Transexistential Crises
How the very nature of Englishism birthed rampant Transphobia
Fear & Loathing in Albion
In solidarity against the terror that was perpetrated by Thatcher, LGBT people stood alongside Miners during the strikes[1]. Both groups shared a common threat, the first the political engine that was Thatcherism & Reaganomics, marching across England with the common interest of selling everything off, including our history, and our identity, making it impossible for same-sex marriage to occur or for people to hold down steady, meaningful jobs. And secondly, because both the nature of being a “miner” and the nature of being “LGBT” came under attack: both groups had their sense of self harmed directly, with the intent of it being expunged from the records of British history. Both the Miner and the LGBT person were fighting to retain a sense of personal identity; although very different in how their identities were being oppressed, the intersectionality is apparent in how solidarity manifested. I believe, as the years have turned however, and Conservatives, Liberals, Fascists, and Labour Party clowns have erased more and more British history[2]&[3], it is this moment (amongst others) that has led to the cultish explosion of transphobia in the nation.
Michael de Freitas expressed a particular kind of racism that existed within the English temperament. He called this panic-induced reactionary racism Englishism[4].
“De Freitas decided that there was a fear in England that went far deeper, than just the working-class racism…, ..that behind the polite veneer of the middle classes,, there was a hard ruthlessness and a suspicion of others., De Freitas gave it a name., He called it Englishism., It came, he said, from both an anger and a melancholy, at the loss of their empire[…] [sic]”[5]
As Adam Curtis goes on to explore in his documentary series Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, Michael X determined that British people believed that the atrocities of the British Empire would inevitably result in the English people having to pay a debt to those they had subjugated, a debt which, perhaps, could only manifest fearfully and violently. Michael X himself, born in one of the colonies, expected to find an England of gilded roads and welcoming arms, only to suffer a deep, core racism from landlords and the general public. The English, Michael X concluded, were terrified of the colony cultures that were coming to their Green & Pleasant Land, building this belief into the national psychoculture: this panic, this fear, this reaction to anything other than the pure, white English working class man struggling in the pits and the smoke became part of the national identity. It is interesting to note that Michael X himself became one of the very same landlords he railed against, as if this Englishism could parasitically attach to even those most aware of the national psychology.
So here we have three intertwined threads. A population of LGBT people with a strong comprehension of identity, who stood alongside those oppressed by the same powers willing to remove their rights to marriage and children[6]. A working-class population born from the wreckage of a ruined empire, suffering under the intersectional prejudices of the state, under constant threat of bricks being thrown at their children, of jobs vanishing into the aether, and the promise things will only get worse. And a national psychoculture, born from colonialism, born from empire building, born from Winston Churchill’s constant warning of blacks, Irish, and miners themselves[7], where everything other is to be feared: a racism, a prejudice, fuelled by a lack of history and a panic at what is to come.
Lepers & Saints
Why have we reached a stage where one of the most beloved authors of the British Isles is holed up in their castle, supporting people who say that AIDS is preferable to transgender people?[8] How have we reached a point where authors[9] support teachers writing about the private lives of their students, as sideshow attractions with “chocolate skin” and “jewish nose[s]”[10]? Where does this fear of the other come from in an era of supposed wokeism, and why does it manifest so vehemently in Britain today?
As R. D. Laing writes:
“There is a race against time. It is just possible a further transformation is possible if men can come to experience themselves as ‘One Of Us’. If, even on the basis of the crassest self interest, we can realize that We and Them must be transcended in the totality of the human race, if we in destroying them are not to destroy us all. As war continues, both sides come more and more to resemble each other. The uroborus [sic] eats its own tail. The wheel turns full circle. Shall we realize that We and Them are shadows of each other? We are Them to Them as They are Them to Us. When will the veil be lifted? When will the charade turn to Carnival? Saints may still be kissing lepers. It is high time that the leper kissed the saint.”[11]
His bombasity aside (and some gross oversimplication[12]), the key phrase here is “We are Them to Them as They are Them to Us”, that each side of the coin witnesses the othering from their side. And although when it comes to colonial-inspired prejudice, one side is suffering more greatly than the other (this cannot be ignored: there is a ‘leper’, and there is a ‘saint’, in the sense the latter is in a position of authority and the former is not), it is this perpetual reigniting of We vs Them that manifests as racism, transphobia, and other oppressions throughout the nation, throughout the world.
But what is specifically interesting in this regard is how England has manifested itself as an island of transphobia. On the global stage, England possesses a certain quality that it is ‘more transphobic’ than other countries, and whether this is practically, legally, or ontologically true or not, this perception, this phenomenology of England, is regarded as true. What we believe fuels our individual and collective consciousnesses. Transphobia is one of the many ingredients that comprise the national identity of Britain, however that manifests, whereas in other nations it is less to do with the psychoculture of those living in the nation, and is merely part of the state apparatus. This is the Englishism Michael X described, the fear and the panic. An embedded hatred rather than simply a performative one. What R. D. Laing would describe, through the voice of Sartre and their ilk, as an existential crisis.
From Winston Churchill to the Daily Mail, from Piers Morgan to far-right twitter bloggers, from liberal blue ticks waxing verbose they have no comprehension of power to prominent Labour MPs fuelling the incarceration complex, England (and Britain) is constantly reminded to remain fearful, alert, in a survivorship mode. Our constant requirement to relive WWII, to the need to comment on the bodies of others, is part of an ongoing, evolving Englishism, which may not be recognisable to Michael de Freitas’ original intentions of the word, but certainly grew from it.
It is important to note for a moment that not every person falls into the traps of Englishism. When we talk of “white people” or “cisgendered people”, these are catch-all terms for the purposes of expressing broader stroke events, happenstances, and issues within a national identity. If you are reading this and presume you have never been prejudiced, think less about actively calling someone a “nigger” or a “tranny”, and more the systems of oppression you have been forced to exist within that have lured you into the traps these prejudices possess. As Ibram X Kendi[13] remarks:
“[racist]…is not the equivalent of a slur. It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it — and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction.”[14]
We perform racist or transphobic (or misogynoir) acts, but we do not need to let these things embody us, to become our identity. As we have seen, the powers-that-be are quite comfortable taking the identities of miners and LGBT people away from them. Englishism, WWII panic & death urges, rampant homophobia in all its forms, these are the liquids we use to fill the ‘vessel of self’ damaged by the state. When we do fill our vessel with this brand of hatred, this results in the rampant transphobia we have seen in England as of late.
Blue Hair Scare
A common turn of phrase of what some people call The Boomer Generation is that, once upon a time, there were only three channels. With the cost-of-living crisis[15] doubling-down into worser & worser conditions, we have seen an influx of twitter accounts remarking that freezing to death in a bungalow is a form of joyous sacrifice. This is Englishism in action. But why is suffering such an important quality in the British psychoculture, in the national psyche?
Although LGBT people fought alongside miners in solidarity, this portion of history is cut from national curricula (especially as this would fall into the category of illegal information to be disseminated under Section 28). I use miners here in broad-strokes, referring more to a generation of people who were oppressed under new neo-liberal, libertarian ideologies which Britain had not yet been accustomed to in the past. Here is a group of people made completely unaware of those who stood alongside them in times of strife, who have their Englishist nature fuelled and fanned by state-sponsored media outlets, client journalism, and misinformation campaigns. Here are people who survived floods, droughts, lack of food and resources, lack of work, and lack of respect for countless years. And although these same people may have been able to afford housing where now young students cannot, they still had to push through this treacle-thick miasma of pain, loneliness and oppression that have become such a norm in the tapestry of England.
Now we hit the generations of millennials, Gen Z, and other unnecessary terminology who proclaim, regularly, how terrible everything is. Although the number of people suffering has (probably) not changed across the decades, this is the first instance where everyone has access to public fora to discuss their pain. From Palestine to Tigray, from Brixton to domestic abuse, everything can be laid bare, every lie analysed, every challenge made completely aware to the general public. Although the Boomers and the Millennials probably complain just as much as each other, the former believe the latter as complaining more than their own generational peers because the former had the pub, and the latter has a globalised internet. The former had the public library, the latter The Digitised Library of Alexandria! People are just louder now.
From out of these later generations come younger people who have learnt more about their gender, their sex, their sense of self & identity than other generations previously had access to. They come forward and present themselves as they truly feel, as they truly are: transgender women & men, and non-binary people, and at the far end of the philosophical spectrum, the gender nihilists & abolitionists[16]. Gender, for the most part, has been an established ‘fact’ to the majority of people in the nation. I say this in regards to how Section 28 denied educators the ability to dispense even moderate comprehensions of gender/sex & identity, instead forced into a corner of penis means man, vagina means woman. But ‘the kids today’ have access to greater knowledge, broader knowledge, more radical knowledge, and thus can access their truth in a multitude of fashions. No one is more or less intelligent, but with access to this enormous pool of knowledge something will inevitably, seismically shift.
‘But gender is a fixed point’, as the school-system forcibly taught the generations before our transgender comrades[17]. If gender, something so apparent & obvious in the minds of so many, can be changed on a whim (or so it must feel to those who suffered other ontological terrors as freezing to death, lack of food, and lack of work), then this raises further questions of what can be changed. This directly feeds the core of Englishism: panic.
If young people can ‘change’[18] their genders, then did we need to suffer at the hands of Thatcher? Did I need to be bullied at school for having long hair? Did I need to marry that man? Did I need to work those long hours for little pay? Did I have to live in this house, in this country?[19] Did I have to feel shame when I tried on my Mother’s heels?[20] Did any of the pains, sufferings, and challenges I have faced have to happen, or, like the gender of the blue-haired anime-adoring freaks of the internet, could it have been averted, changed, manipulated, blossomed, ignored… if gender isn’t a fixed point in the tapestry of the self, what other parts of me could have been built from joy and not from suffering?
This is the turning point. One can either accept that the dukkha[21] experienced was simultaneously formative and absurd, a series of unfortunate events that could have been avoided if not for state-controlled fearmongers, if not for the environment one was born into; or enter an Englishist existential dread, that one’s identity, forged in the fires of political turmoil, is rendered moot against the backdrop of the easily interchanged genders and identities of the blue hair brigades. In the latter instance, transphobia develops, as a defence mechanism of the last shreds of identity left over in the wake of Thatcherism. My pain, which forged me, must mean something.
The Bell Rings…
“The double action of destroying ourselves with one hand, and calling this love with the other, is a sleight of hand one can marvel at. Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth. By such mystification, we achieve and sustain our adjustment, adaptation, socialization. But the result of such adjustment to our society is that, having been tricked and having tricked ourselves out of our minds, that is to say, out of our own personal world of experience, out of that unique meaning with which potentially we may endow the external world, simultaneously we have been conned into the illusion that we are separate ‘skin-encapsulated egos’.”
Here, R. D. Laing speaks of how we indoctrinate children because “what the school must do is induce children to want to think the way school wants them to think”, and how that school thinks is a combination of state oppressions (such as Section 28) and the lived, genetic memory of each generation that returns to schools, schools that once beat children, schools that still ring a lunchtime bell invented when the first students were taught in the workhouses[22]. We induced our children — who consequently become our adults, our authorities, our teachers, our colleagues, our enemies — to believe that ideas such as hard-labour, gender, and ‘voting to make things better’ were fixed, ontological facts. These were immovable concepts, part of reality as trees or gravity are, and not concepts constructed for the betterment of society, or for its subjugation. But as David Graeber remarked, “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently”[23], that the only thing stopping us from changing the world is believing that we can. This realisation our greatest asset is our imagination, combined with the Englishism of The British Isles[24], creates the perfect melting pot for existential dread. If everything can be changed, why did I have to suffer so?
If my identity can be shifted, altered, manipulated (by both myself and outer powers), analysed, developed and constructed with such ease, then why did I suffer? That suffering must hold meaning, and so my identity must as well, and thus the ideas I have been taught throughout my life must be fixed, ontological facts. Therefore, the transgender woman sneaking into a bathroom must be the true threat, otherwise I would have to unpack everything that comprises myself. Although the transgender woman is only presenting one aspect of identity, gender, it directly contravenes all we have been taught by our shared reality. The challenge of one absolute truth puts everything else into jeopardy, and not possessing the tools to understand an existential crisis, we resort to hate fuelled by fear. As Laing continues:
“Each group requires more or less radical internal transformation of the persons who comprise it. Consider the metamorphoses that the one man goes through in one day as he moves from one mode of sociality to another — family man, speck of crowd dust, functionary in the organization, friend. These are not simply different roles: each is a whole past and present and future […] I know of no theory of the individual that fully recognises this.”
Laing owes this analysis to Sartre, of the existentialists. Although the likes of Sartre and Camus (and Laing himself) may not possess the radicalism of the contemporary era, the former still embedded in a coloniality and the latter skidding around the edges of his own transphobia[25], this philosophical turning point illustrates that when a human identity is under threat what was once called “madness” or “schizophrenia” or “fascism” can be birthed. At the same time, what society regards as “mad” or “insane” are most likely not the case, either a form of identity expression that does not follow the rules of the bell chiming in the workhouses, or, as Rousseau (and Vonnegut, and countless others) have expressed, and as I shall paraphrase, to be sane in an insane world is an act of insanity. In this instance madness is Englishism. In this instance, seeing someone able to be happy by expressing their true gender is palpable to denying reality itself.
We are moving into the muddy terrain of overlapping linguistics. To conflate transgender identities with madness is a gross, overt prejudice, and to assume any form of fascism is a form of madness is unkindly to those in the worlds of neurodiversity, psychological diagnostics, and Mad Pride. One can be completely rational and still support colonialism, fascism, and hate. One can express their identity without requiring medical treatment. One can understand who they are without a diagnostic of some personality disorder, quickly scribbled by an unorthodox GP. What is important to note is that without an awareness of the existential dread that come about when two identities meet — due to each one informing the other of truths perhaps forgotten, misplaced, or never addressed — people can fall into ideologies, habits, and behaviours truly harmful to their fellows.
When the bell chimes that the shift is over, that the next classroom period is up, that the strike is going ahead, that the legalese is returning with vitriolic gusto to prevent people simply expressing their morphological freedoms, we must take the time to address what this means for our own identities. Who we are — how we shape that — is a beautiful thing.
[1] https://daily.jstor.org/how-lgbtq-groups-supported-striking-miners-vs-thatcher/
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/race-commission-report-institutional-racism-b1824605.html
[3] We went from “statues can never be removed or we’ll forget our history” to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-61227944
[4] Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head [2021] [BBC iPlayer]
[5] http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Can%27t_Get_You_Out_of_My_Head_%28TV_series%29
[6] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/cacc0b40-c3a4-473b-86cc-11863c0b3f30
[7] https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2020/06/21/churchills-racism-in-his-own-words/
[8] https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy
[9] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/11/society-of-authors-philip-pullman-tweets-kate-clanchy
[10] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/13/pointing-out-racism-in-books-is-not-an-attack-kate-clanchy
[11] R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise [1967] [3rd Edition, 1990]
[12] There is a touch of that liberal hopefulness to Laing’s monologues, that if we all could just see we were all the same maybe we could hold hands and forget all this silly business of hating each other. But the man seemingly lived on magic mushrooms, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. To clarify, things are not as simple as just “them and us” when power is brought into the equation, which is why it is good to see Laing at least read Fanon before writing his work.
[13] https://www.ted.com/talks/ibram_x_kendi_the_difference_between_being_not_racist_and_antiracist
[14] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/15/751070344/theres-no-such-thing-as-not-racist-in-ibram-x-kendis-how-to-be-an-anitracist?t=1650976189523
[15] https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/cost-of-living-survival-kit/
[16] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alyson-escalante-gender-nihilism-an-anti-manifesto
[17] The gender binary is a rather new idea, and transgender philosophers have been teaching alternative visions of gender long before the Miners’ Strikes I mention here. I refer in this article to only the contemporary understanding that knowledge is being disseminated in a new way.
[18] I will remark bluntly here that I will use a transformative language rather than a language of manifestation. Transgender people often speak that they are not “changing” gender, but becoming/manifesting/embodying the gender they truly are. However this language counterpoints the journey an Englishist may take, so assume a position from the other side of the veil for the purposes of comprehension. Transgender women are women. Transgender men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary. The gender nihilists are…?
[19] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8
[20] There is much discourse that transphobic people are all secretly transgendered. This is reductionist to the point of insult and incoherence. However, the existential dread of discovering something “obvious” can be changed must include some people who do indeed feel this way.
[21] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thebuddhasaid/2020/09/the-unawakened-life-sucks/
[22] https://www.workhouses.org.uk/education/workhouse.shtml
[23] Thank you to The Anarchist Federation, @apodoxus, and @swesocialist on twitter for finding this quote for me, as I could not find it anywhere. The original article it apparently came from is here: https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/david-graeber-the-power-of-the-imagination/.
[24] I have been slipping between “English” and “British” throughout this article. I am a firm believer that the nature of The United Kingdom should fall apart, seeing as the English Parliament parasitically feast on the hard-labour of our sister countries. I also believe countries are a foolish notion, but that is for another time. In this essay however, it must be noted that Englishism may shift culturally, psychoculturally, and psychologically between Cymru, Kernow, Éire, and Alba, but due to our entwined historiographies, some overlap must exist.
[25] Within The Divided Self, Laing talks of patients who express themselves as women when they are truly men. Although Laing believes we should honour the “madness” of our patients, there is still an ongoing thread this is not normalcy. In short, this is in itself transphobic. However, as Laing used the language of his period (schizophrenia, dementia praecox, etc), he is trying to wrestle himself away from such hyperpsychologisation. To do this at 23 in the 50s is remarkable to me. I’ll address this more thoroughly in a review of his work.