Transgender people burning at the stakes as modern-day heretics

Back in the day, like way back… say 400 years ago, if an individual questioned authority or long-held beliefs they could be tried for heresy. Heresy is defined as ‘an opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted.’ One famous case of heresy involved physician Michael Servetus. Servetus was one of the first to describe how blood flowed through our body but he also didn’t believe in the trinity. Not a great idea back in the day. So off ya go, kid. He was burned on top of a pile of his own books. How poetic.

See that’s the thing, in America they can’t literally burn us at the stake for stating new truths. But they sure as hell can figuratively by stripping away and denying us equal rights.

We live in a time when it is still considered heresy to state that gender does not naturally divide itself into two simple categories. Despite the evidence, through intersex births, that even nature itself does not produce two individual genders. It is still ‘profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted’ to believe you do not have to live within a gender binary. It has been shown that gender is a structure, a structure built on this flawed assumption that nature has only two categories.

What happens to those of us who state a new truth based on new evidence? What happens to those of us that refuse to live within constraints just because that’s the way it’s been?

We are refused service. We are discriminated against. We are denied our rights. We are beaten. We are murdered. And while society can no longer burn us at the stakes, we are certainly still burning.

So, I ask what’s everyone so afraid of? Something new, something different? A truth that may not align with your current belief system? ‘An opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted?’ If that’s the case, look to the future, my friends. You’ll see us heretics. Our images in history books. Our bodies, that bore the suffering, celebrated.

We may be bloodied but we are not broken. We will continue to speak the new truth about gender. The truth being uncovered by sociologists and scientists every day. Will you a part of the evolution or will you be lighting a match? #breakthebinary

You are who you say you are,
leo

Photo from the NYPL archives