That’s a labelling I’ve been seeing an awful lot lately: “trans and genderqueer” – “genderqueer and trans”. Not as a description of a person – but as a way of including two different groups.
Certainly, some genderqueer people don’t feel themselves to be trans – this isn’t to suggest that that doesn’t hold true.
But, in that desire to simplify and dichotomize that we apparently can’t resist, it seems increasingly common to encounter the idea that genderqueer people cannot also be transgender, or transsexual, or have a trans history, or any other unique engagement with the trans umbrella. Not just online – more and more frequently I’m meeting people on the queer scene who suppose that my being genderqueer is the ‘limit’ on my transness.
As though there’s a slider, with ‘transsexual’ on one end and ‘genderqueer’ on the other, and the ‘more trans’ you are, the further along the spectrum you go.
As though the totality of our lives only gets one word.
As if that word itself cannot contain multitudes.
I see that the use of the phrase ‘trans and genderqueer’ often comes from a place of inclusion, of wanting not to offend and erase.
But this is a reminder – don’t, by including that ‘and’ forget that many of us are the ‘and’.
Filed under: trans
