I’ve noticed this trend on tumblr where people seem to think that transmedicalism is just some generic term that means medical transition is the ‘best’ form of transition. When in fact, transmedicalism is an entire ‘theory’ of transsexuality - one that frames transsexualism as a sexual disorder, ‘curable’ only through medical and psychiatric intervention by experts who ‘know better.’ It comes out of a cissexist ideology that preserves the sanctity of cissexualism by relegating transsexuality to the realm of disease and perversion. It positions transsexuality as an aberration, something to be cured, an exception that proves the rule of nature.
The former definition is de-politicised and ahistorical, and I think when you adopt that former definition, you quickly run into conclusions about how asserting the importance of medical transition is itself normative - that to resist transmedicalism means to instead privilege a generalised fluid ‘queerness’ that eschews more durable and lasting forms of transition (HRT, surgery, name/gender marker changes) in favour of something that is more ‘radical’ than transsexuality. Because after all, isn’t the goal of medical transition to just look like a cis person? You see this line of thinking in the invocation of the “binary trans person” - an assimilationist transgender subject. The act of remaking one’s entire body and administrative relationship to the state is positioned as normative in comparison to the act of ‘individual’ (ie, non-state, non-administrative, non-medical) self-identification and expression.
This is a massive betrayal of our trans siblings, of course, not least of all because it deliberately ignores the coordinated efforts of all levels of state governments, the media, medical and psychiatric institutions, religious organisations, and civil society broadly to eliminate trans people from the world. A trans person who is denied HRT and gender marker changes is not more radical for being forced into that position, nor is the assertion that they should have access to those things somehow cisnormative. If it was so normative, they’d give us those things in a heartbeat! Shouldn’t it preserve the cissexual order by giving HRT to minors so they don’t have to go through the wrong puberty and look as much like cis people as possible? But somehow our enemies have come to the opposite conclusion - that we are freaks, degenerates, perverts and predators who want to mutilate ourselves and every child on planet earth. To change one’s sex is to thwart the will of god and destroy meaning itself.
I think this mode of thinking valorises transgender suffering as noble and radical, that being closeted, being denied care, or having to hide one’s transness in the many spheres of our lives (such as work, family, social activities, dating, etc) is itself a radical act. And I think it sucks real bad! It patronises our trans siblings who suffer under oppressive restrictions/bans by telling them they’re radical for not transitioning ‘the normative way,’ and it condescends to our trans siblings who assert their humanity through hormones, surgery, and name and sex marker changes by telling them they’re just trying to emulate cis people.
And if I can be particularly confrontational for a moment, I think some queer people believe trans people are monsters for doing this to ourselves, that we really are mutilating our bodies to “look like” cis people, that the act of bodily and administrative transformation is gross and weird. To access state or private health care (or worse, to use DIY hormones), to change our administrative being, is inherently assimilationist. Exercising a form of sovereignty by (to paraphrase Stryker & Sullivan) petitioning the king to correct the record is just bowing to the king himself.
Which to me speaks to a deeply nihilistic worldview where we’ve somehow reached the end of history with the human body. Remaking oneself in one’s own image is just rearranging the pieces on the board, a shuffling of what’s already there. Frankenstein’s monster isn’t so special after all - just a freak built out of pre-fabricated limbs, exactly equal to the sum of its parts. The act of bodily and administrative remaking is just emulation, not autonomy, not liberty, and certainly not creation. But the queer? The queer makes do with what they were given and finds ways to subvert cis-heterosexuality by the radical act of refusing to alter oneself and instead ‘queering’ the body they were ‘born with.’ This is in fact a much nobler, more radical, more revolutionary act - the act of moving forward by standing still. I see the claim that our transsexualism is normative and counter with the exact same claim about our queer cousins. I wonder if they’ll give us the benefit of the doubt when hearing their own words repeated back to them
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