The Binary is A White, Colonialist Fiction and It's Up to White Cishet Folks to Disrupt It
[The image on the right depicts an angry, screaming King Kong clutching a feinting white woman in a barely-there dress. The image on the right depicts a muscular and strong Lebron James screaming and taking a forward-facing stance while wrapping an arm around Giselle Bundchen who is posed more passively and loose as if she is skipping through a meadow, hair flowing, satin dress clinging to her frail frame. She’s smiling and seemingly carefree. This juxtaposition illustrates the white supremacist socially constructed tropes that contain Black men’s sexuality and White women’s sexuality. These tropes exist in tandem and both project harmful and inaccurate stereotypes.
Our society is propelled and propped up by white supremacist fictions like the belief that genitals determine gender, that the only form of valid intimacy is between a cis man and a cis woman, and that marriage is the only time you are allowed to have sex. Unlearning these beliefs is crucial to mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual health.
As a cishet white woman my sexuality is affirmed everywhere I go, every space I enter, on every television show, every news channel. My health, livelihood, and human rights are not currently, and have never been, under attack due to my gender or skin color, which are inextricably linked.
Unfortunately, us White women ( *cough* Taylor Swift *cough*) have often been huge barriers to healthcare and basic human rights for LGBTQIA+ and two-spirit communities -- particularly, for trans Black womxn and femmes.
We too often support individuals and organizations that profit from Queerness, but have a history of anti-Blackness. We often can’t be bothered to think more critically and research more deeply, to reassess the people, places, and politics we support or shouldn’t support. We like inclusion and equity in theory, but we aren’t going to put our social standing on the line to call bullshit on the people and organizations that need to be accountable, or take the necessary time to explain to our family members or friends why their comment was transphobic and anti-Black.
White women have historically been used as pawns to continue the violent and damaging cisheteronormative white fictions that instruct dominant society’s beliefs and behavior.
“The United States has a storied history of white female sexuality being used as a justification for racist acts of violence,” reports Emma Gray for The Huffington Post in her piece, “The History Of Using White Female Sexuality To Justify Racist Violence.”
We have even offered ourselves up as puppets to white male supremacy — playing into a performance of the helpless damsel in distress — as in the case of Carolyn Bryant who falsely accused a 14-year-old young boy named Emmett Till of harassing her.
This boy was kidnapped, brutalized, dragged behind a car, and shot by two white men, one was Bryant’s husband. This is the power of our white women’s tears. We can cry wolf and get innocent people — children — murdered.
Dr. Lisa Lindquist-Dorr explained to the Huffington Post that the trope of innocent, pure white women and scary, sex-crazed Black men has been used, “...as a racial red herring that would be brought up to justify violence or legal tactics to oppress African Americans,” she said. “One that wasn’t based in reality. It’s a trope that’s trotted out to justify oppression.”
Systems of oppression, racism, sexism, cisheterosexism, ableism, classism, nationalism, all feed into each other in order to establish and maintain dominance -- the “appropriate social order.” It’s not just those at the “top” who keep injustice churning as we saw with Carolyn Bryant. How are we as white women enacting the violence of white supremacist, cisheteronormativity? Are we instilling the lessons of white supremacy and patriarchy into our children? As cishet people how are we making a conscious effort to oppose cooperation with these systems of oppression? Because we inadvertently benefit from the way our sexuality is used to justify racist violence, cishet white women are most responsible for rejecting and deconstructing the white, colonizer fiction that is the gender binary.
During Pride month, Ericka Hart, a sex educator, writer, and social/racial/gender justice disruptor, gave a guided tour and discussion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was holding an exhibition on Camp: Notes on Fashion, between May 9 and September 8, 2019. The intention of the exhibit was to explore the origins of the camp aesthetic and how it has evolved from a place of marginality to become an important influence on mainstream culture. However, what Hart points out along the way of her tour, is how The Met in and of itself as a structure, represents the oppressive barriers that were the catalyst for Black femmes to invent Camp in the first place.
Camp exemplifies the protest of established norms and high fashion by enlisting the subversive power of pastiche, parody, and hyperbole. The multiplicity, dynamism, and layered meanings behind Camp seems squelched and co-opted when turned into a theme for The Met gala, an invite-only party for rich celebrities. It is another reminder of how mainstream cisheteronormative, white modes of operation will always find a way to appropriate, and rip from context, the movements that function to create a safe space for marginalized groups to freely express themselves.
At the beginning of her tour, which you can view on her Instagram stories, Hart stood in front of a plaque that states a land acknowledgement for the stolen land upon which The Met is erected. She points out that it took them way too long to locate that Land Acknowledgement and encourages the group to think about why it’s not front and center in a main room, but pushed off to the side, nearly hidden.
Hart goes on to explain to her tour group that colonization has a lot to do with how we understand gender. “Are folks familiar with what the binary is?” She asks. “Male/Female and that’s it. Man/Woman. That is what the gender binary means. Bi is two. So it just means there is two and there is nothing else. But when colonizers came they erased indigenous folks, not completely, but inside of murdering folks you don’t just kill the person you also kill the culture, you kill identity, you also kill how people identify.”
The tour continues on to a room that features Picasso. “He agreed that his genitals matched his gender, so he identified as a man.” Hart says. “He lived his life that way, and navigated the world that way. [This is probably how] he became a household name. A lot of white cis men we know their names, don’t we? But if I told you about a lot of Black femmes you probably wouldn’t know who they were. But white cisgender men you know who they are. Bill Clinton. Trump. Joe Biden. Justin Bieber. You know all of them. And it’s because of their privilege, so Picasso was also privileged in this way as well.”
It’s incredibly important to deconstruct the figures, structures, and traditions that our society holds dear and in high esteem. Questioning that which is handed down to us as a given, our assumed truths, is crucial in creating a more just world.
Hart describes how, “Picasso in the 1900s viewed women as goddesses or doormats. And bell hooks pointed out that Black femmes are related to as strong, mystical, powerful creatures, so white femmes can remain victims. So, it’s not always a good thing to remain strong, but sometimes you’re never able to be soft. You’re never able to rest.”
Throughout her talk, Hart effectively disrupts the misogynistic and colonialist undertones (and overtones) that are ingrained in not only The Met’s actual structure, but the art that hangs on display within the walls of the building. She encourages us to look at how this globally acclaimed institution perpetuates the erasure of Black people, Black culture, and the connections that exist inextricably between colonization and gender-expression. Hart concludes her tour by explaining why she focused her talk on cisgender people.
“I intentionally didn’t talk about trans and non-binary folks people in this talk, although I am non binary, because every time someone does a gender workshop they always talk about trans and non binary people.” - Ericka Hart
Hart is encouraging cisgender folks to interrogate, investigate, evaluate, and dissect our identities. How do we participate in the same cycle of erasure that The Met does? “It’s important that cisgender folks evaluate who they are and how they perpetuate their privilege. And how that oftentimes bulldozes the folks who have given cisgender people the tools to move through their gender with exploration and freedom: trans and non binary people.”
In honor of National Coming Out Day here is a list of small things you can do to work towards a safer world for everyone:
Make it a practice to introduce yourself with your pronouns, and ask for other people’s pronouns. Make a conscious effort to remember them!
Refer to people as “they” when speaking to or about them until you know their pronouns.
Research about Black, trans womxn who have always been on the frontlines of Queer Liberation movements. Research the epidemic that is the murders of Black, trans women. When we fight for the protection of Black trans womxn, we fight for all.
Push back on the white fiction that everyone is cisgender and that we are automatically born from the womb as cis.
