To be visible or not – that is the question for trans persons and communities

Transgender Day of Visibility is not globally celebrated on 31 March, even in the United States, which was once seen by many people as a defender of gender justice.

Uplifting trans visibility, advocating for trans justice, and celebrating trans joy is the clarion call of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

The HRC recognises that there are ...

“... over 3.3 million trans, non-binary and gender-expansive youth (age 13+) and adults across the United States”.

This community’s fluid sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC, as defined by the 2007 Yogyakarta Principles and YP+10, in its 10-year review) intersect with other identity markers – for example, class, ethnicity, cultural background, migrant status, dis/abilities, and faith traditions.

These are intersectional differences that matter.

But the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) clarion call runs counter to US President Donald Trump’s edict that “there are only two genders: male and female”, pronounced in his inauguration address on 20 January.

Trans visibility in the United States in this tumultuous Trumpian era cannot thus be taken for granted.

The threat of invisibility

“This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. We will forge a society that is colour-blind and merit-based. As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.” – US President Donald Trump

Making America Great Again (MAGA), President Trump’s rallying call, is for only two genders – “women [who] are biologically female, and men [who] are biologically male”, and “at conception”, as decreed in the quote above.

Trump reverts to the "logic" of sex as biologically determined and, therefore, intractable. In doing so, he hails himself as the protector of women, principally from trans women who intrude in “single-sex spaces”, including shelters for domestic violence survivors.

Women’s bodies, yet again, become a battleground to counterattack what he denounces as “transgender lunacy”.

MAGA is not only for two genders

MAGA is also only for Americans of a particular race, the kind who do not need Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies and practices forged by the previous Biden and Obama administrations “into every aspect of public and private life”.

In the name of meritocracy, Trump purports to reverse “reverse discrimination”, which some critics (of DEI) equate DEI to be. But he is paradoxically socially engineering American citizens by flattening differences that matter (among others) – race and gender.

It’s a strategy to make invisible gender and race otherness.

Claiming visibility

Cisgender rather than transgender and whiteness as the unified American subject is thus conjured. Alison Bailey terms this as a “fiction of unity”.

The complex heterogeneity of the American subject is reducible to only “two genders” and the singularity of a desired race and sexuality.

Bailey’s complementary thesis of “strategic ignorance” is resounding as a tool of resistance by those who find themselves on the underside of the oppressed.

Where ignorance of the dominant majority leads to the erasure and marginalisation of the dominated minorities, the latter can, in some instances, optimise such erasure and marginalisation for their benefit and gain.

The “Balik ke pangkal jalan” campaign by the Justice for Sisters is illustrative.

The Justice for Sisters “advocates for the full realisation of human rights for LGBTIQ+ and gender-diverse people in Malaysia”.

The “Balik ke pangkal jalan” campaign is a stance that is commonly weaponised against the LGBTIQ and gender-diverse people to compel them to return to the “right” path.

The Malaysian subject, like the American subject, is also cloaked within a “fiction of unity” that insists that there are no LGBTIQ and gender-diverse people in Malaysia.

Justice for Sisters has reclaimed and redefined the “right path” to mean the “path of acceptance and inclusion”.

This entails making visible conversion practices and increased criminalisation of trans men and trans masculine people, hate speech misinformation and disinformation targeting those who do not conform to this singular Malaysian subject that excludes migrant workers and refugees.

To be visible or not

Transgender Day of Visibility is fundamentally about the right to decide to be visible or not. This applies to allies, too.

Can the American dream or Malaysian dream be a vision realised for those who fall outside these humanly-made binaries of sex (male/female, masculine/feminine) and belonging (citizen/alien)?

I turn to a living prophet – past the self-professed one who survived an ear-graze assassination attempt – to Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, of the Episcopal Church in Washington.

Budde, during the presidential prayer service following Trump’s inauguration, implored him to bestow mercy and compassion to American LGBT children who “fear for their lives” (even in the best not just worst of times).

She also included in her plea, immigrants who slave away at the dirtiest, most dangerous and demeaning jobs that are the bedrock of MAGA.

Radical love, as a form of greatness, is neither (sex) binary nor (colour) blind – it confronts the lack of humanity in our hearts and homes.