The second Trump administration’s attack on trans people is in full swing. Within hours of taking office for the second time, the president signed an executive order that described trans people as “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex” and accused them of attacking not just the laws of biology but the safety of women and “the entire American system.” Since then, other executive orders have promised to ban gender-affirming care for anyone under 19 and “end indoctrination” by eliminating any program that teaches children about trans people.
In short, it’s a terrifying time to be queer or trans in the United States. The consequences for not fitting into dominant gender norms can be severe, even violent, especially for trans women, and most especially for trans women of color. Under these conditions, it can sometimes be a prudent strategy to try to go unnoticed. For example, when going into public, a trans person might dress and act according to their assigned gender at birth (AGAB), or we might go stealth—elide our trans histories and disappear into the other binary gender. This can be a matter of survival.
Going unnoticed isn’t just about learning gender norms and trying to follow them. The performance needs to seem natural and effortless. If we look like we are trying, then we’ll reveal the fact that the gender norms we’re trying to follow don’t come naturally to us. This is a problem for everyone, not just queer and trans people. Gender norms are supposed to look natural because gender is supposed to look natural. Philosopher Charlotte Witt argues that social roles like gender can only be performed well if we are habituated to them; that is, we must practice responding in a certain way until we don’t have to think about it—we just do it. Following the norms gets inside us, becoming part of who we are.
But this is worrisome. Mainstream gender norms are restrictive and harmful, even to those who can fit inside of them. Queer and trans people know this better than anyone; we are often the targets of their punishments. Following gender norms can be uncomfortable, even painful. These norms can ask us to do things that don’t feel right for us and limit our self-expression; they can even encourage us to do morally bad things (for example, consider a masculine norm that encourages misogynistic behavior). In the bigger picture, gender norms are also oppressive. They help sustain a world in which a certain kind of privileged, white, cisgender, gender-conforming man has most of the social power at everyone else’s expense. In short, gender norms may conflict with our deepest values, and our values are a crucial part of what makes us who we are.
So, queer and trans people face a conflict. We need to be able to learn how to follow gender norms effortlessly to pass through the world unscathed. If we do, however, we risk taking those norms into ourselves. We shouldn’t want to do this—not just because it can encourage us to behave badly and against our self-interest, but also because it can damage us. One way to put this is that it threatens our agency or our capacity to act in the world. As agents, we act based on what we value. When our values pull in one way and our actions another, we risk being pulled apart.
So, what should we do?
In his recent book, Games: Agency as Art, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen argues that the human activity of gameplay reveals something about our agency. Usually, as agents, we have a set of enduring values and goals. Those values and goals make us who we are. But when we play a game, something interesting happens. We temporarily set aside our enduring values and goals and take up a whole new set given to us by the game. We might suddenly value scoring points or collecting tokens and develop new skills for getting what we value. For a short time, our other concerns disappear; we enter an entirely new mode of agency, and we hold the rest of our values and goals at “arms’ length.” We can also step out of that mode of agency. As soon as we stop playing the game, those temporary goals disappear, and we return to the things that matter most to us in the long term.
Of course, there are some things, like winning, that we might care about both inside and outside of gameplay. But we don’t just play games because we like to win. We might also play because we like the experience of playing. If we only cared about winning, then the best games would be the games that are easiest. This clearly isn’t true. We play games because we enjoy the activity of gameplay, or because it’s the best way to connect with and learn about our friends. Still, in order to play well, we have to play as if we really care about winning. This changes what matters to us. During a board game, a little golden token might appear to be the most valuable thing in my field of vision; when the game is over it becomes just a piece of plastic.
For Nguyen, gameplay teaches us something important about our agency: it’s not fixed, but fluid. It can have “layers,” “nooks and crannies.” It can change on a dime. But it can do all of that without tearing us apart. Taking up different values and ways of being isn’t just possible, it’s common; we do it all the time. What’s more, we can use this ability to practice the skills that we need. For example, Nguyen writes that practicing playing chess taught him to think more strategically and carefully. He was then able to call on this mode of agency in other contexts—for example, graduate seminars in philosophy.
There are long histories of queer and trans people playfully taking up gender norms. Consider a drag performance. In drag, someone briefly takes on a hyper-exaggerated gendered role. They “play with” gender norms, practice and perhaps perfect them, and then take them off when they are done. This is not just an established practice but also often paid labor. In this sense, playing with gender norms can be someone’s bread and butter.
Drag has roots in ballroom culture, queer and trans communities of color that exist in most major cities in the United States. Ballroom culture is partly built around the ball, a competitive and celebratory group event where community members perform different sexual and gender roles. These roles can be theatrical and exaggerated, imitative of mainstream practices, or both simultaneously. As queer theorist and ethnographer of ballroom culture Marlon Bailey writes, ballroom spaces are a way for Black and Latine community members to learn how to pass safely through hostile, racist, queerphobic spaces, while also expressing themselves. Bailey cites ballroom community member Tim’m West:
“A boy rides up to the Bronx on the D train every day and after a certain street he gotta act like a boy. He turns it on. But after 14th Street, girl it came right back off! In a certain way, these performances do match a particular reality that people have to live in.”
To be clear, ballroom, drag, and other queer gender games can have norms of their own—norms that can be demanding and restrictive in their own ways. What sets them apart from oppressive mainstream norms is that they are not built to exclude queer and trans folks. Rather, they are built by and for them; they enable queer and trans folks not just to navigate but also to escape, resist, and refigure the norms that would harm them.
Sometimes, queer and trans people have to play along with mainstream gender norms. Practices like drag and ballroom demonstrate different ways of doing this. If we take mainstream norms seriously as really valuable, they might threaten to pull us apart. But we don’t have to do this. We can hold them at arm’s length and play them like a game while also learning to perfect our performance of them and play flawlessly when the time comes.
Gender norms can be very serious, and there can be harsh consequences for playing poorly; they are more Battle Royale than board game. If we follow them constantly, we become too immersed and struggle to set them aside (this is true of all games). Fortunately, there are queer and trans spaces where gender norms are already being mocked, played with, refigured, and resisted. To survive without losing ourselves, we must celebrate, protect, and learn to play in these spaces.
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