Anthropology has a lot to answer for. Back in the 90s, a transphobe named Serena Nanda turned the gaze of the university onto the issue of gender in India and we are still living with the consequences. With the power of imperial knowledge-making behind her, she has laid down the dogma that only (educated, middle-class, white) Westerners claim to be trans women while those Indians we call hijra are actually a third gender. All the cis academics since agree with her and even the Indian courts cite her, so it must be true, right? So if you see photos of a protest with signs like “Hijras are women” or Indian trans women saying that they’re trans women, you can rest assured that’s that just our malign colonial influence. The exotic truth, on the other hand, is safely preserved in the centers of power of the Anglophone world thanks to the daily labor of cis academics everywhere – preserved from the colonial force of white trans women who threaten to extend their reach everywhere.