Egalitarian Annihilation

Marsha P. Johnson never called herself a trans woman--she called herself a drag queen, or a transvestite--yet we recognize the impact she had as part of trans history. Of trans women's history. There is so much effort to re-imagine her influence as being the one who "threw the first brick" at Stonewall and less effort to remember her as one of the co-founders of STAR, an org dedicated to the protection of sex working transvestites. (Which took influence from both queer orgs and revolutionary orgs like the Black Panthers). Whether it's a lack of terminology or her transness was not under such a narrow definition (the P. in her name stands for "pay it no mind" because when people asked if she was a man or woman she told them to mind their business, and said "I think of myself as me.")--she is part of trans history because drag history, transvestite history, female impersonator history, gnc history is trans history whether the participants would consider themselves trans women or not. It's transfeminine history.

Stormé DeLarverie, the person whose violent arrest sparked the Stonewall uprising, is described as a drag king, and as such, every publication--including queer coverage of her involvement--lump her in with cis women's history and never also transmasculine, despite the fact that while she didn't identify as anything to those who knew her, she preferred to be assumed to be a Black man. That's transmasculine history. That's lesbian history. These two histories are not mutually exclusive, yet we act like they are.

Leslie Feinberg described hirself as a trans woman--zie was trans and a woman. Queer coverage tries to decide whether that makes Feinberg a cis woman or a trans man. Neither. Leslie has influenced transmasculine history and transfeminine history, and has been part of women's history with hir feminism. Leslie was a pivotal voice in trans movements, and focused much of hir work on the overlap with "female" identity. Leslie has arguably moved the needle more for trans women than trans men due to hir focus on women, but those are not separate categories--victory for trans people of any type is a win for us all. Transmasculine history is not wholly separate from "women's" history.

Emi Koyama is responsible for popularizing the word "transfeminist" and was (and still is) a deeply influential voice in the trans and transfeminist movements. Emi is also intersex, and her identity has been used to discredit her status as a "real" trans woman. Her influence is in intersex history and trans history and women's history. These communities are not non-overlapping--Emi occupies all three!

Kate Bornstein has been one of the most influential trans theorists since the 90s, yet her work has been largely erased as time goes on. Her focus on nonbinary identity and attempts to break us out of a binary seems to be the cause of the strife. A writer, speaker, poet, whose work focuses on the overlap of many trans identities and the empowerment of the individual to find the language that suits them ought to be the single most talked-about style of transfeminism...and it isn't. Her name is fading from people's reading lists.

Riki Anne Wilchins created one of the most influential groups fighting against the exclusion of trans people from pride--and other queer events--alongside Denise Norris: Transexual Menace. She created the term genderqueer. She has written countless influential pieces about trans life and those of us who exist even in the margins of trans identity--and she wrote often about the overlap with nonconforming cis people, whether they later come out or not. She even founded GenderPAC.

Nonbinary people, intersex people, gnc people, genderweird--those who never had the language and those who didn't use it for whatever reason--are part of TRANS history. We do no one any favors to assign labels to people who didn't use them to legitimize their already-legitimate existence in our minds as part of the movement. And we do no favors to narrow our eyes and block the door until the folks who bled, cried, fought, and died for us--the trans community--call themselves what we prefer to hear.

The murder of Brandon Teena galvanized countless trans women. Trans men were some of the first to issue fundraisers for Miss Major when she first fell ill. There are so many trans people who do not see separate niche groups but recognize the collective under this big umbrella of transness--we desperately need for those groups to not be in the minority. Trans is a collective, not a club.

And what does trans men? Anyone who doesn't fit the cis narrative of gender.

Quotes from trans folks about what transgender means to them:

Hekki ALMO

the you that remains