would you be willing to elaborate on the (non) dichotomy between cis and trans (or share folks who influenced your thinking)? i feel very neither but i'm just getting over gender shame so am only now taking a critical look at gender
well… in this case, my very very first blog post ever was about how gender identities like mine aren’t necessarily cis or trans bc indigenous genders exist outside of this….
both trans and cis have a specific history and context and while i do often use this for the sake of coherency, it doesn’t mean that i think they adequately describe the totality of gender.
in terms of the specific analytic lens, i tend to prefer the tetralemma, which i leaned via studying Nagarjuna. basically, instead of presenting us with a more white classical dilemma (ie, that people must be cis or trans, but not both), it presents us with four options:
in classical white logic, the latter two positions are incoherent bc of the so-called laws of logic (specifically the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle, respectively).
now, white ppl – in gender theory – will assert that only the first two positions are possible (or coherent/valid), but since i’m not analysing this within a white system of logic, i don’t think we have to worry about that.
specifically, i think that the last two positions are interesting areas for poc, since an argument could be made that this is where a lot of indigenous genders exist (or could potentially exist).
however, the danger of exploring the possibilities opened up by an analytic approach like this is when i, for example, see some poc who do not with to be called ‘cis’ and aren’t ‘trans’ but also aren’t part of the people who experience transmisogyny, which tends to make it look like they are – by disavowing cis identification – attempting to dodge accountability.
this is why, by and large, i won’t discuss this sort of thing with most ppl and in most contexts.
i have ideas that i’ve articulated (elsewhere) that partially explore how we can understand oppression within an analytic that isn’t binary… but i guess i haven’t thought much about this recently and maybe i could because obviously this complicates how we understand gender-based oppression, since we can’t quite articulate how power works in this analysis, beyond knowing that cis is the oppressor class.
as for influences… i honestly don’t have any. as noted… my very first blog post ever was about this. this is really one of the ideas i came up with independently (not going to say i’m the only person who thought of this, just that my articulation was really something that came from within and from trying to understand how my experiences as a bakla fit into the white gender narrative, so i can’t really link you to any resources)
i’ve had discussions with various people about the classes of ‘cis and trans’ and ‘neither’, but i can’t really link you to anything. the genderescent tumblr has some of these convos archived.
