Post #1707303

One of the most sinister things that cisheteronormative society has done to trans communities is to weaponise our own experience of information marginalisation and epistemic injustice against us in order to undo the small amount of progress we have made toward inclusion in society. Because from birth, trans people are confronted with a foundational epistemic injustice. Society is set up to allow for only two options, "boy," and "girl," and our opinion on the matter is not asked. A doctor makes a quick call, and our course in life is “set”. And when we grow up and figure out that, "hmm…, maybe things don't line up as cleanly as what the doctor said,” our capacity as a knower of our own personal knowledge is constantly gaslit by a society that thinks it knows better than we do, and is terrified that maybe it doesn’t. And so society hides the very knowledge that would help us to feel whole in the world from us. It perpetuates a vast, systemic violence against us, inflicting information marginalisation on our developing minds so that we do not even know what questions to ask when something feels "off" in our body. When we have discomfort in the way we move through the world, the way we dress, the choices of "acceptable" activities we are given. But the human desire to know and be known has broken through, again and again. And each time an oppressive regime seeks to burn our books and kill members of our community who have gone before us, we rebuild the knowledge. We share our lived experiences, and eventually, we even publish empirical evidence that what we say about our lived experiences is backed by medical, psychological, and social science. We construct frameworks and conceptual models and theories that can be used to explain the very real, embodied knowledge of our community. And in response? Cisheteronormative society weaponises our research. They call it “gender ideology" as if there was some vast conspiracy to “groom” all the kids. As if our lived, embodied experiences weren't what was informing our research. Not content with starting our lives with a foundational epistemic injustice and gaslighting us with systemic information marginalisation, they reject empiricism so that they can continue to strip us of our basic human rights and dignity.