Anyone who’s been paying attention to queer politics will have noticed that activist language never stands still but constantly marches Leftward.
Words like “homosexuality” and “gay” have either been written out of the lexicon or redefined in ways that would be unrecognisable to gay activists from the last century. The word “queer” itself has been reclaimed from its origins as a slur to a badge of defiance.
But whatever stage of linguistic purification we’re in, it seems intuitive that this is the final phase, the end of history, and the terminology we cherish today represents the apotheosis of kindness, empathy, compassion and received wisdom.
So it may seem strange that a hallowed word like “transgender” may be showing early signs of turning musty and stale, a liberatory locution morphing into its oppressive opposite, not unlike its discredited predecessor, “transsexual.”
One early sign of such a shift is an article this week in the prestigious journal Nature, which states that the flourishing of gender identities is outpacing the binary limitations of transgender and cisgender. The article provides examples of post-modern individuals who were never “assigned a sex” at birth by their parents, so that they never transitioned to their true authentic self. Such queer individuals “find themselves unmoored from binary terms,” like cis or trans.
And not having the precise label for such individuals means their “experiences will be erased,” a form of linguistic gendercide. “Recognizing gender modalities beyond cis and trans is a matter of justice,” the trio of authors state in Nature. Those terms “can be seen as inaccurate or marginalizing.”
The underlying idea is that the term “transgender” is loaded with a host of assumptions. A transgender person may be transgender from birth, so when they adopt any nonbinary gender identity, they are not actually transitioning from cisgender but rather affirming the only gender they have ever known.
It seems like only yesterday that those terms were the cutting edge of wokeness, but it turns out that “not everyone is cis or trans,” the article states.
The reality is that the word “transgender” has already undergone several modifications. Some well-intentioned people still think that being trans has something to do with gender dysphoria, or being born in the wrong body, but such notions are so 18 months ago. A reliable guide for how the word should be used today can be found in the advocacy group’s Human Rights Campaign glossary, which clearly states that the word refers to “people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth.” It just means you don’t fit the cultural stereotype.
It’s hard to think of a realm other than social justice activism where vocabulary is constantly undergoing a makeover. The issue here is not that language gradually changes and evolves, but that the changes are imposed from the top by ideological gatekeepers and enforced by diktat.
It’s no accident that the opening chapter of Ibram X. Kendi’s 2019 manifesto, “How To Be An Antiracist,” is titled “Definitions,” and devotes 10 pages to redefining existing terms to advance Kendi’s ideological prerogatives. “Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.” Kendi’s definition puts a sobering twist on the local speed limits in Iceland.
The ever-expanding lexicon of social justice words that have been redefined, expanded or inverted has been widely remarked upon, so that sometimes seems as though social justice activism is a branch of lexicography. Let a few examples suffice: harm (mild discomfort), trauma (moderate discomfort), white supremacy (Western, European, American), racism (indifferent to activism and allyship), violence (speech), and, most notably: woman (?).
Thus language is not a fixed system to which we submit, but a malleable tool that we can shape to dismantle the Cistem and create a perfect world with a precise term for every curated, bespoke gender identity.