Thinking Outside (and inside, and in-between) Gender Boxes

So, like the responsible little human I am, I showed up for my annual physical, health card in hand. Like (too) many people, I've been without a family physician for some time. I did a little homework and tracked down my local Planned Parenthood (which, much to my surprise and happiness, is also a general primary healthcare provider). I was given a bunch of forms to fill out, so I grabbed a pen and a handful of condoms (you can never have too many!) and got started.

And there it was. The box that confronts me in every survey, on every doctor's visit, in everything government-related or anything that requires me to identify myself--the dreaded Gender Box. Except that, because this is Planned Parenthood, my local community-minded feminist healthcare provider, there was an extra box where there is usually only two. Beside the standard M and F categories was a shining beacon of hope--a box marked TS/TG (that's transsexual and transgendered for those of you not in-the-know). And while my heart sang with gladness for trans-identified folks everywhere, I was also confronted with a question I'd been kicking around for awhile. Where do I, as a cisgendered woman who is constantly interrogating the concept of "womanhood", fit?

It feels wrong for me to simply check the lady box. And I feel no desire whatsoever to check the man box. Yet selecting TS/TG seems far too close to claiming an identity that I have no place in owning. I understand that to do so would be an appropriation; for me to check that box would be to assert an identity that carries experiences I will never have. Still, when I think about it, identifying as a woman feels like a compromise. This may just be my doctor's office needing to know what kind of anatomy they're working with, but to me it's much larger; the implications of an unproblematized identification with gender runs much deeper.

Whether I like it or not, this gender assignment I was given at birth has led me to a whole host of experiences that likely could not to be replicated were I to inhabit a different body. Though I'd like to think that our bodies are not necessarily determinants of how we experience the world (and that, by the same token, this experience can be shaped/modified by the way we present and adorn these bodies) I recognize that to some extent our interaction with the world is (quite literally) out of our hands. It is for this reason that I see value in a strategic identification with gender categories. As a feminist (albeit a postmodern one) I understand that there can be huge drawbacks in the realm of gender equality when we choose to eschew so-called "womanly" characteristics. While on the surface this may seem like a progressive move away from things that have traditionally defined us, this same move often works to the detriment of those who choose to embody these qualities (see my last column for more on why I feel it is dangerous to devalue femininity).

To problematize this further, I wonder about the inaccessibility of this kind of mucking about with gender identification. But why do I feel like talking about gender in this way is a privilege? One the one hand, I suppose it's because I wonder what business I have questioning my gender identity when there are many who ache to feel at home in their bodies. But do I feel that sense of comfort in my own mortal vessel? Not really. Not with the meaning that's assigned to it by things like media, religion, etc.

Without conflating gender and sex, I recognize that the two are intertwined. I don't want to let go of or discredit the amazing things I've gained from having a feminist community--something I've come to largely because of my experience of the world as a cisgendered woman. And while I recognize that, like bell hooks says, feminism is for everybody, I also love and feel nourished by woman-only spaces and the safety I've felt and gained from this community.

Thus I feel it's important to acknowledge that while to some extent we choose these communities, it is also true that they choose us. While checking that "F" box on my health forms may mean signing on to a whole lot of mess like essentialism and cis-privilege and a whole whack of other things I feel uncomfortable with, it also means acknowledging the ways in which those very things have contributed to my place in and experience of the world, and hopefully allows me to continue to question exactly what that means.

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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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Poser

Remember "poser"? That overused, generic, definitely not a good thing late-90's term that kind of just went away? I was thinking about it today. And how it really irritated me in its pompous, demanding, and condescending way. How when someone used it that person immediately became immune to its damaging effects and made the other person subject to its wrath whether or not they truly did fit the definition. Which brings us to another question- what did these post-mullet yet not quite out of the big-hair stage young folk really mean when they used the word? And more importantly- why was it such a negative label to give?

Eh we all know what I'm talking about. Someone who pretends to be someone he or she isn’t. Is there anything more irritating? Not only someone who wants to be someone or something else but who tries too hard, ya know? I've come across a few of those while living in Mexico. People that come from the U.S. and feel the need to prove something while they are here. Maybe it's that they know how to use Spanish slurs (i.e. using the same two swears every other sentence- just in case you forget that they know two swears in Spanish) or constantly referring back to the week they spent in Chile during their second year in college and how now they really feel like "one of the people". Or hanging out with certain people while spending time here just to be able to say they "did that" once they're back in the states. Women who become sexy only when they step off the plane and until they step back on. Men who whistle and cat call, but only to Mexican women, not other foreigners- this is what they take from such a rich culture. I'm not knocking immersing yourself completely in a culture to really understand it (swear words and all) or negating the fact that a week out of the U.S. can truly teach you things you wouldn't learn in a lifetime. I'm talking about using those experiences and adventures to spice up your own life and impress yourself, not others.

Fast forward a few years when the most likely situation is that I'm not living here anymore and someone turns right around and says the exact same thing about me when I order my enchiladas rojas at the Mexican joint down the street with a slight accent- crap, I'm caught. Am I just reminiscing about the time I lived in Mexico? Making the clerk feel more comfortable by speaking in his own language? Or am I just fluffing my feathers like a peacock on mating day? Thinkin' I'm the shit and letting everyone know it. I mean in this description I'm being a little more dramatic than necessary but this is genuinely a concern. To what point is it ok to flaunt your pride in another culture? When you are born in it? When you live in it? When your parents are from it? When you study it in school? When you live there? For how long? With whom? When I don't live in Mexico anymore will part of my relationship with the country and its culture slowly dissolve? It's a double-edged sword because here I am saying I am irritated by "posers" yet maybe I want to be one?

What if when I'm in the states I'm in the same relationship I'm in now? Is the accent I used in the Mexican joint ok now because at home I speak Spanish with my partner? To what extent is it ok to flaunt my lifestyle that I have here when I live in the States again? Being part of a culture in the U.S. is a very different thing from being part of the culture here in Mexico. In the U.S. it's the culture-less and it's everyone else. For example, first generation Mexican-Americans. Many who I know just don't feel Mexican and they don’t feel American. Why? Because Mexicans say they're not Mexican and people in the U.S. say they're not "American". So what are they? Why can't they be just Mexican? Or just "American"? Or why can't they consider themselves both? It goes back to the post I had about label, people just don't know what to do if they can't put you in a certain box.

Moving back to the states is a very plausible thing. But when I do, I'm worried that not only will I miss my life here more than I understand right now but that I will struggle with combining what I now consider to be the two cultures that I am part of.

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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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Say my name.

I was talking recently with a friend of mine over a beer – we were comparing our college experiences. I went to a moderate-to-conservative private college in the south; she went to a famously open-minded private college in New England. Environment doesn’t always play a factor in one’s decision to identify deviantly, so to speak, but in my case I think it did. I was wound up so tightly that I needed to be in an community that pushed me out of the closet; I needed to be in an inflexible environment that disallowed any kind of identity that wasn’t completely In or completely Out.

But what I really want to talk about is the moment of truth, the moment I not only realized but the moment that I accepted. The point of no return. Here’s how I unraveled:

My first year at college was a nightmare, and it was mostly my fault. I was quiet, anxious, and afraid of being called out. I was afraid of being noticed for fear that someone might see parts of me I wasn’t comfortable baring. The combination of my own inflexibility with the general social inflexibility of my college created a bit of a psychological time bomb in my head. I chose to deal with my unhappiness at college through complete disbelief: everything was fine, and everything will be better when I transfer, everything will be better after I graduate.

The problem is, for whatever reason, the gays on campus found me. Over the matter of a semester and a half, I befriended the gays on campus, curious as to why they all managed to introduce themselves to me. They were the only real friends I had. Little did I know that by being so aggressive and friendly, they planted a seed deep in my brain – they introduced to me a new identity that somehow managed to get by, to live happily despite all the pressure on them to cease to exist. But I refused to go out and socialize with them; I refused to take another step across the diving board into what I considered a self-abating spiral of masculinity, into non-heterosexuality.

As the first year rolled into second semester, my friendships with the campus gays grew, and my perception of the community shifted to a more positive lens. I started to help with campus LGBT activism as a straight ally, collecting signatures for petitions I’d advertise in classes where I felt comfortable.

Now here’s where I’ve been leading – my meeting with Dr. Jones, esteemed professor of southern literature. After she encouraged me to make an announcement to my classmates about one of our petitions, I met with her privately to discuss my thoughts on a thesis I was developing for a paper. But she didn’t really want to talk about my paper.

“I really admire all the work you’re doing; I can’t even imagine the struggles you must have endured during just your short time here.”

I smiled blankly and nodded, confused.

“I mean, I myself studied at schools in the south, but there were still vibrant, encouraging communities for gay and lesbian students.”

I still smiled blankly and nodded, but my insides screamed horror. I was trapped.

“So, as a gay student, have you found your experience here to be as dreadful as I hear it can be?”

And with that question, with that presumption of my identity, I had been given a choice. Until this moment I had not considered for even a second that I was gay; it just wasn’t an option. But here, so innocently, Dr. Jones – a gracefully aged woman, looking at me with empathetic, concerned brown eyes – called on me to reidentify.

Something happened. It was entirely impulsive, like a twig snapping under someone’s weight. In those few seconds before speaking, I didn’t think about consequences. I wanted to finally be able to communicate with someone and feel comfortable and know that they felt comfortable, too. I wanted so desperately to really talk with her. I just wanted for one small moment – one small moment in the anxious existence I constructed around myself – to breathe.

And then, as I felt my lips begin to whisper, I exhaled:

“…it hasn’t been too bad.”

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