Sonya Blanck writings

Oh hey there! I’m very grumpy and pregnant and also trying to rewrite a novel, so my weekly Wednesday posts are going on ice for a hot minute. Have fun without my marvellous weekly insights, and I’ll see you soon!

Yes, I know it’s Thursday instead of Wednesday, okay. I got lazy yesterday, so sue me. In my defence, the day before yesterday I got back home after one day of a planned 2-day camping trip and just crashed.

See, in early March, after a few months of schools being shut and being cooped up indoors with two feral screenkids shouting at each other and various devices all damn day, I got angry enough with the state of things to book a camping trip for the spring break, because I wanted an enforced amount of time away from screens before I threw them all into the sea.

I found a nearby campsite we could get to by cab, my partner pitched his small tent in the back garden to see how many of us could fit in (it turns out me and the boys fit in just fine, but he had to sleep under a tarpaulin), we bought new ground mats and set about planning logistics. I knew we had to make it work for the time booked, because by May half-term – when the weather is nicer – I would be too pregnant and grumpy to camp.

Fervently hoping to stargaze, I told my partner to intend for clear skies in whatever way he had the energy for, because full-on magic is something I frankly don’t have a lot of time or mental energy for right now, so I outsource. (One of the many benefits of coupling with someone witchy!)

After packing a fair amount of things, but evidently not enough of the right things as you’ll see later, we cabbed it to the campsite and pitched up. Which, to be fair to the campsite, was lovely! It was a quiet patch of land on a farm in the countryside, and there were some very cute animals running around. We noticed other families pitching up, noting that a) they had cars and b) could therefore bring posher tents and more things. Oh well! How hard can camping on a budget be!

Ha! Hahaha. Ha.

Our first mistake was going on a long walk instead of chillaxing and building a fire. By the end of it, we had two miserable children and not much time to get a blaze going. My partner went into man mode trying to get a fire lit, only admitting after one failed attempt that he hadn’t built a campfire in a fire bowl before. I grumpily elbowed him out of the way and got a fire going decently enough to cook the hot dogs and sweetcorn we brought. At least I got to introduce my kids to proper campfire s’mores, which were probably the highlight of the trip.

Then it was time to hunker down in the tent for some shuteye. One slight problem: after the sun set, the temperature plummeted to 0°C, so despite huddling with two kids in a tiny tent, we were all very, very cold. Thankfully, their sleeping bags were thicker than mine, and my partner’s was an outdoor bag, which meant that he didn’t freeze to death under his tarpaulin.

The temperature probably would have been surmountable, had we packed actual camping mattresses and pillows. As it was, however, I found myself tossing and turning on the unforgiving surface of a thin camping mat on the hard ground, flanked by two similarly-restless children and kicked repeatedly in the bladder by a restless foetus.

When I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I climbed over my eldest and pulled my shoes on with my numbed, chapped hands, neglecting to bring a torch as I marched to the camp toilets. On the way back to the tent, I looked up – the sky was perfectly clear, and full of big, bright stars. My eyes streamed with cold as I picked out Ursa Major, before I had to put my head back down and concentrate on finding our pitch in the pitch-black so I could warm two kids with my body heat.

Reader, I got no sleep. Instead, I got hip pain from the ground, and also for some reason the Hebrew linguistic acronym begadkefat bounced around my head on loop. Begadkefat. Begadkefat. What does it mean, I thought to myself. (It turns out that the Hebrew letters involved have their sounds modified when fronted by a long vowel. Now you know!)

At 5 in the morning, my youngest wailed that he needed the toilet. Thankfully(?), my partner also hadn’t slept and so was on hand to bundle him up in his coat and shoes whilst my eldest and I also got ourselves ready. We took a family trip to the toilets, where we learned that none of us had actually slept. As nobody was actually getting any rest, my partner and I confined the children to the tent whilst we I built a large enough campfire to keep us somewhat warm and cook breakfast.

When the fire was finally warm enough, my eldest came to warm his hands and asked why my partner and I were talking about leaving after breakfast. ‘I want to stay another night!’

Ha! Hahaha. Ha. No.

Our takeaways from this experience are to intend for warm weather rather than clear skies, given that clear skies at this time of year are invariably accompanied by freezing nights; pack more padding; and look how about we just pitch up in the garden this summer okay. I’ll make s’mores bars in the oven. We can put as many pillows and blankets in the tent as we like. And I can retire my grumpy pregnant ass to an actual bed.

Halfway through my latest pregnancy, I have discovered the simple joy of picking fights online.

Not ad-hominem insult-fests, mind you, because I’m classy. (Also grumpy.) No, I am in the process of conscripting the internet into my own personal debate club, for fun and no profit. Is it trolling? I mean, maybe? Whatever it is, it’s entertaining, which is good when you’re laid up in bed and you’ve sent your partner out to buy Nik Naks for the fifth time in a day.

This started shortly before Passover, when I got into arguments debates on Facebook and Twitter about whether the Last Supper, as depicted in the Gospels, was a seder. Now, this seems quite obvious to me – I mean, a) did the Last Supper even actually happen, because probably not; b) the Synoptic Gospels clearly appropriate Passover imagery in order to draw parallels between Jesus and the Paschal lamb; plus c) the Council of Nicaea specifically had to divorce the celebration of Easter from the Jewish calendar for Pesach, indicating a definite relationship between the two holidays.

But of course, I was arguing with linguist Jews, who made the point that the word ‘seder’ specifically denotes a Rabbinic-era Passover dinner complete with haggadah, and is not an overall term for a Passover dinner. Then my rabbi friend told me that the term used for ‘bread’ in the Synoptic Gospels is the Greek Ἄρτος, which specifically denotes leavened bread. This is what happens when you argue with people who literally have an entire holy book comprised of rabbis arguing with each other. Mess with the best, die like the rest, Sonya.

Eight days without leaven just made me even more grumpy, so when I saw a shaman friend arguing about psychedelic therapy with a Western doctor I jumped in, admittedly with my elbows out. Now don’t get me wrong, I think that the recent surge of interest in the medicinal properties of entheogens is a good thing – however, I find the dismissive attitude of the Western medical establishment towards the shamanic community, which has been medicinally using entheogens for thousands of years, to be irksome at best, and medical colonialism at worst.

This second argument was both more and less successful than the first one, because while I won it (or am at least claiming victory as the opposition left Twitter for a couple of days for inscrutable reasons which, in my fantasy, relate to being out-debated), it was rather shorter, confined to one social media platform, and my follow-up tweets CC’ing other Western MDs for expanded debate were ignored. Well, that’s what I get for tweeting on shabbos.

In retrospect I’m left wondering whether my latest predilection for online debate is related more to pregnancy grumpiness, Passover grumpiness, or an intersection of the two. Hey, at least Passover’s finished now, enabling me to eat Nik Naks again. (But has chametz blunted my debating edge though? Only one way to find out…)

Well I suppose this is where I mention that I’m relocating my money-soliciting endeavours to Ko-fi, because I think one-off donations are a better ask than ongoing patronage at Patreon. So go buy me a coffee! Please, because I’m very, very broke.

The problem with embracing unemployment, is that it often creates more admin than just having a job. An easy example is that, for some reason, British councils still haven’t quite figured out how to deal with people on Universal Credit, and so I’ve been going back and forth with my new council for months about an outstanding council tax bill that I can’t possibly afford to repay. They’ve finally conceded that I don’t owe council tax for the coming tax year, but are still chasing me for debt incurred before the application of council tax reduction, which they refuse to backdate. Well, at least they’re not utter bastards like my last local council, so hey.

There’s also the admin involved in maintaining a Universal Credit claim itself, which involves speaking with a very kindly-sounding lady on the phone every couple of weeks to explain that, no, I still haven’t found a job in this truly thriving economy, okay speak again in a couple of weeks, bye.

Where the admin was most egregious, is when I was trying to help my ex-partner claim the Personal Independence Payment a couple of years ago. See, my ex cannot and will not work outside the home. She has extreme anxiety, not to mention ongoing documented mental health issues, and at the time of her PIP application she was also still in transition and extremely dysphoric. But, because she managed to show up to the PIP assessment centre, and because she seemed slightly coherent, her claim was denied.

We then applied for a mandatory reconsideration, because everyone who actually knew her – her GP, her gender psychiatrist – knew that she wouldn’t work outside the home, nor should she be expected to. The mandatory reconsideration was also turned down, and the whole process so traumatised my ex that she opted not to take her PIP claim to tribunal, where something like 70% of the cases are decided in favour of the claimant.

But that’s how the show runs in Tory Britain nowadays – make the physical, mental, and economic cripples jump through ever-more ludicrous hoops or else risk penury and starvation.

Well, we haven’t used a food bank since moving, so small mercies.

Speaking of food banks, I’m hungry! Ha-ha!

Seriously though, I have no decent way to end this heavily-edited and sanitised blog post about poverty admin, so instead I’m just going to fuck off and make breakfast.

Judaism’s origin story is an enduring interest of mine, and something which compelled me to become observant a few years ago. My thinking on it continues to evolve, and I’d love to put all my thoughts in a book one day – pending further evolution and concrete research. Which probably involves significantly bettering my Hebrew, and picking up both Ugaritic and hieratic script. Which, hello, I will not have time to do within the next two decades. But still.

Whenever I read other theories on Judaism’s origins, they tend to frustrate me in one of two ways: they’re either too literal, trying to find a way to make the Torah entirely historically accurate, or they’re too dismissive, relying solely on the contradictory archaeological record to completely invalidate the Torah as an historical account of the Jews in Egypt. This hyperfocus on whether or not the events in Exodus actually happened in history or prehistory overlooks probably the most important why question about Judaism: Why was it so important for the authors of the Torah to establish a link between the Hebrews and Egypt?

To answer this question, we first need to consider what function the books of Genesis and Exodus serve in the Torah’s narrative. Moreso than the following four books, Genesis rehashes several stories common in Mesopotamia from at least the Neolithic onwards. The most notable example of this is the Flood, a version of which can be found in both Sumerian and Babylonian literature, and indeed Noah’s name may be an abbreviation of the name of the Flood’s protagonist from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim. If Genesis is viewed as a way of situating the other four books of the Torah into existing Mesopotamian cultural narratives, then a few interesting things emerge.

First of all, we have the figure of Abraham, who depending on how one interprets the Hebrew for ‘Ur of the Chaldees’ (Ur Kashdim) hails either from Ur in Sumeria, or from Urkesh in Syria. Both places are potential signposts for cultural influence upon the early Hebrews, although I personally prefer Urkesh as an origin because that then points to Hurrian influence, which already incorporates extensive Sumerian influence. Hurrian influence is further signposted in the story of Jacob, who returns to the environs of Harran from Canaan to seek a bride. Harran is also located in Upper Mesopotamia, within an area of Hurrian settlement.

Hurrian influence is particularly interesting here, for a few reasons. Firstly, the Hurrian god Kumarbi is syncretised both with chief Canaanite deity El, and with Cronus/Saturn – indeed, the Greek myth of the castration of Uranus is thought to derive from a Hurrian myth wherein Kumarbi castrates sky-god Anu (note the crossover with Sumerian religion here) and is then defeated by his own son Teshub. Here, then, is the clearest vector we have which demonstrates Saturnine influence upon the Jewish deity.

Returning to Sumerian influence on Hurrian religion, the Hurrians also worshipped Enki, god of water, under the later name Ea. Ea was also syncretised with El, and potentially provides a source for the theonym Yah. (I know I said I thought Yah was syncretised with Thoth through the lunar god Iah-Djehuty, but Ea/Yah syncretism has more evidence through the Hurrian vector. Having said that, Enki, like both Thoth and Hermes, is also considered the god of magic, and is also represented by the planet Mercury, so if I could just bloody well learn some Ugaritic…)

Additionally, diplomatic correspondence between New Kingdom Egypt and the kings of both Canaan and Amurru, a Hurrian kingdom, is evidenced within the Amarna letters. This establishes longstanding cultural links between the Hurrians and Egyptians, running through Canaan, in addition to the older links between the Hurrians and Sumerians.

Which brings us to Joseph, another particularly interesting character within Genesis and the first of the Hebrews to supposedly reside in Egypt, albeit initially as a slave. Many have already noted that Joseph’s role as chief advisor to Pharaoh, and the building projects attributed to him in Genesis, bear parallels with the historical and legendary personage of Imhotep, chief advisor to Djoser and probably the inventor of concrete, which in ancient times was enough of a Big Deal to get you deified post-mortem.

Unfortunately, the debate around Joseph-as-Imhotep centres around whether an historical Joseph actually was the historical Imhotep, with wild-eyed literalist evangelicals butting heads with sober nay-saying archaeologists. Guys, this is a profoundly stupid way to study the Torah. Instead, ask yourself: why does Genesis contain the story of a personage which clearly parallels that of a well-known Egyptian cultic figure?

And make no mistake about it, Imhotep was a Big Deal throughout the Near East, particularly by the mid-2nd millennium BCE when the Amarna letters were being exchanged between the Egyptians and the Hurrians. He invented concrete and probably designed Djoser’s pyramid! And somewhere along the way there, he also became equated with Asclepius and became known as a great healer. By the mid-2nd millennium BCE, he was venerated as a god.

And who were the two tutelary gods with whom he was associated and syncretised? Why yes, that would be Ptah and Thoth. The same Ptah which was syncretised with El in Canaanite worship documented on the Sinai Peninsula, and the same Thoth which may have been syncretised with Enki/Ea.

So where does this put us with Exodus? Well, we have a whole book preceding which establishes a Hebrew lineage for an Egyptian cult. And then we have a whole book consisting of ‘bringing’ this lineage back into Canaan and ‘establishing’ foundational practices which I am very willing to bet were already documented somewhere within Ptah, Thoth, or Imhotep’s cultic rites, if I could just read the hieroglyphs…

Something to chew on during your Pesach seders this weekend and next week, whilst you eat a sandwich of unleavened bread, a medicinal herb known to New Kingdom Egyptians, and symbolic concrete.

Hopefully this week’s missive will be shorter than last week’s! I had so much to do last Wednesday but I ended up blowing it all off to write a six-hour-long blog post. Oh well.

This past week, my partner and I have been working on a Hebrew calendar for the year ahead – the Hebrew year, 5782, which begins in September 2021 of the secular calendar. I became inspired to make a Hebrew calendar last year because, while searching for my first-ever Hebrew calendar, I couldn’t find any that actually centred the Hebrew months as opposed to the secular months. This annoyed me so profoundly – the pigeonholing of important Jewish holidays within the structure of a secular-Christian lunisolar calendar instead of signposting the secular months within a coherent lunar Hebrew calendar – that I decided to simply make my own calendar, where Erev Rosh Hashanah occurs on 1 Tishri, rather than on the evening of 6 September.

For me, the act of making this calendar has been profoundly deassimilationist. Basic things, like starting days at sunset instead of midnight, have up-ended my assumed model of time – we’re now trying to figure out how to gracefully signpost normal, secular days within a Hebrew calendar which counts new days from sunset, putting the onus on the secular-Christian calendar to conform rather than modifying our conception of time to fit with the dominant lunisolar calendar.

All this raises, for me, the question of timekeeping – what inherent values are reflected in how we mark the passage of time? Calendars have changed throughout history. The Egyptians, for example, divided each month into three decans of ten days each, which functioned much as the modern 7-day week does. The Hebrew calendar itself used to simply refer to months by their order in the year, rather than by their Babylonian names as today. And two different Christian calendars – Julian and Gregorian – arose based on different ways of calculating the year that Jesus was born, both of which are probably wrong.

Most people commit to the secular calendar without thinking. Of course the year is 2021, whether or not you actually believe that the Messiah was born 2,021 years ago. Even in the Arabic world, which keeps time based on the year that Mohammed migrated from Mecca to Medina, or in China, whose many lunisolar calendars pre-date the Julian calendar, the ‘standard’ Gregorian calendar is used for civil matters. It is, put simply, temporal colonialism.

This realisation has perhaps affected my goyische partner more than me, as he’s never had a compelling reason to differ from the secular-Christian calendar, never been forced to consider the ways in which the sacred days of Christianity are privileged within it in a way that the holidays of other faiths are not. (Spare a thought here for your Muslim friends, who for the past few years in the Northern hemisphere have had to observe Ramadan during the summer! Who needs intercalary days anyway.)

I find that my perception of time changes around the first of the Shalosh Regalim, Pesach (or Passover in goy-speak). Of course, observing Shabbat every week accustoms Jews to participating in sacred time, aligning ourselves with the actions and intentions of Creator. But the other holidays in our calendar also compel us to step into sacred time as it unfolded historically, when our ancestors interacted with Creator, whether your belief in such interaction is Orthodox or not.

Pesach is particularly important to me as a holiday, because it represents the foundational event which established Jews as a coherent people, rather than a collection of Semitic desert nomads. This is also fresh on my mind because the past few Torah portions have covered the events of Exodus. In fact, some traditions – notably the Egyptian Jewish tradition – celebrate a second Rosh HaShanah on 1 Nisan, to commemorate the month in which Creator brought the Jews out of Egypt.

All of this is to say that methods of timekeeping are a choice, based on what is both practical and valuable to a culture. It is impractical to begin a calendar at the literal creation of the Universe, because humans only came to inhabit that Universe at the tail end of its current manifestation. So how we count, and where from, becomes as important as the date itself.

How long have we been here, keeping sacred time? Christians count from the birth of Christ. Muslims count from the journey of Mohammed. Romans counted from the foundation of Rome, and nicked their calendar from the Greeks, who weren’t particularly interested in marking a linear procession of time from any foundational event. The Jews, whose calendar got nicked from Babylon, counted from the supposed beginning of the world, based on the timings given in the Torah.

We’ve definitely been here longer than 5,781 years, but if that time isn’t counted, does it count?

Anyways, this post is too long now, and I’ll update the Zines section with a link once the calendar’s ready to preorder.

I have been thinking a lot about gender lately, in part because many of my friends and acquaintances have now come out as nonbinary, an identity which earlier in my life I may have chosen to embrace. (Back in my day, ‘genderqueer’ was the preferred moniker, and pansexual was only just becoming a thing. But I digress.)

My feelings about gender are conflicted, both as someone who previously considered myself to be genderqueer and who now identifies as a gender nonconforming woman, and as someone whose first marriage was, as it turns out, to a transwoman. But my experiences have led me to draw a few conclusions, some of which are, on the surface, contradictory:

1. I believe that how someone identifies should be respected, whatever their biological sex and wherever they may or may not be in their transition. This includes respecting pronouns as well as granting access to single-sex spaces with the same caveats applicable to the cisgender people also using those spaces – eg, there are laws against assault and privacy invasion which also apply to cisgender people, and these shouldn’t be weaponised against transgender and nonbinary people.
2. However, I also believe that gender identity is an interaction between an individual and the culture in which they reside, and that feelings of dysphoria experienced by many trans/NB people result from cultural restrictions associated with their assigned gender.
3. Additionally, I view gender identity as only tangentially related to the body dysmorphia which compels people to transition medically – for me, it is unfortunate that such stigma surrounds the term ‘transsexual’, because from my perspective the process of medical transition treats a distinct medical condition wherein the brain is hardwired to respond to hormones not sufficiently produced by the body. This condition and its ramifications differs significantly from the social transition undertaken by trans/NB people who choose not to medically transition, and while one could argue that medical transition represents the far end of the entire transgender spectrum, to lump it in with other trans/NB identities risks either needlessly medicalising trans/NB people who do not require medical transition, or – more dangerously – trivialising trans/NB people who desperately require it in order to continue living.

The easiest way for me to illustrate point 3 is with the vastly differing experiences of my ex-partner and me. When I was younger, I identified as genderqueer, in part because of my androgynous gender expression and in part because I felt a kind of ‘male-ness’ in how I interacted with others, particularly women. However, I never felt a powerful urge to medically transition, and in fact experienced significantly less dysphoria once I discontinued hormonal contraception, which as it turns out was exacerbating any gender dysphoria I felt. Sometimes I still think about the what-ifs of medical transition, and am actually somewhat grateful that I have a nice female body which could in no way, shape, or form pass as male because of its almost childlike proportions. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for those whose body dysmorphia compels them to medically transition despite being unable to pass as their correct gender.

My experience as a butch-presenting, gender nonconforming – dare I say, cissexual rather than cisgender – woman, differs greatly from my ex-partner’s experience. When she came out to me as transgender, I was shocked but not surprised – she had always been a feminine man, something I loved about her, and indeed took greatly after her mother in personality and mannerisms, but I had never considered that her ‘female-ness’ was any different to my ‘male-ness’, or that her dysphoria was any deeper than my own. Having said that, there was never any question in my mind that she needed to transition, or that I could or should somehow deter her from the process.

As I supported her through her medical transition, I was lauded by many heterosexual, cisgender friends and acquaintances for supporting her quest to ‘live her truth’. While I knew they meant well, the phrase rankled – her need to transition wasn’t based in some vague notion of wanting to live ‘authentically’, or present as her ‘real self’. Her need to transition was based in the need to live – period. Had she not been allowed to medically transition, my ex-partner would have died. It was never about ‘living her truth’ – it was about living at all.

And this brings me to point 2, which is the concept of gender as a culturally-negotiated phenomenon only tangentially related to medical transition. Lacking that essential dysphoric urge to medically transition, my ex-partner could have identified and presented however she wanted, within the growing number of gender roles afforded by Western society. However, her medical transition was distinct from her social transition, and was a necessary mitigation to actually keep her alive. Could she have socially transitioned without medically transitioning? Yes, but in her case, she needed – and was fortunately granted – timely access to life-saving medical treatment.

Many people both within and outside of the gender-variant community wish to de-medicalise the experience of being transgender, nonbinary, or otherwise gender nonconforming. While I agree that immediately placing gender-variant people into a medical silo is unnecessary, I feel it’s important to question how gender variance which requires no medical intervention differs from dysphoria requiring cross-sex hormones and surgery. And the difference comes down to how one views gender itself.

In Western culture dominated by late-stage capitalism, the wants and needs of the individual surpass all other considerations. Gender is therefore regarded – erroneously, in my opinion – as an entirely personal matter, to be decided and declared by the individual. Additionally, gender expression – how one ‘performs’ gender – is seen as distinct from gender identity, which is defined as how one regards oneself, without any consideration for how one presents to the outside world.

However, divorcing gender expression entirely from gender identity not only removes the element of cultural negotiation from one’s self-perception, but also leaves a void where any coherent definition of gender identity ought to be. So is gender identity based upon biological sex? Often, but not always: transpeople who medically transition have a gender identity opposite to their birth sex; nonbinary people have a gender identity not at all contingent upon their birth sex; and intersex people often have a male or female gender identity despite having both sexual characteristics. But if gender identity doesn’t correlate with biological sex, then how does it relate to gender expression? Without the recognition of cultural factors in declaring and shaping gender, we’re stuck with an unsatisfactory parsing of what it means to think of yourself as a man, or a woman, or gender-variant. Gender becomes an algebraic function with three variables: solve for X.

In Judaism, six gender identities are discussed in the Talmud. These are male; female; androgynos, which corresponds to the modern-day understanding of intersex; tumtum, which is someone whose sexual characteristics are ‘hidden’ – this is a somewhat more complicated identity than nonbinary, although it maps reasonably well; ay’lonit, which is a woman who doesn’t develop at puberty and is infertile – perhaps corresponding to transmen; and saris, which is basically a male eunuch and corresponds most closely with transwomen.

These identities are formed as a combination between sexual and cultural characteristics, and each role is associated with different laws and cultural morés. For example, the Talmud extensively discusses whether androgynos and tumtum people are obligated to observe male commandments, female commandments, or both, with some rabbis arguing that because of their ambiguous sexual characteristics, these gender-variant people should adhere to the stricter interpretations of the commandments for both men and women. An easy example of this is that, within Judaism, women are not obligated to observe time-bound commandments – in other words, commandments contingent upon being performed at a certain time. But because androgynos could be classed as both men and women, and because tumtum could be either men or women, they would be obligated to keep these time-bound commandments.

For me, this points to the importance of maintaining culture which both welcomes and examines gender-variant identities – a culture which finds a role, a place, for everyone. For example, I know several people who become dysphoric if addressed with the wrong pronouns, and while this is understandable and every effort must be made to respect how people identify and present, I can’t help but wonder whether Western cultural expectations surrounding the gender roles with which those pronouns are associated play a part in generating this dysphoria. Is a nonbinary person misgendered as a ‘she’ reacting strongly because they don’t ‘feel’ like a woman, or because the idea of being a ‘woman’ within the confines of Western cultural parameters is upsetting to them? At what point does presenting as – ‘performing’ – one, both, or neither gender become a fundamental expression of identity such that external perception of being a particular gender has the ability to affirm or wound it?

Funnily enough, some of my staunchest allies while my ex-partner pursued her medical transition were members of the Asian, and specifically Pakistani, community. Within the subcontinent, the gender identity of hijra – someone born male who transitions to female – is well-known. I remember visiting the home of one of my children’s school friends, and his mother told me that all of the Pakistani mothers at the school knew I was married to the hijra. She said, ‘In Pakistan we are told to respect the hijra, because they are following their heart.’ The hijra is not an unproblematic role to have in Asian society as they face the same hostility and violence as transwomen elsewhere, but it is a gender role which has existed since the time of the Kama Sutra, in which it is referenced, and is enshrined and protected in Indian and Pakistani law.

In fact, Western colonialism can be rightly blamed for the erasure of gender-variant roles in colonised cultures, and thus for the increased threat of violence experienced globally by many gender-variant people. I have detailed two cultures wherein gender variance is recognised, but there are many indigenous cultures which recognised and honoured gender variance. Indeed, gender-variant people often held ceremonial roles, becoming shamans and medicine-people. Gender variance had a cultural place, a role, which was steamrolled by Christian European dominance.

We are now in a postcolonial era, an era where indigenous cultures are being rediscovered and reconvened. In the West itself, spaces previously governed by Christian values are now governed by a tenuous secularism, which struggles to classify and understand cultural phenomena suppressed for hundreds of years by its colonial predecessors. Gender variance initially emerged as a medical phenomenon, studied by doctors; now it is also a social one, studied by psychologists and anthropologists. But unless gender can be rightly understood and situated as a negotiated cultural phenomenon, gender-variant people will constantly deal with pushback from the last vestiges of a secular-Christian culture in which they have no defined role, by people unable to create or expand cultural institutions to accommodate them.