Periodically — like this past weekend — I will see someone share some early (read: pre-1990s/1980s maybe?) news coverage of a trans person (and probably a trans woman) noting with awe that — contrary to the common perception that in the bad and terrible past, trans people were automatically treated with disgust — the coverage of, say, Christine Jorgensen is actually relatively positive.
Every time I see this, I just want to be all “well, yes, with an asterisk.” Because I think one thing that is easy to miss is that the reason why Jorgensen and a handful of her peers were given a friendly reception in the media was because they were seen as aberrations.
One “GI turned bikini babe” (or however the headlines categorized Jorgensen) is a novelty, a demonstration of the wonders of science that can upend everything we think we know about the immutable gender binary. Millions of trans people — and not just those who follow the Jorgensen trajectory, but trans men and non-binary people and even trans women who aren’t interested in conforming to heteronormative hyperfemininity — is a different matter entirely. A single Christine Jorgensen can be the exception that proves the rule. A critical mass of diverse trans people ask us to throw the rulebook out entirely. That is what causes the most violent backlash, I think: not the individual who wants to live their own life how they see fit, but the organized group of people who challenge the fragile foundation upon which society is built.
I have been thinking quite a bit about this, despite the fact that I am tragically cis*, in part because, I mean, I care a lot about the trans people in my life, but also in part because there are such obvious parallels to me between the bi experience and the trans experience**, between the rationale for being transphobic and the rationale for being biphobic.
To wit: when I was coming of age in the 1990s — a period in between the “gee whiz!” response to Christine Jorgensen and the all out war against trans kids that we see now — it was very, very common for afternoon talk shows to have segments where a group of drag queens (who, at the time, were often treated as stand ins for trans women for reasons that would probably require an entire book to discuss) and cis women would be brought on stage, with the studio audience and the audience at home invited to pore over their features and determine who were the “real” women.
Even trans positive media — I’m thinking here of things like Tales of the City, To Wong Foo, and the books of Francesca Lia Block — was still obsessed with this party trick. I cannot overstate how frequently a book that would assure me that trans women were beautiful and trans women were women would immediately follow that sentiment up with instructions on how to clock them. I find it really distressing that this was burned into my brain at a formative age; I cannot imagine how much worse that content must of been for young trans femmes.
But I digress. Because the reason why I bring up this gross 1990s transphobia is not just to dissuade you from getting nostalgic for that shitty era (although seriously, please do not), but also to point out that the underlying mindset behind all this stuff was that trans people are interlopers who must be identified. I have to assume that this was partly because a slowly rising rate of people pursuing gender confirmation surgery had raised people’s awareness that trans people and specifically trans women might be among them; to my earlier point, the minute it became more obvious that Christine Jorgensen might be, not a novelty, but the tip of a gender fucking iceberg, the cultural perception of trans people (and again, mostly trans women, trans men were largely invisible) took on a darker cast: trans people as fetish object, trans people as lurking threat.
And while I cannot think of a similar 1990s talk show corollary with bisexual people (although there might have been one, especially with all the “is my boyfriend gay” type panic that occurred during that era) this idea of being an interloper who must be identified — that, I have to say, is incredibly familiar to me. How often have I — have you — felt like a pretender within a straight space, going through the motions of heterosexuality and hoping I won’t be found out. How often have I felt the need to out myself within a queer space, not simply because I want to be seen and understood and respected as bi, but because I’m terrified that not acknowledging it will lead to accusations of infiltration and deceit?
And then, of course, there is the specter of contagion. In this violently transphobic climate, you don’t have to think too hard to find an example of trans people being talked about, not as people, but as a viral threat (literally the basis of the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria myth). Bisexuality, too, is perceived to be catching — if you have the stomach for it, look up some of the responses to surveys that show that 30% of Gen Z (or something like that) now identifies as bisexual. The parallels to the response to rising rates of openly trans youth… well they’re definitely present.
(I can’t read this article because it would require subscribing to Evie Magazine — a right wing propaganda rag dressed up as a lady mag — but “Porn Turned Me Bisexual And Almost Ruined My Life” sure sounds like a familiar panic arc!)
Anyway. I think these things are connected: bi and trans people (and bi trans people) must be rooted out because we are perceived as a contagion. Biphobia and transphobia are not simply about disgust with the other — they are about a fear of what the “other” might say about the self. If you can go from burly hypermasculine athlete to femme fatale, what does that say about the stability of my own gender? If I can date men and then date women and non-binary people and then date men and then date women, what does that say about the stability of your attractions?
There’s an element of this in homophobia as well, to be sure — the fear that a gay person might “turn you gay” — but I think the fluidity inherent in both trans and bi identities makes it even more threatening. It is notable, for instance, that queer biphobia often contains a note of “if bi people exist then I might be forced to have straight sex” — this idea that fluidity is, you know, catching; that it cannot be contained within a single self but inherently must be infectious, exists even among people who should really know better.
Which, I think, connects to the original point: trans people were tolerated when they could be seen as a handful of outliers who were “born into the wrong body” and needed medical intervention to right a genetic quirk. Trans people were demonized when they became evidence that the gender binary is a farce, that it need not be adhered to, that the gender you were assigned at birth need not be the one you subscribe to your whole life, for whatever reason that might be. The “threat” of the trans person, of the bi person, is not about an individual’s choices and how they choose to live their own lives.
The threat that lurks within us — the gender fuckers, the sexually fluid — is what we say about the choices that others could be making, but choose not to.
* PITCH: An all queer Tragically Hip cover band called The Tragically Cis
** Just a reminder that trans people are more likely than cis people to ID as bi, and thus “the trans experience” and “the bi experience” are not separate things
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