Decolonize Your Mind: Transphobia Is Colonial AF
For most precontact cultures in the Americas, our trans relatives were celebrated.
On this Transgender Day of Visibility, it's important to know that trans people have been part of humanity for as long as humanity has existed.
Trans people were documented as vibrant, respected parts of cultures around the world until oppressive religions—often spread by invading colonizers and settlers—stole the cultural roles trans people once held.
Transphobia In The USA Is Colonial Violence
Transphobic bigots love to spout rhetoric about “traditional family values.” They claim only cisgender heteronormativity is compatible with a healthy, happy family.
But in North America, the traditions they're talking about are the culture of the repressed, bigoted colonizer.
It's the tradition of the intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally stunted oppressors who converted Indigenous peoples to Christianity at the point of a sword or the end of a gun.
But the majority of North American Indigenous cultures didn't even have a gender binary.
A gender spectrum and fluidity was the norm.
In my own cultures—maternal and paternal—we recognized 5 genders, including a fluid gender.
Trans Day of Visibility
Familiarity can turn into understanding and grow into acceptance among people open to looking beyond their own experiences and perspectives.
I don't know what it's like to be anything other than a cisgender, heterosexual woman. But my gender and sexual identity shouldn't invalidate anyone else's.
My limited understanding of what other identities feel like doesn't negate the existence of them.
Nonbinary people, asexual people, transgender people, gender fluid people are not a new fad or modern invention.
They've existed far longer than the hatred being pushed upon them by the ignorant and uninspired.
And not just in the Americas.
But if you call my ancestral homelands your home, then please decolonize your mind.
💛🤍🖤❤️
I find the indigenous two-spirit akin to (but not exactly like) the 6-8 genders in the Jewish Talmud. Granted, at the time they were about intersex people rather than trans people, and they were on a two-gender axis (Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic only have two genders, unfortunately), but even in antiquity we Jews didn't just see two genders. I would describe myself as a "Saris Adam", or "someone who was identified male at birth but who later gains female characteristics through human intervention". At the time of the Talmud's writing, it meant a Eunuch, but due to advances in medicine, I interpret it to include Jewish trans women like myself. You can read this for more information: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-eight-genders-in-the-talmud/
Thank you for sharing your history lesson with us! You inspire me to be a better person ❤️