Transgender Memories of Anarcho Queerdom — One Trans Man’s Adventures Beyond the Binary and Into Queer Practice
I was first introduced to queer politics in 2004 when a friend suggested I attend Queeruption, a week long DIY anarcho-queer punk festival hosted in a massive squat that attracted hundreds of people from around the world. This one was in Amsterdam, though they have been hosted in different countries. At this point I was 19, I had been taking testosterone for a few months and was just about to start a degree in Cardiff. Before this the trans groups I’d been a part of were very transmedicalist, and very focused on the idea that there was a specific way to be trans (there was nothing approaching the idea of non-binary) and the only gay spaces I’d been in were hyper-commercial gay bars.
Going to Queeruption exploded my tiny queer brain For the first time I met people who’s gender was different from what they had been assigned at birth, but who had no desire to medically transition. It was the first time I’d encountered the idea that gender and sex can be seen and experienced separately, and that transitioning was about more than attempting to replicate the body and life of a “real” man/woman.
The term “non binary” wasn’t really around back then (at least in the communities I was involved with), but to call yourself “queer” was kind of inherently non binary, because it represented a rejection of binary structures. It was also viewed as something you *did* rather than something you inherently *are*, with a focus on gender and sexual liberation through the breaking down of oppressive boundaries/binaries rather than working out what your “true gender/sexuality” is. The term “genderqueer” was used a lot to describe someone who was queer specifically in relation to gender, which had similarities to the modern usage of non binary (and is a word I still like and identify with). It was all very much influenced by academic queer theory, with a lot of the workshops being discussions influenced by the likes of Judith Butler, so I was able to pick up a lot of the core ideas up without reading any of the texts at the time (and use heteronormativity in a sentence). It was also very much influenced by anarchist and anti-capitalist politics.
I think this anarcho-queer way of thinking about sexuality, sex and gender has a lot to offer that has been left behind, though it was by no means perfect and there’s some stuff that definitely should be. A big one is how people often took their rejections of transmedicalism too far the other way and became antimedicalist, saying that medically transitioning was conforming to oppressive binary structures that we should be working to dismantle, and seemingly completely throwing out ideas of the importance of bodily autonomy. The awareness of cultural appropriation and how even the well-meaning can perpetuate racist structures has expanded since then as well, which is fantastic as this was always a bit of a blind spot for these communities. I also think it’s great that we now have the language of non binary in relation to gender, though I feel that the way it’s talked about is sometimes a bit rigid and — well — binary.
I sometimes feel like the sentiment “trans women are women, trans men are men, non binary people are non binary” is used to mean not that people are what they say they are, which was the original intent, but that those are distinct, fixed, natural categories, without flexibility between them. For example I was recently told by a young trans man that I can’t be a “real trans man” because my bio says I’m ok with they pronouns and those are “only for non binary people”. I tried to explain that as “they” is gender neutral it can be used by anyone who’s comfortable with it, and that I wanted to break down the idea that we should announce a person’s gender every time we mention them, but they still struggled to understand.
I’ve also seen people say afab lesbians shouldn’t use he or they pronouns with similar arguments (as if gay men haven’t been using she pronouns and butch lesbians he for over a century), and people insisting that you can’t be both non binary and a woman/man, as if “man” and “woman” can only ever be viewed in binary opposition to each other and non binary is a kind of third gender.
One result I’ve seen of this rigidity of identity is people getting very stressed out and anxious because they can’t work out precisely which identity describes them most, or over whether they’re “really” non binary or a man/woman, as if by not being able to define it they can’t truly know themselves or communicate who they are to others. I’ve certainly had this experience when I was younger, especially in terms of not knowing whether certain feelings or desires are “real” or caused by the experience of being trans or other past traumas. I’m not saying these people are bad for wanting to find the words that perfectly describes how they feel, and it can definitely be liberating to find language that describes your feelings, but I also found a great liberation in just saying “fuck it” and embracing the ambiguity in a way that I don’t see being talked about so much these days. Like everything else, it’s not binary!
While there has been improvements in the language and approaches we have around gender, I do also feel like there is something that’s been lost from the approach that knocked me over the head as a baby queer, and I feel really grateful that my formative experience of gender was that it’s something to break apart and play with, not something to “discover” then rigidly hold on to.
