On erasing transpeople

When Ibrahim Farajajé approached the TSA inspection station on his way to board a flight, he apparently aroused the suspicions of one of the agents. A 6-foot plus, skinny, Black, bearded older man wearing flowing robes, he was not your average American passenger. He wore cotton balloon pants that day.

"Drop your pants!" demanded the official.

"You don't want me to do that," replied Ibrahim.

His authority questioned, the official yelled fiercely: "Drop your pants!!"

"You don't want me to do that," replied Ibrahim softly.

So ordered, Ibrahim eventually complied -- only to have the inspector screaming at him the next minute -- "cover yourself up!" 

Apparently he didn't want Ibrahim's uncovered genitals hanging loose in the TSA line.

Ibrahim, since unhappily deceased, was both a distinguished academic scholar of religions and also a Russian Orthodox archpriest who later in life converted to Sufi Islam. You couldn't mess with Ibrahim.

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The Supreme Court's off-hand order last week that transpeople should be forced to carry passports which name the sex they were assigned at birth reminded me of this anecdote which Ibrahim told delightedly.

One has to ask, why does the Court care so much that appearance should match historical record? They don't say. Appearance is not necessary for confirmation of identity. 

M. Gessen comments about carrying a passport which marks their gender as X...

[it] attests to the meaninglessness and uselessness of all gender designations. Why did the border officers need to know my gender at all? I match the age indicated in my passport. The photo is mine. New technology makes it close to impossible to travel using a look-alike’s documents; many passports contain iris scans and fingerprints.

The existence of transpeople and others of indeterminate gender evidently triggers anxiety and an icky feeling in some powerful Justices. 

Is that response rooted in a kind of essential prurience about sexuality that apparent gender fluidity triggers? Perhaps. 

Without explanation, the Court majority reveals that what they care about is their unease with the permanence of a social structure which privileges white, European, Christian maleness, and cisgender individuals. Their world is shaken.

That discomfort will expose some people to humiliation and even actual danger.

They cannot abide recognizing that some humans live outside their lines and others may color there. People like the Republican Justices are frightened by a society that affirms such a reality. 

The inability of live with harmless difference is a sickness of the soul. Courage in the recognition of difference is not automatic. It takes work. But a decent society strives to aid its members to do that work.