The Colonial/Modern [Cis]Gender System and Trans World Traveling

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Trans of Color inclusion is not simply a gesture of affectionate commitment to María Lugones's theory of impure communities. Rather, it is required for the enactment of her liberatory theory within and across communities of color. While María Lugones's historico-theoretical analysis of the colonial/modern gender system relies upon anthropological citations of Native gender and sexual diversity, she argues that we must bracket gender for the benefit of [cis]women of color feminisms. However, if this bracketing does not first carefully uncover cisgender histories of violence, then this decolonial feminist praxis reinscribes the invisibility of transphobia, racism, and colonialism's violent intersections, performing another mode of erasure and silence on Trans, Two-Spirit, and Nonbinary Native, Black, and Latinx peoples. In placing Lugones's texts into conversation with the voices of Two-Spirit and Trans of Color theorists, I argue that the mutilation of trans flesh makes possible the integration of [cis]People of Color into the gender–sex binary even if as failures. More important, this essay offers the beginnings of a phenomenological account of Trans World-Traveling, where the unruliness of Two-Spirit and Trans of Color bodies cocoons decolonial worlds from within the spiraling folds of abject flesh—always already in infra-communication with ancestral pasts, presents, and futures.</jats:p>

Examining the elevated risk of COVID-19 in transgender communities with an intersectional lens

“…As such, it is necessary to acknowledge that transphobia is rooted in white supremacy and colonization, as trans people (and trans PoC in particular) threaten the cisheteropatriarchy established by White settlers. Colonization annihilated expansive conceptualizations of gender identities (e.g., Two-Spirit people; see Wilson 1996 ; Paramo 2018 ) and continues to strictly enforce a gender binary (Upadhyay 2021 ; Leo 2020 ) based on sex assigned at birth, punishing those who do not conform to it. U.S. colonial systems viewed Two-Spirit identities as a threat to their power, and “sequester[ed them]… away from their fundamental role in Indigenous life-worlds” (Leo 2020 , p. 458).…”

“…Colonization annihilated expansive conceptualizations of gender identities (e.g., Two-Spirit people; see Wilson 1996 ; Paramo 2018 ) and continues to strictly enforce a gender binary (Upadhyay 2021 ; Leo 2020 ) based on sex assigned at birth, punishing those who do not conform to it. U.S. colonial systems viewed Two-Spirit identities as a threat to their power, and “sequester[ed them]… away from their fundamental role in Indigenous life-worlds” (Leo 2020 , p. 458). Indeed, dismantling transphobia inherently involves decoloniality, including leveraging the visions of people with expansive, nonbinary gender identities (Leo 2020 ).…”

“…U.S. colonial systems viewed Two-Spirit identities as a threat to their power, and “sequester[ed them]… away from their fundamental role in Indigenous life-worlds” (Leo 2020 , p. 458). Indeed, dismantling transphobia inherently involves decoloniality, including leveraging the visions of people with expansive, nonbinary gender identities (Leo 2020 ). White supremacy, like transphobia, operates at multiple levels of context, from the microsystem to the macrosystem, contributing to its particularly insidious and lasting impacts.…”

Coloniality of White Feminism and Its Transphobia: A Comment on Burt

“…At the same time, it is critical to note Indigenous peoples who were outside the European binary system were even more brutally targeted by the settlers. The 1515 massacre, in Panama, of over forty "men dressed as women" by the Vasco Nuñez de Balboa and his army is a prime example of this violence (Leo 2020). Killed Indigenous peoples were fed to the dogs for trespassing Spanish gender norms and being non-human.…”

Toward Decolonial Feminisms: Tracing the Lineages of Decolonial Thinking through Latin American/Latinx Feminist Philosophy

“…As Leo contends, through their bodies and lived experience that refuses the terms of the coloniality of gender, Trans of Color and Two-Spirit people inhabit worlds and decolonial imaginaries that are in excess of the modern/colonial gender system. Offering world-traveling and cocooning as life-giving tools, Leo writes, “Through world-traveling, the material bodies of Trans of Color folks creatively cocoon new worlds of sense where gender is anticolonial” (2020, p. 471).…”