The Postmodern Experience A Trans Perspective.

This is a selection of tweets. I was thinking about the phrases ‘Cultural Marxism’ and ‘Postmodernism’ because they are being used to criticise the idea of gender fluidly in what is seen to be a contemporary trend. The combination of internet networking and advances in medical science are being convoluted with a sense of the ‘natural’ or ‘immutable’.

Feminism has correctly criticised the cosmetics and plastic surgery industries but they do not pertain to any sex or gender. These aesthetics are neither a negative or a positive but they do reveal economic and social disparities. Trans people are no more exempt from this or party to this than any other group.

Postmodernism is (partly) about the history of ideas. Being trans is not a imagined idea. It is a complex set of real experiences. Trans-sceptic commentators have used the ideas of postmodernism as a weapon against us while completely misunderstanding the history and essence of what this means.

It’s possible to argue that gender and gender nonconformity grew out of capitalism, in the same way all styles or ways of performing the idea of the self in the world are developed. But this ignores the histories of cultures outside of this narrow paradigm.

The wall art discovered in Pompeii, for example shows a healthy obsession with sex and various expressions of androgyny and vivacious romping between all sexes. Postmodernism relates only to the ironic use of sex as a tool in an artists studio.

Some people argue that the trans experience is purely a modern ‘invention’ because it was only in the last century people were able to modify their bodies with surgery. This is a very narrow view which ignores all the advances of medical science since the turn of the last century.

So, the postmodernism they are speaking of is a confused mix of art, self actualisation and cultural experiences that really have no unique influence on trans people. None of us are exempt from the detached parody of current times. Maybe it’s the uncertainty which scares them.

The term ‘Cultural Marxism’ is often convoluted with postmodernism. In a transgender context is a complete nonsense spoken only by people who believe in far-right conspiracy theories and seek to find a systemic, rather than a medical reasoning for the existence of trans people. In the mind of the exclusionary, ultra-conservative far-right it is a convenient answer to what they assume is phoney psychology and bogus science.

Freda Wallace

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