Work Drag

Sometime ago I heard an acquaintance use the phrase "work drag" to describe another friend's professional attire (which was much more feminine than her regular not-at-work clothes).   Other friends in earshot, mostly lesbians and older than me, seemed deeply familiar with the term - and at the fact that the friend in "drag" wanted to go change immediately before joining us.  I got the meaning but was also fascinated by the concept - I'd never heard the work clothes conundrum described in this way.    

At the time, I was privately struggling with work and interview wardrobe issues of my own.  I recently wrote a post on gender codeswitching - the ways in which queer folks often must adapt their behavior to the circumstances they're in, either to protect their physical safety, or for professional or other reasons.  Clothing is a substantial piece of this, since clothes play a hugely symbolic role in our social interactions.  Regardless of sexuality or gender identity, everyone uses clothes to send signals to others - about what sports teams we favor, what kind of work we do, how much money we have, whether we're outdoorsy or bookish, or both.  We use clothes to convey personality - an outgoing person who likes to experiment and bend the rules might wear loud, mismatched colors together.  Someone who prefers to blend into the scenery might choose more muted colors.  In addition to conveying information with our own clothing, we also try to gather information by observing what others are wearing.  Uniforms often indicate an official role in public safety or health.  People often interpret dirty or torn clothes as a sign of poverty or homelessness but the same could also mean the person has a job as a painter, carpenter, or gardener - occupations in which fancy clothes would be inappropriate.

For queer folks, clothes can simultaneously be a haven of self-expression and our worst enemy.  In relation to work, I've found this to be true especially in situations where I have to dress up - interviews, fancy dinners, meetings with Important People.  I'm fortunate to have a job at the moment where relatively casual attire is the norm - jeans or slacks and a button-down shirt fits the bill for pretty much any day.

Dressing up is another story.  I don't mind it - and have actually come to enjoy it - when I'm dressing up for an affair with good friends.  They get me and aren't usually surprised when I show up in a tie or the like.  At a fancy work event, or worse, at an interview, what to wear requires a delicate calculus.  A couple of years ago, when I was applying for full-time permanent positions in earnest, I spent a lot of time agonizing over how out I wanted to be when going in for an interview.  I'm always out in the sense that I don't hesitate to refer to my partner and I don't purposefully hide things, but clothing also conveys a certain message.  If I go to an interview in a men's suit and tie, that's a very different way of being "out," especially in terms of gender identity than going to an interview wearing a more gender-ambiguous outfit.

I don't think this is an issue with simple answers - it's part of the world queer and gender-non-conforming folks must navigate.  For those of us who feel we're at a crossroads or identities, there are few places where the gender binary becomes more obvious than when it's time to dress up in nice clothes.  My partner is an attorney and has found that some judges are very particular about this.  Some essentially require female attorneys to wear skirt suits in their courtrooms (rather than pantsuits).  I've never worn a women's pantsuit and imagine I'd be fairly uncomfortable in one.  But a skirt suit?  No way.  I don't know what I'd do in a profession like that.  Where do those of us in the middle fit?  If a skirt is "dressy" for women and suits are "dressy" for men, what about the rest of us?  Who gets to be told they look nice?  So much of that is gendered.  When we're surrounded by other queer folks, it's easier.  In the wider world, not so much.



   

"I'm Not Racist, But": Colorblindness, Privilege, and Humor (or lack thereof)

"I'm not racist, but..."
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone start a story with that caveat and then go on to say something completely offensive and inappropriate, I'd be rich.  What gets under my skin most about this turn of phrase is that, at least in my experience, it is largely used by white folks while in the company of other white folks to give some example of their discomfort with people of color (or immigrants, or neighborhoods where the white population is very small or "in transition," or people for whom English is not a first language, and so on...) while still following the social rules of the colorblind era.  Even while following the "rules" of colorblindness, these kinds of stories convey a sense of uneasiness with colorblindness.  I can't help but feel when this happens that white folks are trying to create a space for themselves to say things that they know are a little (or a lot) inappropriate - things they wouldn't say if people of color were within earshot.  It makes me feel like white folks in exclusively white company believe themselves to be in a momentary White People Club and are testing whether those around them are also members.  It's white folks' code for "I want to say this really problematic thing that is questionably funny and almost certainly not OK, but you're white, too, so you won't mind that I say this."  But I do mind.

I am white.  As a result, despite the fact that I try on a regular basis to make clear that I am in fact not "colorblind," but actively anti-racist, white folks still try to tell me their "I'm not racist" stories so that I can be in the White People Club and, I can only imagine, assuage their fears that what they're saying might actually be racist.  But you know what I mean, I can almost hear them say.  I can't do it.  I don't want to be in the club.  It's easy for folks to say they're not racists when they define racism as outward expressions of prejudice, a la the KKK or Bill O'Reilly, but in truth we're all racists in that we were raised in a systematically racist society (see the following re: race and mass incarceration, segregation in the cafeteria, white privilege, race in the media, American perspectives on the "third world," and for good measure, I think it never hurts to re-read the Autobiography of Malcolm X.).

We may strive as individuals to combat inter-personal prejudice and we may find overtly hostile expressions of racism like violence, name-calling or legal segregation repugnant, but we are steeped in a culture of bias and marginalization.  Escaping that isn't impossible, but it will take more than hoping that having a black president has erased systemic discrimination, or folks like Paula Deen tearfully begging us all to understand that despite what she said in the past, she's not racist.  We struggle with this.  I think the recent internet "meme-fication" of African-Americans being interviewed on local news stations is a prime example (Think Antoine Dodson, Sweet Brown, or Charles Ramsey).  These things have a tendency to go viral in a way that suggests we've lost track of the line between humor and mockery.  A while back, Slate posted an article called "The Troubling Viral Trend of the 'Hilarious' Black Neighbor" exploring this notion, and it's been a topic of discussion on NPR, as well.  What's most troubling about some of these "memes" is that the gravity of the stories is forgotten.  Dodson and Ramsey were both doing good deeds under frightening circumstances - Dodson by helping his sister fend off a rapist who had broken into their home and Ramsey by helping three trapped women and a child escape imprisonment in his neighbor's house.  Brown, of course, was the victim of a house fire.  As children we're taught that a joke is funny when folks laugh with you and cruel when folks laugh at you.  I get the distinct feeling that neither Dodson, Ramsey, nor Brown are laughing.

This post doesn't have a neat and tidy feel-good ending.  There's no easy way to wrap this up with some kind of simple, here's-how-we-fix-this message.  The obvious things to do are, for white folks, to abandon the "I'm not racist" caveat.  White folks or other folks in positions of privilege can also challenge these stories when people tell them.  There are lots of ways to express discomfort - I try to accomplish this by either refraining from laughing at jokes that aren't funny even if others are laughing, or explaining why these kinds of stories and jokes make me upset, or simply getting up and walking away to indicate I'm not interested.  But I've also engaged in things I'm not proud of.  After the Antoine Dodson auto-tuned video came out, I certainly watched it more than a few times.  I laughed.  I showed it to others.  I've learned a lot since then.  I've done some self-reflection about why I thought that video was so funny.  I've stopped watching.  I've stopped singing the song.  I think we could probably benefit from more interrogation of things like this both inter-personally and on a national level.  We divide things into rigid categories - racist, or not racist.  As individuals, most people do their darndest to separate themselves from any notions of outward racism.  Because it's much harder to identify, we rarely consider our contributions, whether explicit or implicit, to systemic racism.  We're easily offended when anyone suggests we do participate in such a system.  This isn't helpful and we can do better.  So let's stop saying we're not racist.  Let's stop taking it personally when someone points out that the past and present marginalization of people of color in the U.S. and elsewhere globally has something to do with us.  Let's forget colorblindness and set ourselves on a path towards actual equality.  They say admitting you have a problem is half the battle.  I have a problem.  I benefit from a racist system.  If you're listening, I'd love to tell you a story about that.

  

Invisible Queers: Age and ambiguity in the gender binary

I've mentioned before that I'm often mistaken for younger than I am.  Just a few years ago, being mistaken for a teenage boy was a common - sometimes near daily - experience for me.  More recently, that's lessened a bit, which has been a relief.  Still, it happens often enough to be frustrating, and the ways in which it happens lead to further frustration, since people's assumptions often come across as awkward at best and rude or insensitive at worst.

Just the other night, I was out with my partner and a friend of ours and our friend ordered a bottle of wine for the table.  The waiter said nothing to any of us about our ages when we ordered the wine, but when she was bringing us glasses, she hesitated to give me one.  As she was putting the glasses down, she looked at me and said, "Um, do you get one, too?"  Exasperated and totally out of patience for this kind of bullshit, I provided a rather curt response (which I later felt bad about - the result of my Midwestern upbringing and my sympathy for the fact that food service is hard, hard work...).  The waiter fumbled for words and ended up telling me I look young in an attempt to turn her faux pas into a compliment.  After my table-mates and I got over the awkwardness of the moment, my partner pointed out that her approach to the situation was not only awkward and offensive to me, but also had the backhanded effect of implying that my partner and our friend looked old (or at least too old to be carded).  All bad.  The unfortunate waiter could have easily solved any doubts she had from the get-go by asking everyone at the table to show ID when we had first ordered the wine.  Perhaps it's not common practice for her to do so, but given our waiter's confusion about me, doing so in that case seems like an obvious solution.

In other posts I've expressed frustration about this same sort of "mistaken identity" that I'm often the victim of.  I've been mistaken for my younger brother by friends of my parents, mistaken as the son of more than one co-worker by others, and mistaken for a "kid" in all manner of places.  I've come to realize that aside from the fact that there are usually simple solutions folks could employ to determine my status as an adult before inserting both feet directly into their mouths, the real reason I get angry when this happens is that people might more readily see an adult when they look at me were they expecting to see queer bodies in their midst.  When people look at me and see a boy or a "kid" it's not just because I look young or chose to wear a baseball cap or a t-shirt that day (plenty of other adults look youngish and wear hats and short sleeves everyday), but because they aren't looking for genderqueer folk.  It's almost hard to get mad at the individual people who do this because their brains are on autopilot.  They are looking for adult masculine (enough) men and adult feminine (enough) women.  Anyone who does not fit obviously into either category must be a child or youth.  Even people who know and love LGBT people don't always seem to have interrogated their assumptions on this.  People just aren't looking for gender non-conformity.  So where does that leave us gender ambiguous folk - especially those of us who have yet to earn the wrinkles and gray hair that come with age?  For the time being, it seems to leave us relegated to the margins of adulthood.  I used to largely ignore people who mistook me for a teenager or kid, but I've resolved to stop doing that in an effort to signal that not only do I exist, but that they should be on the look out for me and others like me.

Post-Wedding Industrial Reflections

I got married earlier this summer and it was lovely.  I wasn't a great sport about the planning process (and had great fun mocking all of the wedding-industrial pitfalls we encountered), but it was great.  For the most part, all of our my wife's careful planning went off just as we'd envisioned.  Still, there are always a few things that pop up right at crunch time that you realize you didn't think all the way through.  You can add these to the list I started earlier this year...

We kind of had flowers after all  
So, this falls into the category of not thinking things all the way through.  After our initial hullabaloo about not wanting cut flowers at the wedding, we started brainstorming about what else we could put at the center or the tables.  We came up with the brilliant (we thought) idea to fill mason jars with different veggies.  We felt very warm and fuzzy about this idea for many weeks.  We bought the jars.  We bought some rustic, twiney-looking ribbon to decorate the jars.  We talked about putting candles around the jars.  We talked about what vegetables should go in the jars.  We forgot to talk about what to do with the vegetables afterwards.  Our wedding was in Ohio.  We live in DC.  Neither of our parents live in the city where we had our celebration.  Most of our friends and family were from out of town as well.  Unless we were going to just waste a whole bunch of random vegetables, our idea was sunk.  We already had a purple theme going, so ended up having the (actually) brilliant idea to use lavender instead of veggies.  After being talked out of a plan to go to a lavender farm and harvest our flowers myself, I ordered some dried lavender bunches from a lovely old man who has a farm somewhere in Washington or Oregon (those two states blur together in my brain.  I seriously can't tell you the difference).  Thing is, you apparently need to notify folks when an order is for a wedding.  Or a set deadline of any kind.  A few days before we were set to leave for Ohio, our lavender had still not arrived.  I called the farm.  The sweet old man said "Ah, yes, I marked that order as shipped, but we had some problems that day and nobody made it to the post office."  Problems?  A whole slew of them apparently.  He described to me a perfect storm of bad weather, flat tire on the pick-up truck and somebody quitting their job all on the day our lavender bunches were supposed to be mailed.  Wonderful fellow that he was, he sense my distress and asked me if this was for a wedding.  I said it was.  He ended up overnighting us another box of lavender for free.  As luck would have it, both boxes arrived the same day.  On that note, if anyone needs any dried lavender, um, let me know.

Follow up on the name game...  
A friend recently asked me for advice on this, which motivated me to write about it.  This is another item in the "not thought all the way through" bucket. I think I've mentioned before that I typically go by a different arrangement of my birth name than the one I grew up with, though my parents and family still call me by my given name.  Which means I have two names, kind of.  Prior to the wedding, I had some anxiety about this - I couldn't decide which name to use on invitations, for gift registries, at the ceremony...  We ultimately went with what my partner and I were both most comfortable with, which is the name I use now.  I was worried my family would be confused.  As it turns out, it wasn't much of an issue at all and nobody really batted an eye.  Most of my family members are friends with me on Facebook where I use my "common use" and not my given name, so they knew who people meant when they called me "Sumner."  What I didn't think of pretty much until zero hour, was friends who had never known me by my given name.  It suddenly occurred to me that people would be using my given name - I assumed my dad would make a toast, for instance, and call me "Lindsay" and folks would think he was nuts, or talking about the wrong person, or something.  We had always planned to put a little note in the program explaining the name thing (that I am called by two names and that both are fine), but we had imagined it more for the benefit of family.  It turned out, I think, to be more for the benefit of friends.  Go figure.

      

Respect Trans

The DC Office of Human Rights has a campaign to improve general understanding of gender and gender identity, and in turn, the lives of trans and gender non-conforming folks.  You can find out more here: http://ohr.dc.gov/transrespect.

The Cost of Racism

Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman has been found not guilty of murder.  He was not convicted of manslaughter, either.  In fact, despite having shot and killed a person after an incident initiated by Zimmerman himself, the state of Florida did not convict him of any crime.

There has been a lot of talk about whether Martin and Zimmerman engaged in a scuffle or fist fight prior to the shooting.  About whether or not Martin hit Zimmerman or whether or not Martin had pinned Zimmerman to the ground prior to Zimmerman firing his weapon.  About whether it was Martin or Zimmerman who was heard calling for help.  The problem is, none of that is the point.  None of that is the story.

At its core, this is a story about an unarmed teenage boy traveling on foot who was followed and then approached by an adult male who was not only driving a vehicle, but was packing a weapon.  Let me repeat that because it may take a moment to really comprehend the gravity of such words: This is a story about an armed adult who confronted and killed a child walking alone at night.  

I can think of three main circumstances in which it is appropriate for an adult to approach an unattended child whom they do not know:
1) The child appears lost and is too young, or otherwise unable, to sort the situation out alone.
2) The child is in imminent physical danger.
3) The child's actions have the potential to place those in the vicinity in immediate bodily harm.

With a few possible exceptions, I can't think of any other reason why an adult would need to follow, speak to, or otherwise interact with a child or teenager they don't know, particularly in the manner that Zimmerman approached Martin.  Put yourself in Trayvon Martin's shoes.  You're seventeen years old, running an errand on foot at night.  It's dark out, but you don't see any reason not to be walking through the neighborhood on your own.  You notice an adult you don't know who seems to be following you in a car.  The further you walk, the more you're convinced this guy is definitely following you.  You might start feeling nervous, but convince yourself it's nothing and keep moving.  Maybe you pick up your pace.  The car keeps tailing you.  You're on a call with your friend and you tell them you think someone is following you and that you're going to get off the phone.  You hang up and the guy has gotten out of his car and is coming towards you.  You're angry, and probably anxious.  You ask why he's following you.  He asks what you're doing here.

When I was seven years old, my best friend and I were playing in my front yard.  We were approached by a strange man who asked us if we knew anyone named John.  Being little kids and eager to help and not sensing any danger, we said we didn't know anyone named John, but that we had a friend Jonathan who lived across the street.  The man left, but must have gone around the block because he came by again, from the same direction, this time to show us some pictures.  We didn't know anyone in them.  He came around the block a couple more times.  My friend and I were getting irritated with him because he kept interrupting our game, but we weren't particularly worried.  My parents were right inside and hers were just down the block.  But the last time the guy came around he said the magic words that set off all the stranger-danger alarm bells in our little second-grade heads.  He said he wanted us to meet him around the block at his car.  Thankfully, he walked away again and we ran directly into my house and told my parents, who called the police.

When Trayvon Martin was approached by George Zimmerman that night in February of 2012, he was seventeen, not seven, and likely very aware of the potential threat he was facing.  Martin was also a black male teenager, and had probably already experienced first-hand the realities of racial profiling - both by the police and by others around him.  I have no doubt that as soon as he became certain that Zimmerman was tailing him, alarm bells were going off loud and clear in Martin's head.  I have no doubt that he must have experienced an acute mix of emotions - fury, frustration, and fear.

Zimmerman and Martin may have fought.  Martin may have lashed out.  He might have indeed struck Zimmerman.  Given the situation - being a seventeen year old black male approached by a strange adult with a gun - no one should be surprised if that's the case.  Martin's options would have been pretty limited.  He could run or he could fight.  Either way, Zimmerman would still have a gun.  And a car.    

We don't know exactly what happened in the time between Zimmerman getting out of his car and the moment when Martin was shot.  But we do know what happened first and what happened last, and I frankly can't think of anything except racism that explains how an armed adult can confront an unarmed teenager, end up shooting and killing the child, and get away with it.  Those of us who had hoped for a guilty verdict spoke of "justice for Trayvon."  Truthfully, even if Zimmerman had been found guilty, there would still be no real justice for Trayvon.  He experienced the most egregious injustice there is - the senseless loss of his life.  But there might have been justice for all the kids that will follow him - we might have found comfort in knowing that this jury, and this system, would protect children and young people - all people - from assholes like Zimmerman.  I'm still processing everything that this verdict means, but I know what it means in terms of freedom - kids like Trayvon will have less of it going forward and guys like Zimmerman - grown men whose sense of masculinity and self-worth are found by "guarding" their neighborhoods with firearms - will have more.

 

A Social Justice Dictionary

Ableism - Discrimination or prejudice towards people who are differently-abled, such as those who use a wheelchair or cane to get around, or who experience a developmental or mental challenges.  Ableism often serves to isolate able-bodied people and people who experience physical and developmental challenges from one another.

Cis-gender - When a person's gender identity matches her/his/their perceived physical sex.

Civil Disobedience - A form of direct action, protest, or activism that directly challenges the status quo by breaking a rule or law, usually in a non-violent manner.  Civil disobedience is often used to prevent something unwanted from occurring, or to draw attention to an injustice by prompting the mass arrest of those participating in the action.  Civil disobedience has been used by social justice groups in the United States for many years.  Examples include lunch counter sit-ins to end segregation in the South, anti-war activists blocking traffic or railways to stop delivery of military equipment or to otherwise disrupt regular life, or people occupying buildings or urban space to preserve things like affordable housing.

Colorblindness - Colorblindness is a dominant cultural ideology in the post-Civil Rights era that denies the significance of race in our lives.  Some people point to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, the legal de-segregation of the South, and more recent events like Obama's election to the presidency as evidence that race no longer matters in the United States.  When people say things like "I don't see race," they are engaging in colorblindness.  This is problematic because both structural and inter-personal racism continue to be facts of life.  Colorblindness prevents us from being able to meaningfully engage the problem of racism and come up with real solutions.

Heteronormativity - The assumption, either systemic or personal, that all people are heterosexual.  Asking a male acquaintance about his wife, or a doctor asking a female patient how she's preventing pregnancy without finding out if her partner is male are examples of heteronormativity.  Queer folks are likely to encounter heteronormativity at work, school, at the grocery store, while walking down the street, while planning a wedding, at the doctor's office, on the phone with utility service providers, while looking to rent or purchase housing, and while traveling.

Inclusive Language - Use of language in a way that fully reflects a diversity of human experiences and the contributions of many kinds of people to society.  Examples of inclusive language include the use of "firefighter" or "mail carrier" instead of "fireman" or "mailman"; referring to children as "kids" rather than "boys and girls"; saying "parents" in place of "mom and dad"; the use of "spouse" as a general term for married partner rather than "husband" or "wife" and the use of gender neutral terms like "people," "folks," or "friends" in place of "ladies" or "you guys."  In the context of religion, inclusive language can also mean referring to god using a mix of female and male pronouns, or without gendered pronouns at all.

Intersectionality - The idea that people have multiple identities and thus intersecting experiences of oppression and marginalization.  For instance, African-American women may experience sexism differently than Caucasian women because black and white women have different experiences of racism and race privilege, and as a result, may have different experiences of being female.  Intersectionality is important to acknowledge because posing situations as "women" versus "blacks," for instance (as was frequently the case during the Democratic primary campaign between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton in 2007 and 2008), serves to erase the experiences of women of color.

Labor Union - A labor union is a collective group of workers employed by the same company or organization who join together to improve or protect their working conditions, pay, and benefits.  This is also called democracy in the workplace.

LGBTIQQA - An acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, and Allies.  This acronym is more frequently used in its shortened versions, typically LGBT or GLBT.  

Love - That which binds us and simultaneously propels us forward to seek peace, justice, and community.

Pansexuality -  Refers to attraction to individuals of any gender expression and/or physical sex.

Privilege - Un-earned advantages accrued to people in positions of relative power.  Common examples include white privilege, male privilege, cis-gender privilege and heterosexual privilege.  Peggy McIntosh's "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" is a standard read for those wishing to better understand white privilege.  Similar lists have been generated by others to illustrate the effects of male privilege, heterosexual privilege, and so on.  Like oppression, privileges can intersect.  For example, a queer male person of color will experience male privilege differently than a white, straight male (see above re: "Intersectionality").

Queer - A term used by some gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming people to describe their sexual and social identity.  Some prefer "queer" over "gay" or "lesbian" because it is not tied to the gender binary.  "Queer" can refer to both sexual orientation and gender expression.  In the past, "queer" used as a derogatory term, but has since been reclaimed by many LGBT folks.

Reverse-racism - This is not actually a thing.  Racism is both inter-personal and structural and is intimately tied to power, privilege, and oppression.  All people are capable of bias and prejudice, but because white privilege still means that whites disproportionately hold political office, high-paying professions, college degrees, and personal wealth in the United States, prejudices held by whites towards people of color carry different meaning than prejudices held by people of color against whites.

Transgender - A person whose gender identity or expression differs from her/his/their perceived sex or sex assigned at birth.  Alternatively, a person who transcends gender boundaries.

Xenophobia - Fear or hatred towards people of different national origins or ethnicity than oneself.