Debby Sahertian, who gave the public an education in the anti-language when she published Kamus Bahasa Gaul, a dictionary of terms that doesn’t hide their roots in bahasa gay. On the one hand, it’s said that she once apologized to queer Indonesians for popularising bahasa gay and destroying the secrecy of the anti-language. On the other, it means that queer people’s uses of language aren’t a potentially dangerous give-away, because they’re common linguistic currency.

The phenomenon of queer anti-languages being ‘outed’ via the media is hardly unique. As soon as Drag Race ceased to define its own terms, the internet stepped in for anyone out of the loop. In the Philippines, the incredibly complex vernacular known as Swardspeak gained wider recognition after a series of instructional videos by (straight-identifying) YouTuber Wil Dasovich. Queer slang has never been better-documented, or more accessible, though whether it will keep in touch with its roots remains to be seen.

As soon as Drag Race ceased to define its own terms, the internet stepped in for anyone out of the loop.
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It Will Probably (Continue To) Be Used To Sell Us Stuff

It’s an ancient cliché that the entertainment industry is especially influenced by queer culture, and it follows that its slang would become the media’s lingua franca. In the Philippines, it’s almost a requirement that people working in entertainment be versed in Swardspeak (Hart & Hart, 1990). Drag Race incorporated the slang of queer nightclubs because that’s where its contestants work. Performers from Katy Perry, to Morrissey, to David Bowie have woven queer slang terms into their work—it was inevitable that the language of the people working in entertainment would bleed into what they produce. Especially with the new forum of social media, like Dasovich’s instructional videos, slang is able to move faster and further than ever before.

This exposure has its perks. Drag queens, once reviled as everything undesirable about gay men, have risen to a point of cultural reverence—and they’re making a mint off of it. Queer media (independent and non-) is able to attract bigger audiences and more lucrative advertisers—can you imagine Nanette or them existing in the days of Drag Race’s infamous season 1 filter? But corporations and non-LGBTQIA+ individuals, too, want a piece of the pink dollar, and speaking the right language is a proven way to get it. Enter the Target shirts.

Being absorbed into the mainstream means being brought into everything Western society represents—including capitalism. When queer slang’s associations shift from the queer simply to the fashionable, those in the know (and those who stand to gain) suddenly and infinitely expand, and as any linguist will tell you, the changes that come with this will be almost impossible to hinder. But don’t mourn what may or may not be lost to history—enjoy this unprecedented chance to write (and speak) it.

This September, GQ ran a piece on the topic of lowering sperm counts, with the rather foreboding title “Sperm Count Zero.” Throughout the piece the author, Daniel Noah Halpern, asks scientists to take study data about sperm counts, and extrapolate on what that means for men. He starts the piece with a basic premise, which is that men are by definition people who make sperm, and that gender essentialism infects everything about the piece.

Reading it reminded me that while understanding science is deeply and profoundly important, after our schooling is done most of us are getting our scientific knowledge not from scientists, but from science journalists. And Mr. Halpern over at GQ isn’t the only journalist filling his articles with gender essentialism. In fact, science media as a whole has a massive gender essentialism problem. This problem is just as prevalent in new media as it is in old, just as likely to show up in hip publications as it is anywhere else, and it has massive implications for how we understand sex and gender as a society.

The conflation of sex and gender, and the use of gender essentialism and straight up sexism in science writing, contribute to an overall culture in which it’s easy for people to assume that sperm is what makes a man, that vaginas are what make a woman, and that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Mixing gender essentialism with science seems to give gender essentialism more weight and credibility, allowing bigoted ideas about gender to be assumed factual without being challenged.

Gender essentialism is so ingrained in the way that we talk about science, that unless you are looking for it, it can be difficult to even notice. It shows up in nature documentaries, when narrators often use heavily gendered language to describe animal behavior (I love David Attenborough, but any time he narrates animal courtship it is cringeworthy). There’s also more going on here than mere sexism.

Mixing gender essentialism with science seems to give gender essentialism more weight and credibility
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To understand the sex and gender issues at play in science media, it’s important to understand the terms. In general, biological sex is defined by a combination of physical traits such as chromosomes, genitals, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics (this includes stuff like whether or not you have a beard). Those traits are used to lump a person or animal into a category such as male, female, or intersex. Gender is the social and cultural stuff which is often, but not always, tied to sex. The simplified version of sex and gender that most of us learn when we start to dig into gender issues is that sex is physical, but gender is a social construct, or “sex is what’s between your legs, gender is what’s in your heart.” The truth turns out to be a little more complicated than that. For years transgender activists have been pointing out that the way we define sex is also socially constructed, and as this twitter thread from a scientist so beautifully illustrated, the two primary categories of male and female are hardly the best way to classify people.

All of this is easy to mix up with the scientific concept of sexual reproduction, which is just a form of reproduction that uses two cells in order to make a new organism. Many organisms reproduce sexually in ways that look nothing like the “two sexes” system we’ve come to expect. For instance, many slugs all carry both male and female sex cells, and during mating both fertilize each other. However, when humans look at the animal world, we seem to have a tendency to interpret in a way that makes it a little more human, and therefore a little more gendered. I can’t overstate enough that this is humans adding our own cultural biases to data that doesn’t usually conform to them. Scientists themselves are not immune to this, but science writers, in their attempt to make the data relatable and interesting to the public, take it even further. As journalists, they have a responsibility to convey the information accurately, and to attempt to check their biases at the door, but often they conflate sex and gender, fall back on sexist assumptions about sex and gender, and simplify the concept of sex so much as to make it inaccurate.

When writers (and to some extent, scientists themselves) reach for metaphors to describe scientific information, they often rest on gendered assumptions. The way we talk about sperm is a classic example of that; we tend to see sperm as aggressive and masculine when they are, in fact, just tiny cells. We also tend to assume that sperm production is for men, when in fact not all men make sperm, and not all people who make sperm are men. The popular science blog IFL Science ran an article called “Why Do Men Exist” which, no surprise here, was specifically asking about cisgender sperm producing men. Other winning IFL headlines include things like “Suffering From Man-Flu Not Attractive, Science Confirms.” As a transgender man and a science nerd, reading these articles can be anything from mildly amusing to incredibly irritating, as most of the time, I am not included in their definition of “man.”

When humans look at the animal world, we seem to have a tendency to interpret in a way that makes it a little more human, and therefore a little more gendered
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This gender essentialism can be found at all levels of science reporting. The WNYC show Radiolab has won a National Academies Communication Award “for their investigative use of radio to make science accessible to broad audiences,” and its unique approach to sharing scientific knowledge has made it a great way for people, myself included, to get interested in science as adults. Given its position as a cool, weird science radio show and podcast, you might expect a deeper and more accurate look at issues of biological sex, and a more progressive look at gender issues. However, in their 2008 episode about sperm, called simply Sperm, co-host Robert Krulwich referred to spermatozoa as “the wiggly cells that, along with male pattern baldness, seems to describe everything you need to know about being a man.” One would think that equating a single cell with the entire concept of manhood would be offensive not only to trans men, but to everyone, but the theme persisted throughout the entire episode.

I was cautiously optimistic when Radiolab announced a new series of episodes about reproduction and the human body, all under the heading of “Gonads.” The six episodes promised in-depth reporting by producer Molly Webster, and the name suggested some acknowledgement of the ambiguity between the sexes. The first episode, sadly, offered more of the same simplification and essentialism I’d come to expect. When describing the primordial journey of the cells of the gonads themselves, there was never any indication that there was any possible outcome other than testicles, which would make the fetus a boy, or ovaries, which would make it a girl. Even though intersex conditions are about as common as red hair, and have everything to do with how a fetus develops, they were left out of the conversation of fetal development. Later in the series, when, in all fairness, a slightly more nuanced and complex take was given, sex was still presented as a binary, and it was still taken for granted that simply having ovaries would make one identify as a girl. One episode featured a lengthy interview with Dana Zzyym, who is intersex, and that interview was handled with sensitivity… but that didn’t undo the rampant gender essentialism of the series as a whole. In a separate episode, chromosomal variations outside of XX and XY were casually referred to as “aberrations.”

Science writers often have to simplify big complex issues like sex and gender in order to explain the science to the general public. The problem is that these omissions, sexist metaphors, and gender essentialist assumptions are everywhere and they add up. And they do not happen in a vacuum. Right now transgender people are more visible than possibly ever before, but with that visibility comes a very vocal and often dangerous opposition. Transphobes want to be able to point to science and say “look, there are only two sexes!” and “having a penis makes you a boy, that’s just how it works.” Science doesn’t actually back up their bigotry at all (in fact, it confirms that both gender and sex determination are extremely varied), but science writing sure makes it look as though it does. As we’ve seen with climate change and vaccine issues in this country, what the actual science says often has less of an impact than public opinion.

But don’t just take my word for it, there’s even been a study showing that bigotry against trans people is fed by “scientific” information that seems to support that men and women are somehow wired differently.

The problem is that these omissions, sexist metaphors, and gender essentialist assumptions are everywhere and they add up.
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So what can be done? Well, science writers can be careful about journalistic standards, and avoid extrapolating study data based on their own gendered assumptions, for one. We could also all stand to be a bit more direct and say what we mean when discussing things like reproduction. If we’re talking about people who have testicles, we can very easily say “people with testicles” rather than “men,” for example. We need science writing that isn’t afraid to dig into that complexity, because that’s where the real story is.

Back over at GQ, Halpern fell right into the standard essentialist assumptions, even referring to cisgender men with lower testosterone as “less male.” I read the whole article with my mouth opened in not to so much shock, but amazement that a single article could so perfectly encapsulate everything I had come to hate about science writing. Through all the hand wringing about falling sperm counts runs an endless commentary about men, and he doesn’t have to say it for me to know I’m not included. At the close of the article, he offers up a few potential scenarios for the species. Either sperm counts will drop so low we’ll go extinct, we’ll become completely reliant on fertility treatments to reproduce, or we’ll figure out how to get pregnant using stem cells that have been converted into sperm with “no need for any males.”

Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty clear that Halpern thinks the final scenario would be worst of all.

I feel my most queer in a skirt. Dresses feel like drag, like a performance I learned a long time ago, and am now reprising. Not quite a reenactment, but rather, a gender reckoning.

I do not remember the first time I was taught to demean the feminine. Maybe it was when my play was restricted by well-meaning adults telling me to keep my legs together—though they were the ones who put me in dresses. Maybe it was when I was a pre-teen and was told that girls should be good at school, but not too good, for fear of scaring off men. I began to see, as many see, the feminine as less important, frivolous, false, an act performed for the benefit of men.

But the feminine was also my community (which at the time was all cis, straight women). It was daiquiri mix in the fridge and all girl nacho nights with my friends and their moms and my single mom. We bonded over mandatory pedicures and Reese Witherspoon and Julia Roberts. We asked each other for makeup tips and knew that men were no good, but should be pursued nevertheless. It was Jude Law and Hugh Grant and finding the sensitive, but not too sensitive, men. It was not judging each other for crying at the end of sad movies, and giggling at other women’s bad haircuts. It was letting ourselves be joyous when the makeup bag came in pink, and promising to never “let ourselves go.” And it was the power of being vulnerable with one another when we found out my mother wasn’t going to live out the year. It was the way she held me and let me cry.

When I was young, I would watch my mother get ready in the mornings. She was a project manager at Ford, which, she was reminded daily, was a good job for a woman with only a high school diploma. It was my job to pick out the shoes she was going to wear for the day. I knew when she had meetings with the mostly male higher ups, because she would wear red, her power color. She rarely wore pants to work, preferring skirts and dresses. These were her armor.

There’s a certain type of femininity for the white, middle class below the Mason-Dixon. It’s blonde and perfect foundation and blush. It’s pretending to be upper class. It’s fake pearls and hot pink dresses. It’s monogrammed towels and a perfect wreath on the door, appropriate to the season. It’s also a passive femininity. It’s gossip and prayer groups and PTA meetings, but it definitely did not include the assertiveness needed to manage a team or go after that promotion. It was not the power femininity of the self-help books on my mother’s shelf: How to Succeed in Business without a Penis, and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. When my mother called her makeup her “war paint,” I knew that on some level she was not joking or being metaphorical. She defied the femininity of her surroundings, and wore it into corporate battle, weaponized it. I remember her power. I remember her joy. I also remember her frustration.

To be a woman with ambition meant sacrificing the social training of woman. It was learning to look down on previous iterations of yourself. This was a lesson my mother never truly learned, or perhaps refused to, always keeping a small sense of play in her wardrobe. But when I moved in with my dad and crossed a class boundary, the pearls were replaced with leather bands, the pink with neutrals. A different kind of femininity was enforced here, in the upper middle class. This was a femininity that played a man’s game: its colors darker, its lines neater. This femininity was less social and more capitalistic. The bonding rituals stayed the same: The Notebook, blonde highlights, men. But the consequences for violating that femininity shifted. Where once I only had to fear the loss of community, I now had to fear the loss of status. Qualifications are irrelevant if you violate the social order. To be an outsider also meant being a failure. Success equaled wealth; there were no other barometers.

I began to see, as many see, the feminine as less important, frivolous, false, an act performed for the benefit of men.
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After my mother’s death and cut off from my main feminine role model, I also became cut off from the community of women she had introduced me to. Sure, by the age of thirteen, I had gleaned a little of how to perform woman. I knew how to put on a little makeup, and I knew what cut of pants was most flattering to my emerging pear shape, the same shape as my mother. I could quote Miss Congeniality and Legally Blonde, and I knew which Titans players had the best asses. But I had very little language for this new brand of femininity, and it was becoming and harder to allow myself to remain vulnerable and open to it. Grief has a way of making a person insular, of making emotion inaccessible to others. PTSD deepens the divide between you and others, and, the protection of others gone, you learn that it is necessary to protect yourself.

Women’s clothing exposes. At best it is supposed to empower. At worst, it objectifies. I could not afford to be an object. My senses on high alert, I already felt outside my skin, outside of time, moving back and forth between the past and present jarringly. I began having flashbacks of my mother’s last moments and trouble sleeping. It became important to fortify myself. Often, that meant layers. That meant stoicism. It was James Dean, who knows how to be sad, but artfully. It was John Wayne, un-phased by massacre. It was denim, no makeup. Bravado.

And those men, the stoics. They always got the girl. And that was something, I was just figuring out, I might want too. And if my femininity was not solely to be performed for men, then what was its purpose? I discarded it, figuring it could no longer serve me.

The dictionary defines femme as “a lesbian whose appearance and behavior are seen as traditionally feminine.” However, that’s what makes it subversive. To be “femme” is to capture femininity on your own terms, reclaiming it from the heterosexual gaze and performing it instead for a queer community. Moving to New York at age eighteen, my ideas of femme possibility expanded: no makeup, unshaven armpits, shaved heads, not just lesbians but queer and bisexual women, too. These women exuded the same type of strength my mother had, but without the fake pearls. And, somehow, they still displayed traits of what we traditionally assign as feminine. They could allow themselves to be vulnerable, to take care of others while also allowing themselves to be taken care of. They prioritized intuition, not necessarily over logic, but alongside it. There’s a generosity in femininity, and an honoring of the role emotions play in our lives. In the feminine, they can be embraced; in the (toxic) masculine, they are something to be done away with. There’s a practicality to this femininity in the way that I imagine it. The feminine rolls up her sleeves and gets shit done.

But there is also a danger to femininity. How many gendered insults can be thrown against us without a few sticking? How many times can I be called a cunt or a pussy or a bitch and still maintain that there is strength in my womanhood. How many times can I be harassed? Raped? Walking down the streets of New York after I was assaulted my freshman year of college, it was hard to differentiate between annoying catcalls and threatening men. In some ways, I imagined the feminine as a victim.

The stats vary, but something close to one in six women will be raped in her lifetime. Hate crimes against trans women are on the rise. Femme gay men are often the targeted victims of hate crimes for threatening the masculine’s sense of world order. So I told myself a story. Masculine does not get told to smile on the street. Masculine does not get catcalled. Masculine is not raped. I understood that to be masculine meant being safer walking home at night. And it was that safety that I craved. This is of course, not true. The masculine is also policed and is sometimes the victim of violence. I knew that the more masculine my appearance, the more likely I was to be identified as gay by passersby, which presented new dangers. But I also knew that it was my femme and feminine sisters who had been taught to walk with our car keys tucked between our knuckles.

To surrender to the feminine began to feel like surrendering to pain. It seemed easier, safer, to hold myself at some remove. Withholding brought stability. The masculine myth of self-sufficiency made it less painful to acknowledge a lack of familial connection. But, for me, this remove was not sustainable. Stoicism meant isolation. Masculinity made me feel shored up against something. But though it was scarier, femininity meant healing, meant community. My femme identity exists in direct opposition to toxic, cisgender masculinity that would have me fear for my life no matter how I expressed my gender. Femme identity is my letting the guard down.

To be “femme” is to capture femininity on your own terms, reclaiming it from the heterosexual gaze and performing it instead for a queer community.
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Over the last several years, as I have begun my slow, femme re-education, I have found a new type of community. It is a sisterhood of queer femme-ininity. It includes cis, femme, queer women, trans women, femme trans boys, gay men in nail polish, and lipstick with beards. What I have learned is that there is no one way to be femme. Some wear their fierceness on their sleeves like a weapon, and others hide it beneath pastels. I have found power in many different avenues of the feminine, reclaimed.

Sometimes, it can be easy to let myself regress into the trappings of Southern femininity, especially since I’ve moved back to Tennessee. And it can be especially easy when I am rewarded with the mixed privilege of passing as straight. My queerness is routinely erased in the workplace, and it can be difficult to decide to out yourself when Tennessee currently does not have laws on the books protecting queer people from discrimination. So passing can start to feel, not only like a social mandate, but also an economic one. In what class does my femininity sit? In which class do I wish to sit?

But that’s when I decide that it is time to play, just like my mother taught me. I sit in a chair with my legs spread, just like I was told not to. To be femme is not just to be feminine, but to allow myself to practice femininity in ways that empower me. Most days, I choose not to wear makeup, but I also choose to center the personal in my writing, and to ask for care when I need it. I let myself take care of others because I know my community needs to be strong for each other. I allow myself to be vulnerable because it grants me power to take what I want. I now find myself reenacting the rituals, but I choose to go in sans war paint.

1. Keep your business within the stall under two and a half minutes. Any longer and the Cisgendered person becomes suspicious. If you still need to go, use a different bathroom.
2. Be as quiet or still as possible. They can’t see movement.
3. Use as little toilet paper as possible. I mean, they’re judging the shit out of you already, don’t give them more of a reason. This is more the case in any government building or library. They don’t want their taxpayer money going to a Transgirl’s ass.
4. Similarly, when washing your hands, sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in your head twice, but don’t use too much water. Use minimal soap. When drying your hands, make sure you’re thorough but also not using the air dryer too long or too many paper towels. They’re analyzing how many resources you’re taking up.
5. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES MAKE EYE CONTACT.
6. If there is no one in the bathroom at the time you enter your stall you may act as if it was a single stall bathroom. But remain vigilant…
7. If someone enters the bathroom while you are in the stall you must believe they are a Cisgendered person.
8. If you see another Transgirl in the bathroom, even if you personally know them, you must not acknowledge their presence as stated in Article 3, Section 21.b of The Official Transgirl Handbook. The only exception is when there is no one else in the bathroom and you know the other Transgirl personally. But this is risky since a Cisgendered person may enter the bathroom at any moment.
9. In fact, don’t talk to or acknowledge anyone when inside a multi-stall bathroom. The only exception is when a Cisgendered person says “Hello.” If they do, you must greet them as well. If they ask you any questions you must respond but make your answer brief.

Following these steps is critical to maintaining the slim levels of respect we have from the Cisgendereds. This respect helps alleviate some of the pains of awkward family reunions, co-workers, and those people who you sorta vaguely knew in High School and thinks of you as one of the Cisgendereds. Keeping the respect of Cisgendered persons in bathrooms is a collective effort! They will hold any slight misstep against all Transgirls complaining about it to no end. We must look out for our fellow Transsisters (Article 1, Section 7). I don’t care if they don’t respect or see all my identities and lifestyle choices,  I just want to be able to have some sort of passing respect and to not worry about pissing or shitting my pants.

Or, y’know, be physically assaulted.

As a chubby, gender nonconforming queer I’d always been the odd duck in yoga class.

For 10 years, I’d used yoga to relieve back pain or pause anxiety, but self-consciousness kept me from connecting with it on a deeper level. I didn’t go to yoga studios often because I couldn’t afford to, first and foremost. But when I did attend classes, I felt invisible.

I was chubby and inflexible, barely able to touch the ground in a forward fold, nevermind execute an arm balance like crow pose. I practiced in loose pants and old t-shirts that flew up to expose my round stomach, because leggings and clingy yoga tanks felt invalidating. Every time a yoga teacher used gendered cues, mentioned upcoming yoga retreats, or offered the class an opportunity to practice handstands—something that seemed to come easy to the bendy, leggings-clad yogis that packed most classes—I was reminded anew that I was an interloper in yoga land.

I stuck to the back of the room, hyper-aware of everything from my smelly feet to my attempts at chaturanga, and scurried out of the studio at the end of class. Boston may have been a cosmopolitan city, although a highly segregated one, but this ancient practice of Hindu philosophy felt like it was reserved for skinny, wealthy, white women who had their shit together and could afford to invest in personal, physical, and spiritual development.

When my local yoga studio began offering LGBTQ community classes, the $5 price tag got me in the door. The class was a collaboration between a yoga studio I’d visited occasionally and my local LGBT center that offered AA-type support groups and youth programming. While these programs are needed by many LGBTQs, the center didn’t exactly offer social opportunities for adults. I didn’t expect much from the class, but I never turned down cheap yoga—and I wanted to support the attempt at adult programming.

Every time a yoga teacher used gendered cues, I was reminded anew that I was an interloper in yoga land.
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The LGBTQ community class was a beginner-level class. I recognized many of the people in the room from previous events at the center (I’d moved on from Boston a couple years earlier) . The yoga teacher talked my fellow yogis through poses I knew well. While she explained the body mechanics of low lunges and forward folds, she emphasized breathwork and tuning in to the body. Through mentions of the chakra system and, in later classes, of Ayurvedic doshas, she maintained a cultural connection that, as yoga has become more popular in the West, is too often lost or appropriated, like those “Namastay in Bed” tees.

These concepts weren’t new to me, but here, surrounded by queer and trans folks, I made a new connection to them. I appreciated this teacher’s brief explanation of her own yoga journey. She began practicing yoga as rehabilitation of an old injury. She felt relatable. She couldn’t do yoga perfectly, either.  

There was no default to gendered language, something mainstream yoga teachers used without a second thought. I’d become accustomed to these cues and developed my own workaround: Rather than take the recommended hand position for men or women, I would switch my grip midway through the pose. It was my way of coping with a system that used hand positions, pose recommendations, and different terms for male and female yogis to center, without space for fluidity, the gender binary.

But here, as we flowed through sun salutation, something shifted. Surrounded by other LGBTQs, I felt seen and uplifted in a way I’d never been in yoga class.

It hit during savasana — THIS was what yoga was all about. It was about feeling connected to my body and to my community. And if all this happened during one class, what else could an LGBTQ-affirming yoga practice heal?

For too many within LGBTQ communities, the body is a site of shame, not pleasure. External pressure to adhere to unrealistic beauty standards — namely preferences for thin, gender-conforming bodies — lowers self-esteem. Calls for “no fats, no femmes” on personal ads, or the continued use of the transfeminine body as a punchline in entertainment, make many of us feel invalidated.

When children grow up hearing transphobic and homophobic slurs, their body image suffers and they internalize shame. Long after coming out, LGBTQs bear the scars of stigma.

In a Chapman University study, 77 percent of gay men felt they were judged on appearance, and 51 percent of gay men expressed interest in cosmetic surgery. Pressure from romantic partners, friends, and media to conform to unrealistic beauty standards leads gay men to experience higher rates of eating disorders and body dysmorphia than their straight peers.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that lesbian, bi, and queer-identified women are exempt from pressure to be thin, as the assumption is women only attempt to be thin to adhere to the tastes of straight men; however, some studies suggest that with greater acceptance of LGBTQs comes increased pressure to conform to heteronormative beauty standards.

When WHO Assigns Our Genders, Who Assigns Our Genders?

theestablishment.co

This seems true for LGBTQ youth. Sure, they’ve come of age in the era of gay marriage, but they still face discrimination — and employ unhealthy coping mechanisms. A joint survey of 1,000 LGBTQ youth from The Trevor Project, National Eating Disorder Association, and Reasons Eating Disorder Center found that 71 percent of transgender youth and 54 percent of all LGBTQ youth had been diagnosed with an eating disorder. After trans youth, cis female LGBTQ youth had the highest rates of eating disorders.

Trevor Project CEO Amit Paley writes in the study’s introduction that, “The unique stressors that LGBTQ-identified people experience, such as coming out and harassment in schools or the workplace, can impact levels of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and unhealthy coping mechanisms,” from eating disorders to substance abuse.

These stressors carry lifelong consequences. Almost half of transgender adults report depression or anxiety, compared with 6.7 percent and 18 percent of the general U.S. population, respectively.

“While the main reason [for] mental illness and depression amongst trans and gender variant people is due to the lack of acceptance and social ridicule…it cannot be denied that the actual physical [gender] dysphoria most certainly plays a large part,” notes Rebecca Connolly, an Advanced Clinical Practitioner and member of WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Connolly adds, “The vast majority of trans people have huge degrees of body dysphoria purely, because [their body] does not match the internal representation of who they are and how they express themselves.” While gender-affirming surgeries are available, they’re not accessible for all who want them, nor do (or should) all trans folks want surgeries.

There also continue to be few professionals nationwide who have the knowledge to address LGBTQ mental and emotional wellbeing. In a 2015 survey of 452 transgender adults living in Massachusetts, nearly one in four respondents had experienced discrimination in a health care settling — and were more likely to postpone or avoid seeking care as a result.

“A huge struggle that my trans clients face is being able to feel safe in their own skin without the world judging them,” says Bernard Charles, an LGBTQ lifestyle coach who uses meditation to heal LGBTQ body image issues.

In the face of a lack of bias-free, gender-affirming care, many LGBTQ folks have turned to self-care tools like yoga to fill the gap. While yoga has long been known as a stress reliever, it has potential to heal body image issues, too. Studies have chronicled how yoga lowers stress through improvements in heart rate, respiratory rate, and systolic blood pressure. Yoga activates both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous systems. Flowing sequences like the sun salutation stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, while seated meditation boosts the parasympathetic nervous system.

LGBTQ-affirming classes, such as the one I’ve been fortunate to find, are more welcoming of diverse bodies, genders, ages, and abilities. Sally Morgan, a lesbian yoga teacher, says, “[speaking] as a lesbian… the yoga community is not particularly inclusive and I know some of my lesbian friends with bigger bodies are very self-conscious in yoga classes because they don’t fit the stereotypes of yoginis.”

In the face of a lack of bias-free, gender-affirming care, many LGBTQ folks have turned to self-care tools like yoga to fill the gap.
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Morgan, who trained in Phoenix Rising yoga, notes that specific styles of yoga may work better for healing trauma. In her work with trauma survivors, Morgan avoids hands-on corrections (which may be unwanted) in favor of clear directions that avoid “yoga jargon.” Rather than gendered cues — common in traditional yoga classes — LGBTQ-affirming cues are open-ended, so participants can decide how to adjust their bodies.

Jacoby Ballard, a New York City-based yoga teacher who offers Queer and Trans Yoga classes, acknowledges that mainstream yoga classes often center a particular experience—the young, affluent able-bodied white women with whom I’ve shared many an om—and this makes the practice inaccessible for folks who can’t afford it, don’t feel welcome, or are disrespected when they show up on the mat. Ballard speaks to the LGBTQ lived experience in yoga practice by addressing homophobia and transphobia in meditation and highlighting savasana as a time to release inner shame or guilt.

Yoga’s power to heal a negative body image lies in its focus on movement that draws participants out of their minds and into their bodies. While remaining in a pose, students may be encouraged to ground, balance, or soften. Strength, stability, and emotional release come through focused movement. Playful poses lighten the mood, helping participants find fun in their bodies. Yogic breathwork grounds participants in the present moment, which can pause anxious thoughts.

With regular practice, yoga changes fascia, tones muscle, and increases balance. As it becomes easier to move, people feel better in their bodies.

Morgan structures yoga classes to lower anxiety, increase relaxation, and remain sensitive to trauma in her students’ pasts. Says Morgan, “We…spend nearly all of the class on the floor as a way to help people feel more supported literally and emotionally….I use cues such as ‘Where is there dark in your life?, Where is there light in your life?, What is the message from the dark?, What is the message from the light?’….Sometimes this look inward prompts journal entries, which can further foster healing.”

As connections are made explicit in yoga classes, participants can return to them at home. As Morgan says, yoga “causes one to look inward and to find a quiet place of peace in the mind and body. Once a person learns this skill, it can be applied in any situation in life that is challenging.”

What keeps LGBTQ people from feeling comfortable on the yoga mat isn’t yoga itself, but the mainstream culture that’s been built around yoga in Western societies, which focuses on hetero- and cis-normative body images as the assumed goal. But when those structures are stripped away, yoga can become a place to heal.

“This is just between us, right?” one of my students asked, her voice trailing off as she adjusted her navy blue backpack and got up to leave.

I reassured her that this was a confidential, safe space to share any feelings, experiences, or questions that she may have. “Ok” she replied, looking relieved, her shoulders relaxing, “see you next week.”

As a mental health clinician practicing in a large school setting, students talk to me about many issues, including their gender identity, gender dysphoria (defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify), and sexual orientation. And they talk to me because they trust that I will keep what they share confidential.

There are certain legal exceptions to student/provider confidentiality. If school clinicians suspect a student is being abused or neglected, or if a student expresses suicidal ideation, we must follow a clear intervention plan to protect the student.

However, with the overwhelming majority of issues and experiences that students come to talk about, it is the privacy of the space that prompts them to come and seek support in the first place. It is the understanding that they can speak freely and those words do not go beyond the walls of this office.

But if Republicans in many states get their way, this guarantee of confidentiality will be destroyed.

Ohio Republican Representatives Tom Brinkman and Paul Zeltwanger recently introduced legislation, House Bill 658, which, if passed, would require school therapists and teachers to “out” transgender students to their parents.

HB 658 states, “If a government agent or entity has knowledge that a child under its care or supervision has exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner opposite of the child’s biological sex, the government agent or entity with knowledge of that circumstance shall immediately notify, in writing, each of the child’s parents and the child’s guardian or custodian.” 

The law would also punish therapists with felony charges if they do not comply with outing children.

HB 658 perpetuates the dangerous belief that if we forbid children from receiving therapy, if we scare them with the threat of being outed by a trusted therapist and we impede their ability to gain any validation and gender-affirming support, then their gender identification isn’t real. Then all of this will just go away.

Republicans claim the reason for this proposed bill is a supposed concern for “parents rights.” The belief is that parents should have to consent to any form of treatment, including just speaking to a school therapist, regarding a child’s gender identity or gender dysphoria. 

Yet despite the pretext for this law, the fact remains that parents rights are not being impeded; their rights are still overwhelmingly protected by state law.

State law already requires that parents give consent for a transgender child to begin hormone blockers, take testosterone or estrogen, or have gender reassignment surgery. But now Ohio is trying to infringe on whether or not a student can even talk to a school therapist or teacher about their gender identity, effectively turning school providers into gender informants.

And Ohio isn’t the only state trying to violate transgender student rights. There has been a startling increase in legislation targeting transgender children. In the last three years 44 anti-transgender pieces of legislation have been introduced in various states, with 23 of those targeting transgender children in schools and in playing school sports. 

Ohio is trying to infringe on whether or not a student can even talk to a school therapist or teacher about their gender identity, effectively turning school providers into gender informants.
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These types of legislation are particularly dangerous given that transgender students are already at an increased risk for anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and becoming homeless due to parents kicking them out (after discovering their gender identity). 

A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, led by Sari Reisner and Mathew Mimiaga, research scientists at the Fenway Institute and Harvard University, found that transgender youth are at a higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and self harm than non-transgender adolescents, and that the need for gender-affirming mental health treatment and other support services is essential to their well-being. 

Currently, of the 1.6 million adolescents and young adults who are homeless in America,  40% of them identify as LGBTQ, according to research done at the Williams Institute at UCLA Law. 

In addition, 46% of homeless LGBTQ youth left the home because of their family’s refusal to accept their sexual orientation or gender identity; 43% were kicked out by parents, and 32% reported enduring sexual, emotional, or physical abuse in their family home. 

How many more will be abused or become homeless after they are forcibly outed by their schools?

Jenn Burleton, executive director of the TransActive Gender Center, reports that “Many transgender kids living with unsupportive parents may be able to hold on, emotionally, because of support through school counselors or Gay-Straight Alliances. But in one fell swoop, this bill would eliminate any support system at their schools…their goal is Draconian.”

How many more will be abused or become homeless after they are forcibly outed by their schools?
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In many ways HB 658 creates a state-sanctioned witch hunt. Where does it end? The proposed law says that any student who “exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner opposite of the child’s biological sex” must be reported to their parents. 

Are schools now supposed to be spies for any possible non-conforming gender expression? 

“Who is the judge of which gender is allowed to do what? If Jane signs up for shop class, will her parents receive a government letter? If Jordan doesn’t want to play football, do his parents get a letter? What if Alex wants to attend a meeting of the student LGBTQ group–does the school email that to Alex’s parents? Just what stereotypes are they expected to enforce?” states Ohio’s Equality Now in response to this bill.

In addition, forcing clinicians to report non-conforming gender expression or gender dysphoria to parents, even though many of them may react violently, would only cause students further harm and violates our duty to protect children.  

Therapists cannot ethically report a child’s gender expression or dysphoria if it is told to us in confidence, and even more so if we know that child will then be at an increased risk for abuse or being thrown out of their house. 

The repercussions of the proposed Ohio law (and many other pieces of anti-transgender legislation in other states) would be catastrophic for all transgender students—and those who are the most vulnerable will no longer seek out support if they now have to fear being “outed,” which then elevates their risk for depression and self-harm. 

The National Association Of Social Workers (NASW) has condemned HB 658 stating, “We are outraged by the legislation that is so clearly in violation of everything the profession of social work stands for.” The American Counseling Association (ACA) also weighed in on HB 658, stating the bill “negates client rights to confidentiality and attacks the very basis of a key mandate for counselors: to provide counseling to those who need it and have nowhere else to turn.” The risk to students is especially pertinent in Ohio, where abuse of transgender students has already been well documented. 

A recent study found that 64%of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have heard disparaging comments about being LGBTQ from family members and only 23% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have come out to close family members about their sexual orientation. The study also found that 12% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio were sexually assaulted/raped due to their presumed or actual LGBTQ identity, 69%of LGBTQ youth in Ohio are harassed in school, and an alarming 70% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have received unwanted sexual commentary and inappropriate and lewd jokes in the past year.

While the legal challenges to this law, if it passes, are inevitable, this type of anti-transgender legislation that is exploding around the country, plays into the larger cultural battle of denying transgender students their basic right to exist, to seek support, and to have their own autonomy.

Students will no longer have the ability to come out when they are ready, they will be forced out. And even those who have more support and aren’t at risk for abuse at home will still be forced to come out on someone else’s terms.

Corey Vickman, a 15-year-old transgender student in New York City, shared that “While I have a supportive family and school, coming out can still be terrifying for many transgender students. I can only imagine how devastating it would be to have that option taken away from you, especially by someone you have confided in.”

Even those who have more support and aren’t at risk for abuse at home, will still be forced to come out on someone else’s terms.
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You can’t scare a child into not being transgender or non-binary. No amount of threats, rules, or regulations will keep someone from experiencing dysphoria. School clinicians are there to support students, and requiring them to “out” children, to put students at an increased risk for harm and to betray their trust, violates the core principles of what we do.

And we will do everything we can to stop this dangerous legislation. 

**Names have been changed to protect the identity of minor children**

It’s not that I want to burst the Queer Eye bubble. I adore its heart-warming loveliness and energetic embrace of diversity, and the way they fill their subjects with confidence fills me with joy. But behind those French tucks and that exposed brickwork lies an uncomfortably materialist message. Queer Eye might seem a liberal millennial dream, promoting messages of self-care and acceptance, but the solution to its participants’ problems is often just to throw money at them. In Queer Eye it’s okay to be gay and it’s okay to be a man with feelings—but only if you have all the right stuff to go with that.

Of course, Queer Eye is not the only makeover show that does this; much of the appeal of the genre is in seeing transformations that you could only dream of, while creating pathos by giving these expensive overhauls to those most in need of it. The premise is always that this new house/wardrobe/garden/car will solve the participant’s problems and change their life. Extreme Makeover and Ten Years Younger use pricey cosmetic surgery as their tools, while Property Brothers and Grand Designs pour their money into lavish refurbishments of houses. Perhaps Gok Wan’s How to Look Good Naked, premiering in 2006, made makeover TV’s materialism the most literal when he asked the female participants to stand half-dressed in shop windows at the end of each episode to show how much their body confidence had grown.

Queer Eye might brand itself differently from the classic makeover show, but its materialist focus is the same. The Fab Five—Jonathan (grooming), Tan (fashion), Bobby (design), Karamo (culture) and Antoni (food), the team of queer experts who guide the transformations on the show—are always ready with good advice, personal anecdotes and a sturdy shoulder to cry on. They insist they are there to help their “heroes” be their best selves, and lead honest, empowered lives. Yet in the world of Queer Eye it doesn’t matter if someone is struggling to come out to their family or needs to rekindle a romantic relationship, the solution is a fancy new wardrobe and a designer haircut. The big reveals of each episode still relate to a flashy makeover of their clothes, hair, and house, with a sidelined section on their “cultural” development (still as vague as it was in the original iteration of the show) and how they’ve learned to cook one incredibly simple dish using reasonably expensive ingredients. To become a better person you need to have expensive material goods and be attractive, no matter your social background.

Queer Eye might brand itself differently from the classic makeover show, but its materialist focus is the same.
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Take William from Season Two’s “A Decent Proposal” as an example. William works at Walmart, as does his girlfriend Shannon, to whom he is planning to propose. Quite clearly they’re not going to be living a highflying lifestyle. The couple live in a trailer home that’s been decorated with love, if not expensive taste. Yet the Fab Five’s reaction to the home is classist, and shows real misunderstanding of living on a low income. When they first enter Bobby seems scared to touch anything and a sofa that was bought for $30 at Goodwill is deemed a rip off. But what shocks the Fab Five the most is that William and Shannon are using furniture that Shannon had previously owned with her ex. To them this is terrible, unacceptable, a cause of William’s difficulty in romantically committing to Shannon; perhaps it’s merely that, on a low income, the couple don’t have the option of turning down perfectly good furniture for emotional reasons.

Only Antoni seems to acknowledge that they work so much they might not have time to create the perfect home environment for themselves. William and Shannon seem like a sweet couple who deserve a bit of luxury; but surely the waxing, dermatology consultation, and expensive clothing the Fab Five advise aren’t a standard that two Walmart employees can keep up? The finale of their episode is a showy proposal at an open-air cinema, complete with fancy picnic and a cheesy film made with the help of the Fab Five. It’s adorable, its loving, and it made me cry—but isn’t it the love between William and Shannon that matters, not the financial ability they have to put on a huge proposal?

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It’s a recurring theme throughout the show that the wholesome encouragement and message of self-confidence must be accompanied by the purchase of new material items. Season One’s opening episode “You Can’t Fix Ugly” centres on Tom, who has gone through multiple divorces and is still in love with his ex-wife, Abby. He clearly needs a confidence boost and perhaps some lessons on how to show a romantic partner you care, but alongside these the Fab Five also do the standard appearance and house makeover. Apparently his recliner chair is disgusting (it kind of is) and his house is a mess (it also is), so it gets a huge redesign from Bobby. Wouldn’t it be better if the Fab Five just tidied up what Tom already has, rather than buying brand new expensive items? Instead it’s repeatedly made clear in the episode that this physical transformation is crucial to a successful relationship, betraying the materialist heart of the format.

It’s the fact that so much of Queer Eye is brilliant that makes its central failure so underwhelming. The program has been lauded for how it tackles modern masculinity, encouraging men—whether they be bearded divorcees, nerdy comedians, or Burning Man addicts—to acknowledge their emotions and feel free to be vulnerable. Even the gruffest are hugging left, right, and center by the end of their makeover, proudly telling those closest to them how much they love them. Queer Eye does men’s rights the feminist way, allowing men to do the things they feel their gender identity has told them they can’t. It’s also tackled racialist police violence in its first season, and had a trans participant in its second season. I’d never claim Queer Eye provides the most radical or comprehensive analysis of these issues, perhaps particularly in the case of its race debate, but it doesn’t shy away from talking about difficult issues.

Wouldn’t it be better if the Fab Five just tidied up what Tom already has, rather than buying brand new expensive items?
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Yet Queer Eye’s materialism and consumerist ethos undermines its good work and laudable intentions. Toxic masculinity, racism, and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people are deeply tied into the capitalist materialism at the heart of Queer Eye’s makeovers. A capitalist society is always willing to let individuals suffer if it makes the boss at the top just a tad more money. LGBTQ+ people are often the victims of this; we see that when the price of AIDS medication increases because of the greed of pharmaceutical companies, or in how LGBTQ+ venues are being pushed out of London and other big cities as property owners hike up inner-city rent. By combining liberal TV with materialist values, Queer Eye reflects the trend of “pink capitalism,” in which companies profit from targeted inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community, whilst simultaneously benefitting from the ways heteronormative capitalism exploits queer people.

The history of pink capitalism is a sad reflection of how quickly businesses will jump upon a radical social movement. As widespread homophobia declined around the 1990s, businesses recognized the spending power of LGBTQ+ people—particularly gay men. Queer couples often benefited from two paychecks and no children, sometimes making their disposable income uniquely high. At the same time, openly queer people became less likely to be turned away from well-paying jobs and, eventually, LGBTQ+ culture even became trendy and desirable to those who didn’t identify as anything but straight.

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Western cosmopolitan culture is now welcoming to queer people, and for a business to be anything but welcoming too—at least in the public eye—is often detrimental to their success. Never is that more obvious than during Pride season, when everyone from Spotify to Burger King to Google will jump on the queer bandwagon in the hope of appealing to an audience that broadly accepts diversity. Sure, its nice that companies no longer overtly hate queer people, and that queer employees get a chance to organize and march with company floats, but the LGBTQ+ community aren’t merely consumers. As backlash to the commercialization of pride will tell you, Pride started as a protest not product placement.

Unfortunately, in a capitalist society, everything costs money, and sometimes chucking a whole load of cash at something can make a difference. Season One’s “Hose Before Bros” and Season Two’s “God Bless Gay” both involve the Fab Five getting involved in community projects, helping with a fire station’s fundraiser and doing up a church’s community center respectively. But even then shouldn’t the state be funding fire stations and community centers, not Netflix? And for the individual transformations, the focus upon stocking their lives with shiny new things just seems lazy. It reinforces the worst messages materialist capitalism has for us and this show has the potential for more than that.

While the Fab Five do sometimes incorporate old belongings into the makeovers, wouldn’t it be powerful if this happened more? Queer Eye could tell us that the foundations of a new life are all around us if we just have the right mentors, adding rather than detracting from the other inspiring messages the show has to convey. In 2018, let’s separate materialism from self-worth and make life transformations about more than pricey goods and services. In choosing not to do this, Queer Eye falls into the trap of complying with capitalism, not challenging it. It’s time Netflix changed this—and we got the heartwarmingly subversive Queer Eye we deserve.

The World Health Organization released the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11, on June 18th of this year, to the excitement of some transgender activists. In past years, the ICD defined being transgender as a disorder; a form of deviance in need of treatment. But this year was different. The latest update forgoes diagnoses such as “transvestic fetishism” in favor of the far friendlier “gender incongruity.” Having someone’s lived gender experience changed from a deviant “fetish” to a simple contradiction felt like a step forward.

Despite much celebratory discussion of this as a progressive step, there are numerous troubling factors in this re/de-classification that are being ignored. This friendly term is still a sexual health condition listed in a classification of diseases. Gender non-conformity is still pathologized, just differently costumed.

The ICD does nothing to “destigmatize” gender incongruence by renaming it, because it still rests on the presupposition of disorderly bodyminds. In defining “disorder,” it must draw arbitrary dividing lines between the real trans experience and the things outside it. They suggest that there is a concrete and diagnosable difference between gender non-conforming (GNC) cis people, and people who are legitimately transgender. And that the only person who could tell that difference is a doctor.

In defining 'disorder,' it must draw arbitrary dividing lines between the real trans experience and the things outside it.
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This notion of gender incongruence reifies the concept of biological sex as the only “real” bodily experience, which is used to further power structures and gender norms under the guise of what is “natural.” For example, cultural norms of male aggression are biologically validated when erroneously connected to testosterone. Cisgender women are pushed toward motherhood because of an imagined “maternal instinct.” But the maternal drive—often arising from pregnancy itself and certainly not from the mere fact of being assigned female—is cultivated, not inherent. Sometimes, this cultivation begins in childhood, but it is still not inborn. The idea that men are born to fight and women are born to birth, instead of being culturally expected to adhere to these norms, is a damaging consequence of the social construction of sex and gender.

Some activists, educators, and others argue that sex is not gender and gender is not sex, in an attempt to to distinguish the “fact” of biological sex from the ‘feeling” of gender. But this distinction will not save us, either. This is especially true when doctors are in the business of diagnosing what is understood as deviant behavior. Contrary to what the ICD—and well-meaning allies—might say, it isn’t that gender is mutable and only sex is concrete. There is no such thing as “incongruent” sex and gender because, as Judith Butler illustrates in Undoing Gender, there is no sex without gender; no gender without sex. The two produce and naturalize each other, just as testosterone and aggression do.

The ICD’s new rules for real-transness were not meant merely to de-pathologize some experiences in favor of others. Instead, they are part of an ongoing process to assign more specific diagnoses to certain experiences; to widen the pathological catalogue. In doing this, it draws arbitrary dividing lines between the real trans experience and the things outside it, suggesting that there is a concrete and diagnosable difference between GNC cis people, and people who are legitimately transgender.

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This is a common practice that Michael Foucault discussed in Madness and Civilization. The trend of meticulously diagnosing difference is a relatively recent phenomenon, Foucault argues. Though we presume these diagnoses to be natural and timeless because a medical authority declared them so, this paradigm is only about two centuries old. It was invented as a means to mark some people as deviant and others as sane—not as a way to realize an essential “truth.” Diagnoses shift not due to a gradual march toward accuracy, but instead as a means of accommodating shifting social (and thus, psychological) conditions.

By these rules, one is only really transgender when one is interpellated that way by some authority figure, like a doctor. I only become “really me” when some authority recognizes me. Introduced by Louis Authusser, “interpellation” happens when a subject is recognized as such within a certain ideological framework: in this case, gender and disease. The classic example of interpellation is a police officer shouting, “hey you!” at a subject. The “hey you!” is the moment of interpellation. Similarly, according to ICD logic, a subject “becomes” trans not when they determine they are, but when a doctor names them gender-incongruous by the WHO’s guidelines. The idea of gender-as-interpellation contradicts the prevailing assumption that transness is intrinsic, and reveals this as a major flaw in the ICD’s thinking.

If we are only trans when some authority hails us that way, I was not trans until age 18. At 18, I began seeing a therapist and had my gender dysphoria “diagnosed,” all with the express intention of getting a bilateral mastectomy covered by my insurance. Although many trans people are “undiagnosed” until adulthood, we are also expected to produce lengthy historical testimony proving our lifetime of transness, divulging the intricacies of dysphoria that supposedly should have afflicted us since childhood.

If we are only trans when some authority hails us that way, I was not trans until age 18.
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If one isn’t trans until marked that way, but must also have been “born that way,” transness-as-diagnosis is revealed as a paradox; it simply doesn’t make sense. And what do we make of trans men and women who choose not to receive sex-reassignment surgery; who are comfortable with and even enjoy the genitalia they were born with? What do we make of the “Borderlands” (a borrowed term from Gloria Anzaldúa’s work) between butchness and transmasculinity, as Jack Halberstam discusses in Female Masculinity? How do we come to basic conclusions about what “normal gender” is so as to define incongruity in the first place?

If we look to Judith Butler, who notes the ways in which gender is an ideal to be imitated and not a fundamental truth, it would appear that efforts to nail down a true trans diagnosis are grounded in efforts to further clarify (primarily Western) gender roles in general, by defining those who violate them. Pathological incongruity helps to mark normative gender’s outer limits.

In attempting to find an ontological difference between true trans people and mere “cisgender GNC people,” the ICD cordons off trans identity that needs to be validated by medical authorities. The layperson is presumed to be unqualified to determine who is diagnosably trans and who isn’t. It also seals up gender norms for all people; in the shadow of the clearly-set rules for gender incongruity are the un/spoken expectations around correct gender congruity.

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Furthermore, in reserving transness for only those who qualify under its medical definition, others in our community are denied the solidarity they need. Medical notions of true transness appear in trans communities themselves, leading to the harassment and vilification of those deemed “not trans enough.” To qualify as real in the first place, one must submit to the scrutinizing eyes of the medical establishment (and be able to afford being seen by a doctor in the first place), and beg to be seen.

In order to qualify for medical transition, I had to strategically choose not only the medical and psychological professionals I sought diagnosis and permission from, but also which aspects of my health history to disclose. In doing transness with a bilateral mastectomy as my goal, I monitored my behavior, clothing choices, vocal pitch, placement of my feet and hips, and disclosure not only of diagnoses but also of aspects of my personality. I wore an oversized men’s shirt and jeans from the boy’s section, hoping that their bagginess would convincingly hide the shape of my body. I spoke with my chest-voice while hiding the fact that my chest was unbound beneath my shirt. An apparent lack of chest binder or improper attire, I feared, could arouse suspicion of my realness. In order to track down the essence of physical dysphoria, guidelines such as the ICD’s push me toward sheer performance of proper gender incongruity. This is not performance in the Butlerian sense, even, but in the literal sense: I was putting on a show.

The ICD’s classificatory shift of transness is by no means worth celebrating, as that “shift” only works to conceal the workings of the medical system; to make onlookers more amenable to its decisions. A long history and present of pathology leaves all people unable to imagine gender (non-)conformity without medicine and psychiatry. This ICD update only draws slightly different distinctions between the “real” (dysphoric) and “fake” (insufficiently dysphoric) trans people. Its depathologization of the latter group will, paradoxically, do more harm to some than good: it forecloses the possibility of getting surgery and hormones for those not trans enough to diagnose.

Those who are diagnosed receive gender-affirmative care, but only at the cost of being marked as a psychological deviant. All of these situations naturalize sex even as they claim to transcend assigned gender. Compared with the real ramifications of the ICD-11, the romanticized notion of a trans-inclusive medical establishment is dangerous at worst, and incongruous at best.