First of all, before I get into addressing her recent piece in the Advocate, I must own my own bias where Riki Wilchins in concerned. I’m not a knee-jerk fan of hers. I was around when she lobbied congress (along with Nancy Buermeyer and Winnie Stachelberg in 97, 98 and 99) telling them that trans folk were happy to be taken out of ENDA. So, yeah… I tend to reflexively raise an eyebrow when I hear her make statements about the trans community.

Riki writes:

Androgen blockers, which prevent all the painful and irrevocable effects of puberty that I spent several years of my life trying to reverse – chest hair, beard, Adam’s apple, etc. – had made this blond 13-year-old into an entirely non-transgender transsexual. One whose gender, and social identity, will be always and completely female to every adult she knows or meets. With the right surgeon, she might not ever tell her husband or wife. She didn’t cross gender lines or even rub up against them. She fulfilled them fully and completely in a way I could never know…

Later in the article, she presses her point:

For the blocker babies, there is no residue. Their transgender-ness is there, and then – poof! — it’s gone.

For the “blocker babies” – their experience of self as not having the physiological history of cis folks will be part of their identity. Whether or not that experience is based in shame has a lot to do with the way we as a culture value and experience norms around reproductive choice. Making space for “blocker babies” to exist in our culture is explicitly supporting the probability of a reproductive-free life. At every stage of reproductive maturation, the “blocker baby” will have a significantly different experiences about a facet of human life and development that’s deeply ritualized, institutionalized and romanticized. Being sexually normative is still highly valued in our culture and that’s not going away anytime soon… Which is to say, the experience of being a cultural “other” (and facing the possibility of rejection, oppression and abuse because of your history/experience) is a certainty for the perceivable near-future.

Riki’s labeling of these kids as “blocker babies” belies her vision of a Judith Butler utopia. The term “blocker baby” has already recognized a differentiated sexual maturation experience that’s non-normative. I mentioned cultural shame above and it’s worth noting that the amount of cultural shame that’s foisted upon “blocker babies” by our culture will partly drive a need to communicate with others like themselves. “Blocker babies” will have language to talk about their experience and they will want to share their experience – to one degree or another – with another who understands. Jargon + a shared specific life-altering experience will produce both identity and community. The jargon may (and probably will) change, but there will be both a type of “transs-ness” as well as a community for the foreseeable future.