I’ve had it.
I’ve had it with cisgender and transgender folks who keep saying ‘gender is over.’
Don’t get me wrong. I’m got nothing against transsexuals, or drag queens (I am one!), or drag kings, and certainly I’ve got nothing against transgender folks who personally reject the gender binary. I only object to those who wish to eradicate the gender binary completely, for everyone.
Because has it every occurred to anyone that if gender is over, then ‘gay and lesbian’ is over too?
In a recent article in the Globe and Mail a Queens University professor named Airton (who uses the pronoun ‘they’) says “Love is love -- this is more of a young person’s discourse than -- I can choose to marry a man if I’m a man.”
I find this rhetoric hateful and homophobic.
The problem with getting rid of gender is that if there is no more gender then there are no more homosexuals or lesbians (duh!). Gays and lesbians are same sex people. We love people of the same gender; that is how we define ourselves. If gender is over, than we can no longer love someone of the same gender. No longer will we be able to celebrate ‘man on man’ and ‘woman on woman’ love and sex.
Simple, isn’t it?
On top of these objections -- getting rid of gender simply won’t work, and is not ultimately desirable.
People are mostly born with either penises or vaginas. They naturally tend to think in terms of male and female. Penises and vaginas, masculinity and femininity -- all that stuff is sexy -- the only problem comes (as Judith Butler tells us) when you think that only men born with penises can be masculine, and only women born with vaginas can be feminine. So sure -- rip the categories of male and female apart, criticize them, deconstruct them, reapply them in radical ways, challenge them -- but you cannot and should not do away with them.
I don’t blame the trans theorists who want to rid of gender. (I used to know Kate Bornstein and she is a lovely, lovely person). I doubt there is conscious agenda on the part of trans theorists to erase ‘gay and lesbian,’ (at least I hope not) but it is nevertheless the logical outcome of those who propose there be no gender for anyone, anymore.
In fact it is my suspicion that trans theorists are merely being naive, idealistic and aspirational (all, potentially good things!). But remember our shared queer history: early gay and lesbian theorists believed that the goal of gay liberation was to destroy all sexuality categories. But it is now nearly fifty years later and those labels have not disappeared.
‘No gender’ trans theory may be well intentioned -- but it is an undesirable goal that will never work.
And I have to say it.
Whatever their intentions, those who call for ‘the end of gender for all’ are being homophobic.
Period.
