The right to be nasty
Respectability politics and trans activism have a long confrontational history which is playing out across social media in attempts to explain and obfuscate the incoming Trump administration. On the one hand “transsexual” moderates are bemoaning the “transgenders” who make medicalised trans people look bad, while on the other are a broad range of non-cis people simply wanting the right to exist as themselves in the world. It is as much a matter of personal philosophies and politics as it is about identity, at its heart the right to be nasty, non-normative, in the world.
Sarah McBride’s decision to uphold the anti-trans rhetoric is a practical example of the compromises many trans folk face in the world, forced to yield to people who fail to accept that sex and gender are always framed from a dominant position. Trans people have always faced hostility because their identities break the inherent power of sex and gender in society. To be trans has always held a nasty connotation, as if you can smash aside the rigid gender roles ascribed to you from birth you call into question the very nature of performative gender roles to begin with. The queering of sex breaks apart every legal and societal assumption of women’s bodies, especially when men who have that power willingly give it up to live as their authentic selves. The right to be nasty comes with the right to give up the inherent power your assigned sex at…
