all i ever wanted was a life in your shape
so, i follow the white lines, follow the white lines
keep my eyes on the road as i ache

when i think of whiteness as a gender, the first thing that comes to mind is ironically mitski's "strawberry blonde," a song about an asian woman longing for whiteness as a way to be desirable that was misappropriated by white queers as a sapphic love song. her yearning to me reads as not only wanting to be white, but specifically a white woman who is able to win the affections of whoever they're both vying for—to live in the body of and experience the implications of being a white woman. it's as if being a white woman would make her more deserving of love.

i argue that whiteness itself is a gender that dictates other forms of gender, sort of like a superstructure. in other words, your trans*ness is not measured by your relationship with your gender identity but rather your proximity to whiteness. if butler is correct that gender is culturally constructed through recursive performances, then it is easy to rethink "male" and "female" as western inventions that reinforce whiteness as the norm. this can be illustrated by the fact that "male" and "female" constitute the binary, while everything else falls into the category of "non-binary," a category that is defined by its deviance from the norm. but why can't the "non-binary" be the norm? as europeans colonized the americas, asia, africa, pacific islands, and etc., they designated differing cultural constructions of gender as "third sex/gender," as seen with the tayagigux' and ayagigux' of the Aleut people, the batée of the Crow people (which categorizes both trans* women and homosexual men as the same gender), or the nádleehi of the Navajo people (who exist on a spectrum of at least four general identities), all of which are commonly known under the umbrella of the two-spirit identity. in hawaii, māhū designates "gender liminals" and are considered a third gender because gender liminality is not the norm in western culture. white gender becomes a hegemonic tool not only in the language we use today but also throughout history as a way of asserting control over non-white bodies: a biopolitical operation that, as stanley would put it, marks people for death. 

colonists that first imperialized the americas reported back to their empires that indigenous peoples were "savage" and "uncivilized," simply because gender hierarchies in which women had more power were strange to white men. they sought to "masculinize" indigenous men and "feminize" indigenous women according to their own standards, often through violence. here, possessing white gender becomes synonymous to being human, a western trend that continues onto the plantation, where enslaved Black men and women were degendered as a means of making them less-than-human. in 1855, Celia, an enslaved Black girl killed her enslaver when he attempted to rape her. according to missouri law at the time, women could legally kill someone in self-defense against rape. her defense team used this law as the basis for their argument, stating that Celia should be included as a woman. the all-white jury of enslavers disagreed. she was hung at the end of that year. the degendering of Celia by the state reified chattel slavery and marked her as an object that deserved rape and then murder, because she was not "woman" enough, because she wasn't white enough. her only real barrier to womanhood was the fact that she was Black.

today, passing continues to be a courtroom and whiteness continues to be the judge, prosecution, defense, and jury. i've already argued that trans*ness is almost "forced" onto deviating bodies. as i tweeted months ago, "in order to render coherent trans*ness, the cisgender—the correct bioessentialist state—must exist first." i build upon this now by claiming that the cisgender is white. you are cisgender because you conform to western notions of what the binary should be; you are trans*gender because you don't, even if you fit the binary in other cultures. naturally, the goals of passing are modeled after white trans* people. the ideal trans* man has fluffy, short brown hair, top surgery, testosterone, a flannel shirt, and jeans. the ideal trans* woman is probably blonde, with beautiful long hair, short skirts, estrogen, and eyeliner. they're both white, skinny, and started medically transitioning in their teenage years. if you are a trans* man who keeps your long hair, you don't pass, even if long hair is a sign of masculinity for your people (such as indigenous and chinese cultures). if you're a trans* woman with angular features and a broad nose, identical to cis women of your race, you'll need to get a nose job. it is difficult to explain the feeling; obviously, no one is forcing trans* people to move towards whiteness, but i think that every trans* person of color feels this to some extent. it doesn't help that white trans* people are hypervisible in the trans* community and in media: the face of what trans*ness is and is supposed to look like. the goal of passing, the stage at which your appearance finally matches what you think your body should look like, is subconsciously modeled around white bodies. 

white trans* people also dominate the conversations of what the trans* experience is like. i see a lot of discourse online about how trans* men gain privilege from transitioning and benefit from the patriarchy, which is sometimes true, but i can't help but notice that everyone involved in the discourse is white. many trans* men of color aren't afforded protection from the violence of constantly being clocked, and Black and latino men statistically face more violence from cops, for one. we need to recognize that the trans* experience is different for everyone, and trying to staticize any thread of similarity shared by all of us is not only futile but harmful. when it comes to whiteness, i've found that being white or non-white is a very significant differentiator, to the point where i feel as if white trans* people and non-white trans* people are two different genders entirely.

the result of this, for me at least, is not only feeling dysphoric about being being born a girl but also about being born a person of color. i get somewhat annoyed whenever people tell me that i shouldn't want to be white, and that i should be proud of my chinese heritage. i know that they're coming from a good place; i hope that i can get there someday, but western hegemony makes it hard. beyond not having family support or access to medical transition that a lot of white kids do, i feel as if i will never reach a state of gender euphoria (and especially not the kind of gender that white trans* influencers have where other people constantly comment about the "gender envy" they give them). it's alienating; most of the people who are able to be visibly out as trans* in my life are white, and i find it difficult to relate to them. maybe this is a me problem, but maybe not. mitski, me 2.

1. mitski’s “strawberry blonde” ↩︎
2. see butler’s gender trouble ↩︎
3. binohan’s decolonizing trans/gender 101 has some valuable thoughts on this ↩︎
4. see stanley’s chapter on necropolitics in atmospheres of violence ↩︎
5. see “state of missouri v. Celia, a slave” ↩︎
6. the ability to come across as cisgender (and sometimes heterosexual). passing makes me think of ALC’s theory that gender is gifted to you by others; in other words, you are functionally not male until people see you as male and treat you as a male ↩︎
7. guys i’m outing myself as a twitter user. sorry. i’m ashamed of myself ↩︎
8. unfortunately the stereotype that every trans man’s goal is to look like rodrick heffley (in the movies) is true ↩︎
9. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/05/14/policingwomen/ ↩︎