Therefore, queer and the norm both threaten each other, but with a severe power differential. The norm belongs to no one. It is enforced by various religious or civil authorities, and while a queer person’s existence is perceived to undermine said authorities and societal structures, no single, real person’s self-identity is hurt by another individual being queer. In contrast, queer individuals’ self-identity are declared null and void by the norm, or worse, marked for eradication for the crime of deviance. No action is required on the part of the queer individual for the authority to establish the norm, decide said individual lies outside the norm, and take offense at a fact of their own creation.
This then is state-sanctioned violence, wholly unprovoked, waged against the queer individual. In the course of living our own authentic lives, our journey of self-discovery and identity that should have stayed personal, has become through no fault of our own, a bastardised political quandary. For most of society, being transgender or queer is a theoretical talking point, a classroom debate that can be shelved for the next class. But for us queer folk, we are talking about the everyday reality of our own lives being dismissed, questioned, and persecuted. Far from hyperbole – classification, or “the othering” is the first of the ten stages of genocide[1]. And we are long past stage one.
When the personal becomes political, politics gets personal. We thus have a moral obligation to defiance – to reject the systematic politicisation of gender and sexuality with non-systematic, individual “misbehaviour”. For example, in Katrina Roen’s article “Either/Or” and “Both/Neither”: Discursive Tensions in Transgender Politics, on page 512, paragraph 2, Roen’s queer interviewee Kal demonstrates this very sort of defiance on through direct action and subversion of the use of labels.
Labels, as understood by the system, are a social control tool. They are a depersonalisation mechanism by which individuals are to submit themselves to the system. The label is a clear, neatly packaged description that acts as a social scaffolding for other members of the system to grasp for the sole purpose of working together. When a person is labelled as a “man” or a “woman”, it immediately brings to mind a certain cookie cutter template of the sort of person this “man” or “woman” could be, without going through any of the tough emotional labour of getting to know the real person. It strips the individual of their uniqueness – their perks, quirks and gnarly traits. This represents a complete perversion of how an individual might use or categories or labels; as a form of personal empowerment and connection, whereby the individual uses their own language to discover and construct their own self-knowledge and truth, and to reach out to other kindred spirits. Furthermore, as labelling is established as an accepted norm, the brutalisation of queer identities itself can no longer be ascribed to a single entity, and hence anyone who does it is divested of any culpability. It is no longer qualified as a conscious act of labelling, but a social phenomenon, a feature of the system, an unfortunate but nevertheless invariant fact of life.
By refusing to label themselves and turning the obligation to label back on the other person, Kal challenges the casual acceptance of the norm of depersonalisation. Kal reintroduces the culpability of depersonalisation into the conversation with the enrolment officer. Kal goes a step further to give up their own agency in defining themselves, instead conferring it on the officer, confronting the officer with the reality that they are not going to debase themselves, and that the only way to get Kal to “fit in” is for the officer to consciously depersonalise Kal and bear the guilt of erasure. The alternative is for the officer to come to terms with their ongoing, complicit acceptance of an immoral norm and defect from the system as a rebel alongside Kal.
Even though Punk ideology paradoxically defies definition, this constitutes a form of authentic Punk praxis. What Kal does is not a concerted, organised effort, but an individual exerting their own will through their personal life for localised political and social change. The problem caused by the organisation of society cannot be fought with organised action, but with authentic, personal confrontation. Admittedly, it is not always successful. Kal’s story does not have a happy ending; while we hope that the enrolment officer is convicted of the immorality of their complicit inaction, ultimately they cannot face the truth and choose instead to deny both the truth and Kal’s application. The cost of authenticity in the face of system is certainly high. But I value this form of protest – immediate, personal and constant. A form of protest that requires no permit, no organisation, no other validating body but myself. A form of protest performed not on public streets but on my private body. A visual form of protest that speaks no words and yet you can’t help but to hear me loud and clear. The only way to combat erasure and normalisation.
Punk is a reaction, a retaliatory response, a duty that is thrust upon me because of the circumstances. Punk isn’t pre-emptive, nor expansionary. In fact I reject the casting of queerness as power relations, and seek to bring the narrative back to “a quest for personal truth” (page 515, line 4). It is intense emotional labour to be authentic and practice Punk all the time, and therefore like the many who Roen interviewed, I do not do it to be a role model (lest I am held up to yet another arbitrary standard). I do it to do right by me, to be me.
Now, there is another way to talk about Punk. In the modern lexicon the word Punk is evocative of cyberpunk, a brand of science fiction known for its dystopian, futuristic setting, but also bodily autonomy. Is rejecting Nature’s design in favour of modifying our bodies to serve our needs malicious, anarchic, and terroristic to social order? Maybe a little. But if transgender people are labelled as such, it’s only a short hop, skip and jump to denying medicine to other minorities, too.
cool title 