Christie Elan-Cane Responds to Tumblr Criticism »

UK non-gendered campaigner Christie Elan-Cane has been a long term inspiration of mine, ever since appearing in the BBC Q.E.D. (aka ‘Living Proof’) documentary ‘Sex Acts’ in 1995 as a very visible example of someone living outside of the gender binary. I was 15 then and barely able to put my self identity into words, so watching the documentary had a profound and lasting impression on me. Since then I’ve followed per continued activism, campaigning and visibility work including the blog per has run since 2008.

Pr Elan-Cane does extremely important work including contributing to government and census consultations, advocating for trans people who do not have gender identities and ensuring that non-gender people are given representation in schemes such as the new UK government Transgender Equality Action Plan.

However I have recently found some of Christie Elan-Cane’s writing to be problematic due to its tendency to erase the experiences and identities of some nonbinary trans people. Pr Elan-Cane was recently criticised on this blog and by other nonbinary and genderqueer Tumblr, Disqus and Twitter users for declaring that the term ‘gender identity’ can only ever refer to people with binary genders and as such everyone living outside of the binary is non-gendered, for insisting that it is offensive to all non-gender people for ‘genderqueer’ to be recognised in the new WPATH Standards of Care, and for making other such strongly worded misrepresentative blanket statements about all people identifying outside of the gender binary.

Pr Elan-Cane has since responded to those constructive criticisms in a spectacularly unconstructive manner, attacking our characters rather than our arguments, describing us as (to paraphrase) whinging and whining, contributing nothing of value, undermining the work of others who strive to make a positive difference, not capable of contributing anything of value, living only to take, never able to grow up and not really wanting true equality because we would be unable to handle the responsibility that goes with it.

I would quote from the response directly, but Pr Elan-Cane now forbids any quoting in part or in full from the blog. I would dearly like to answer the post directly rather than having the need to quote on my own blog, but Pr Elan-Cane’s blog also has commenting disabled. As always, I encourage you all to read the linked blog post in full to ensure that I have not ‘wildly distorted’ the original material in this or previous posts (although I cannot guarantee that it hasn’t been edited since the time of writing).

The response makes no reference to our actual criticisms nor gives any defence of the opinions we found problematic, only giving a mention of the fact that some of us made reference to Pr Elan-Cane’s age when discussing per objection to the term ‘gender queer’. I agree that this was problematic and encouraged ageism, although not completely unjustified in context. It’s also unfortunate that some of the commenters did not take the time to determine per correct pronouns and title and so regrettably misgendered Christie in some comments. (Please note, Christie Elan-Cane’s pronoun of preference is ‘per’ and title of preference is ‘Pr’, it’s important to respect those in the same way we would hope per would respect our identities).

However the vast majority of the comments were justified constructive critique (or expressions of frustration) about an activist purporting to work for equality for all people outside the gender binary, by others who fit that definition.

Pr Elan-Cane implies that all criticism comes from members of the ‘privileged gendered majority’ (for reference I don’t consider myself to have a ‘gender identity’) but by erasing or misrepresenting the identities and experiences of other people living outside of the gender binary, Christie Elan-Cane is misusing per position of relative influence as one of the UK’s more prominent trans* activists speaking for non-binary experience.

I would argue that activists who purport to represent others have a responsibility to accurately represent their experiences and be accountable or open to criticism when they fall short of this. I also believe that it would strengthen the cause for UK nonbinary gender equality if the ‘new generation’ of activists could work productively with more established voices to present a united front in all of our advocacy and visibility work. As such, I’d encourage Pr Elan-Cane to open comments on at least one of per posts and engage in open discussion with others in the UK who live outside the gender binary and are interested in working towards equality.