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| Hannah Wilson Class of 2017 |
In the nooks and crannies of languages, influenced by cultures and peoples of various ideologies and modes of being, there exist slews of derogatory slang terms for transgender peoples. In the United States among English speakers, it is not uncommon to catch wind of “tranny,” “transvestite,” or, a more general slur for LGBTQ+ individuals, “faggot” being used in reference to those who identify as transgender.
Varieties of Chinese languages also house words for transgender peoples. In Mandarin, kuaxingbie translates as “to go beyond sex,” and is considered to be the literal translation of the English word “transgender.” However, the word is not popularly used outside academia.
In Hong Kong, slang terms used towards transgender peoples are numerous. Bin tai is used as an insult to non-normative people, such as cross-dressers, homosexuals, masculine women, feminine men, and transgender people. Jan-jiu translates to “human monster.” Yan yiu translates similarly to “human monster” or “freak,” but is used in reference to queerly sexed people in addition to transgender individuals. The list goes on.
Specific, derogatory terminology is a valid point of departure for discussions of inclusivity and political transformation. However, it is not the most important manifestation of a given language on which to focus if one is considering a culture’s potential to accept and treat equally all its members.
More importantly is the way in which a language treats not only queer and transgender people, but objects, ideas, and “normal” people. Most Indo-European languages (i.e. Spanish, Italian, German, Russian) grammatically gender objects. For example, the Spanish endings –o and –a indicate maleness and femaleness, respectively.
Chinese, however, though by no means a wholly gender-neutral language, entails a gender-neutral third person pronoun, tā. Originally written with the radical (a part of a Chinese character that imparts some semantic or linguistic information) meaning human, tā has reemerged in Chinese language as a all-encompassing term for individuals or objects that English speakers would refer to as he, she, or it.
Meanwhile, over the course of the past three decades, China has experienced a “Great Sprawl,” with millions of Chinese migrating from the countryside into cities. In 1990, 26 percent of Chinese people lived in urban areas. At the end of 2015, that number had increased to 56 percent. With hundreds of millions more people living in urban areas, the potential for the exchange of intellectual capital is great.
Simultaneously, the potential for a shift in cultural notions of gender, sex, and sexuality is equally great. Whether or not China will capitalize on the opportunities for this shift afforded it by a rapidly urbanizing populous and a partially gender-neutral language is uncertain. However, the stage is set for China to be on the forefront of human rights for transgender and queerly sexed peoples.
But, of course, slang terms would have to go, too.
Hannah Wilson is a senior McConnell Scholar studying philosophy, political science and women and gender studies at the University of Louisville.