Queer Babies

Sometimes, I wish I bought into the idea that queerness and transness were genetic.  I have a certain fondness for the notion of having and raising queer trans babies, of being able to share queer and trans cultures and community ties with them, of having.  Maybe it would be enough to tip the scales and make me willing to face the social hell that would be heaped on me if I ever had kids if I could know that I'd be able to have little queer trans aspie kids.  I could read them Feinberg for bedtime stories, help them learn the eyebrow codes, and show them queer movies.  They'd grow up knowing their history, Compton Cafeteria Riots and Lawrence v. Texas. And dysphoria sucks, but if my babies had dysphoria, I would get them treatment, I would fight for them.  Because we already have cures for a great deal of dysphoria.  We've got hormones and surgeries.  It's one of those things that transphobes don't think of when they suggest we need "cured".  We've been working on that, and we've made a shit ton of medical progress, and if people would stop getting in our way, we'd make even more.  It's just our version of what we need is totally fucking different from what they imagine people should need.

Of course, in real life, you wouldn't know, and in real life, the trans or queer kids of a genderqueer queer person might tear themselves up and tangle themselves up because of social pressures to not be like their queer parent(s).  It's not okay to pressure kids to have a certain sexuality or gender.  Of course, the rest of the fucking world brutally forces everyone else, but still.  And of course if I had a child that was hetero and cis and neurotypical, I would love them too.  Though there's still a part of me that, when reading studies of "same sex" parenting and they emphasize that the kids won't turn out queer, is rather disappointed by that news. 

Is Genderqueer a Political Identity?

Yes and no.  No, being genderqueer isn’t like being pro-gun control, it is an identity, not a position.  Does being genderqueer identified say something about me and the way I view gender?  Yes, but by that standard, so does the identities of those who are cis, are binary IDed, etc.  If my gender identity is political, so are binary IDed cis people’s.  Binary cisgendered identities are only seen as apolitical insofar as they are treated as the norm and as the default human.  

We often do this with marginalized or stigmatized identities.  The rights and lives of trans people, queer/lgb people, people of color, people with disabilities, women, poor people, colonized people, etc. are seen as objects of public scrutiny and as “political issues”.  But marginalized identities are not inherently more political than centered ones.  Oppression is not primarily an “issue” of the oppressed, rather it is an issue with the oppressors.  If being against an enforced binary gender system is a political position, than the opposite position, being in support of an enforced binary system, is also a political position. 

You know what?  I would fucking love it if being genderqueer were as easily accepted, acknowledged, and given rights as being cis and binary and we didn't have to engage in political and social struggles.  I would fucking love not having to fight for rights, not having to navigate through unfavorable legal and social minefields, not having to swallow the vomit that rises in my throat when confronted with being forced to put myself in a gendered box.  It would make my life so much easier.  I would love to not have to be “political”, but until that day comes, I won’t accept being told to stop fighting to protect myself or others like me (and others not like me who are given shit too).  The frontlines of this “political” struggle isn’t a game to me, it is my life.