Gender: 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 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.

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

My heart leapt. I understand what she’s articulating, but I also had a crushing moment where I thought: “Well why have I done this?” Her response was: “Perhaps it was because you weren’t allowed to.” I find that challenging because I would like to think I´m not influenced by societal pressures, that I´m not doing something as an adult, transitioning, simply because I wasn’t allowed to as a child, but I feel duty bound to inspect my own thoughts and feelings around that because what I see around me are young people who reject gender altogether. Young people who just can’t see what the issue is. They can’t see that gender exists, and yet have to live in this binary which continues to divide them from the moment they’re born and into the adult world.

Even if you aspire to bring children up in a gender-free world, it´s virtually impossible to do it. We do things that are deeply ingrained and don’t realise we’re doing them. If you were to take a small girl to the park you might comment on the flowers in the park and say “Aren’t they pretty?”. If that child is a boy, the chances of you saying “Look at the flowers, aren’t they pretty?” are slim. You’re more likely to say “What are those colours?” Or “shall we count them?”. At the earliest stages of life we start to shape the minds of children in two different directions.

As a parent I can see this happening with the difference between my son and my daughters. My son finds it more difficult to be emotionally articulate. I can only conclude that the change in him happens because of societal influence.

He doesn’t talk to his peers in the same way that my daughters talk to their peers. The pressure to bottle up emotions in circles of young boys is completely different to young girls. We look at adult men and women and say women are more emotionally articulate. We make assumptions about these being innate characteristics, but there’s no evidence to suggest that.

There are people who are bringing a child up in a gender-neutral environment. This is difficult. You might be able to achieve it at home, but once that child goes to school they’ll be singled out – if Fred picks up a tutu when he gets into his nursery room he’s going to be known as either an effeminate boy, will be bullied or somebody might suggest that he’s trans. Who knows?

Fred picking up a tutu in the nursery is still a source of comment even if he’s been wearing a tutu at home for years. We’re attached at many levels, and this includes trans people like myself for whom a binary transition was the only logical thing to do when I became deeply uncomfortable with being perceived as female.

My psychotherapist at the time said to me: “You could go and live in Cornwall and occupy that third space that you talk about, but the reality of your life is your career as a doctor, your family history, your role as a parent. Do you really have a choice other than to live your life as male if female isn’t comfortable?”

I did have a choice, and I´m ashamed to say that my binary thinking is so entrenched that I couldn’t choose to identify as non-binary. I still aspire to it, but when I woke from my last surgery I had an overwhelming sense of having moved into a different realm.

I felt as though I´d been cured of something, and I had. I´d been cured of my gender dysphoria, but it also meant that I´d been cured of gender altogether. I felt strongly that I could no longer see it to exist in the world today. I´m more comfortable existing and being seen as a male because it carries privilege with it and gives me platforms and people listen, but I resent the fact that that happens, because it shows up the inequalities that we’re still struggling with.

Young people today are increasingly identifying as trans, in other words rejection of gender binary, and as non-binary, which I see as something beyond rather than a third option. Young people today inspire me because they just cannot see a future with gender oppression in it. They liken gender oppression to colonialisation.

The eradication of queer people across the planet happened at the hands of colonisers in the same way that the eradication of people of colour happened at the hands of colonisers.

Issues with gender are wrapped up with issues with race, capitalism, misogyny and its evil twin, misandry. All are a direct result of gender oppression. You can’t treat half of the human race as less than the other half, but nor can you fight for equality by saying there are two halves and they need to be treated equally. The only way to achieve true equality is to educate people to understand there isn’t a difference. The diversity of the human race stretches across the gender divide and makes a mockery of it.

I see the way forward is to educate people in understanding the battle that we’re fighting.

Peter Tatchell alluded to it in his lecture. Going beyond equal rights to transformation of the way we live, and I would agree with what he’s saying because I see that we have to deconstruct the cis-white heteronormative goal that everyone is taught to aspire to because that’s the right way to live. It’s not, it’s just a way to live but it’s also an extremely oppressive way to live.

I mentioned BLM and Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Pride. They are all movements for not just equality but for change, and it’s when they start to group together that we really see a difference. It was very interesting to know that XR have had criticism around their dealings with people of colour, making it difficult for black people to protest with them because the risk of arrest is high.

XR took it upon themselves to examine how they were operating and reach out to do things that were more inclusive. The result is that the last BLM march here in Brighton was in partnership with XR and it felt powerful that climate change and anti-racism were close, that they could synergistically march in protest. I was really pleased to see at the same time XR putting out a trans-inclusive statement addressing the JK Rowling furore.

It confirmed for me that these things belong together and the next step for us in LGB circles is to step up to the plate in the fight for trans rights.

We have amazing allies in the LGB community behind us and as trans people our voices are important because we represent historical oppression finding its way back to the surface.

Trans people of colour, in the words of Ellis Joel: “Revolutionaries who have drunk revolutionary milk from revolutionary breasts, people who have survived the oppression, colonisation and people who’ve been beaten into submission rising up generations later to claim a space and to claim this time.”

To see LGBT Pride, BLM and XR come together to push for change is something that would be amazing and we could see it in our lifetimes.

Watch the lecture, unedited, with Q&As here: https://bit.ly/344etna

Dr Sam Hall is a trustee of the Clare Project, which offers support for the TNBI community and runs a weekly drop-in: www.clareproject.org.uk