g&l (print) issn: 1747–6321
g&l (online) issn: 1747–633x

Theme Series

Beyond the cis gays’ cis gaze: the need for atrans linguistics
Lal Zimman
Abstract
Trans and other nonnormatively gendered subjectivities served a foundationalrole in queer linguistics, but it is only recently that a wave of trans researchers
have begun to carve out distinctively trans approaches to the study of language.
This commentary explores the question of why this shift has taken so long andhow certain disciplinary norms have made linguistics a less-than-attractive
home for trans scholars, namely an apoliticised ideology of descriptivism, theflippant indulgence of linguistic curiosity and claims to linguistic authority.
Importantly, these processes are vulnerable to furthering not only transphobia
but also racism, colonialism, ableism and linguistic subjugation. These convergences present opportunities for coalition-based responses to the maintenanceof social hierarchies in linguistics and allied disciplines, and underscore theimportance of community-based approaches to research on language and gender alterity.
keywords: transgender, trans linguistics, community-based linguistics,
intersectionality, queer linguistics

Affiliation
Lal Zimman
he/him/they/them
University of California, Santa Barbara
email: zimman@ucsb.edu

g&l vol 15.3 2021 423–429 https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.20883© 2021, equinox publishing

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Like queer theory, queer linguistics has from its inception been concerned
not only with nonnormative sexualities, but also nonnormative genders.
Indeed, one of its key early insights was that the division between gender identity and sexual orientation is a constructed and culture-specific
one that is evaded by many of the world’s queers. However, while queer
theory and queer linguistics questioned the gender/sexuality divide in the1990s, transgender activists in North America, Europe and elsewhere wereincreasingly insistent that a clear distinction between gender and sexuality
is necessary for the comprehensibility of certain trans identities, such as
those of lesbian trans women and gay trans men. Of course, queer linguists
were engaged with academic discourses that employed a simple, undertheorised division between gender and sexuality, whereas trans activists
were defending the legitimacy of their identities among nonacademics forwhom gender and sexuality were and remain very much entwined. Yet thistension between the concerns of queer academic theorists and those oftrans activists bears connection to the complex position of trans people inlinguistics, which is the focus of this commentary.
The prominence of nonnormative gender identities and practices
in foundational contributions to queer linguistics was driven in part byanthropological perspectives on queer practices in the Global South.
Though various forms of gender nonnormativity have always been central to
the theorisation of language and gender (Hall 2004), nonnormative genders
were represented in this literature primarily by research participants who
were assigned male at birth, who typically had male sexual partners andwhose femininities were transgressive in relation to local norms (e.g. Halland O’Donovan 1996; Gaudio 1997; Kulick 1998; Besnier 2003), but who
were not necessarily identifiable as transgender, at least as the category
has been deployed in the Global North. A smaller body of research wasproduced during this time on language among transgender-/transsexualidentified people in the Global North (e.g. Moriel 1998; White 1998; Livia2000). At the time, research that merely recognised the existence of transand gender nonnormative lives had transgressive potential. Yet the sensethat any and all of this work was equally transgressive, affirming or worthyof praise for its representation of trans people is undoubtedly related to
the fact that it was written predominantly by cisgender queer linguists(though see Cromwell 1995) and evaluated by cisgender readers. Only inthe past decade have we seen a surge of publications on language in transcommunities authored by trans researchers, enabling the identification ofa distinctive, emerging approach to the analysis of trans people’s linguistic
practices that runs in parallel, but never complete contiguity, with queer
linguistics: a distinctively trans linguistics (Zimman 2020). Trans linguistics,
thus imagined, centres social and linguistic transformation, the dialogic

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nature of identity construction and affirmation, and the discovery of what
is possible over the documentation of trends and norms. It also increasingly
prioritises linguistic interventions that impact trans people’s wellbeing,safety and vitality (e.g. Ansara and Hegarty 2013; Zimman 2017; Kniselyforthcoming; Zimman and Azul forthcoming). The latter goal underscores
the necessity of research practices that interrupt the reproduction ofwhiteness and colonialism at the centre of queer/trans language and life
(Feu’u 2017; Snorton 2017; Davis 2019) in favour of building coalitions
within and across community-based approaches to language. The work oftrans linguistics, then, is not only about the importance of trans people
leading that work, as critical as that factor has been, but also of disruptingways of thinking that are rooted in cissexism – work that we all must do(for recent examples in this journal, see de Jesus and Caldas-Coulthard
2018; Katsiveli 2021; Turton 2021).
The centrality of community-based interventions for trans linguistics
is an entry point to a question that has weighed on my mind since I began
my path into linguistics in the early 2000s: where are all the trans people?
Trans folks passionately theorise language, with particular attention to ideologies and their material impacts, normativities, strategies of subversion
and the endless complexity of interactional context. Linguistics has always
seemed to me a natural academic home for trans scholars, but throughout
my graduate training and for several years after I received my PhD in 2012,
there were very, very few of us. Today, there are still precious few openlytrans academics employed in linguistics departments, and fewer still withemployment security, but there are many more trans students who areeager to study their own communities’ language, particularly when that
language is also multi/translingual and/or racialised. How has this promising romance yet to blossom? Given that other social sciences have beenlearning from trans people’s experiences since the 1960s, why are linguists
so late to the game? With reflections on a few instances of transphobia
in linguistics – some major, others mundane – I outline a few large-scale
ways in which the discipline has yet to live up to its potential to accompany trans people’s linguistic activism (Bucholtz, Casillas and Lee 2016).
These include the emphasis on an apoliticised ideology of descriptivism,
the indulgence of cisgender curiosity and our claims to unique linguisticauthority. These are by no means the only problems, nor are they particular
to trans people or linguistics. Similar ideologies manifest in varying ways
across multiple axes of subjectivity and marginalisation and must be confronted in ways that attend specifically to those distinct realisations and to
the expertise of those who inhabit them. My own comments, then, should
be understood as a product not only of my positionality as a trans person
and a queer man, but also as a person who is disabled/chronically ill, white426

LAL ZIMMANand Middle Eastern/Mizrahi, class privileged, a US citizen and a native
speaker of (only) American English.
Descriptivism – a language ideology that prioritises overtly nonjudgemental stances toward variation in linguistic usage – is often framed asa tool for undermining linguistic oppression. Linguistics students areaggressively socialised into descriptivism in their training, and letting goof prescriptivism is difficult for some. The difficulty comes not only fromstudents who are attached to prescriptivist ideologies, but also those whoare engaged in language activism. I’m often asked by students in the lattergroup whether telling someone not to use an offensive term, or to stop
misgendering someone, or to otherwise be more inclusive, is a form ofprescriptivism and, if so, whether it’s acceptable for a linguist to do thesethings. But students of linguistics also pop up in online political disputes
only to invoke descriptivism to dismiss objections to oppressive language.
This move is not limited to novice linguists: in a now widely-discussed
event in 2017, a senior linguist and prolific contributor to Language Log
characterised the expectation that he not misgender nonbinary people who
use they/them pronouns as ‘the most extreme manifestation of prescriptivist Stalinism [he had] ever encountered’. When descriptivism functions as adepoliticised cover for linguists who would like to avoid supporting social
justice movements just as easily as it does to critique linguistic injustice, its
utility must be carefully reconsidered.
Little can top an accusation of Stalinism directed at a student who simply asks not to be publicly misgendered, but many other practices contribute to a less-than-welcoming environment for trans linguists. One of theseis the unmitigated exploration of curiosity and armchair theorisation on
the part of linguists who lack an understanding of the gravity of languagein trans people’s lives. In a moment that felt ordinary to me, I witnessed acolleague ask presenters in a trans-inclusive language workshop about thepronunciation of hir (from the ze/hir/hirs pronoun series) as /hir/, which
he found surprising based on the spelling. I learned later that his observation was perceived by some trans participants as challenging the legitimacy of ze/hir pronouns. As a linguist, I recognised the question as driven
by curiosity and genuine interest (I was delighted to see my colleague atthe workshop!), but the trans nonlinguists were reminded of the perpetualdemands we face to convince cis people of the validity of our language.
In other cases, curiosity leads to more blatant social violations, as whena friendly meeting with a cisgender colleague turned into an exhausting,multihour Q&A regarding my gender identity and transition, pepperedwith apologies for the personal nature of the questions and acknowledgements that this was not the conversation we met to have. Curiosity is aBEYOND THE CIS GAYS’ CIS GAZE

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luxury, and one which may be bought at another’s expense; here, the cost
was my limited physical energy.
Finally, linguists’ desire to assert linguistic authority must be reconsidered as part of an ongoing project of recognising the expertise of lived
experience and the novice status linguists must at times occupy. Putanother way, trans people haven’t flocked to linguistics because linguists
have apparently yet to realise how much they have to learn. The same formsof transphobia and exclusion found throughout the academy and otherinstitutions of power are found in our disciplines, and scholars of language
and gender must be particularly cautious about old transphobia dressed up
in new terminology (e.g. ‘gender critical feminism’).
I couldn’t begin to count the number of conversations I’ve had in whichcisgender linguists have passed judgement on trans people’s language inways they undoubtedly perceived as supportive but were in fact anything
but. Cis colleagues have expressed disappointment when trans people
blend traditionally feminine and masculine forms rather than being ‘moreinnovative’. They have encouraged their nonbinary students to use more‘positive’ language rather than defining themselves by what they are not.
They have even, in the midst of a job interview, spent half an hour justifying their choice to misgender the trans people they know. Linguists
have kindly informed me that trans researchers who study trans people are
more biased than their cis counterparts (strangely, the same logic doesn’t
seem to apply to cis researchers who study cis people, perhaps because itwould indict nearly the entire field) and that there is no point to studying
trans people unless you are comparing them to a ‘normal’, ‘heterosexual’
population. What these examples have in common is how the individuals
delivering them seemed to find a sense of great value – even delight – intheir contributions, as if they had hit on something a trans person neverwould. The authority of being a linguist was apparently enough. There areso many opportunities for linguistics to rise to the challenges posed by thecommunities the field has excluded and dominated, but this is impossible
without becoming more comfortable relinquishing our linguistic authority.
Trans linguistics, as I see it, is not only a label for community-based linguistic research with trans communities, but an opportunity to reconsider
fundamental issues through a trans lens. In this sense, trans linguistics is
not exclusively for trans thinkers, but for anyone who aims to fully divest
from transphobic worldviews while meeting the moral obligation to materially invest in the wellbeing of trans humans, including supporting andamplifying the voices of trans students and scholars. It is equally important
for trans linguists to address the needs of and questions raised by thinkers and activists who are Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC),
disabled, speakers of nondominant languages and varieties, and otherwise

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marginalised, some of whom will also be trans. Realising a liberatory, transformed linguistics grounded in social justice requires the learning of newvalues, skills and roles, and the unlearning of others.
So, where are all the trans people? We are here, and we are asking formore. The question that occupies my thoughts now is how the discipline
will answer.

About the author
Lal Zimman is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and Affiliated Facultyin Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara. His research takes a sociocultural
linguistic approach to language and trans communities, applying a varietyof methods to issues including embodiment, the gendered voice, the theorisation of identity and trans-affirming linguistic practices.

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