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This piece was written for The OutCrowd, Syracuse University’s only student-run LGBTQIA+ publication, and published in collaboration with The Daily Orange.

If Judith Butler’s assertions in “Gender Trouble and Performative Acts of Gender Constitution” regarding gender’s “performative” and learned nature hold true, so must the roles that traditionally accompany them be unsubstantial, along with the unquestioned and assumed universal “normalcy” of strictly binary gender presentations and heterosexual relationships.

Currently, however, it appears that a larger number of people, especially young queer people, seem to be more accepting of, if not outright identifying with, more non-binary gender identities. In general, they’re moving away from normative concepts of gender altogether. There is a lot of heavy lifting here that can be attributed to the easier access to queer media and information and a generally more socially accepting climate.

But still, as Susan Stryker observes in “Transgender History,” the price to be paid for nonconformity is usually higher, with the tendency for identities that are not “gender normative” to be lumped into the broad category of “transgender,” further marginalizing people from mainstream society as well as the LGBTQIA+ movement.

Especially then, it can seem worthwhile to adopt a more “acceptable” and palatable presentation — to seek validation under the neoliberal status-quo that demands a certain degree of marketability, leaving less and less room for gender dissidents, hence the conversations around “passing” and the need for slogans like “Non-binary people don’t owe you androgyny!”

Cisheteronormativity, and even the dominant “homonormativity,” thrives on distinct binaries, all in return for some acceptance from the same system that sets the goalposts. Given these conditions, how do you leave enough space open for everyone?

Often in “the West,” struggles in gender and sexuality have been seen as an almost completely western invention, which is a “Eurocentric progress narrative.” In the words of David M. Halperin in “How to Do the History of Homosexuality,” such a narrative aligns modernity, Western culture, and metropolitan life against “pre-modern, non-Western, non-urban, non-white, non-bourgeois, non-industrialized, non-developed societies, which appear in this light as comparatively backward.”

Essentially, the “enlightened and developed West,” supposedly bringing the “emancipation of LGBT people,” is too often situated in contrast to the “undeveloped world,” with the idea that these people had been there living “in fear and silence” all along.

Beyond being a reductive model which erases the fact that many places around the world have and have had their own rich ideas of gender and sexuality before the advent of imperialist colonialism, which imposed its own ideals, it is important to take a broader look at the diversity of groups and movements on a global scale, taking into account their histories but also how forces like race and class play in to this very day.

The aforementioned broad category of “trans,” can include, as Leslie Feinberg points out in “Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue,” “homeless teenage drag queens” who rage “against the cops who beat them mercilessly and then demand sex” in addition to “cross-dressers who own banks and railroads, hold high-level government offices, and run television studios.” These are clearly two very different sides of a broad umbrella.

To again quote from Feinberg, maybe the project isn’t necessarily to completely dismantle and deconstruct gender, but instead open up “a world of possibilities,” one that queers the family structure, democracy and gender relations itself.

“Trans liberation has meaning for you — no matter how you define or express your sex or your gender,” she writes, “this movement will give you more room to breathe … to discover on a deeper level what it means to be yourself,” fighting for “each individual’s right to control their own body, and to explore the path of self-expression,” thereby enhancing your “freedom to discover more about yourself and your potentialities.”

When we talk about “deconstructing gender,” it is important then, in the name of liberation and solidarity, to be aware of current movements and organizations worldwide. This means not only fighting against vague notions of “homophobia” and “transphobia,” but actively blurring boundaries, subverting gender, maintaining open queer inclusion and building a global and anti-racist solidarity.

A larger move towards a radical queer sexual politics, part of which involves a true deconstruction of gender, must at its core seek to transform institutions, not be co-opted by them.

Published on October 19, 2022 at 11:13 pm