Trans language activism and intersectional coalitions

Abstract

The last decade has brought a cascade of exciting, distressing, promising, and destabilizing discourses about trans people and language. Changes in norms around gender-inclusive language have taken hold at many universities, new linguistic forms have been innovated by trans, queer, and gender nonconforming people across the world, and shifts toward more trans-affirming language are evident in mainstream mass media. Even as the desire to avoid transphobic language seems more widespread than ever, trans communities simultaneously face heightened vulnerability by way of escalating transphobic violence, governmental efforts to legally enshrine transphobia, and the misrepresentation of transphobic discourse as progressive gender politics. One of the few things everyone seems to agree on, however, is the centrality of language within the social changes for which trans activists and our supporters advocate.In this context, trans people's linguistic issues are best addressed as part of coalitions built on intersectional models of sociolinguistic justice (Bucholtz et al., 2014; miles-hercules, 2022). As linguists increasingly reckon with racism, colonialism, and ableism in our disciplines and communities, more opportunities emerge for collectively resisting these systems and their interlocking relationship with transphobia and gender normativity (see also Charity Davis, 2019;Henner & Robinson, 2023;Steele, 2022). This is important first because transphobia's impacts are intensified by other structures of oppression, yet the most visible and well-resourced types of trans language activism (TLA) tend to represent the perspectives of relatively privileged trans people without necessarily considering how racism, colonialism, ableism, classism, and other kinds of subjugation might manifest within those perspectives. Thus, when I talk about intersectional coalitions, I am referring to cross-sectional social justice efforts that prioritize the needs and voices of people who exist in the crosshairs of multiple forms of symbolic and material domination.TLA (for brevity) captures an array of ever-shifting practices, ranging from formal advocacy for institutional change to conversations in which trans people and our allies and accomplices seek more inclusive or affirming language in everyday interactions. TLA includes advocacy around issues like the attribution and use of gendered pronouns and grammatical gender; terminology for different facets of gender and varieties of gender identities; the ways bodily sex is discussed; and various discursive strategies used to avoid misgendering and other manifestations of transphobia