An reflective piece written by Project Officer, Japheth Monzon
A significant part of power comes from one’s ability to control the significance of another’s body – what that body means, what that body represents, and what that body is capable of.
Modern emancipatory queer theory owes a lot to Feminist and Anti-Racist Movements in this regard. Kathleen Lennon correctly points readers towards the contributions made by “feminist theorists… critical race theorists and theorists of (dis)ability” towards the philosophy of embodiment and the power that comes from prescribing meaning towards bodies (Lennon, 2019). These ‘body politics’ propose the idea that bodies (the corporeal and metaphysical forms) are places where social constructions – and, thus, sites of social struggle – take place. In simpler words, to analyse the body is to analyse the ‘shape of power’ (Foucault, 1977).
We only need to look around us to see how the body is used as the foundation for domination and power. Block Jr looks at the visual media representations of the Former First Lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama, and how her body is used as a site of ideological warfare against systemically disadvantaged groups. Indeed, Block Jr’s research discovers that voters favoured depictions of Michelle Obama when they depict her in line with Eurocentric attraction. On the other hand, depictions that conjure negative stereotypes of Black women had voters tend towards unfavourability (Block Jr, 2017). A recent article by BSWN also cites the work of Achille Mbembe who similarly utilises theories of embodiment to emphasise how the racialised and migrant body is used as a way of reinforcing political ideas of deservingness/undeservingness (Monzon, 2022). Feminist scholars have long utilised Theories of Embodiment – and continue to do so – as a means of deconstructing arguments against bodily autonomy, abortion, and contraception. But, it seems, the lessons taken from the Theories of Embodiment have long been forgotten when it comes to the bodily autonomy of transgender individuals.
AFRICANAH Body Politics exhibition - Billie Zangewa, The Rebirth of The Black Venus, 2010
Brianna Ghey, described as “beautiful, witty, and hilarious”, was a young girl with a large following on the social media platform, Tiktok. She was tragically killed at the age of 16 in Warrington, Cheshire (BBC, 2023). Her life, brutally and unfairly taken at such a young age, has been utilised as a fairground for ideological dogfights between multiple camps. But, this is not unexpected. Certainly, Miller et al astutely state that the transgender identity is inherently (body) political (XXXX). It is only expected that such a contentious issue as transgender civil rights is brought up when the death of a young transgender woman is placed in the public forum. But to place Brianna’s existence outside of the political sphere is to effectively erase the root causes that have led to her murder. In rendering her death ‘apolitical’, any analysis of the body politics that continue to be enacted on transgender individuals is rendered impotent for the sake of public civility. The systematic erasure of transgender discrimination is rife – root and stem – in British society, from several British news outlets failing to make mention of Brianna’s transgender identity (whether due to the scarcity of reportable facts at the outset of the investigation, or a purposeful act is unknown), to readers of said news outlets making a concerted effort to “correct” the use of she/her pronouns when reporting on Brianna’s life. Rendering Brianna’s murder as ‘apolitical’ serves as one thread in a long tapestry of transgender erasure.
Image of Brianna Ghey - Sourced from The Independent.
It is not for those who do not live the hardships of the transgender experience to pronounce whether a transgender issue is political or not, for that only works to maintain the binaries and borders so central to body politics. Similar situations have been identified when individuals prescribe the extrajudicial killings of a Black person at the hands of police enforcement as ‘one-off’ situations and not as an expression of the inherent systemic racism that flows throughout bodies of authority.
Certainly, we at BSWN see it as a symptom of a larger macrocosm of interconnected prejudices. Anti-Black rhetoric leads to violence and racism launched at Black communities. Trans-exclusionary rhetoric – that which seeks to deny their existence and their right to self-identification – therefore leads to violence against Transgender communities. Whether Brianna’s murder is directly connected to a nefarious premeditated plot against her life predicated on prejudiced beliefs against transgender people is not as important as paying attention to the subtle influence that anti-trans rhetoric within British media has had on the general populace.
Days after Brianna’s death, the New York Times published an opinion piece titled “In Defense of JK Rowling” whereby Pamela Paul props a poorly-built barricade against critiques of Rowling’s questionable history in supporting ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists’. Paul states “nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic” (Paul, 2023) after selecting a few cherry-picked quotations that display a modicum of ambivalent respect towards transgender lives. What Pamela Paul misses is that discrimination and prejudice do not need to manifest in explicit ways. Indeed, Rowling has written essays expressing “concerns” over trans activism, comparing gender transition to the likes of conversion therapy, “fueled” by homophobia; she has also shared misinformation about gender transitioning that has aided in stoking fear (Davies, 2023).
A YouGov poll (2022) has revealed that British support for transgender rights has gradually eroded throughout the years, with the areas of legal transition, amending the legal/medical transition process, gendered facilities, and gendered sports being the most negatively impacted in recent years. Even more recently, debates surrounding Scotland’s Gender Reform bill have preceded larger political events such as the resignation of Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, from office. It is thus clear that identities that are transgender, today in Britain, are political and should be salient in discussions surrounding violence against transgender bodies. Most importantly, however, a large portion of the British public remains ambivalent towards transgender issues. Yet, ambivalence does not equate to support. Those in the position of ignorance are placed perfectly for fearing the unknown. In normalising the ‘apolitical’ nature of transgender deaths, further analysis of how politics plays out on transgender bodies is put to a halt, leaving space for other parts of the transgender experience to be politicised and weaponised by those who seek to erase the identities of young girls like Brianna – when all transgender people want to do is live in peace.
It is for this reason that I have chosen the title of this piece: ‘Brianna Ghey and the Miseducation of Britain’s Public’. This title took inspiration from the coming-of-age LGBTQ+ film ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’, whereby the refusal to accept young queer individuals leads to violence inflicted on their bodies and psyches. At the end of the film, the emotional abuse of the ‘conversion camp’ is refuted – despite the bodily harm experienced by one of the young queer characters. Similarly, the British Public is being misinformed, leading to the denial of the abuses experienced by transgender individuals in their daily lives.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post - '“Desiree Akhavan’s award-winning follow-up to Appropriate Behaviour, with Chloë Grace Moretz as a teen sent to a gay conversion camp.”
It is for this reason that hundreds of people have held candle-lit vigils – including in Bristol – to commemorate the beautiful existence of Brianna Ghey. Her impact as a young transgender woman on social media should not be understated. Her trans identity has been put front and centre – as it should be. But that should not be what she is solely remembered for; Brianna is not a martyr emblematic of what it means to be out-and-proud as a transgender woman. Nay, Brianna was a young girl who just wanted to grow up like everyone else. That is, however, not a call to erase her transgender identity in its entirety. Indeed, to do so would be tantamount to the erase of what made Brianna who she was – a clear form of ontological violence (ontology referring to what it means to be, to exist).
Therefore, when discussing this tragedy, readers must remain vigilant to not fall into the trap that others have sought to employ: that her transgender identity is of nought importance, that she is simply a girl subject to tragedy. I propose then that one should consider this instead: Brianna Ghey was a beautiful and talented life that was unjustly taken from the world at such a young age, yet her transgender identity made her vulnerable to violence and discrimination that has been fostered by the public mood of hostility towards transgender people. In remembering Brianna Ghey’s bright, yet fleeting, life, we must celebrate her for the achievements she had reached whilst remaining aware of the systemic obstacles that transgender people face in their daily life.
Image of people in Bristol paying a tribute to Brianna - © Ben Birchall, PA/Wire
Cited Works
Block Jr., Ray (2017) Race, gender, and media coverage of Michelle Obama, Politics, Groups, and Identities, 5:1, 161-165, DOI: 10.1080/21565503.2016.1256822
Brown, N. and Gershon, S.A. (2017). Body politics. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 5(1), pp.1–3. DOI: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21565503.2016.1276022
Davies, Rachael (2023) ‘The NYT knew what it was doing with its ‘Defense of JK Rowling’ The Mary Sue, accessed by https://www.themarysue.com/the-nyt-knew-what-it-was-doing-with-its-defense-of-j-k-rowling/ [accessed 16 February 2023].
Foucault, Michel, “The Eye of Power”, Power/Knowledge (1977), C Gordon (ed.), 55-62.
Hines, S. (2020). Sex wars and (trans) gender panics: Identity and body politics in contemporary UK feminism. The Sociological Review, 68(4), pp.699–717. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120934684.
Jones, Bronwyn. and Lazaro, Rachael., ‘Boy and Girl in Court charged for murder’ BBC News, accessed by https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-64625001 [accessed 16 February 2023].
Lennon, K. (2010). Feminist Perspectives on the Body. plato.stanford.edu. [online] Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/feminist-body/.
Miller, P.R., Flores, A.R., Haider-Markel, D.P., Lewis, D.C., Tadlock, B.L. and Taylor, J.K. (2017). Transgender politics as body politics: effects of disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism on transgender rights attitudes. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 5(1), pp.4–24. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2016.1260482.
Monzon, Japheth (2023) ‘This Isn't the Way to Live: Racial Inequality, Costs of Living and the Living Dead’ BSWN, accessed by https://www.blacksouthwestnetwork.org/blog/raceequalityweek2023 [accessed 16 February 2023].
Paul, Pamela (2023) ‘In Defense of JK Rowling’ The New York Times, accessed by https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/opinion/jk-rowling-transphobia.html [accessed 16 February 2023].
yougov.co.uk. (n.d.). Where does the British public stand on transgender rights in 2022? | YouGov. [online] Available at: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2022/07/20/where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights.