Trans woman and UvA student Tammie Schoots: “I advise people to go through their transition quietly”
The first gender clinic in Berlin opened over a hundred years ago. How has the emancipation of transgender people progressed in Europe since then? Pretty badly, as UvA student and trans woman Tammie Schoots says. “Journalists have given a big middle finger to transgender people.”
This Wednesday evening, Spui25 organised a lecture by writer and researcher Alex Bakker on the history of gender care. One of the guest speakers was Tammie Schoots (30), a European Law student at the UvA and trans woman. “That I, as a thirty-year-old, unemployed student, have been given the opportunity to do this is wonderful, but at the same time a little sad,” she said with a bit of self-mockery. “Because although I have read and written a lot on this subject, I miss trans PhD candidates or trans Volkskrant journalists in the public debate.” With this, Schoots immediately touched on a difficult point, because although ‘gender-affirming care’ – medical interventions such as sex-change operations or hormone therapy – is now celebrating its 100th anniversary, Schoots does not see the position of transgender people in society improving.
To get the conversation going, Schoots joined Alex Bakker on Wednesday evening. During the lecture The Birth of the Gender Clinic: One Hundred Years of Gender-affirming Medicine, the development of gender care was discussed based on the Berlin Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which was founded a century ago. “The German medicine and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld’s institute was hugely important because he not only offered medical and psychological help, but also employed real trans people. In this way, they became part of their own healthcare provision,” Schoots explained.
The radical right
Now that the radical right is gaining momentum worldwide, Schoots believes it is increasingly important to keep talking about gender care being under pressure. “The ideology of the extreme right is based on a natural order in the world. The man is at the top, then comes the woman. A kind of primary school biology in which your gender determines your place in the world. Transgender people are an obstacle to that idea of a male and a female. That is why the extreme right is agitating against it in such an aggressive way.”
The situation in the United States, under the Trump administration that is only two months old, is of particular concern to Schoots. “A rule has been passed that states that you may not present yourself as anything other than your sex at birth,” she said. “This probably means that trans people can no longer enter the country because that would be a criminal offence.” Another example from the US: terms such as ‘gender’ and ‘transgender’ were recently banned from scientific studies by the CDC, the American equivalent of the RIVM. “Not being allowed to talk about it anymore is the first step. If you no longer use the terms, you can’t talk about oppression either.”
However, as Schoots emphasised, the problems are not limited to the United States. “This topic is also extremely relevant in the Netherlands, even if it is never really recognised as such. Five years ago, teacher Caroline Franssen wrote an opinion piece in the Dutch newspaper Trouw in which trans women were portrayed as potential rapists. Until then, such extreme ideas could only be found on radical right-wing forums, but since then the hackneyed idea of ‘trans people as a danger’ has been appearing more often. We don’t offer a platform to someone who claims the earth is round, do we? By publishing such things in the newspaper, you are signalling that this is a normalised opinion in the public debate. Journalism has really given a very big middle finger to transgender people.”
And that stands in the way of the sustainable acceptance of transgender people in society, Schoots believes. “About nine out of ten Dutch people say they have a positive or neutral attitude towards transgender people, but at the same time there is a very large group of people who would prefer not to have a transgender teacher in their classroom, or find intimacy between queer people in public spaces offensive. So you can consider yourself very open-minded, but at the same time harbour ideas that prove the opposite. Where are the PhD researchers who are looking into this? That is where the greatest frustration lies.”
Schoots gave plenty of personal examples that illustrate the undermined position of transgender people, even at a professional level. “I recently applied for a position at a journalistic platform, where I was told in the rejection that people like me are an obstacle to journalism. Because I am a trans person, they were afraid that I would want to write about “people with a uterus” instead of “women”, even though I have never done that. Prejudices like that are very shocking, people are really rejected for being trans.”
Frightening
“When I enter a room, I am almost always the only trans person. That is extremely frightening,” Schoots said. “There are only about 70,000 binary trans people in the Netherlands, which is a percentage of next to nothing. It is a super small minority that is extremely vulnerable. If you are going to kick against that, it is simply not an equal debate.”
She is somewhat ambivalent about the position of trans people at the UvA. “The UvA can sometimes be one of the most surreal places to be. There are constant conversations about gender and gender identity, but still it is not possible to truly include trans people. In my experience, you are seen as less talented, and it is less likely to have the opportunity to progress, even when you are achieving good grades.”
Schoots was also not optimistic about the current gender care in the Netherlands. “When it comes to gender care, lower scientific standards are accepted. A scientist and a right-wing extremist opinion maker are given the same status in that debate. I fear that the moment will come when transgender care for teenagers will be banned. When you have to go through male puberty as a trans woman, you can never reverse it. You are simply disfigured for life.”
Avalanche
Schoots therefore emphasised the importance of lectures such as the one on Wednesday evening, although she fears it may be too late. “I fear we have already passed the tipping point. Trump has only been in office for two months, and we are really in for an avalanche. We simply have not done enough to get transgender people into important scientific and journalistic positions to offer a counterweight to this.”
She said she felt forced to come to a sad conclusion. “I advise people to go through their transition quietly. Make sure it is not documented anywhere and do not look for publicity, because you will be hit with an enormous wave of hatred. That is incredibly sad, but as long as we do not take the next step in the emancipation of trans people, it is the only thing I can recommend.”
