For many people, it’s obvious that there’s something awry with the ‘transgender debate’. But without a thorough understanding of just how we got here, it’s difficult to make sense of it. Raewyn Connell’s new book is a helpful primer. Aimed at educated readers but requiring no specialist knowledge, it situates the experience of being trans in the context of wider issues of of gender and bodily autonomy. It confronts social and medical dimensions, and provides an anatomy of what Connell refers to as ‘the anti-trans movement’.
In going about this, the author strives to get beyond the familiar context of white, Western-centric narratives, instead grounding her arguments in in-depth research on trans communities around the world. Readers new to the subject may be particularly interested to hear about the sheer diversity of gender systems that have been active around the world over time – now and in the past. An Australian sociologist and university professor, Connell laments the damage done to some such systems by colonialism – and latterly, US political and cultural hegemony – in imposing binary gender on the Global South. She notes the present day success of the US model in spreading around the world, but it’s still a little odd to see her write about hijras in ‘third gender’ kinship communities in India – without mentioning that many transfeminine people on the subcontinent now reject that model and wish to live simply as women. She also fails to mention the importance of hijra identity to many Indian intersex people. Although she says that the book will make reference to intersex people as well as trans people, it does so only once, and then by addressing their ‘conditions’ – a term which many intersex people find unduly pathologizing. ‘Variations’ would do fine.
