There's a transphobic sediment that, though I've definitely heard before I even came out as trans over a decade ago, getting some new usage by transphobes today that I wanna talk to other trans people about.
That sediment is things along the lines of " When you die and archeologists dig up your bones, they will know what you actually are". It's intended to cause hopelessness in a trans person, a sort of " you were born a man/woman, you will die a man/woman", make trans people hyperfocus on the parts of our bodies that we can't change like our chromosomes and our skeletal structures. It's even meant to call upon the existential fear of being misgendered in death/for eternity for trans people. However, this whole scenario, when we actually look at facts surrounding archeology and anthropology, is... Questionable at best and at worst, a complete lie made up by transphobes with zero knowledge on how these fields actually fucking work to fulfill their transphobic fantasies of destroying the historical existence of trans people and to hurt current trans folks.
Now, I won't lie and pretend that I am an archeologist or an anthropologist but I've been doing research into these topics and learning about them my whole life. Any data that I'm presenting was presented to me first by either actual degreed archeologists and anthropologists (and even sociologists and biologists) or the scientific papers and studies themselves.
Let's start off with the big one: this whole idea is deeply based in Human centralism/exceptionalism or anthropocentralism. These concepts are, when we focus on their huge similarities and not minor differences, are that humans, especially as individuals, are more important, more special and more likely to be valued over everything else on the planet. It does not surprise me that the people making this argument often belong to human exceptionalist religions like Christianity. The reason I bring this up? It is highly unlikely, in any amount of time, that you specifically will be archeologically excavated from your eventual grave. Especially if you are buried in a graveyard.
Archeologists do not unearth every single grave older than 100 yrs that they know of. Most graves are left undisturbed for many reasons. It is highly unlikely that you will be excavated at all, let alone studied, even when the headstone wears away and our cultures are long gone. You are extremely unlikely to be the Ötzi of your culture. The concept that you will be raised and studied and used to understand your forgotten culture is called osteobiography and it's more than a 1 in a million chance that will be the case. So, if you are worried about archeologists digging you up and misgendering your corpse, don't be, it's unlikely the archeologists will know you are there at all, let alone dig you up.
The second issue is, even if you do happen to be part of the osteobiography of America circa 2026 ce, the status of your bones, the circumstances of your death and the preservation of your body are another issue entirely. All these things can drastically change wether or not the archeologists can determine your birth sex. The completion of your skeleton is the biggest: of your entire skeleton is preserved, it's highly likely at 95% accuracy. However, if it is incomplete or destroyed pre or post death, only individual bones can be used to guess your sex. The pelvis is best at 90%, the skull is closer to 70-80%, long bones like arms and legs are closer to 70% or below and, if you are in or before puberty, it's extremely unlikely. I also feel the need to remind you all that, even if you are buried in a casket in a graveyard, your bones will not likely be preserved and complete. Depending on the material of the casket, the embalming process, the environment and wether or not a burial vault was used, the casket will collapse in on itself in anywhere from 10 hrs to 100 years after burial. All this ignoring the depth of the casket and the influence of bugs and animals on the body, even underground.
There also other means of identifying bodies, especially if conditions are correct, in finding DNA, even if that's significantly harder the older the body is. Which also means they could likely tell wether or not you were on synthetic hormones or has surgeries, these things would show up on both chemical tests and physical representation, even in bones in some cases.
However, I think the biggest piece in deconstructing this myth is well.... The entire field of anthropology. If you are buried in gender affirming clothing, especially if you have grave goods that make the journey, they can tell that you were transgender. This has been found 10s of times, with male sexed skeletons being found with feminine clothing and feminine grave goods and female sexed skeletons being found with masculine clothing and a masculine name. We've even found nonbinary and intersex graves. We have pre-mesopotamian transgender graves, hell we have evidence of transgender individuals dating back before humans invented farming. We have evidence of HUNTER-GATHERER trans people. Transphobes don't know this because they are often anti-science anti-intellectual. They don't know we have an entire field of study dedicated solely to human culture. Do you think archeologists and anthropologists just looked at the skeleton to determine the cause of death and it's sex and didn't consider all the food, bowls, beads and more around them? To think trans people didn't exist prior to the 00s and archeologists and anthropologists only care about a skeleton's sex and not the mountains of evidence around it... It's pure ahistorical lunacy.
What these transphobes may not realize is that scientists have been on the side of trans folks for a very long time and the only reason we don't have nearly as much evidence and recorded history as we had before is due to, well, the fucking Nazis.
In berlin, prior to hitlers regime, there was a clinic and library called Institut für Sexualwissenschaft or the institute of sexual science/sexology. It was founded in 1919 by a Jewish man named Magnus Hirschfeld and it housed the world's knowledge, and many artifacts, related to the history of sex, homosexuality/gayness/biness/lesbianism and transgenderism. It protected them as these texts and artifacts were being systematically destroyed at the time. It was considered the worlds first official transgender clinic, it provided some of the first forms of HRT and sex-change surgeries. Berlin, at the time, was a powerhouse of the gay and trans community, with a robust socialist and gay culture. Hitler, exploited them, lieing about being part of their progressive culture, then, when he took power, he shifted his values to that of nationalism to get more support from more bigoted rural German communities.
Then, when he amassed enough power, he became a dictator. You've heard of Nazi book burnings, they are infamous. Their first large scale target? Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. They burned over 25,000 books and the entire institute to the ground and recorded it, making a spectacle of destroying thousands of years of LGBT history in the span of 4 days. These infamous pictures of Hitler youth burning books can be found in thousands of American history textbooks across the United States yet none of them name the material they are burning as LGBT science and history or falsely label them as only torahs and Jewish literature. Thus, continuing the systemic erasure of LGBT history and the violence we experience.
So, when a transphobe tells you history will erase you're identity, know that they are lieing, they do not know how science functions, they do not wish to learn and that they are the same side as a Nazi. Oh, and let them know it.
Finally, lets end this post, and pride month, with a picture from a costume ball held there not long before the burning. Trans joy is eternal.
None of us are free until all of us are free.
