This deified view of transness was found all around the world. Dr. shawndeez (they/them), an Iranian American independent scholar who completed their PhD in gender studies at UCLA, told me that in various indigenous societies around the world “our transness was a fixture of our spiritual height.”21 Trans people were seen as “really useful vessels between this world and the spiritual—our transness gave us this extra access to this divine wisdom.” shawndeez believes transness demands that we cultivate “a consciousness that is so open,
