Day 3: Julia Serano's keynote, "Balancing Acts and Bottom-Up Approach"

Julia Serano was a much-anticipated speaker at the conference, who presented a lot of cool graphics about sad topics of exclusion in society. A great philosopher and activist, let's dig in to what she spoke about:

Society has a double standard of a marked vs. an unmarked mindset. According to Serano, being marked isn’t good; it is deemed unnatural and requires explanation:

This is problematic in lots of cases, and also when one is trans. Being cisgender and heterosexual is "the norm," so Serano concludes that “everything else is in the closet, remarkable, questionable, and artificial.” Thereby, marked folks are marginalized and this is what creates the idea that queer folks need to come out of the closet. The stigma-contamination mindset follows:

Top-Down Approaches to Activism involves assumptions, stereotypes, and expectations with many types of -isms: sexism, racism, etc.

Here's a list of invalidations that marked people experience:

Trope of mental incompetence; Sexualization (sexual attribute is the only important thing about you; hypersexual; undesirable; exotic, as a fetish object); viewed as immoral; viewed as unhealthy or ill; viewed as anomalous; viewed as inauthentic or fake

1st stage acceptance: Toleration: Stress humanity, reduce compulsory intolerance and fear of contamination

2nd stage acceptance: legitimization : “equal rights” and non-discrimination (prejudice not tolerated)

3rd stage acceptance: Recognition of unconscious and systemic biases: increased recognition of subtle double standards; efforts to transcend them

Serano understands the critique some people have of the popular "Born this Way" argument. She suggests it's not about explaining to people why they're queer or trans. Rather, It "allays their fear that they'll be contaminated by it. Because, she says, "if we're born this way, then they can't catch it from us." In fact, she says, "this wave of anti-trans and anti-queer activism is really centered on social contagion and groomers. They're trying to bring back the contagion aspect of stigmatization." And the backlash is worried about how more people have moved to the tolerance phase of acceptance, so they have to be more organized and louder.

As a general tip for activists, she advocates for not putting down trans activists by lumping them into the oppressor class. She desires there to be less debate about which terms to use (for example, not stigmatizing elder generations of trans activists for using the word "transsexual"), and sees that trans terminology is changing all the time, so that's not the area to worry about.

Serano's keynote gave me language of invalidations and stigmatizations that so many "marked" groups experience. It affirms in me collaborating with allies and with as much intersectionality as possible. It was a lot to digest and I don't really know if I have done a good job sharing what she intended to say! What comes alive for you with seeing this? How could it be useful to you or to groups working for transgender inclusion?