#today im reading a queer history of the united states by michael bronski

[mueritos]

I’m not going to debate with a transmedicalist (see above), but I will answer that question because Im sure a handful of folks are wondering the same. Why did I single out white people here, even though I myself have also seen BIPOC trans people project the same colonialist ideas regarding gender?

That’s because those ideas started from whiteness, and not from BIPOC communities. There are already hundreds of indigenous and BIPOC communities who celebrate and honor gender variance within their cultures. Colonialism as a power destroys anything that is outside the catholic/christian cishet white norm. These ideas of gender that I talk about within this post are all racialized gender ideas. BIPOC didnt hate their body hair, white people did, and our cultures forcibly internalize it.

If you really wanted to read into it, any book on queer indigenous culture will do, but Michael Bronski’s A Queer History of the United States makes the clear connection between gender, race, and colonialism and slavery as the reasons why we interact and project gender the way we do today. Yes, BIPOC can internalize it and cause harm by projecting it, but these ideas did not start within our cultures. They were learned and forced upon us by colonialism, slavery, and white nationalist religion. It’s up to white people to start unlearning these, because they more than anyone continue to uphold the power in those structures. BIPOC of course must unlearn, but until white folk do, it will be a viscous cycle of colonial ideas.

Some thoughts about online trends, hyper visibility of trans people, and more…

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[keyboard-cowgirl]

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