Beyond the Gender Binary

In the fifties era of butch-femme relationships, those who played the role of butch or femme, switching at will, were known as “ki-ki”. In later Second Wave Feminism of the sixties and seventies, butch-femme role playing fell out of favor in middle-class circles. The word for lesbians with gender-neutral identity was “androgynous.” The androgynous lesbian was a preferable alternative to the dehumanizing sex-role stereotyping that had been the norm in the fifties and earlier. 

In today’s world this option is known as “non-binary.” Ideally, this would mean that everyone would be free to select ideas and behaviors from a smorgasbord of choices. People of many genders and orientations can fit under this umbrella because we are all so much more than the bodies that we happened to have been born into. 

The thing about both transgender identity that confuses me the most is the way that sex role stereotypes are idealized, romanticized, even fetishized. When I hear about a little boy who loves pink and playing dress up, or the little girl who wants to play sports or be a cowboy I don't automatically think that these are children occupying the wrong bodies. I first wonder if they're just having a hard time coming out as lesbian or gay. 

Yes, some people are genuinely transgender. But other people are truly in pain and confused about their identity. Some are looking for a simple solution to a complex problem. In Iran the government will pay for transgender surgery when it means that the person will no longer have same-sex attraction. If a man who loves men becomes a woman, he will present as straight. Surgery can be used as a means to insure heterosexual normativity at any cost. 

After my uterus was removed for medically necessary reasons, the doctor told me about groups organized around grieving this loss. As a sixty year old lesbian who has remained childless by choice, I found this ridiculous. The body parts I have emotional attachment towards are ones that either can be seen, make my body systems function well, or propel me physically through the world. I never developed an attachment to my uterus and have always viewed the prospect of childbearing as far too similar to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

When I was working as a reference librarian  in San Francisco a regular patron, male the day before, came in and announced s/he was now female. I knew this person’s gender-neutral name and don’t have the greatest memory, so it was inevitable that a few days later I referred to that patron as “he. Very upset, this apprentice transitioner said, “I’m a woman, just like you.”

Okay then, if you’re a woman just like me, you don’t give a damn if people mistake you for another gender, unless you’re planning to sleep with them, in which case, hopefully, they would already know. A “woman like me” has zero attachment to behaving “like a woman” or presenting as such. You would want only to be accepted for what you do and how your mind works, not how you look because you would not see yourself as decorative, but as functional. A woman just like me would believes that the concept of acquiring “femininity” is both ridiculous and a huge waste of time. 

I don’t comprehend the need, in this culture and many others, to place gender markers on everyone and everything. Everywhere I go now people call me “Mam.” I hate it. Not just because of the age reference but because of the explicit gender. I wouldn't like "Sir" either. Why is it necessary to continually point out each persons gender? Can’t you just ask a question without tagging it as female or male directed. What’s wrong with, “Can I help you?” period. Or if you have to add something why not “friend” or another gender neutral word. Even worse are words like poetess or aviatrix, the height of condescension for people with female bodies.

We are all unique individuals. I find sex-role assignment dehumanizing. I aspire to neither of those limited definitions. We all deserve the freedom to do what we want with our bodies and that includes modifying them for any reason. At some point in the future, we might have a society where every person is accepted and accepts their body no matter what shape, size, color, age, orientation or ability it presents. Unfortunately, that Utopian vision is far removed from the reality of the world we do our best to stumble through today.

My Body, My Definitions

When I was a reference librarian there was a man who suddenly began calling himself Krystal and demanded, from that point on, everyone refer to him as a she because now she was a woman. Nothing about him had changed except this pronoun. I found that odd but fine with me. Then, to my confusion Krystal stated,” I’m a woman just like you.”

How dare anyone make assumptions or claim to know anything of who I am without talking to me! I have not now nor ever possessed a “woman’s brain” whatever that’s supposed to mean. To me “womanhood” is a nebulous and ridiculous concept. Yes, I have female sex organs but I’ve never experienced any emotional attachment to them. I have been disparaged, discriminated against, discouraged, threatened, molested and undermined for this female body all my life. I have never been called “courageous” for undergoing this abuse. It is just considered normal.

And as a woman who is attracted to other women, I’ve been ridiculed, fired from jobs and beaten by strangers. If I had a dollar for every time someone said “are you a boy or a girl or called me sir, I’d be a millionaire. I have come to answer, “It’s none of your business since I have no desire to sleep with you.”

The New York Times front page article by Elinor Burkett posits an interesting take on the MTF transition. She asks what if someone who always considered himself a black man in a white man’s body chemically increased the melanin in his skin and braided his hair? Would he be lauded as courageous and embraced by the black community?

I am a human being who has been relegated to life in a woman’s body. I don’t feel like a woman or wish to be a man. My brain is full of all kinds of things based on my experience. I’d prefer to have been treated as neutral and allowed to develop my full human potential. What I am capable of accomplishing has nothing to do with the shape of my body. I respect everyone and deserve to be accorded that same respect. Others are not allowed to re-define and rewrite my life experience due to their perceptions of my age, race, identity, appearance or anatomical arrangement.

I have no intention of interfering in personal decisions people make for themselves. Changing gender falls into this category. Choice, personal selection, privacy, freedom of self-definition, these are all rights and protections I will not violate. But everyone has the right to define themselves. So do what you like to yourself, but keep your assumptions and pre-judgments off my body!

Challenges of Long-Term Lesbian Relationships

 A Long-Term Power Couple

Two women who gossip together, debrief on relationship issues, exchange sexual intimacies, what could be problematic about this picture? In many ways, nothing is and that’s why many lesbians get together in the first place. But the more challenging part of this equation is staying together.

Unlike places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, in the U.S. the separation between the culture of men and the culture of women exists informally but nevertheless, serves as a divider for the men and women. The football with the boys and shopping with the girls stereotype is simply shorthand for a far wider separation that makes it easier for same-gender couples to meet, yet harder to persist in queer relationships.

Continuing to have friends is a given for heterosexual, married women. And I don’t mean only friends that are also coupled and visited with in pairs, I mean real “heart” friends. For lesbians in couples, emotional intimacy can be threatening for the life partner. There is no automatic dividing line between other women, as all of them have the potential of being seen as romantic partners. To prevent this, once coupled lesbians often engage in what I call emotional monogamy, meaning other couple friends are encouraged but new emotional intimacy is not. 

Among queer women some of the greatest wear and tear on relationships comes from the joined-at-the-hip phenomenon. This “urge to merge” is deadly to long term connections because it becomes attempting to share the totality of one’s existence tends to be deadly in a relationship. It is far healthier to bring home stories and adventures from two separate lives.. This involves cultivation of individual friends and interests; a simple thing that the majority of straight folks do automatically.

Being sexually monogamous yet emotionally non-monogamous is possible. But this feat  is more challenging for lesbians than for our straight sisters. It means being open to the kind of real friendships we had with each other before we were taught that emotional intimacy is automatically a precursor to sexual intimacy. This is debatable, but he absence of the possibility of true friendship cuts off an emotionally satisfying and healing connection to others. Friendship should not only be for teenagers, searching singles and old married ladies. Paired lesbians need friends too.

Of course, the major things that make our relationships more difficult are factors such as outright discrimination, lack of social support, denial of marriage rights, and inequality under the law, things that fall under the general umbrella of lesbian oppression. All are obstacles working against the longevity of lesbian relationships, demanding that we explore workable new alternatives.

Sexism Must Die!

It's undeniable that the Republicans are waging war against women. But just how are women faring in other political communities, for example that of the 99%? Has sexism been defeated in the sixty plus years since the emergence of second-wave feminism, dated roughly from the popularization of Simone De Beauvoir's book, "The Second Sex," first published in 1949, but translated into English and read widely for the first time in the fifties.

I wish I could report back that the Occupy Movement is free of sexist bias, but honestly, I can't. It is undeniable that many young women, as well as young gender non-specific types, are stepping up with competence and assuming power, but an alarming crisis of self-esteem and bias still persists in the meetings I have attended. Women are still hesitant to speak up and will undercut their statements with phrases like,"I don't know that much about this but..." There is often a preponderance of males in meetings and when it comes to stepping up to summarize goals and lead groups, men still dominate the proceedings.

A Workers Assembly meeting I attended this weekend was about two thirds male to one third female in composition. This probably occurred because union membership is skewed to favor higher paid, better jobs, which are primarily held by males. This is not to imply that women are silent at these gatherings. Women my age (fifties and sixties), for the most part, don't seem to have problems speaking out. Some younger women are taking leadership as well. But more pervasive overall patterns of discrimination and even self-suppression are apparent and more difficult to erase.

Last night I attended a second small meeting of an Occupy spin off that was a small group of boomer males with only a couple of women. A very articulate woman took notes at the last meeting and she was drafted again, somewhat against her will, as note-taker at this one. Of course, that was after all the males refused to volunteer and their gazes turned toward me. I replied, just as the men had, that I didn't have a laptop or know stenography either! I didn't address the gender bias because I was caught off-guard. I thought we dealt with this in the sixties when we women walked out of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) because we didn't want to be secretaries and coffee fetchers.

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. The fact of the matter remains; this prejudiced behavior is unacceptable and it will only serve to undermine our movement. At this point I'm trying to pull together a presentation of sexism and homophobia that both young and old can understand. The very lifeblood of our movement depends upon it!