LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Student CAMP:Gender Issues |
by Kristen Minor |
Recently on one of those interchangeable and vapid reality television shows, a male contestant was presented with six women and asked to pick "the real one." Five of them were in fact very realistic drag queens, and the contestant had what can charitably be called a hissy fit, equating his ability to figure out which one was biologically female with his prowess as a real man. After a few minutes of agonizing dribble about how he would never live it down if he chose incorrectly, he did just that. This is probably the first-ever example of reality television inspiring serious thought, but this episode has made me think an awful lot about how we perceive gender. This leads to the million chromosome questionwhat is gender, anyway? And why does it make us so uncomfortable? Certainly everyone knows the difference between boys and girls. We know what girls and boys are supposed to be. Men are swaggering, sweaty hunters who are brave and aloof; women are domestic goddesses who are fulfilled by relationships with husband and children. Or something like that. I've always had a hard time keeping my stereotypes straightso to speak. It's very evident that many queer people play with gender. Any pride parade will have drag kings and queens, swishy men, butch women, and all sorts of other gender variants. Even the leathermen seem to be satirizing masculinity more than embracing it. Heck, any given women's meeting at my university could be considered a case study in short hairstyles. What is disturbingparticularly among the queer communityis the way that transphobia manifests itself. I focus on the queer community because it is the most frustrating to mein my little fairy world, queers unite and recognize that one person's oppression is everyone's. (And yes, the view in my world is lovely.) Among gay men, the most visible element of transphobia is the whole idea of "straight acting." Litanies of gay personals start with "straight-acting gay man seeking same..." and there is even a website where you can take a quiz and rank how straight acting you are. The term makes me twitchyit brings to mind a screaming queen trying to force himself into a lumberjack outfit. The message is clearit's not okay to be swishy, to not be a "manly man." A friend of mine who is so gay that he practically sets passing shrubbery on fire tells me that much of the overt homophobia he faces comes from other gay people. "Why are you so swishy? You're just living up to the stereotype!" This is an unfortunate by-product of the assimiliationist movement in the queer communityyou know, the people who take "straightening up for mom and dad" literally. I think that women have a lot more leeway in gender deviancetomboys are much more socially acceptable than sissies, butch women face much less flack from the lesbian community than flamers from the gay men, and female-to-male transgenders are often seen as really butch dykes. The treatment of transgendered people within the larger queer community is very often disgraceful. We can say "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered" all the livelong day, but very often it seems that transgenderism, is at best, an afterthought. Gay people embrace binaries just as much as straight peoplewe are women loving women and men loving men, not something outside of that system loving something else outside of that system. Overt transphobia is often blatantthe Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and its policy of allowing only "women born women" is an obvious example, as is the controversy that Girlfriends magazine experienced after columnist Patrick Califia-Rice (formerly Pat Califia) began transitioning. The readers were polled as to whether they wanted Califia-Rice to stay, and although the response was largely positive, the magazine received a great number of letters about how it was ridiculous to have a man as a writereven a man with decades of lesbian experience. A male-to-female transsexual once explained to me why she felt that transphobia was so pervasive by saying, "Well, gay people challenge sexual orientation. But that in itself isn't so radical anymore. Trans peopleanyone who lives outside of that male/female binarychallenge a much more deep-seated identity. A person should know that they're a boy or a girl, damn it. And the minute you start talking about sexual orientation being separate from gender identity it just blows most people's heads off. I'm not a gay man. I'm a straight woman who used to be a man. If I were attracted to women I'd be a lesbian. This bothers people." In short, yet another phobia is based on deep-seated insecurity. Shocking. The transgendered movement has long been marginalized and ignored by the larger queer community. Queers, of all people, should be comfortable with fluidity in tradition. Kristen Minor is a member of the class of 2004 at Dartmouth College, where she has recently declared herself a gay man with heterosexual tendencies stuck in a woman's body because she is well and truly sick of binaries. She can be reached at kristen@youth-guard.org when she's not off being a radical. . |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 12, August 23, 2002. |