We are not just fighting for “trans rights,” we are fighting to end the gender binary.
This is not about individuals, it’s about ideologies. There are cis people who are against the gender binary and trans people who perpetuate it. “Trans rights” is about a minoritized population. Challenging the gender binary is about everyone. Trans rights is about supporting trans people, terminating the gender binary is about ending gender norms.
The gender binary is the root cause of gender-based violence. No matter how much you decorate it, it is a fundamentally violent system that cannot be redeemed. There is no feminist gender binary. Binary thinking requires hierarchy and stereotype over reality.
It’s concerning how the narrative becomes that we, the hyper-emotional non-binary “social justice warriors” are taking away all of the fun. This is the same response that cis women received from men in advocating for suffrage: people struggling for the recognition of their humanity are dismissed as selfish saboteurs because they’re inconvenient to the status quo.
We fear the loss of the gender binary because we don’t know who we are outside of it. The ways that we have been taught to parent, build family, structure our lives and communities are called into question. But that interrogation, it’s the beauty of being alive. We are dynamic, constantly self-healing. We are predisposed to transformation. Why would we want to remain stagnant when we could be soaring?
Trauma clouds us from seeing the difference between fearing “what might occur” (projection) fearing what actually is (reality). A world with no gender norms might seem scary, but look at the world we are in right now. The gender system isn’t working.
How exciting it is to create new ceremonies, new language, new ways of being. How splendid it is to actually experience people for who they are, not what they should be.
Abolition of the gender binary isn’t destruction. What is destruction is the forests in California that are burning because of a gender reveal. Get your priorities queer.
art by @gs.crafty