On the Possibility of the Transnormative

Part 1

Everyone familiar with the term will readily agree that we live in a cisnormative society. Indeed, to argue otherwise is to attempt the proof of a negative––there is no word to signify the opposite of cisnormative, or any other alternative to cisnormativity. Consequently, in attempting to name the presence that is not just “not cisnormative,” but positively opposed to cisnormativity, we are left with a silence. This absence where there should be a word confounds our effort in opposing cisnormativity by denying the existence of a positive alternative, leaving us with a negative vocabulary. We are opposed to the structures of cisnormativity, but we cannot name what we are for, what we want to build in its place. Our stance is forced to become reactionary, aiming for the (necessary) destruction of structures reinforcing cisnormativity, and assuming that this act of negation is sufficient to bring about the alternative. In this light, “equality,” our great objective, becomes essentially negative: the absence of inequality. We need to introduce into our discourse language necessary to describing equality in its positive aspect––language that would make the concepts necessary for societal transformation immediately present, without the need for implying it through negation.

Presented with this problem in opposing cisnormativity, the structure of the English language suggests to us an easy enough solution. It posits a dichotomy between the cisgender and the transgender as a pair of opposite terms describing supposedly opposite conditions of life. This suggests the antonym of “cisnormative” ought to be “transnormative,” and that this latter term should take on all the meanings of a society in which being transgender, as opposed to being cisgender, is the privileged norm. But the simplicity of this operation raises the question as to why the word “transnormative” has not already entered usage. In this regard, the history of gay satire is instructive.

The idea of reversing the relationship between the transgender and the cisgender has a historical analog in the idea of reversing the societal positions of gay and straight men, which appears in gay satire. We need only look to the opening of Michael Swift’s satirical essay, “Gay Revolutionary,” to understand the LGBTQ attitude regarding what it would mean to reverse the relationship between gay and straight. He writes: “this essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor” (original emphasis). Comedic ironies aside, no one seriously thinks it can or should be done (and it is not what is being proposed here). Within the world of mainstream LGBT activism, such proclamations, and even any claims that might be misconstrued for them, have been seen as an eminent danger to LGBT equality due to the risk of offending potential straight allies. In fact, the reception of Swift’s satire may be the clearest historical reason for this aversion. To quote the introduction to the version archived by Fordham University hyperlinked above:

In 1987, Michael Swift was asked to contribute an editorial piece to GCN, an important gay community magazine, although well to the left of most American gay and lesbian opinion. A decade later this text, printed in the Congressional Record is repeatedly cited, apparently verbatim, by the religious right as evidence of the "Gay Agenda". The video Gay Rights, Special Rights, put out by Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition cites it with ominous music and picture [sic] of children. But when the religious rights cites this text, they always omit, as does the Congressional record, the vital first line, which sets the context for the piece. In other words, every other version of this found on the net is part of the radical right's great lie about gay people. (Emphasis original)

Consequently, when authors like Maggie Nelson have coined terms such as ‘homonormativity,” their purpose has not been to name a state in which homosexuality has replaced heterosexuality. Rather, the term “homonormativity” conveys the extreme of LGBT assimilation to the norms of a hetero/cisnormative society. Moreover, it is not presented in opposition to such a reversal as the one in “Gay Revolutionary,” but to a concept of Queer separatism that looks back to the time of explicit criminalization. This dichotomy between assimilationism and separatism is often treated implicitly as the main political axis within the LGBTQ community, with the latter position describing more of a commitment to maintaining Queerness as a value than opposition to legalized equality. The “transnormative” is proposed here to convey a third option as a means of escaping this dichotomy: the possibility of transforming society rather than remaining separate from or assimilating to it, while at the same time avoiding an advocacy for an impossible and undesirable reversal of homophobia and transphobia. Developing this option requires a critique of the current discourse of gender and sexuality in order to argue for what it informs us should be impossible, but which daily life nonetheless informs us may be increasingly inevitable. We will begin this critique here and extend it through several articles.

The prefix cis- is derived from Latin, according to the Wiktionary, meaning “on this side of.” In the context of gender, however, we might take the meaning of the prefix cis- as being used metaphorically to indicate an unchanging state, as opposed to a changed one. So, what do we mean when we speak of cisnormativity? It must be founded upon a taking for granted of inhabiting or presenting a static gender, and by extension, a more or less static identity. The transnormative, therefore, becomes that which takes for granted change in gender, or which assumes dynamism as a condition fundamental to human identity. The difference between the cis- and the trans- normative, therefore, is not defined by the reversal of the relationship between oppressed and oppressor, but by a shift in what we assume to be fundamental to the human condition.

In the next part, we will begin to examine the consequences of this shift in perspective, including what it would mean to be cisgender in a transnormative society, and also, how cisnormativity currently informs our sense of what it means to be transgender.

P.S. Many thanks to Lyn Christian for the new logo art!