Deconstructing my father

My father has largely been a source of negativity in my life. My parents divorced when I was 3 years old and my time with him from that point onward has basically been divided into three time periods: 1) ages 3 to 15 I was afraid of him and hated him and was afraid of becoming like him 2) 16 through 20 I forgave him for being a bad father and understood the things in his life that led him to be the fucked up man that he is 3) 21 to present I’ve been somewhat actively trying to pursue a positive relationship with him on an adult level, treating him as an equal and demanding the same in return.

My father’s main problems have always been his ego, his greed, his verbal abuse, his short temper, and his self-centeredness. His life has been countless failed attempts at artistic (mostly film) projects trying to get whatever he wants at any cost regardless of how it affects those around him. He likes to feel in charge, he likes to lead the pack, but really he’s just an immature kid trying to assume the role of the alpha-male which is the position he was in throughout his childhood. He was the oldest of 8 children and was forced into being a third parent and taking care of his 7 siblings denying him his natural growth as a young boy. His father was physically abusive to him, and generally he has had a fucked up life with a fucked up family: drugs, death, suicide, being poor, prison etc. all of which contribute to his inner turmoil. Since he was male and the oldest he was taught to be strong and take control of others from a very young age and if he didn't he was abused or punished until he did.

On the positive side of things he is a very good director. He is politically savvy and very down to earth, smart, and easy to get along with when he isn’t wrapped up in his ego. He has directed many independent videos/films, and written a number of articles. Only a few of his projects have generated any real income but all have had moderate critical success or were enjoyed by those who had access to them.

My mother left him because of verbal abuse and because of his complete economic and emotional selfishness. He is THE typical story of a self-centered artist. His occasional film or video gig bought him enough food to slide by while my mom paid for rent, myself, and everything else. Divorcing him was most definitely the right choice for her and I.

When I was young I was really terrified of him. His bouts of anger often reduced me to tears, he was insulting, mean, and horrible. He had virtually no respect for me one moment and after the tirade was over he would apologize later but never change his behavior on any real fundamental level. It was only when I became a teenager that I really began to pity him instead of hate him. He was and is a failure in his own eyes, his family's eyes, and in society's eyes. He never had a chance to have a normal childhood as a basis for his life and he has built such an ego around himself he sabotages his own work because, for him, it never lives up to the acclaim he feels it deserves.

He has aged and with it I think has come the slow understanding that he has really fucked his life up. He has let down my mother. He has let down me, his son. He has let down his siblings he was supposed to help raise, most of which are fucked up, dead, or barely getting by. But instead of intrinsically changing the life set out for him by his socially constructed gender he uses that same structure to do the only thing he knows how to do: start project after project and hope one takes off, generates lots of money, and use that money to solve his problems. This will never happen and money doesn't solve problems. Even a modicum of success does not make up for decades of bankruptcy and emotional detachment. Due to this I have always had a shallow and tenuous relationship with him. My whole life I acknowledged his character flaws and even though I knew there was a real person in there I knew I would probably never truly see it. I would never really reach HIM, just the bullshit he uses as a facade to cover up his emotions and insecurities.

I was wrong.

During his most recent short film he was, as usual, hoping for the best. Seeing the world through the lens of his gender he saw the answer to his problems lying in becoming a successful alpha male: money, fame, and power. This would be it - this is the big one, it's going to make him $10,000 each week once it takes off and becomes a feature-length hollywood production that he will direct. He'll be famous and never have to work again. I saw the final product and it was beautiful. It was intelligent, sweet, and incomprehensibly optimistic about the world and the human race. It was political and revolutionary. And like most revolutionary pieces of art, it didn't do well. After a month of good reviews and sub par audience attendance at an independent theater the final showing came. The credits rolled, the movie ended, the crowd left, and I found myself standing outside the theater doors knowing something was wrong. The manager of the theater, a friend of mine, came up to me and said that he had just learned, because of the lack of ticket sales (let alone the lack of producers coming to throw money at it) my father wasn't able to pay the theater for the month of showings. He was in the process of letting the owner know that he would pay as soon as he got the money but that he didn't have it now. During my realization of how serious that was the doors opened and I saw my father, his face covered in tears, his voice barely audible, look at me and the manager and barely croak out a single word: water. He closed the door as the manager ran off to find him a bottle of what he requested and left me in shock.

I had known my father for almost 25 years and I had never once seen him cry. I'm sure he had here and there, but it was rare and I had certainly never been witness to it. In that one moment of pure vulnerability I completely and finally understood him. It was a culmination of all the understanding I had done over the last decade. He was fucking alone. He never had a normal childhood and he had never matured because of it. He didn't know how to relate to people unless he was bossing them around. He had taken every last shred of his positivity, his happiness and creativity that he had buried inside of him - he took it past fucked up layers of anger and abuse he had suffered and poured it all into this one work of art; a story of a young man trying to do something good with his life. Something he, having dropped out of high school, having been a parent since he was born, having never been taught how to have a non-dysfunctional relationship to people and society and women, had never been able to do. And not this movie alone but he had poured his heart into his work before, and had seen it all fail. He never had a chance, and maybe he could have been lucky enough to work past his problems earlier in life but can I blame him that he didn't? Can I blame him that his salvation of money, power, and fame was created by viewing the world through the lens of his own socially constructed gender? How many men are lucky enough to have a radical feminist critique present in their own lives so that they can smash their inner patriarch?

So, in a moment of pure unabashed emotion I forgave him for all he had done. I hadn't forgotten it, and I don't let him get away with it when it still happens, but I forgave him. I felt love for him and for the first time in my life I wanted to call him dad instead of his first name.

My dad is the failure of the male gender in a world that builds men up knowing most won't succeed. He is the powerless working class man, he is the self-centered artist, he is the failure of the education system, the long lost first born child, the abusive father, he's a thousand stories and male stereotypes and more rolled into one. Society failed him so he failed those closest to him. Patriarchy built him up and patriarchy tore him down. The problem with gender archetypes is that they aren't real life. A man can't succeed when there's a corporate empire trying to control him. An artist can't express himself when one needs so much money just to have a place to live. A father can't raise a family when he was never raised himself. A husband can't have a healthy marriage if he never knew one was possible. A man has to fight to be a feminist because he's led to believe he is something else: that he's a man instead of being a human being.

Seeing the world through the lens of patriarchy is deadly. Seeing it through the lens of feminism is liberating. I don't think it's too late for my father, I don't think it's too late for anyone, but I know that if he ever wants to release his anger, his sadness, and create a real future for himself - one filled with love and peace, not money and power - then he has a lot to own up to and a lot of work to do. Maybe I'll try and talk to him about it if I can muster up the strength.

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The Joy of Social Construction

Why do we harp on ad nauseam about things being ‘socially constructed’? Why is ‘social construction’ so essential to gender and sexuality studies? The answer to these two questions lies in the activist and progressive effects that constructivist thinking can produce. Asserting that something is socially constructed means that it is changeable. It is created out of human interaction and can eventually be undone. This is opposed to an essentialist world view, which does not question the origins of social phenomena, but takes them as bio-psychological givens. Essentialist formulas for change usually occur within established power structures, while social constructivists perceive those power structures as open to change.

For instance, some scholars have lauded the modern Muslim practice of veiling as feminist because it can free women from the scopophilic gaze of men. By ‘covering themselves up’ women will not allow men to judge them based solely on restrictive beauty standards. They will not have to visually prostitute their bodies in order to get jobs, relationships or marriages. This policy is the result of an essentialist view of men and masculinity. Men are taken ‘as they are’ (superficial scopophiles) and women must adjust to that in order to make life better for themselves.

Social constructivists would resist this kind of framing of gender. Men may judge women based on standards of ‘physical beauty’, but there is nothing necessarily permanent about this. Men are collectively ‘like that’ because society makes them that way. It encourages them to behave in ways that are degrading to women. Popular culture, parents, the media and schools all promote a ‘beauty’-based valorization of women; boys are taught that being a ‘real man’ implies this kind of attitude to the so-called ‘opposite’ sex. Therefore, under a social constructivist framework, patriarchal behaviors are the product of identifiable ‘social doings’ that we can work towards changing. Instead of ‘covering up’ women as a response to male scopophilia, we can change masculinity by altering the structures of socialization that produce it. The media does not have to promote degrading judgments of women, parents can teach their kids to not judge people based on their gender, and schools can encourage gender equality. Under a constructivist framework, there is no reason for thinking that patriarchal social phenomena are permanent: we can all work collectively towards changing them. It is no wonder, therefore, that feminists and other gender progressives depend so much on social constructivist thought. It is generally an optimistic worldview that winks at the possibility of change in society.

But is there such a thing as social constructivist thought? Does this concept not make sense only when defined against essentialism? This is true, to an extent. There are many diverse theories that deal with ‘constructed-ness’ and not all of them are necessarily in fundamental agreement with each another. One of the most basic fault lines within social constructivism is between ‘symbolic interactionism’ and poststructuralism. The former is considered more ‘mainstream’ and generally follows the schema outlined above. The latter is a more pessimistic, and at times, anti-progressive theory that has come up against some resistance in modern academia.

Both symbolic interactionists and poststructuralists conceive of identities as ‘socially constructed’, but differ on the desirability of ‘stable’ identity constructions. Poststructuralists deny the existence of a knowledgeable human nature that precedes socialization and view rigid identity performances as reflective of a lack of stable identity. People stick doggedly to fixed identities because they are afraid of the ‘instability and uncertainty inside’. In turn, the need to maintain a stable identity causes violence towards others because the only way that it can be maintained is through an ‘othering’ process that discredits and despises anything that which the desired identity is not. For example, fixed heterosexuality is inevitably violent because it requires a level of disgust at all other sexual identity options as a way of maintaining itself. Thus, poststructuralists favor embracing the fluidity and ambiguity of identity as the only way that social change can be achieved. In order for patriarchy to ‘go away’ both men and women are going to have to take their identities a lot less seriously. Symbolic interactionists, on the other hand, find nothing wrong with stable identities as long as they are better identities. Masculinity does not have to be destabilized in order to stop being aggressive. Rather, it is possible to change the identity for the better (expunging homophobia & misogyny from it), while maintaining its fixity.

***For More Information***
For a basic introduction to a symbolic interactionist framing of gender, have a look at Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s “Doing Gender” from the first issue of Gender and Society (1987). Since this article may be hard to find on the Internet, you can use this summary to get at their argument. West and Zimmerman examine gender from the perspective of individuals reacting to social expectations, but if you are looking for a more institutionalist perspective, check out Judith Lorber’s “Night to His Day”.

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Fussy Old Foucault

Sometimes, it seems impossible to have a healthy relationship with the work of Michel Foucault. In academia, worshipful adoration mixes with utter derision to produce a frustrating bifurcation: fawning love for the seminal philosopher or absolute disdain for the fussy French sophist. At the heart of this polarization is Foucault’s conceptualization of ‘power’. Unlike many philosophers (and the vast majority of political theorists), he does not theorize power as something that an individual or institution actually has. For Foucault, power is not the ability to make others do what they otherwise would not have done. It is not limited to the accumulation of material and social capital that individuals and other entities can use to cajole others. Rather, Foucault views power as a productive force that is constitutive of people’s identities. Power is a particular discourse that creates the person, simultaneously liberating and imprisoning her. It constructs who we are and sets the conditions under which we can operate in the world.

For instance, a woman who gets plastic surgery in order to look more ‘beautiful’ may think that she is empowering herself. And, in a sense, she is. By tailoring her body according to the perceived exigencies of heterosexual men, she is more likely to get jobs and be sought for marriage. She is acquiring the social resources that have the potential to incite others to do what they otherwise may not have done. Nevertheless, she does not choose the terms on which she acquires this power. She is the product of gendered social discourses that force her to perceive ‘normative beauty’ as her only ticket to success. She is produced as a gendered subject by these discourses, and thus, it is the discourses that have the power – not her. They can exercise this power because they are ultimately productive: they produce an identity for the person (in this case, ‘woman’) and a ready-made blueprint for how to ‘get on’ in life based on this identity (‘beauty’, pleasing men). But, at the same time, they fundamentally limit her. She is a slave to the discourses that constitute her identity: she is not her own person. This is why power is so effective. It provides tangible benefits for those who succumb to it, while, at the same time, profoundly entrapping them. Power gives its subjects the illusion of control over their lives, while defining the very essence of their being.

There are generally two sets of objections to this kind of analysis. People who perceive themselves as beneficiaries of the status quo find it particularly disturbing because the terms of their success are exposed as not being their own. On the other hand, those who fight against the status quo find it maddening that Foucault does not seem to view anything as truly emancipatory. Their proposed revisions of the status quo have the potential to be just as oppressive and limiting. There is always ‘something’ (power) lurking in the background, constituting, constraining and limiting everything that we are and everything that we do. The discursive power behind any new identities that we create for ourselves is bound to enchain us in some way. People, thus, write Foucault off as a hopeless non-conformist, a radical revolutionary for whom the world will never be radical enough. A Foucauldian analysis (such as the one below) of the oppressive implications of the gay rights movement often comes under particularly strong criticism.

In Foucauldian terms, the modern gay rights movement is a direct product of the post-Enlightenment medicalization of homosexuality. Sexuality was transformed from something one does to something that one is for the purpose of classifying homosexuality as a psychiatric disease. Modern LGBT identity politics owes its existence to this transformation. Without it, it would be impossible to make appeals to human rights for people who are homosexuals. And while this new discourse, which produces sexuality as an identity rather than an action, has definitely contributed to ‘liberating’ some people, it has also placed them in a new spider’s web of limitations. The classification of people into homosexuals or heterosexuals creates restrictive identities that limit the polymorphous potential for sexuality. The medicalization of homosexuality has, ironically, provided the key resources for liberationist homosexual politics, while locking people in a new set of chains: those of binary, fixed, stable and consistent sexuality that somehow forms of the essence of their being. Critics of Foucault complain that this attitude is far too pessimistic and disrespectful to the successes of the liberationist gay movement.

This objection is perfectly understandable. What is the point of political engagement if it is just going to lock us into another set of discursive chains? Is any political effort not going to end up imprisoning people in some way? For a healthy engagement with Foucault, we should take this part of his philosophy with a grain of salt. Rather than automatically assuming that whatever ‘new social arrangement’ emerges must be oppressive in some way, it would be more productive to be on the lookout for potential anti-emancipatory effects of all political activity (no matter how emancipatory it claims to be). Foucault’s caution with emancipatory politics should be taken as a warning about utopias. He demonstrates the foolishness of the notion that, at some point, all oppressive politics will stop and we will all live happily ever after. For a healthy engagement with Foucault, we should understand his doubts about ‘emancipatory politics’ as a warning against illusory utopias, not as a definitive statement that defines all political efforts.


***For More Information***
Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (Vol. 1) is a great read and provides an interesting starting point for exploring his reconceptualization of ‘power’. Power/Knowledge, collection of essays and interviews, is also very useful. Also, check out my previous post on Foucault and fetishism here.

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Housekeeping, 3.23.08

+ news +
MD making strides?,
The NYTimes on civil unions =/= marriage,
and gender non-specific pregnancy! for the week.

Sincerely,
ts

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The invisible queer woman!

Recently, I got out of one of those "unofficial" kinds of relationships. For the past six months or so, I'd been going back and forth with this woman who was in another relationship and yet, she told me, would rather be with me. Still there were a bunch of other complications, like the real fact that there were other people she'd rather be with, too, and not in the sense of setting up a polyamorous sort of deal where we'd be honest with each other and upfront and all that practical and necessary stuff. It was more like every time I turned around when we were out together, she'd be hooking up with someone else, and occasionally even a friend of mine. My begrudged and broken heart notwithstanding, I found it really difficult being in this pseudo-relationship without actually being able to answer in the affirmative whenever anyone asked if she was my girlfriend, and not just because I really wanted to say she was (there, I admit it!). Rather, as a feminine-presenting woman, my sexuality is often made invisible when I'm single.

I've struggled with this for some time, even going so far as to try to attempt to genderfuck, but what ends up happening is that a) I feel ridiculous and uncomfortable, like I'm acting out a part and b) well, I kind of look like a feminine woman trying unsuccessfully to genderfuck. Furthermore I feel like this totally negates the entire reasoning behind genderfucking; namely, that in playing with gender roles, we interrogate their limitations and why they exist in the first place. Interestingly, in the queer community I currently belong to (downtown Toronto), genderfucking and androgyny have become the standard to which queer women are expected to measure up. Thus it's not surprising that those who don't fit the paradigm (i.e. me) feel like this supposedly supportive community that is so rich in and tolerant of diversity might not be all it's cracked up to be.

I find it very interesting that our gender presentation and our sexuality are so inextricable, and I wonder why that is. Historically, this isn't really new in communities of women who sleep with women. This isn't the first time that the ways we express our gender have been used as "evidence" of our sexual behaviour. For instance, I think it's important to note the history of butch/femme identities, which supposedly denoted what kinds of sexual practices a woman might be into. However, many butches and femmes have argued that their outward identities had less to do with sexual roles than simply finding comfort in one's own skin. So why, then, if that's where our history lies, are we homogenizing a queer identity?

Something in me wants to cry out, perhaps naively, "This isn't supposed to be happening amongst queers!! Aren't we all about self-definition and a radical dismantling of the rigidity of sex and gender?!" Still, in the Toronto scene, it seems there is a pretty small margin of people who fit into what a queer woman is "supposed" to look like. Recently I attended a workshop on queerness and body image. While I was expecting a discussion that largely focussed on body type in terms of size, I was necessarily reminded of my white privilege when the discussion turned to racialized bodies. Many of the participants were people of colour who began to articulate the concern that for them, Church Street (the downtown strip that used to be known as the gay village, though increasingly less so), and other queer enclaves in the city are actually pretty inhospitable environments. Someone mentioned that while we homos like to believe we are inclusive and progressive by virtue of our sexual marginalization, our communities are by no means immune to the many other forms of oppression out there (ie. racism, ableism, etc.). One of the participants spoke about how this racism is often hidden under the guise of "preference"; he said he couldn't even count the number of times someone he was hitting on had responded, "Sorry dude, I'm just not into Asians".

There is absolutely a problem of representation and a lack of a sense of inclusion in these spaces, especially considering that this is a community that rallies around the word "diversity" as a way of getting the hetero world to acknowledge and accept us. There is evidence of this everywhere. How often do we see queer characters of size, of colour, and/or with disabilities in television and movies? How often do we see these people having any kind of sexuality at all, for that matter? Sexuality is sort of a tricky thing to be unified by. We aren't understanding of marginalization overall by virtue of our sexualities, as much as I'd like to believe that's possible. So I'm rolling up the sleeves on my girly shirt, because we've got a lot more work to do.

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Yeah, I used to be cool.

So I know a lot of my friends wouldn’t believe me if I told them, but I was totally the coolest person back in school. I was friends with everyone, and everyone wanted to be friends with me. Sometimes people knew my name before I knew theirs. I think I even remember breaking a couple girls’ hearts.

But it all ended in 7th grade. In 7th grade something weird happened. It wasn’t anything particularly isolated; there was a wide-sweeping change in how we organized ourselves and related to each other. I think it was puberty. But the bottom line? Well…I was placed at the bottom of the line. I was no longer cool. And particularly among men, I became a target.

As I’m sure my parents can attest, I was a very energetic little kid. In terms of gender performance, I was just like I am now – a healthy mix of femme, mostly andro, and the occasional spout of earnest butch – except that when I was little I acted as if I was constantly wired on caffeine. This meant, I think, that when I was femme, I was really femme. I would roar around with my trucks just as much as I would dance little pirouettes in the hallway. I was so energetic that everywhere I went it felt like a production. Maybe that’s why, in elementary and middle school, I was so popular. A big part of my self was bouncing around and having fun; I was a fun magnet. Lots of little kids are.

So you’re probably wondering why this loser is talking about how he (used to be) cool in elementary and middle school (and you’re also thinking: no wonder he’s not cool anymore). Well, it’s because of this age thing, I think. I wasn’t cool anymore because my way of behaving as a male – at our around the time when everyone else my age hit puberty and began reorganizing according to gendered expectations of sexuality and resulting behavior – no longer became acceptable. What was interesting was that, even despite my gender variance as a kid, I had a ton of male friends growing up. At puberty, however, a gender mechanism initiated; “appropriate men” actually had to reject the company of gender variant boys. So, at or around 7th grade, no longer was I (in the confident, gender-variant way I behaved) an appropriate kind of boy for another boy to be friends with. In the company of women, I don’t think the rules were necessarily the same; there were complications when it came to romantic interest that set up a standard of rules and regulations for how to interact, but most of the time that wasn’t as big of an issue.

I’ve been reading some stuff lately by Nancy Lesko, and she’s really awakened me to issues of age when thinking about the construction of identity in adolescence. She advocates for a reorganization of primary and secondary education (and, I’d argue, child-rearing) that transforms the child-parent/child-teacher relationship into more of a mutual educational relationship as opposed to this slave-master relationship whereby information and rules about behavior are funneled one-way into the child. I really don’t think, in most schools, there’s enough done to encourage harmless, deviant behaviors from the norm. Shouldn’t that be encouraged? I guess it’s easier said than done. But I do think it would neutralize some of crazy moments of behavior shifting and make middle school a tiny bit less horrifying.

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Housekeeping, 2.17.08

+ news +
Boy hanged for gender bending,
SoCal shooting,
and Noah to the big screen?.

Sincerely,
ts

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bookmonkey: Gender Differences in Mathematics: An Integrative Psychological Approach edited by Ann M. Gallagher and James C. Kaufman

Rating (out of five): ΔΔΔ

Do we all know the stereotype that females are not as capable at math as males? Folks, that old stereotype has just been debunked.

Gender Differences in Mathematics: An Integrative Psychological Approach, edited by Gallagher and Kaufman, essentially states that there are no real differences in mathematical ability. Beware, though, that this is not a book that gets the heart pumping. Not to scare people off from reading it but the book is a fairly dry read.

The book has a variety of ideas on differences in mathematical ability as it relates to gender. These ideas are presented in a conglomeration of essays written by academics and researchers, all of whom have their own personal experiences and biases. Often times the research essays disclosed that females overall ended up with higher grades in mathematics classes than males. However, when taking higher level mathematical ability tests, females tended to end up with lower scores on average than males.

This finding prompted many in the book to discuss reasons for this tendency. There was a range of explanations but most were vague or non-conclusive. One explanation was that as young children males are encouraged to play with blocks. This encouragement has the end result of leading to increased spatial ability. High spatial ability is correlated with doing well with certain types of math, and high spatial ability is especially conducive to success on mathematical ability tests such as the SAT.

This and other explanations for the test score differences as well as class grade difference raise questions about the impact of biology versus socialization on academic performance. If there are differences in mathematical ability how do they manifest and why? Are we as a society more responsible or are physical factors responsible? In some cases it was concluded that societal factors are more to blame and that there are no inherent factors outside of intelligence that lead to differences in mathematical ability.

Gender Differences In Mathematics also raises questions about the focus many research studies take. Why are we asking why males are outperforming females on the mathematical portion of SAT? Ultimately in one of the many essays the authors pondered that studies are asking questions that focus on the ways that males are outperforming females in mathematical areas, but the studies do not tend to focus on the ways that females are outperforming males. This leads back to the old and engrained stereotype that females are not as good at math and that researchers themselves carry that stereotype within them. The researchers have their own personal agendas. Not only the researchers have agendas but also the publishers of the studies.

While I could say more I leave it to you as readers to seek out your own conclusions. The book is worth a shot if you are interested in how child education is impacted by gender stereotypes. It is also worth reading if you are someone in a career that is involved with mathematics. I especially encourage educators to read this book and question the ways in which they approach their students based on gender. Peoples’ well-being depends on it.

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READ MY BELT

Below the Belt today introduces READ MY BELT, a resource of free online journals, articles, and other publications related to the study of gender, sex, and sexuality. We have added a permanent link to our contents bar on the right.

READ MY BELT is purposefully constructed as a blog post so that anyone can comment and suggest new online resources to add. So get ready to copy and paste those bookmarks, you gender geeks out there!

And now, for the journals:

Gender journals
19th Century Gender Studies
Genders OnLine Journal
The Journal of Family Welfare
Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality

International-themed journals
International Family Planning Perspectives
Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies
The Journal of Family Welfare
Journal of International Women’s Studies
Manifesta
Said It.
Women’s Health and Urban Life

Race-oriented journals
Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies
Women’s Health and Urban Life

Religion/Spirituality
Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality
Journal of Queer Studies in Finland
Women in Judaism

Sexuality-themed journals
Canadian Online Journal of Queer Studies in Education
Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality
International Family Planning Perspectives
Outskirts
Said It.
SQS-lehti

Women-centered journals
Advancing Women in Leadership
Journal of International Women’s Studies
Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies
Manifesta
Outskirts
The Scholar & Feminist Online
Thirdspace
Women in Judaism

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Boy, Oh Boy!

Manontheside got me thinking about my dating history, and in the style of his most recent post, I started thinking about what barriers exist that prevent me from finding the so-called One. Seeing as how many of us, it seems, are on this quest to find completion with another person, to find a match that will validate us as successful people, to attain this state that will somehow fill the missing gaps and end the lonely moments singleness brings…I think it’s understandable that we think a great deal about what exactly might be standing in the way of the ideal of partnership.

For me, I think a lot about what I look like, and what I act like – two things that the gay male community, from what I’ve gathered, seems to care about most when looking for dates (manontheside seems to take a less superficial route, an image of gay dating that goes beneath the skin…admirable, but I still stand by the fact that I think most guys are romantically a bit shallow). Looks are certainly what I tend to care about most, at least at first. To start, I’ll take a snapshot of myself, what factors I think shape my chances:

- attractive, boyish look
- moderately short at 5’8” tall
- down the middle mannerisms; not quite femme but not really butch at all
- very shy, mostly around guys

And now to tear it apart:

The shy thing, I think, is the biggest obstacle – shyness lends itself easily to awkwardness, and when you’re trying to meet people it just hands-down means you’ll meet fewer people; potential dates just won’t ever have a chance to be potentials.

But now for the part I think the most about – the look, the boyishness. Boyish guys in the gay market occupy a certain space in the attractive game, I think. They’re not inherently masculine, and so a big portion of the gay market out there with masculinity fetishes (Abercrombie gays, preppy gays, Colt gays, butch-minded gays) typically won’t be into boyish guys. I think there is a window, however, in the Abercrombie/preppy gay market for boyish dudes – but they have to be tall, frat-like in behavior -- also not me.

This, I think, is what I have left. Mikey of Queer as Folk fame – boyish, submissive, geeky, short; not top hot market but still “cute”, with an in-show dating record that truly suggests a dom/sub man/boy thing goin’ on. While my dating history isn’t exactly as NAMBLA as I think Mikey’s (or even Justin’s) characters play from, I can’t help but worry that I’m too much of a sad stereotype. Is it all self-imposed? I don’t entirely think so; as I was coming out, I was rewarded with compliments when I looked boyishly cute (my Fievel Goes West costume was a big hit in college). And so I guess I’ve tried to act the part. But maybe I just worried that I didn’t know any other way to act. Isn’t that sad? TV, tell me who I should be!!

And yet, I’m still surprised from time to time by the reality of a flawed gendered performance – I recall one startling encounter when I was watching Eragon with my date and he was talking about his crush on Edward Speleers. For the first time in my life, I was instantaneously jealous – jealous of an actor my date thought was cute, an actor in one of the worst movies I had ever seen. I already knew that my date had a thing for fair skinned, boyish people…but for some reason Mr. Speleers drove me into a crazed state of anxiety. Yes, he’s toned, something theoretically I could achieve if I worked hard enough (never gonna happen). But he’s a hotter boyish guy. My category was invaded. It seems that even though I sometimes feel limited to a category by my looks, I’m not beneath competing within the category.

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Tough Transitions

Okay, so I’m going to finally write about trans stuff. The problem is, I’ve been hesitant to write about it because I fall into the category of one of those folks who wants to be as supportive as possible of trans issues and help create some dialogue, but I’m still not as educated as I would like to be in order to confidently stand at the front of the picket lines. I majored in gender and sexuality studies in college, but ironically very little of it led me to the study trans issues; we were too busy talking about the gays, gay this and gay that with a little dabble of gender norms here and there. I guess I just need to bite the bullet and write, and risk making a mistake or two. So feel free to call me out.

When the ENDA poo recently hit the fan, I was really upset…and it kind of struck a chord with me from a very, very similar situation I was in a couple years ago:

Back in college I interned for a state-wide gay rights organization in a state where no protections existed in any shape or form against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Our organization was fighting to put a protection on the upcoming ballot, a protection against discrimination for state employees (a protection now required by the passed ENDA). The reality was, and everyone knew, that this move would never pass to be included on the ballot…but they were doing as a symbolic statement to show these rights were in demand. Quite progressively (considering the very red nature of our state), our organization put forth legislative language that included protections for both sexual orientation and gender identity. I admit I kind of expected it; as a young, eager college activist, I thought: “Of course a gay rights organization would be fight for the rights of trans folks. How could one marginalized group leave another one behind?”

A couple weeks into the push to include this on the ballot, powerful (read: $$$$) members of the organization confronted the director about the language on the bill to protect gender identity. One member even stormed into our office in outrage, and I was in earshot of the conversation he had with the director in another room. He first argued that including gender identity would make it impossible for the bill to pass (a reality they already knew would happen anyway). After my director spoke with him about his exact concerns he started to calm down, and then he told a long-winded story about how as an effeminate, gay-curious teenager he was subject to transphobia; people made fun of him saying that because he was gay he was more like a girl than anything, and his family would worry he would become a transvestite and want to maybe have surgery to become a girl (something he resented and has violently rejected since his youth; he was gay…not, God forbid, transgendered).

And that’s one of the big sources of where my frustration with the ENDA comes from. It’s a fear that underneath all of this political stuff about “just getting it to pass” (and I believe the reality is that it really would not pass if it included gender identity), the deep truth is that gay people around this country are uncomfortable with our country's multifaceted transgender community, and further – gay people are excruciatingly uncomfortable with their own gender issues. And while this is definitely for another post, I think the reason this is so is because gay men are being reconfigured in our heteronormative, gender-normative society that can only tolerate other forms of gender variety when they're mocked.

I realize I’m not being particularly objective. I promise something better soon!

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Gender Bending, Gender Shaping

I recently watched Tipping the Velvet with some friends. I thought the direction, cinematography and much of the acting wretched (please, movie gods, never let me see a periscoping effect again) and utterly without subtlety, but I just couldn't resist this BBC film chock full of Victorian gender bending and lesbian sex. As you might suspect, the title comes from a euphemism for cunnilingus. One of my friends liked the romance, two of my friends mocked it relentlessly, and I started out the film trying to unfocus my eyes slightly and imagine Keeley Hawes as Keira Knightley and Rachel Stirling as Martine McCutcheon, if that gives you any idea. Fingersmith, another movie based on a Sarah Waters novel of Victorian lesbianism, is the better film. But where Fingersmith stays primarily with closet lesbianism, pickpockets and cons, Tipping the Velvet takes a broader path with male impersonation, gender roles in employment, the lesbian social scene, strap-ons, prostitution and socialism. It starts with drag, as a fascinated young Nan (Nancy) views Kitty singing and dancing in male impersonation.

I was amused then, when the very next week found me referred me to Ciara's gender-bending music video for Like a Boy:

And then there's this kind of sad performance of What it Feels Like for a Girl (Spanish version here) by gay-boy-adored Madonna:



Or take a look at Boys and Girls by Blur. It's more a commentary on indiscriminatingly sexual British vacation culture, but I've danced my ass off to this song at many a gay bar. It really gets at the fluidity and confusion of sexuality and gender performance these days, even if it is probably criticizing that same blurry haze of loveless sex--let's say the criticism comes in knowing that the same sexually exploratory vacationers would cling to a rigid binary and self-identified sexuality.

Thus segueing away from pop culture and toward science, I'd like to note that Robert Epstein announced in Scientific American his study finding, among other things, that "fewer than 10 percent of subjects score as 'pure' heterosexual or homosexual." He presented on Sexual Orientation Lies Smoothly on a Continuum: Verification and Extension of Kinsey's Hypothesis in a Large-Scale Study while at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality last week.

Unfortunately, here ends my lighthearted banter on sexual orientation and gender expression. Now for the serious stuff. GPAC in August reported on an Ohio University study exploring the intersection of race, gender and sexuality in American classrooms:

A new study shows that teachers tend to view the behavior of black girls as not "ladylike" and therefore focus disciplinary action on encouraging behaviors like passivity, deference, and bodily control at the expense of curiosity, outspokenness, and assertiveness.

You can find the extended article at an academic library near you:
Morris, Edward. (2007) "'Ladies' or 'Loudies'?: Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls in Classrooms." Youth & Society. 38(4): 490-515.

This sad but unsurprising study reminds me of similar articles in my Education & Social Control class, discussing how cultural means of communication that do not fit within the dominant racialized and gendered mold (for example, too much or too little eye contact) are misread as behavioral problems. Blogger Kameelah has already done an excellent job responding to this information--including providing the referral to Ciara I mentioned above--so kindly check that out.

A recent article in the NY Times, Should Hillary Pretend to Be a Flight Attendant? reveals the continuing gender differences in heterosexual attractiveness of intelligence, looks and economic success, as well as workplace disparities regarding adherence to gender expectations, sexy attire and displays of anger. No comment is made on race in this article, which is rather a shame. I would especially like to see further analysis given to Obama's "fired up" campaign in relation to perceptions of not merely masculinity but black/African-American masculinity.
There is just one thing the article casually mentions that I must highlight:

Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route, with lots of speed bumps.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could avoid assumptions about the necessity of the "opposing" sexes and their struggle for domination? Tough Stuff blames it on capitalism, at least partially. What do you think?

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Masturbation in the Movies

We have long discussed the imbalance between male and female nudity in American film. Similarly (yet in an opposite vein), we have discussed the way women’s sexualities are rendered invisible, or at least outside their own control and purpose, in society and in film. And gender variant folk are relatively lucky to appear in film in any state of clothing. For sake of focus, however, I shall play mostly within a binary gender system for this entry.*

So, I’m not kidding when I express some excitement at the increasingly common vibrator jokes in comedy.

Sure, they’re poking fun—but this comedy only works because female pleasure is becoming valued, "female self pleasure" is consequently exiting the closet, and a male-proclaimed "natural" view of what sex should be is actually yielding (albeit slowly and through obliquely subversive means) to a more sex-positive "what works" approach. (Hell, in this Cultural Revolution, even straight men are being freed to enjoy a sex toys.) It’s also moving ever-so-slowly beyond the proprietary ownership of an American Pie style, pseudo-lesbian, beautiful young woman…to a place where even the old lady in Smokin’ Aces can have a dildo hanging out by the bathtub. Granted, we’ve a long way to go yet, in all the -isms, when this quick laugh occurs in context of literary absurdity. And female masturbation, much like lesbianism, is often co-opted personally and commercially for male pleasure. (But this is also yet one more power tool in the female arsenal, should she choose to own and use it.)

One can hardly imagine Gidget taking time away from her breast-building exercises to jerk off. We’re making headway. (yes, headway. Did you see what I did there?)

And it’s not just niche movies like Shortbus or Secretary that are looking at sex, and especially at women’s experiences of their own sexuality, differently. We also have suspense films like In the Cut, where girl-next-door Meg Ryan (of all the actors!) sheds her cute innocence to play a real person, one who lies on her belly and masturbates while thinking dirty thoughts. Mrowr.

Now, in addition to increasing the acceptability of cultural references to women's sexual pleasure, we really need to work on getting governmental and health care systems to value female sexual pleasure as highly as they do male sexual pleasure (see: the old debates on insurance and viagra). For that matter, we need to get comparable general care for women's bodies. My half-assed insurance won't even cover something as basic as an annual gynecological exam. (Yes, if it was ever in doubt, this genderqueer was born with a vagina.) Condoms aside, pharmaceutical companies don't bother to develop testes-based contraception when they can so easily continue placing much of this burden on the ones with the uteri. What about the massive expense that menstruation causes for roughly half the population? My Spanish friend wisely suggests the government pay for this is a general public health/sanitation service. (And again, what about the transgender patients?!)

But, we're out of space. On one last film tangent, I’m in my midtwenties, and I think it only just hit me that Johnny from Dirty Dancing ought to be a ‘mo, and Penny his hag. Maybe I just identified really strongly with idealistic, uncoordinated, determined, socially inept, loyal, sheltered, utterly without artifice Baby--therefore never questioned his interest in "big girls don't cry" Baby. More intriguingly, how did I never really question why the scenes where Penny and Baby dance together (with or without Johnny) were so erotic for me? I mean, at the end of the day, whatever, maybe Johnny’s cousin is the gay one.


*But while we’re on this tangent, check out 20 centímetros for an interesting foreign take on the transgender musical genre, nudity and sex both included.

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Gaycraft

It’s not a big surprise for some, but queers make up a huge percentage of people out there who play video games in some shape or form. Just take a look at Gaymer.org or GayGaymer.net. As a gamer for some time now, I have a decent sense of the kind of culture out there for gamers, and I am particularly sensitive to the culture that exists in the world of MMORPGs. But I noticed a moment in recent gaming history that struck a deep chord for genderqueer-minded gamers across the world. The game in question is World of Warcraft [WoW] (with more than 7 million players worldwide), and the catalyst for this massive event was none other than:

The Male Blood Elf

In the years since the game’s debut, devoted queer players of the World of Warcraft have observed the horrifically homophobic culture of online gamers – “fag” is easily one of the most frequently used words in the game. As a result, gamers started creating guilds (such as the Spreading Taint), or clubs, within the game for LGBT-friendly people. These kinds of groups were met with opposition, however, and by none other than the game developers: the administration of Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard tried to suppress queer guilds by claiming that such organizing violated its policy against sexually explicit language or lewd behavior. After being confronted by the LGBT Task Force, Blizzard changed its tune, and now homo guilds can run around doing their thing.

But back to the Blood Elves. In early 2006, Blizzard surprised the gaming world with its announcement of an expansion, The Burning Crusade; the most important component being the introduction of the Blood Elves, a highly anticipated and much adored in-game race. But there was a twist nobody expected:

Blood Elf men are FLAMERS. Not just skinny, European metrosexuals, as most expected the Blood Elves to resemble. They are queeny, fashionistos, worthy of Fannie fierceness. Their clothes included belly-shirts; even their scripted voice phrases were steeped in queer subtext (“Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot…like…me?” “Sigh…I could really use a scrunchy…yeah, you heard me!”). They were completely unlike the rough-tough macho-male races in the game that resembled the pinnacle of Grecian physique. Blood Elf men were gender variant.

Immediately after Burning Crusade’s launch, thousands upon thousands of messages were posted on the official WoW message boards: “Why are the Blood Elves so gay?” “Sign petition to make Blood Elves men straight!” “Blood Elves are for fags.” Typical debates unraveled on the message boards about gays and straights, if gays should be on WoW, and whether the characters should be changed. How did Blizzard respond to all of these complaints?

They didn’t.

In fact, it was clear to see that despite all of the gay hate going on in the forums, thousands of people were creating new Blood Elf characters every day; even though it was super, super gay…it was still infinitely popular. Blood Elves dominated the realms, and the social culture, slowly but surely, started to change.

In my opinion, nerdy gamers in worlds like WoW, where hate-filled, homophobic people can hide behind the anonymity of their in-game avatars, are the most free they will ever be to say words like “fag” and go around calling everyone cocksuckers as often as they like. By creating a popular character that just so happens to act a little gay, Blizzard may have changed the global nerd culture to be friendlier to homos.

And I think they did it on purpose.

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religion, ethics, and law--can we have it all?

Drinking some rum & (probably chemically toxic) wyler’s light, listening to two drunk people talk politics. It seldom gets better than this. Our proposed topics for my blog today? Gender and divorce. The government’s ideal role, if any, in marriage. Housing discrimination. Gender neutral bathrooms. The recent Ohio ruling. How the Ohio ruling drew on science or scientism.

As my roommate and my friend argue religion, I do some quick Googling. Did you know that “gender news” leads you to http://www.gender-news.com, a ministry of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood “informing the Evangelical community of gender-related news”?

I think it’s all fascinating.

First, we have a religious claim of truth about gender:

“I am saddened, because the solution to feeling uncomfortable about ‘having to choose a gender at the bathroom door’ is not a change in the signs but a return to the biblical truth about God’s design of men and women.” [source]

Simultaneously, we have a religious claim of ideals about gender and the effort needed to attain them:

“The thing you need to understand about biblical manhood is that a male does not check off a manly to-do list (get a well-paying job, buy a house, get married, raise some kids, teach Sunday school), and once accomplished "becomes" a "man." Rather, a male is always "becoming" a man. I know we're getting a little philosophical, but stick with me.” [source]

Curious and...curiouser.

My drinking buddies, as they continue discussing belief and worship, have now left politics well behind for a more heated debate on the existence of a higher power. But I cannot forget the political ramifications of this entire conversation. Because this ongoing consideration of science “versus” religion (for they are so often posed in opposition) does affect my civil rights, especially when schools like Patrick Henry aim to create “champions of God” by developing strong debaters and politicians.

I guess part of the problem is when people base political and social morality, through legislation, not on moral reasoning, but on obedience to a particular higher power…while proclaiming that all citizens are welcome to believe (or not believe) in whatever higher power(s) they choose. You can have religious freedom and ethics-based legislation at the same time, but you cannot base those ethics on religion.

I’m not religiously intolerant the way many of my queer friends have become. I recognize the power of faith in our lives as one which can be quite positive. Granted, I also tend to take a Dune-like view on organized religion. I mistrust the direct influence of faith on government. I think faith is meant to be personal, is best kept personal, and the Bible often supports this view for Christians. And anyway, what’s the point in free will, if government requires us all to conform to one vision of ideal behavior?

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What is Gay Conservatism?

“Most of my friends are straight”
“Yeah, I don’t act like the typical gay, do I?”
“Gays are so promiscuous – loving, monogamous, long-term relationships are what life should really be about.”

If you’ve ever heard any of the above statements, then you’ve come into contact with the discourse of “gay conservatism”: a powerful ideology within gay and lesbian communities that basically calls for queers to distinguish themselves as little as possible from the dominant straight community. Having established this, it is not difficult to guess that the central tenets of this ideology mirror many of the biases and prejudices of normative society:

1.) Gender Conformity & Masculinism – gay conservatives frequently bemoan the alleged high profile that drag queens and bull dykes have in queer communities. They claim that gender non-conformists (and other ‘hedonists’) provide an inaccurate (and shameful) picture of the gay and lesbian community as a whole. Andrew Sullivan, one of the most celebrated gay conservatives, is famous for suggesting that, at the end of the day, men should be masculine and women should be feminine. Unsurprisingly, most gay conservatives are men, with the exception of one “lesbian with a male brain” (Camille Paglia) and her disciples. Paglia was famous in the early 1990s for vitriolic diatribes against feminism and lesbian communities, claiming that non-feminizing (e.g. – not including any kind of ‘cross-dressing/acting’) gay sex is productive and stimulating because it involves a separation from the protective, uncreative cocoon of the mother. Lesbianism (defined as never having sex with men), on the other hand, is regressive and “intellectually enervating” because it is a flight back into the regressiveness of the mother. Although most gay conservative writing is rarely as misogynist, it generally does not accord much relevance to feminism and insists on viewing gay issues and lesbian issues as “separate spheres.”

2.) Marriage & The Military – Andrew Sullivan is famous for claiming that after gay marriage and access to the military have been achieved, the gay rights movement should “end the party.” He suggests that, by limiting our goals to marriage and the military, we are least likely to incur the wrath of the dominant straight community, and we will pay our respects to U.S. liberal constitutionalism (which allows for only formal, legal changes in society). He views marriage and the military as perhaps the most respectable institutions in the U.S., and thus, being included in them would represent/symbolize the acceptance of gays in society. Bruce Bawer, an important (but less famous) gay conservative bemoans the lack of established “courtship rituals” in queer society and positive examples of loving, stable, monogamous relationships (e.g. – marriages) for queer youth. This lack of “positive examples” (i.e. – inducements) creates a culture where “horrible things” like promiscuity and kinky sex are acceptable and an active part of the textual discourse and visual imagery of the queer community.

3.) Resistance to “left-wing” Coalition Politics – gay conservatives tend to see no reason for making alliances with feminists, civil rights and anti-racism movements, anti-war movements etc… the dominant political discourse in most queer communities is viewed by them as “uncomfortably left-wing.” Indeed, being a homosexual should not necessarily imply any kind of political involvement and the U.S. “new left,” with its anti-war, anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist ideology is certainly not the best ideological group to make friends with. As Richard Tafel (an erstwhile president of the Log Cabin Republicans) points out, gay conservatives tend to believe that the capitalism dominant in Western societies is perhaps the primary factor in creating a positive social environment for gays and lesbians (because it promotes ‘individualism’).

Gay conservatism is usually justified as either a strategic imperative (diminish one’s ‘difference’ in order to become a better candidate for government-administered ‘rights’), or as an ethical necessity in the morally anarchic world of the queer community (thus, ‘straight values,’ such as marriage, monogamy, gender-conformity become viewed as ethically desirable).

As strongly as its promoters may feel about these justifications, this ideology has inexcusably negative implications for the queer community. Particularly relevant for the readers of this blog is the fact that it completely misses the point about gender. As we all know, most homophobia is based not on whom one has sex with but on the victim’s perceived gender performance. Thus, people who don’t fit expectations of masculinity or femininity (whether they be queer, bi, trans, gay, straight, lesbian or whatever) are most often the targets of violence, discrimination, and hatred.

In that respect, gay conservatives are certainly right that if we really want to endear ourselves to the normative straight community, we should sweep those pesky gender non-conformists under the carpet and do our best to ensure that they stay out of the picture (how many queers out there have been lauded by straight people for not being “the stereotypical dyke/fag”?). If, however, we are truly interested in building a better, freer world where gender restrictions and homophobia have no place, then it is gay conservatism that needs to be shunted.

***For more information***
Gay Conservatives – Bruce Bawer (A Place at the Table, Beyond Queer); Andrew Sullivan (Virtually Normal); Camille Paglia (Vamps and Tramps, Sexual Personae – at your own risk, she will make you pull your hair out!!); Richard Tafel (Party Crasher).

About Gay Conservatism – There have been few comprehensive analyses (as yet) of this social/theoretical phenomenon. Of the two that I am aware of, Paul Robinson’s Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and its Critics is by far the best. For a slightly less scholarly endeavor, check out Richard Goldstein – Homocons: The Rise of the Gay Right. For a particularly vitriolic response to gay conservatism (particularly as it relates to issues of sexuality), see Michael Warner –The Trouble with Normal.

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