Article
17 JULY 2020 – OBJECT!
Trans ideology positions itself on foundations of science and history. The science has been well debunked by www.transgendertrend.com, Dr Emma Hilton, Dr Em and others but few people have looked at the historical claims made for transgenderism. Has it, as many people think, ‘always existed in various cultures’?
OBJECT decided to look at a foundation stone of this claim, the idea that native American peoples’ ‘two-spirit’ category meant ‘trans’.
When was ‘two-spirit’ first used and why?
‘Two-spirit’ was a new term deliberately created at a 1990 native American lesbian and gay gathering in Canada, mainly to replace an old, colonial, homophobic term ‘berdache’ which originally meant a ‘kept boy’. It has not been universally accepted by traditional communities (who are happy with the words they already have in their languages), although they prefer it to ‘berdache’. Not a mention of trans.
There is a lot written by gender-political activists and scholars on ‘two-spirit’, but little by professional historians. One who has covered it is US Professor Gregory D. Smithers, author of books on native Americans, racism and black intellectuals. His 2014 article ‘Two-spirit Native Americans’ states that the evidence for ‘two-spirit’ is at best scanty and rests on a single dubious document. Prof Smithers has given permission to quote his article here.
The Rules of History
Prof Smithers obeys the rules of his profession: historians must check that their conclusions are borne out by and clearly extrapolated from the evidence, because history has been faked and manipulated by many interest groups for their own ends eg Nazi fake archaeology and the British Piltdown Man fraud.
Historians need corroboration of evidence so that conclusions can be drawn. A document is stronger evidence if we know who wrote it, where and when and in what context – we can then better judge its accuracy and purpose. If evidence is weak, historians must say so and not speak with the same degree of certainty as when it is strong. Strangely, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence: having no evidence for something does not prove it didn’t happen: evidence may have been destroyed, or may lurk underground or in a pile of documents in a loft or archive somewhere, awaiting discovery. Silence on a topic can itself be significant – was it taboo and if so, why? This is what makes history such fun – like questioning a crime suspect, you absolutely must not lead them but must go all out to inquire thoroughly whether they did it, had opportunity, motive etc.
There is no evidence that ‘two-spirit’ ever meant trans before 1990.
In Smithers’ 14-page article he mentions, 28 times, reasons not to accept that ‘two-spirit’ means trans, eg: ‘scarcity of evidence’, ‘methodological difficulties’, ‘over-use of a single undated, unpublished source by someone not known’, ‘motivation of political activism’, ‘problematic’, ‘questions can be asked’ ‘historians are suspicious’, ‘was this really proof?’ ‘controversial and difficult’ ‘historians have good reasons to reject such assertions’ ‘unsupported by evidence’, he warns against ‘upstreaming’ ie interpreting the past through the concepts of today’, ‘historians analyse more robustly (than LGBT activists)’
He concludes that ‘two-spirit’ meant different things to different people, with no proof it ever meant trans. If ‘two-spirits’ existed, we would have known about them based on what else we know – he knows the evidence well. He wants more research and collaboration between different types of researchers, showing he is willing to work with others, but perhaps also that others should consult historians before leaping to conclusions. He asks us to listen to native ways of interpreting the past and not impose modern or foreign interpretations onto it.
So it seems that ‘two-spirit’ has been hijacked by the trans lobby, embalmed in the abstruse language of scholarship by trans-funded gender studies departments, and carefully planted to pretend that trans was an accepted native American idea.
The evidence for ‘two-spirit’ people comes from a single document by a European dated (at a guess) around 1825. This is not enough for historians to authenticate it. Imagine a photo of Piccadilly Circus or Times Square during a power cut being used to indicate that these places were dark and unfrequented. It’s so easy to be misled by a single piece of evidence.
Using ‘two-spirit’ to mean ‘trans’ stems entirely from transactivism. If this brings good things (media attention, tourism, money) to native American people, so be it – we coloniser nations owe them. It in no way indicates that transgender native American people existed back in history. It more likely means that native American peoples lived more holistic, tolerant, balanced lives than their colonisers, who are still now yet again plundering native culture for their own ends. Having had to adapt and survive under colonisation, native peoples must do so again in the face of self-identification.
Re-colonising
By hijacking native Americans’ language, the transgender movement (led by white males) has colonised and exploited them yet again.
Smithers warns that colonists’ use of the negative word ‘berdache’ shows their ‘logic of categorisation, exclusion and ultimately dispossession’. We see this ‘othering’ all over the world in colonised countries as a precursor to domination, betrayal, occupation, exploitation and even extermination.
Many would say that the transgender movement with its rich research funds and foundations, colonises women as a sex, stealing our identity. It recategorises men as women in order to conceal women’s huge biological burden, erase systemic worldwide violence against us, remove our rights and dispossess us of our sex ie to colonise us and obliterate us. We are then ready and available for men to exploit us invisibly in every way they wish.
Saying that ‘Two-spirit’ historically meant ‘trans’ is rewriting history for political reasons
We OBJECT to the rewriting of history for the purpose of political activism.
We OBJECT to telling young lesbians that they are really men and should mutilate their bodies.
We OBJECT to governments subsiding untruthful organisations like Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence who push this harmful, deceitful agenda.
We OBJECT to men redefining us and stealing our identity.
We OBJECT to people who, unaware of their privilege and others’ oppression, choose to identify into an oppressed group while having the right to identify out of it again.
We OBJECT to harming people’s bodies to fit a rigid society. We should be changing society to be more tolerant of non-gender-conforming people. We should abolish gender.