36 Gscene
A Tool of Oppression
Gscene, along with Brighton & Hove Pride, commissioned a series of lectures for Pride Week 2020, with guest lecturers invited to choose their own subject. We are reproducing two of those lectures in the magazine. Last month featured Peter Tatchell, this month it’s the turn of Dr Sam Hall. Watch the lecture, unedited, with Q&As: https://bit.ly/344etna ) I never say no to a soapbox. When I was
asked to give this talk and was asked what I´d like to talk about I came up with the title immediately, which puzzled me because it wasn’t in my awareness. Where this has started for me is partly in my personal journey but also what’s been happening in the last few months, especially around Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the issues with racism becoming more obvious, even though they´ve always been there. It was thinking about the interface between the issue of race and the issue of transphobia that made me think even more about where this comes from. My personal views are mine. I´m likely to say controversial things and I´m mindful that I´m not speaking for all trans people and can’t speak for people of colour. What I mean by gender as a tool of oppression is not dissimilar to the way we see race as a tool of oppression. I used the phrase “epicentre of hate” recently referring to trans women of colour because there’s something about where gender rejection and being a person of colour intersects. It´s as though that’s the one thing that cis, white, heteronormative, privileged society cannot deal with. People can’t deal with race and separately can’t deal with trans identities, but putting the two together becomes something totally intolerable. We see all across the world that trans women of colour are probably the single most oppressed minority in terms of sexual violence, racist interactions or transphobic behaviours, economic stability, housing and family support, or friendship. All of it amalgamates in a ball of hatred that
surrounds these people we probably should be revering. Why is that? Why is there so much hatred directed towards trans people of colour and particularly trans women of colour? I was born in 1970, and at that time the word transgender didn’t exist. The word transsexual did in niche circles within medicine and it was clear at that time to anybody working in medicine that a transgender person or a transsexual person was someone who had something deeply wrong with them. Deeply pathologised people getting treatment were hidden behind closed doors and even medical professionals dealing with them were subject to vicarious transphobia. I remember speaking to a surgeon who does gender surgery for trans women about how he was treated within his own profession. Dealing with transgender people who needed his help has resulted in him becoming ostracised. When I was born trans identities weren’t something that were understood or known about. Neither was the intersection between trans identity and autism, which was something that I’ve been diagnosed with as an adult. It’s clear that I was an autistic child and found it difficult to talk to my family
The reason I wanted to look back on my childhood is because I wanted to challenge the idea of gender altogether. The word gender was used to express different reproductive types and became synonymous with sex because it wasn’t describing anything very different to what we understand in terms of biology, and therein lies one of the biggest issues. Conflation of sex with gender happens continuously in our society because to separate the two requires a lateral shift in thinking which is difficult to do unless you’re a transgender person, in which case that separation happens naturally. There is an understanding that one´s sense of oneself is different from other people’s perceived sense of yourself. How does that happen? Well it happens primarily because we set store in what lies between a child’s legs when they’re born. Why is it that we use the biology of every individual that’s born to segregate them into two separate groups? How is that even a sensible thing to be doing? I was talking to my daughter. One comment she made was: “Gender is dead. It’s something we’re getting rid of. It’s an old-fashioned way of thinking and it doesn’t belong in our society.”
“We see all across the world that trans women of colour are probably the single more oppressed minority in terms of sexual violence, racist interactions or transphobic behaviours, economic stability, housing and family support, or friendship”
EMMA DANIEL
SAM HALL
Gender:
about my sense of identity and seeing myself as something other than female. I expressed it with my actions and tantrums and refusal to wear clothes that my mother wanted me to. My relationship with my mother was damaged by the circumstances. For her it was worrying that she had a child expressing something that at first seemed harmless – “Oh she’s just a tomboy” – and rapidly progressed to something more unmanageable. That’s an issue for parents around the world still today. Children nowadays will do better, especially in more progressive countries.
