The Gender Queer Clothing Conundrum

I have a clothing conundrum.  I imagine most other gender queer or trans-identified folks who haven't undergone medical transition (and perhaps even some who have) can relate.  I like to wear masculine clothing.  I pretty much only wear men's pants and shirts.  I know that finding clothes that fit is a big issue for many in my boat.  I'm lucky in that I'm pretty flat-chested and reasonably tall, so it's not too hard to find things that fit right in that regard.  I'm unlucky in that I'm ridiculously scrawny and have essentially zero shoulders, making it hard to fill out even a size small men's shirt without having everything look really baggy.  Shoes are also a problem.  I have smallish to average-sized feet for a female, but very small feet for a guy, which means I'm usually limited to women's shoes.  This is fine for things like sneakers or running shoes, since those kinds of shoes often come in styles that are gender neutral.  It's harder for things like dressy shoes or, say, soccer cleats (I was sadly forced to settle for women's cleats with aqua-marine accents because my feet were too small for the black, red and white men's version.  At very least I was able to avoid the pink ones...).  I have yet to find a pair of men's shoes I like well enough to stick with, and that I think make me look like an adult (mostly when I put on the dress shoes I do have I feel like I'm 15).

But the real problem for me is not fit, it's being read as an adult.  Dressing up in general is a frequent issue since no matter what I do, or how sophisticated I think I look, or how I try to exude adult mannerisms, I get mistaken by somebody for a teenage boy.  My "fancy" outfits usually consist of nice pants, a button-down shirt, sometimes a skinny tie, and sometimes a sweater vest or jacket.  Without fail, I end up in a case of mistaken identity.  This past weekend, I went to my cousin's wedding dressed in gray dress pants, a slim-fitted button-down shirt, a gray sweater vest, and a pair of TOMS shoes.  I had a fresh haircut a la trendy metrosexual/urban dyke and was feeling like I was really rocking Ellen DeGeneres, not Justin Bieber.  Still, I was passed over by the wine pourer at dinner who assumed I was too young to drink.  Like totally, completely skipped.  She didn't even ask me if I was old enough.  Just.  Skipped.  Me. We had to get her to come back to pour me a glass.  This, after she poured my younger brother a glass without a word.  Now, my brother is 22, and easily looks it, but he didn't look nearly as put together as I did (no offense Drew - not sure if you read this...) and could just as easily pass for 18 or 19 as he could for his actual age.  Which I suppose says that I'm not even passing for even 18 or 19 - there might be some wiggle room for underage drinking at a wedding - but am being read as much younger.

So what do I do?  How do I confidently wear the clothes I am comfortable in while providing indication to others that I am an adult?  Is this possible, or do people just see what they see and I should just get used to this until I start to (thank god) go gray or get wrinkly?  Dykes, genderqueers, trans guys, please, I await your advice.

Children and Gender

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine shared a blog post on Facebook from fellow queer blogger at Feminist Pigs, providing suggestions to help children engage in what that blogger calls "gender self-determination," a term I have become completely smitten with.  I am in fact utterly smitten with the entire post, titled "Children's Gender Self-Determination: A Practical Guide," which you can read here: http://feministpigs.blogspot.ca/2012/02/childrens-gender-self-determination.html.  I loved all five points listed in the "guide," but two in particular really resonated with me.

First, I loved the blogger's opening suggestion, "Don't refer to kids as boys and girls."  This is something I think about constantly since everything in life seems to be segregated by gender from bathrooms to department store clothing sections, and apparently now, Bic pens.  I worry for gender non-conforming kids, for my own not-yet-existent children, and for all children that so much of their childhoods revolve around not only gender-segregated activities, but gender-segregated language.  The author of the self-determination post advises people not to use terms of endearment like "buddy" or "princess" unless you use them in reference to any child.  What's scary about this suggestion is how hard it actually is.  I consider myself someone who has thought pretty long and hard about gender and sex - as social constructs, as medical constructs, as an obstacle in the way of my and others' participation in everyday citizenship, or as performance, and so on - and yet, I have to consciously and carefully stop myself from doing things, like using gender-segregated language, that I have been socialized to do.  For instance (I'm about to out myself as a crazy cat-lover, so if you didn't already know, I have two cats.  And I love them), our female cat is smaller, softer, and generally more cuddly (though I wouldn't say more affectionate) than our male cat who is larger, more active, and has coarser fur.  He likes attention, but does not like to be held.  Sometime after we got the second cat (the male), I noticed that I tended to use a softer voice, gentler touch, and different pet names (excuse the pun) for the female cat than for the male cat.  I called the female cat "sweetheart," "sweet pea," "bug" or "baby girl."  I called the male cat "buddy" or "baby boy," or by his regular name.  As I realized that I was doing this, I wondered if my use of tone and choice of words had any effect on the development of their personalities.  To get myself out of the habit of doing this with animals or people, I've tried to actively stop myself from using stereotypically gendered language around the cats - I make an effort to call the female cat "buddy" and to be gentler and sweeter with the male cat.  It is surprisingly hard.  It may not matter to cats, but I have to imagine these sorts of interactions have a profound impact on humans.  People use certain terms of endearment with female babies and others with males babies.  Others have made frequent mention of the fact that female babies are often told how "cute" and "pretty" they are, while male babies are told they are "husky," "handsome," or "smart."  (Case in point):

A few years later, when little boys start acting macho and tough and little girls declare their obsession with all things princess, we smile, sigh, wash our hands of any responsibility in shaping gender identity and say it must be in their "gender DNA" or something.  Which brings me to the second point I liked so much about the gender self-determination post.  The third suggestion is "Don't diagnose your kid," meaning that every time children step outside of socially-constructed gender boundaries doesn't mean that they are "gender non-conforming" or transgender.  It means that the socially-constructed "boundaries" are just that - constructed.  Children are merely showing us their willingness to explore a diversity of interests, if we're willing to accept that we might have been wrong about the connection between the physical features we use to determine sex and the personality features we attribute to gender.  And yet, sometimes young children do appear to subscribe to rather rigid forms of masculinity and femininity.  In that vein, the blogger also warns against automatically attributing a male child's obsession with guns, for instance, to testosterone.

Some of the literature on early childhood development insists that preschool-age children often have very rigid ideas about gender and become almost gender caricatures to the extent that they might develop obsessions with guns and/or princesses because, according to such research, children that age do not actually understand that sex and gender are fixed and cannot change.  The children worry it might change and thus, act in a way and police each other in a manner that reassures themselves that it will not.  But sex and gender do change.  We know this because there are gender-nonconforming people, trans people, intersex people, people who claim a third gender, people with a diversity of sizes and shapes of reproductive organs, people who like to wear dresses on some days and a suit and tie on others, and just people in general, most of whose lives do not reflect idealized masculinities and femininities.  Sex and gender are not fixed.  Perhaps preschoolers are more savvy than we realize and can see that sex and gender are quite fluid.  Given the fairly consistent rigidly gendered messages most children get from birth, though, it is easy to see why young children might fear gender fluidity - it is not, according to most of their most important adults or books or toys or movies or TV shows, something desirable.  Which is why I like the idea of gender self-determination all the more.  If kids can see that gender is fluid, why not allow them to embrace that?  What are we so desperately clinging to when we insist on defining people by gender, beginning at birth.  I think the answer is that it's the adults, and not the kids, who actually fear change.

Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!!!: Gender & Sports Part II

I am obsessed with the U.S. women's national soccer team.  OB-SESSED.  I follow their blog, know their roster by heart, have seen all of their Youtube videos, and watch every game I can when they're on TV.  I have a shirt that I made with Sharpies that says "Hope Solo is a Keeper" and I once traveled several hours each way during a weekend trip to the beach to see them play in person.  I love them.  They're of course across the pond playing in the Olympics right now and although the opening ceremonies are not until tomorrow night, they have already played their first game (Which they won.  4-2 over France.  Alex Morgan scored two goals.).  In honor of this kick-off week for Olympic soccer, I thought I'd do another sports-related post.

My obsession with the soccer team aside, the issue of gender and sports begs a more serious question: How do homophobia and transphobia play out in the gender-segregated spaces of athletics?  Obviously, I intend to relate this question back to the U.S. women's soccer team (see above paragraph re: OBSESSION).  Although Megan Rapinoe, a midfielder for the U.S. women, is the only U.S. women's national team member that I am aware of being publicly out, I'm fairly certain she's not the only queer player on the team, a fact to which she herself has alluded.  The women's team head coach is also out and a number of the team's players pretty easily set off the gaydar.  Rapinoe commented in a video interview (see below) that she feels queer players are generally accepted by teammates with no issue in women's soccer, but that homophobia is much more prevalent on the men's side. She describes sports as "the last institution of homophobia:"

When she officially came out earlier this summer, Rapinoe again made mention that in general, queer female athletes may find more acceptance from teammates and within their sport generally, than queer male athletes.  See more here.  

While I'm not sure that sports is "the last institution of homophobia" (I'm certain we can all think of plenty of others...), I do think it's clear that, at least in soccer, queer players on women's teams are pretty visible, even if they're not publicly out, while queer players on the men's side seem nonexistent.  I'm sure we can all think of reasons why this is true - mainly that athletics have long been associated with the kind of "conventional" masculinity that doesn't make much room for variance from the status quo and in fact, I would say that sports for men is an environment in which gender is heavily policed.   Anecdotally speaking, it seems that men's sports is heavily dominated by the kind of verbal (and sometimes physical) gay-bashing that would make being out in that environment extremely trying if not altogether impossible.

For female athletes, I would certainly not say that there aren't pressures on them to conform to certain gender norms (see my previous post on gender policing in women's sports), but I do think that there's a subversive element to women's sports that lends itself to being a more queer-friendly space.  In almost every case, women have had to fight their way into athletics.  While youth sports for both boys and girls is now commonplace, this was very recently not the norm.  Just one generation ago, when my mom was growing up, there were no organized sports for girls - even at the high school level, opportunities were very limited.  Now that's changed, but the face of elite and professional sports is still overwhelmingly male.  Women's teams at the national or professional level still have to fight tooth and nail for recognition, audience, and revenue.  Despite the fact that our women's national soccer team has been unbelievably successful over a number of years in the form of two World Cup titles, three Olympic gold medals, and the all-time leading international goal-scorer (male or female) as alum Mia Hamm, we've had difficulty sustaining a women's professional soccer league in the U.S.  Our men's national team has never won a World Cup (their best finish was third place way back in 1930) or an Olympic medal (they didn't even qualify for London this year), men's professional soccer is alive and well in a number of American cities.  The point is, female athletes have to fight the status quo to exist, while male athletes, generally, do not.  Maybe this reality lends itself to greater acceptance of deviations from the mainstream within women's sports than in men's, or maybe not, but I still look forward to seeing more athletes come out of the closet and break down this "institution of homophobia."  Megan Rapinoe has gotten the ball rolling (pun intended).  I hope others will follow.

"Policing Femininity": Gender and Sports

Caster Semenya, South African sprinter

A friend recently Facebook commented on a blog about the policing of femininity in elite athletics.  I read the blog, found here, and the original article that inspired it, which you can find here.  The article features the story of a South African female track runner, Caster Semenya, whose gender has been "investigated" by the International Association of Athetics Federations (IAAF) and who is now apparently undergoing "treatment" because her body naturally produces higher levels of testosterone than the average woman.  She will be competing in the 2012 Olympics while continuing this treatment.

I found this story both interesting and disturbing.  When I've thought about gender and sports in the past, it's usually been related to athletics as a gender segregated space and how this affects transgender athletes' opportunities to participate.  I've also done some thinking about LGBT athletes and sports and the difference in the dynamics of openness and acceptance of queer athletes between men's and women's teams.  I had not really considered the question of intersex athletes or folks whose bodies don't fit into what science considers "normal" for male and female bodies.  I guess that's what I find most disturbing about the above-linked story.  Most of us who have taken a sociology or Intro to Women's Studies course are familiar with the idea that gender is socially constructed (i.e., created and reified by social tradition and norms), but that sex is biological (i.e., a fact - people are born male, with a penis, or female, with a vagina).   One of the ideas that completely blew my mind in college was the notion that not just gender, but biological sex as well, is a social (or in some instances, medical) construction.  Infants born with what we might call "ambiguous" genitalia are not actually that uncommon.  However, many such infants, sometimes called intersex, end up undergoing surgical "correction" to genitals that medical science has deemed outside of the norm.  What this means is that babies born with a large clitoris or very small penis might have their genitals cut off so that they can be raised as girls with "normal" sized clitorises.  But there's nothing abnormal about these babies to begin with except that their bodies don't reflect what their doctors expect to see in male and female bodies, so they are made to fit.  The same thing is happening to the female athletes under investigation for "abnormally" high testosterone levels:

"In a move critics call 'policing femininity,' recent rule changes by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, state that for a women to compete, her testosterone must not exceed the male threshold."

Who sets the "male threshold"?  Are there males whose testosterone levels fall below it?  There must be, just as there are clearly females whose testosterone levels "exceed" it.  The article asks if high levels of testosterone give these women an unfair advantage.  It likely gives them some advantage but I'm not sure I'd call it "unfair."  It's an accident of birth the same way someone having a critical mass of fast-twitch muscle fibers (good for explosive strength/speed) has an advantage in the 100 meter dash over someone with more slow-twitch muscle fibers (better for distance and endurance).  I'd be surprised if I have a single fast-twitch muscle in my body, but if I wanted to be a sprinter I wouldn't force fast-twitchers to undergo treatment to make it more "fair."

Ultimately, I think this goes beyond the IAAF "policing femininity," which it certainly is.  I think we're learning that biological sex and the human body are more diverse than we may have ever imagined.  People have anxiety related to gender and performance for this exact reason - male and female are not the clear and mutually exclusive categories we like to imagine them to be.

Queer Citizens

I've been thinking a lot about citizenship and queer identity lately.  The first openly trans person to testify before the U.S. Senate spoke in support of ENDA (the Employee Non-Discrimination Act) today, so these issues are especially present in my mind at the moment. (To see a video of the testimony, visit here).

For a nation that prides itself on its abundant "freedom" and "liberty," the United States actively denies many of the rights and privileges of citizenship that many people take for granted to its queer citizens.  Social and legal constraints work in concert to prevent queer and trans folks from participating in the social, political, economic, and religious life of the nation to the same extent that straight and cis-gender folks are able to.

Understand that there are people - United States citizens - who have been effectively deported from the U.S. because they can't sponsor a spouse for citizenship the way straight people can, and rather than face permanent separation from their loved one, they leave the country.

Understand that there are people in this country who would fire other people from their jobs based solely on their gender identity or expression and understand that current U.S. law permits this behavior, as do most local and state laws.

Understand that there are places in this country where a trans woman can be placed with male inmates in prison, despite grave concerns for her bodily safety and psychological well-being.  Understand that this is akin to cruel and unusual punishment, a fate our country strives to protect its other citizens from.

Understand that there are people in this country who are denied the right to adopt children and become parents because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer-identified.  Understand also that this means that there are children in this country who are denied the right to have parents because they live in a state where LGBTQ folks are not welcome to adopt and there simply aren't enough straight adoptive parents.

Understand that there are people in this country whose physical safety is under threat each time they exercise the simple freedom to walk down the street at night with friends.

Understand that there are people in this country who cannot use a public restroom without being gawked at or scrutinized at best and harassed, physically harmed, or killed, at worst.

When Americans get all excited about their "freedoms," I always wonder: which (and whose) freedoms are they referencing?  Because it seems to me that the U.S. has a number of laws (or lack thereof) that protect straight Americans' intolerance of things that make them uncomfortable, like gay folks getting hitched or transfolks working in the cubicle next to theirs.  Despite this, there's reasonable precedent in the U.S. to prevent one group's discomfort from standing in the way of another's rights, especially if the group experiencing discomfort is the one in power (see history re: emancipation, women's suffrage, Brown v. Board, Loving v. Virginia, repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell").  I heard someone say recently that if Mississippi were to put interracial marriage up for popular referendum, the way same-sex marriage has been up for referendum in a number of places, it would fail by a long shot.  Waiting for a majority of the country to get on board with same-sex marriage and non-discrimination isn't fair - if we'd done that with interracial marriage, it would still be illegal in some states.  We can't love freedom and deny the rights of citizenship to our own citizens simultaneously.  So even if queer folks, for whatever reason, distress you, imagine someone in your family being forced out of the country in the name of "family values" or imagine someone you love enduring unemployment or suffering public humiliation condoned by your government.  Then call your elected representatives in DC and tell them to support ENDA.  While you're at it, mention that you think DOMA sucks.  It's the American thing to do.  It's what any American citizen would expect of another.

Gender Photo Round-Up

Some quick gender and social justice-related photos from the past couple of weeks:

Gender Neutral Bathroom Win/Fail
I saw this sign outside a bathroom in the University of Maryland student union.  Great sign.  Love the sentiment, especially the last paragraph.

The problem was that whoever posted the sign, rather than just taping it to the bathroom door, affixed it to this giant student union poster board and set it up on a huge easel outside the so-assigned bathroom.  Which kind of takes away from the anonymity and comfort gender neutral bathrooms are meant to foster - that folks can use the bathroom without feeling like, well, a spectacle...

Fitness for Strength, Not Looks

I saw this rather refreshing ad for a gym membership in the Washington Post Express the other morning.  The woman in the ad supposedly wants to workout so she can build strength and power, not so she'll look great in a bikini or have perfect abs or some such bullshit.  You so rarely see women portrayed like this that it's kind of astonishing when you run across an ad focusing on women's abilities rather than their bodies (and implying that women themselves also care as much or more about their abilities than their appearance).

Speak Up
I came across this list circulating on Facebook the other day.  A great explanation and reminder of why we need to eliminate certain words and turns of phrase from our vocabularies.

Forks Are Simply Too Dangerous
This has nothing to do with gender, really, but it's hilarious and who doesn't love hilarious signs?  Care of the food co-op at the University of Maryland...

Funny or Not Funny?

It seems that some people have a hard time discerning what constitutes appropriate joke material and what does not.  So for all you Hunger Games fans - this is the transcender version of Katniss and Peeta's game, "Real or Not Real."  I call it "Funny or Not Funny."  If you feel confused about what is a joke that's actually funny and what is a joke that's not funny because it hurts people, please freely consult this handy guide.

"Funny or Not Funny" is a very simple game.  Things that are funny are things that are funny because they're just... funny, like kittens falling asleep while they're doing something else.  That's very funny.

Ellen Degeneres making fun of things like Go-gurt and toilet paper?  Also funny.

This video of a baby cracking up about ripping paper?



Funniest thing ever.

Jokes at the expense of gender non-conforming folks, or jokes at the expense of gay folks, or jokes at the expense of differently-abled folks or racist jokes?  Not funny (and for the record, they're not "edgy" either).

Making fun of men who like to wear dresses?  Not funny.

Using "retarded" as a synonym for unpleasant things or to denigrate others?  Really not funny.

Making racist jokes or using racist caricatures to get cheap shock-value laughs?  Not. Funny. Ever.