We’re on the precipice of the Third Wave — what does that mean for the future of trans activism?

“The sign 'Still We Rise" is seen among the protesters in Vancouver.” by Alexa Mazzarello on Unsplash

Anyone familiar with the history of feminism knows people often talk about “Waves”. Although the finer details are debated, we can largely break the history of feminism into Three Waves.

The First Wave of feminism was the suffragettes, the women who fought for their right to vote and their inclusion in civil society.

The Second Wave of feminism was exemplified by The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, and represents a move to achieve parity and equality with men, to end sexism in the domestic life, to give more economic opportunities to women and basically bring women out of the kitchen and into society as equals.

The Third Wave of feminism is largely a response to the inadequacies of the Second Wave, which mostly centered the voices of well-to-do white women. The Third Wave has been referred to as the rise of “intersectional feminism” which looks not just at gender discrimination but how that intersects with race, socioeconomic background, disability, gender identity, and so much more. In a nutshell, the Third Wave represents an attempt to bring to life the saying “the personal is political”.

The Three Waves of Trans Feminism

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Just like feminism itself, the history of trans activism can be broken down into three large waves. Granted, this reading of trans history is based on my own perception of what’s important, but I think my observations are true to the broad trends on the movement.

The First Wave of Trans Feminism

The first wave of trans feminism is exemplified by Christine Jorgensen. Jorgensen, born in 1926, was highly influenced by Paul de Kruif’s book The Male Hormone, through which she surmised that hormones were the key to her lifelong struggle with gender.

Jorgensen had gone to a pharmacy and asked for estradiol tablets, saying she was a medical technology student studying hormonal growth in animals. “How strange it seemed to me that the whole answer might lie in the particular combination of atoms contained in those tiny, aspirin-like pills”(quoted in Rudacille’s The Riddle of Gender, p. 75).

Jorgensen travelled to Denmark, where once in Europe she finally met with endocrinologist Dr. Christian Hamburger, who oversaw her sex change free of charge with the promise of complete cooperation. Hamburger administered estrogenic hormones and monitored her levels through daily urine samples. Under Hamburger’s guidance, Jorgensen received hormone treatments for two years.

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In Jorgensen’s letter to her family coming out as transsexual (though she did not use this term) she famously said “Nature has made a mistake, which I have corrected, and I am now your daughter.” (quoted in Rudacille, p. 80).

In the early 1950’s, Jorgensen returned to the States and the New York Daily News ran a front-page story “EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY”. The story quickly became a world-wide media sensation, and Jorgensen was launched into international fame, a position of notoriety that she struggled with for the rest of her life. Jorgensen became famous but much of the attention came in the form of jokes at her expense. She spent the rest of her life performing a variety show in small clubs and doing speaking events across the country.

Jorgensen exemplifies the First Wave of trans feminism for several reasons:

She was a rare specimen, a singular, shining example of being different

The media focus was on details of surgery and novelty of transition itself

She was a pioneer in almost every way, from hormone treatment to surgery, to the path of transition itself.

The Second Wave of Trans Feminism

The Second Wave of trans feminism is best exemplified by its peak, which in my mind was Laverne Cox’s appearance on the cover of Time magazine with the headline “The Trans Tipping Point”. This Wave represents trans people coming out of the shadows, becoming normal members of society, finding normal jobs and living boring, mundane lives. The Second Wave was akin to the Second Wave of feminism itself, representing a push to end discrimination in housing, employment, healthcare, etc.

“Fashionable young man with backpack and denim jacket walking past colorful courage typography graffiti” by Oliver Cole on Unsplash

Arguably, we are still partially in this wave as trans people are still struggling for acceptance as normal members of society. But it’d be naive to think we haven’t made great progress.

Philosophically, the Second Wave of trans feminism was exemplified by Sandy Stone’s response in the 1990s to Janice Raymond’s famous hit-piece with her article “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” This article, more than almost anything else, brought trans studies to the mainstream, introducing post-humanist trans ideas into mainstream feminist theory. The article was central to the development of the burgeoning field of trans studies.

The Second Wave of trans feminism was still largely couched in the framework of “transsexuals” i.e. trans people who seek medical/surgical solutions to their gender issues. This was the framework for the entire trans movement starting with the First Wave: it sought to make the condition of being trans a medical issue distinct from transvestism (gender nonconformity), and issue was to be solved with the help of medical authorities. And because of this, trans people needed to assimilate into society as good, respectable people, not upsetting the boat too much.

Moreover, the Second Wave was largely binary in nature i.e. trans people identified strongly as either men or women.

In the 90s we started to see people starting to fight against this “respectability politics” starting with Kate Bornstein and her genderqueer antics. Which brings me to the Third Wave.

The Third Wave of Trans Feminism: The Future is Fluid

The Third Wave of trans feminism is all about fighting the gender binary. It’s about nonbinary identities, gender fluidity, genderqueer, genderfucks, androgyny, gender nonconformity, alternate pronouns, etc., etc.

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Before I go on, I want to reiterate that I am trying to act as a neutral historian in this essay. I am NOT imposing any morality here. My official stance on the Third Wave is that of neutrality. I know a lot of people, including many trans people themselves, view the nonbinary movement with skepticism and disdain. It has become the butt of jokes, indicative of the larger “social justice warrior” movement and the “snowflake liberals”. They see this development as largely a bad thing.

I view it as neither good or bad. It is simply the evolution of modern queer culture. It’s a fact. It’s happening. I see it happening all around me. As I see it, we have three options. We can: (1) Fight it (2) Promote it or (3) Be Neutral.

My official position as historian and observer of trans culture is that of neutrality. I have some theoretical questions about this movement, but I do not want to stand in the way of history happening, especially when so many people feel their personal identity is at stake. And this is where things are moving, so why fight it?

If you look on the nonbinary wiki, some of the common identities used by people in this movement include (this list is taken directly from the wiki):

Agender aka Genderless , Non-gender — Having no gender identity or no gender to express (Similar and sometimes used interchangeably with Gender Neutral and/or Neutrois).

aka , — Having no gender identity or no gender to express (Similar and sometimes used interchangeably with Gender Neutral and/or Neutrois). Androgyne aka Androgynous gender — Identifying or presenting between the binary options of man and woman or masculine and feminine (Similar and sometimes used interchangeably with Intergender).

aka — Identifying or presenting between the binary options of man and woman or masculine and feminine (Similar and sometimes used interchangeably with Intergender). Multigender (may also include Androgyne) — Moving between two or more different gender identities at different times/situations or having more than one gender identity at one time. Some multigender identities are bigender , polygender , and genderfluid .

(may also include Androgyne) — Moving between two or more different gender identities at different times/situations or having more than one gender identity at one time. Some multigender identities are , , and . Gender Neutral aka Neutral Gender — Having a neutral gender identity and/or expression, or identifying with the preference for gender neutral language and pronouns.

aka — Having a neutral gender identity and/or expression, or identifying with the preference for gender neutral language and pronouns. Genderqueer aka Gender Queer — Non-normative gender identity or expression. While genderqueer originated as an inclusive umbrella term, it is also considered by many to be an individual identity.

aka — Non-normative gender identity or expression. While genderqueer originated as an inclusive umbrella term, it is also considered by many to be an individual identity. Intergender — Having a gender identity or expression that falls between the two binary options of man and woman or masculine and feminine

— Having a gender identity or expression that falls between the two binary options of man and woman or masculine and feminine Neutrois — Belonging to a non-gendered or neutral gendered class, usually but not always used to indicate the desire to hide or remove gender cues

— Belonging to a non-gendered or neutral gendered class, usually but used to indicate the desire to hide or remove gender cues Nonbinary or Non-binary — Identifying with the umbrella term covering all people with gender outside of the binary, without defining oneself more specifically. Is also used as an individual identity in itself. One could be nonbinary butch or nonbinary femme.

or — Identifying with the umbrella term covering all people with gender outside of the binary, without defining oneself more specifically. Is also used as an individual identity in itself. One could be nonbinary butch or nonbinary femme. Transgender — Identifying with the umbrella term covering all gender identities or expressions that transgress or transcend (go beyond the limits of) society’s rules and concepts of gender (Transgender is a wide umbrella term also covering people who hold binary gender identities and expressions but who transgress gender by transitioning between the binary genders).

If your first response to this list is “That’s ridiculous!” then you are on the “fight it” side of things. If your response is “Yes! This makes perfect sense!”, then you are on the “promote it” side. If your response is, “That’s interesting — I need to think about this more”, then you are on the “neutral” side. Personally, I am somewhere in between promote it and neutrality. And part of my promotion is merely the logical conclusion of neutrality: this is where things are heading and I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.

Furthermore, as someone who as dated a nonbinary person and knows many strongly-identified nonbinary people, I know they are genuine and heartfelt in their identities. This is not going to change because someone called them a snowflake.

We can debate all day about whether they are “really trans”. But what does it even mean to be “really trans”? Is there an immutable eternal referent for that term? Language changes and involves. Culture evolves. LGBT culture is certainly not immune to change and evolution. Things might seem to happening awfully fast but I think that’s just a function of social media. Kate Bornstein was popularizing her genderqueer identity back in the 90’s, and the history goes back even further.

Furthermore, one could make the argument that nonbinary identities have existed in non-Western cultures for thousands of years before the Christian West imposed the gender binary on these cultures by force via colonization. So there is a worldwide tradition of identifying outside the gender binary without relying on hormones and surgery — we in the West are usually just ignorant of this history.

Conclusion

“Group hug between men of different races wearing heart-shaped sunglasses” by Dimitar Belchev on Unsplash

We are still living the Second Wave of trans feminism. But the Third Wave is picking up steam. And it will have monumental impacts on public discourse and how we organize public space: will the binary public restroom system be viable going forward for the next hundreds years? How much do you have to “look like a woman” to be allowed in “woman’s only spaces”? Do we as a society still need such spaces? This issue is bound to continue causing controversy. This is not going away. It is going to be a wedge political issue for the foreseeable future. Be prepared for tensions to be raised high, for ideology and propaganda to spread virulently on both sides of the debate. A lot is at stake. This is important. We would be naive to simply ignore what’s happening. But hopefully this reading of history is helpful for providing some context.