A good hit will knock the wind out of your lungs, even if you are only holding a bag for a training partner, but it’s quickly forgotten. As someone who’s done a few martial arts type things now, and who has fired and detonated many things that go boom, a stray elbow or knee to the head on the jiu jitsu mats is something that I can shrug off.
Psychological hits however, can at the time feel trivial, might even make you laugh at the ridiculousness and inaccuracy of the claim being made, but it does get you somewhere, and can be draining without you realising. The psychological hits add up over time, then sometimes without warning, the wheels can fall off and you come crashing down in a heap.
Around the developed world, trans people seem to have become one of a few punching bags for conservative politicians and commercial media outlets. We’re low hanging fruit in the LGBTIQ+ world really – we don’t have that many role models, and have very few vocal allies. We know what the underside of the metaphorical bus feels like, we’ve been there a few times.
The latest hit came via the outrage over Queensland – my home state – removing gender from driving licences, the horror! The move, made in 2016 following amendments to the federal Sex Discrimination Act, was labelled as political correctness gone mad. “It’s offensive and it’s just gone mad,” said Deb Frecklington, Queensland’s opposition leader. “This madness has to stop,” said the deputy leader of the opposition.
All I could think was: good, that’ll help any intersex or trans people who don’t have the right marker on their license. I was pretty sure we were the last state in the country to get rid of having gender on our driving licences and a quick online search proved me right. I couldn’t fathom how elected members of parliament could release social media posts and videos banging on about something that happened over a year ago. If I can use a search engine in my toddler-assisted wake-up haze, surely people whose job it is to make legislation for our state can pay some attention to detail?
Unfortunately, we’ve seen the same style of anti-trans silliness invade our politics and narrative in Australia as we’ve seen in the USA. This rhetoric formed a significant part of the anti-marriage equality debate that was endured last year.
“Radical gender theory” was the boogeyman of the anti-marriage equality camp. To anyone with a clue, or who has watched Bill Nye explain that sex and gender are different and both on a spectrum, what they call radical, we call currently accepted science. The problem is, that while the conservative scaremongers have their way, science doesn’t quite fully make it to the classrooms, meaning that trans people don’t exist until you know one, are one or they’re in the media, usually being misrepresented.
Senator Eric Abetz said “why not?” when asked if marriage equality could lead to people marrying bridges. It, and comments like it from other politicians and commentators, can be kind of funny and gives us fuel for satire and in-jokes. The problem is that when these supposed leaders in our parliament and community spruik this nonsense, it emboldens those who have no idea about sex, gender or sexuality to go that one step further, insulting trans people and calling us “delusional”, despite that having to be specifically ruled out to be diagnosed as trans (but hey, don’t let reality get in the way of your insults, we’ll just add it to the pile).
You can steel yourself for these hits, you tell yourself that these rightwing polemicists are just appealing to a certain demographic, or remind yourself that your diagnosing psych professor who has worked with trans people since the 70s said specifically that you aren’t crazy – but unlike tightening your core and physically bracing yourself for a physical hit, these psychological ones get you regardless.
You can cop it when you’re watching a soon-to-be-former favourite sitcom at home, comfy in your PJs and then bam, a joke is delivered where being trans is the punchline. Ouch, thanks for laughing at, and definitely not with, everyone who’s like me, the very core of who I am and how the world identifies and others me. Again in isolation, maybe not the worst psychological insult, but in a society where our leaders are pushing rhetoric that holds our education systems back from teaching that we even exist and are valid humans, and the troglodytes are out in force to remind us that we are just a joke to them, anything can be that last straw.
- Bridget Clinch is a former infantry captain, trans activist and co-convenor of the Queensland Rainbow Greens
