A philosophical anti-essentialism is so central to how I understand myself in the world as a trans person that it’s mind-boggling to see other trans folks who aren’t truscum/transmed/whatever who still hold onto essentialist ideas about gender & identity.
So here’s the basics:
1. Existentialism. There is no essence, or at least, essence does not, as the classical philosophers held, precede existence. This means that things exist before ideas about them or their purpose exist (what Plato calls “forms”). We find ourselves in a certain set of conditions and we ascribe meaning to those circumstances, not the other way around.
2. Gender is Not Real. Gender exists in our world sort of the way that the forms existed for platonic philosophers: as abstractions that are unattainable yet supposedly desirable. No one can fully conform to everyone’s expectations of what it means to be a man or a woman, and no one can really claim authority on knowing what those categories entail. Even radfems who fall back on “biology” (as a defense of what is basically gender, even though they wouldn’t call it that) don’t really have definitive answers when it comes to, say, intersex people.
3. Gender is a System of Control. If gender can never be fully realized, why do people try to conform to it? The answer is that gender is a method of imposing behavioral norms on people based on the role power structures want them to play in things like reproduction and the institution of family. Presenting people with established roles, appearances, and activities based on notions of gender (and punishing them for nonconformity to these things) makes them easier to control.
4. Gender is Enforced both Externally and Internally. The enforcement of near-ubiquitous systems like this will involve just about every aspect of society. Gender norms are imposed by authority figures, of course, but also by peers and even by the individual upon themself. We grow up in a gendered society, and in order to escape the punishment not only dished out for deviancy, but for the perceived deviancy of anyone who questions this system, we learn to internalize gender, both conforming to it and adopting its logic. We police ourselves, even internally, in how we talk, look, act, and think.
5. Being Trans is Not a Discovery. Since there is no essence and gender is just a set of imposed ideas, being trans is not discovering the essence of a different gender within yourself. This social system of gender is hostile to the variety of human experiences because it imposes monolithic ideas about behavior and appearance upon people. Because of this, many (if not all) people will have hostile encounters with gender throughout their lives. Transness is a particular response to these encounters: a way of taking control of your body and your perceptions of it.
6. “Dysphoria” is Not an Internal Issue. Gender, among many social systems, forces us to understand our bodies as symbols of a deeper, essential identity. What psychiatric professionals call dysphoria is a feeling of discontinuity between what the body symbolizes and what we would like it to symbolize. Part of this, of course, is the way that we are perceived by others, behaviorally and in appearance. But it also extends to the way that we perceive our own bodies and even believe (whether consciously or not) our essence to be. From a young age in a world of essentialism, we conceive of essence (with regards to gender) as related to many things: at the most shallow level, appearance and voice, but at a deeper level, behavior, social roles, and “biological factors” like hormones can become divining rods for essence. Transmeds engage in this kind of practice all the time, establishing standards by which they judge the essential transness of a person. This is just a microcosm of a larger tendency that dominates a cis-normative society.
7. Complete Identity Autonomy. So rather than try and judge whether a person (yourself or someone else) really is trans, how do we respond to these issues? Understanding that identities are not a result of essences but rather socially manufactured categories, how do we navigate a society built upon identity? The answer is to demand complete control, wresting your autonomy back from everyone who will try and police you, including yourself. Foucault says (and I’m paraphrasing) that identity can be a sort of game we play, but that if we try to place bounds around it, it becomes a prison again. As trans people, I think it should be easy enough to see the ways that social demands to conform keep us imprisoned. But I think, for many people, the trans experience (if you’ll pardon me talking about it as though it were one monolithic thing) lends itself to new forms of expression, and an understanding that even as we navigate these social categories, the categories themselves and the systems that produce them are really just violent bullshit.
