As a physician myself I am always shuffling the hierarchy. A fractured leg is important but secondary in an emergency to the heart stopping. When we have enough people we address multiples but alone in the emergency at night I had priority. So Sex, Gender and Social Role have precedence in context and time.
I just finished Before we were trans: A new history of gender by Dr. Kit Heyam PH.D and enjoyed the broader, global and more ancient historical perspective. That book addressed trans gender experience in history and other cultures and makes a rather strong case for the non binary through time with clear distinctions of sex and gender and role that were extremely offensive to early western traders and conquerors. I appreciated this because coming from Celtic or Indo European heritage I never grasped the chauvinism so entrenched in the East, Middle East and Meditarrean world.
My mother and father didn’t have the relationship taht is so comic strip radical feminism. Mom was primary in the home and dad went out into the world to serve the family. He was a powerful man but always with a few memorable exceptions, worked together with mom as a team, cooperative and respeccful of ‘domains’ that would change with illness and time. I have always defended women’s rights at great personal cost on many occasions and respect that Jewish women and Italian women and Iranian and Nigerian women have had major struggles. Canada obviously was until the last decade a leader in women’s rights and I believe that came from the Celtic and Indo European history of the origins. As for aboriginal tribal relationships there were actual matriarchies and patriarchies by tribe. There is no doubt that Russia, Saudi Arabia and China are patriarchies but Ireland and Indian according to anthropologists are more matriarchal. It’s all mute though when one can no more dissect society and family than one can the human body. That tendency to intellectualize in parts is not the organic and interconnected as reality. Indeed the lack of wholistic perspective is central to the failure of Marxist grossly outdated and often barbaric thinking. OF course he was a chauvinist and lived in a society celebrating male dominance.
I don’t like the Marxism that permeates a lot of the transgender and LGBT history with the language of “oppression’ knowing that Communism is a religion of perpetual war that aims to increase dissent in the groups it targets as stated by Putin of his highly funded KGB days infiltrating the Peace Movement groups to benefit the Communists fighting American in the Vietnam war. Yet even West Point studies the revolutionary tactics of Communism because of their success in reducationism polarization and mobilization of peasants and un educated willing to worship and follow second class elite. Lenin, and his family, unable to gain status in the elite world about the Czar went on to destroy rather than create killing the Czar who had killed his brother. Mao has similar persona vendettas against his enemies and very successfully uses the primitive ideology of ‘them and us” as EE Cummings would describe with it’s words of war like ‘oppression’ to gather a proxy army who falsely believes that leadership cares about them. As Voltaire said. Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king’.
That said the politics of change says that there needs to be a Black Panther movement for the ruling class to listen to Martin Luther King. The moderate is only chosen when there the alternative is disdainful.
So these two histories challenge any idea that everyone is black or white. The world is shades of grey in the whole with progress made by forward backward movements and compromise. Before we were trans with its historic and cultural examples is a powerful a denouncement of the idea of absolutes. I found both books together making a cogent argument for the courts especially to move from the 19th century to the 21th century and personally appreciated the concepts of inclusivity and exclusivity reading these books. There’s a balance and juggling act between too loose and too tight. Obviously one doesn’t want to be so closed minded nothing gets in or out or so open minded all the marbles fall out. My biological training makes me appreciate the flexible membrane which it’s ATP controlled permeability. I object to those who insist there should be no walls but live in massive gated communities and tell others to do as they say not as they do. The hypocrisy in politics is so objectionable.
Stryker does a marvellous job of discussing the attack by radical lesbians and homosexuals on the queer and the transgendered who’d often been the ‘shock troops’ of social change at flashpoints like Dewy’s, Compton and Stonewall. They are comfortable and middle class in their acceptance now and fearful of change no different from the mainstream heterosexual.child based family communities that resisted change.
I’m still reading Strykker’s book and learning more in depth about developments that I personally participated in as I was in the civil rights movements and had close contact with the LGBT community as a dancer and actor and in my personal journey. It’s easy to demonize’ the ‘other’ but not so easy when they are family or ‘yourself’. When I studied Hebrew and learned that ‘infinity’ was a mistranslation of Biblical Arabic it was easier to appreciate a ‘loving God’s since one only went to hell for a ‘long time’ and certainly my own life had periods like this. Jesus was crucified and went to hell to establish his rule. This was days not eons and the study of history is the study of time which is not as simple as one thought thanks to Einstein and Schodingers and modern physics. Subjective and objective are dichotomies which get mixed up in the transexual history just as I encountered when I trained in community medicine after family practice and surgery. What was goof for the group especially considering scarcity of resource might not be best for the individual. Indeed the real problem was in the realm of corruption and privilege and issues of ‘fairness’ or even ‘justice’.
Now frankly I’ve muddled along in my life and appreciate others do the same so I really appreciate the history of struggle of those who didn’t win the lottery with a Rockwell childhood and family and a calm disposition. I spend all day working with marginal ,different or the elite with little joy in their latest acquisition, I’m curious that way.
These books are so much more informative than social media and fascinating when one strips away the anger and fear and drops the word ‘oprresion’ because the Beatles recognise revolution only serves the revolutionaries most but without pressure the elite will not give an inch and we will see the kind of rot that begins in stationary entrenched societies that won’t grow in awareness and acceptance. I still think of Turing and what he gave and how we returned his gift. At that level I certainly am ‘inclusive’ and weary of those who want mirrors and judge anyone different from themselves. As a Christian I appreciate that Jesus was more radical than Gandhi or Buddha but Herod was more like Mao and Mohammed. I ‘m a left over hippy saying Make Love not war and enjoyed that a Transsexual protest solagan of the 70s’ Fuck don’t fight’. . I believe we need war and peace but that the balance is off. These books are great reads .
Addendum: I finished the Stryker book only to be disappointed by the last chapters and conclusion of book. It devolved into a radical leftist political rant. So sad given the pre Obama history. Critical of Clinton and Trump it devolved into the politics now a decade back and about individuals and events that are strictly a partisan bubble. After Jenner it really lost me and it was disheartening given the earlier work.
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