We need both options
Meghan Murphy says no, Prince was not trans. Prince was a guy who defied gender stereotypes. Defying gender stereotypes ≠ trans.
As Prince is mourned by millions across the world, his life and artistry are rightly being embraced as unconventional and as boundary-pushing in many ways, including in terms of gender. But, whereas 10 or 20 years ago, a man like Prince would have been celebrated, in death, as someone who did not conform to gender norms, today he is instead being transed. And this is a problem.
Well, to be precise, he would have been celebrated for that by some and ridiculed or excoriated by others. It’s not as if defiance of gender stereotypes was universally celebrated 10 years ago. But I think she means celebrated, by those who celebrated him, as someone who did not conform to gender norms.
It’s not a problem, to be clear, because people who suffer from sex dysphoria or who don’t conform to the gender binary are a problem, but because we need to allow people to push past gender stereotypes without being forced out of their sex. It is not progressive to say that a male who does not act like a stereotypical man must actually be a woman — it is regressive.
Emphasis added.
If we start to say that anyone who refuses or isn’t able to perform gender in the way society teaches them to is “trans,” we assume that the gender binary is real — that a person who is big and tall and hairy and who acts aggressively or pursues sex with women is a man and a person who wears heels and dresses and is gentle and polite and is objectified by men is a woman. Anyone who strays from these norms is, then, proclaimed “trans,” leaving no room for the rest of us to exist outside of these stereotypes.
We need both options. People who want to live as the other sex should be able to do that, and be happy and unmolested doing so. People who want to exist outside the stereotypes without switching sex should be able to do that. Both options.
Let’s celebrate men like Prince and David Bowie and women like K.D. Lang and Patti Smith for refusing to fit into the stereotypical boxes patriarchal society laid out for them, not assume that those who rebel must, naturally, be the opposite gender or trans.
Yes let’s do that.
Appropriating Prince as transsexual — now that he cannot disagree — is so wrong.
On the lighter side, it reminds me, before the Internet, musicians in the Philadelphia Orchestra anonymously typed up this list of remarks that conductor Eugene Ormandy said in rehearsals, and I saw the list as it circulated the classical music community as photocopies of photocopies. The list included this remark on composer Igor Stravinsky’s style of short percussive sounds:
Heh!
Reminds me a lot of the Mormon tradition of baptizing the dead.
Yes, the Mormon practice of “claiming” dead people as Mormon is exactly what springs to my mind too.
Surely though, if we must apply one of these post-modernist labels to Prince (and Bowie etc) – labels it should be pointed out that they have never claimed and are unlikely to have identified with then <i?surely “gender queer” would be more appropriate than “trans”?
Not that I think we should be applying labels to people but, you know, if we have to play that game.
These children who weren’t born when Prince was all over the airwaves can back the fuck off and stay in their own space. You don’t get to ret-con everyone to fit into your self-regarding fantasies.
It’s a nice thought, Josh, but plenty of those children insist on categorising everyone according to their belief system – living or dead. As I’m sure you’ve noticed.
Well… exactly! Huzzah! Consensus is reached.
To have the second option we need to stop retrospectively declaring people to be trans who never claimed it was so; and to have the first option we need to stop comparing trans people to people who claim to be Barack Obama, or claim to have been abducted by aliens, or things like that.
Prince not only transcended gender, he also transcended race.
At times he seemed Black and at other times White.
I loved so much of his music.
I don’t know why you say “Consensus is reached” Silentbob – I’ve said that all along.
There are many people held up as ‘charismatic’ who, I suspect, had I met them, I’d have fucking hated them. Somewhere in there, I fear, is the root of much of the ambivalence I feel about most of our species.
I suspect I’d have liked Prince okay. With reservations, sure. But still. And this isn’t just speaking kindly of the dead.
A bit mixed (and that _ is_ being diplomatic) about the JW thing. But it just so fits. I expect he met someone enthusiastic, well-meaning, even ‘inspirational’, and this was catnip to him.
And no, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t ‘trans’. Pretty much its opposite, along the axis I think I’m slowly catching onto, here.