gender outlawery – Medusa kisses

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022

Frequently Asked Transgender Questions

As part of a transgender and non-binary panel discussion I recently participated in, we received some challenging comments/questions about transgender individuals in sports, feminism & youth transition. They seem to reflect popular topics in news and social media, and may be questions a lot of non-trans people have, so I’m sharing a distilled version of the questions, along with my complete responses here. See also related media links at the end. Questions:

Should transgender athletes be allowed in gender-separated sports?
Maybe transgender should be its own sports category?
Is it “unfair” (due to biology or hormones) for transgender athletes to compete?
When should transgender youth start hormones or surgery?
Do transgender individuals fit in with feminism and the feminist movement?
Don’t “biological women” experience unique challenges & trauma in patriarchal societies, due to their physiology?

June 19, 2022June 19, 2022

Our Humanity Is Not Up For Debate

Plenty of human behaviors and government policies can be reasonably argued about (for example, budgeting); however, what is not up for debate is our fundamental humanity. It’s not politics to understand that all humans deserve Dignity, Autonomy and Safety; we just do.

Anyone who seeks to create, maintain or control a lower class for any group of humans desires (consciously or subconsciously) power imbalance in their favor via institutional bigotry. This is not justifiable.

Transgender people (including trans-women of color) are human beings. It does not matter what your politics are, your sincerely held beliefs or religious doctrine. If you think that crossing traditional lines of gender makes them “wrong,” it is actually you who is wrong. LGBTQ+ folks do not have to hide their relationships nor who they are to avoid causing discomfort; we can be proud of who we are (as per the intent of Pride month celebrations).

June 19, 2020October 15, 2021

Rocky Road of Spring 2020

The spring of 2020 has been a crazy time; this isn’t my usual one topic/essay post, but I thought it was worth mentioning some important events from this unusual spring: covid-19 first wave, black lives matter protests and an historic Supreme Court ruling for gender equality.

For starters, happy Juneteenth! I look forward to a day when our racist war on drugs ends and our racist justice system (including policing, trials, sentencing, imprisonment) is restructured for equality and emancipation can be more fully realized.

I support the Anti-Racism & Black Lives Matter movements, including (but not limited to) the recent protests sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor & Ahmaud Arbery, as well as the weaponization of police by white woman Amy Cooper against Christopher Cooper. These problems, along with so many others are caused by structural racism (aka institutional racism or systemic racism), which many white people are unaware of, but for which a great deal of statistical evidence and personal stories by people of color demonstrate as a significant societal problem. See also: unconscious bias (i.e., implicit bias or implicit association).

December 14, 2019December 14, 2019

Aces Wild (Asexuality & Queerness)

Where does asexuality fit within the queer spectrum? Nowhere? Everywhere? Although not myself asexual, I find this an interesting question because I’m also an outlier, albeit in a different way.

First, some definitions:
Asexuality is defined by a non-temporary lack of sexual attraction (e. g., someone who rarely, if ever, experiences sexual attraction or desire).
Ace is a shortened version of “asexual” and commonly used for self-identification among those who are asexual, similar to terms like, “gay” or “straight.”

For an ace perspective / definition (and a really good doorknob analogy), check out Echo Gillette’s YouTube video: Coming out as asexual.

“Queer” was a term originally used by mainstream people to circumspectly or pejoratively refer to those they considered homosexuals; later, queerness was reclaimed by gay. lesbian, bisexual and trans activists (becoming known as the LGBT community).

August 15, 2019August 30, 2019

Isn’t He Pretty? (a taste of dysphoria)

Everyone wears masks in a way, presenting slightly different versions of themselves in different public situations (perhaps to “unmask” only at home). But gender dysphoria is like a cursed mask melded with your face, an undesirable deception that is overly tight and non-removable (without the right magic spell).

I think that as young children, we tend to accept what the adults around us say, uncritically & regardless of how it feels. For me, in the faint wisps I can recall of my childhood, I was indifferent to the label of “boy” and its trappings (including my boy-name); I didn’t mind it, but neither did I “identify” as it – it was just one of those things people said to/about me. (That said, I insisted on nail polish as a toddler & makeup was generally required each Halloween.)

My indifference began to shift into conflict after enrolling in Catholic school (grades 7-12), which had gender-specific dress codes. At first, it was fun, like a weird costume party all the time, wearing a tie like some “businessman,” but it didn’t take long to feel oppressive. I noticed the girls’ dress code had a lot more flexibility. Girls could have any hair length, wear several different styles of shirts with skirts, Capri pants or regular pants, but boys hair must be short and they could only wear full-length, solid color slacks with button-up shirts and ties.

May 19, 2019May 24, 2019

Neither he, she, nor it.

Which is better: being unconsciously misgendered by kindly people or correctly but maliciously gendered by ill-meaning strangers?

Usually, it is the latter (malicious gendering) because intentions matter. — Even though I’m not necessarily offended by the words, it isn’t fun (or safe) to feel hostility from those who intend their words to hurt. He-she, she-he and it are hater favorites. All are, in a way, correct – I’m not a straightforward he or she type of person. In some sense, I’m an “it” – an unknown quantity to people who tend to think of gender as binary. But I don’t wish to be known by those terms, which are too often malice-tinged.

For my first decade of identifying and presenting as androgynous, I tended to just roll with whatever people chose to call me (even if that made me uncomfortable). Occasionally, the very sensitive or progressive person would ask me what gender pronouns do I prefer?

December 10, 2017

Victims contribute: Sexism

Many people seem to believe sexism is a simple one-way oppression, where entitled men oppress women individually; however, sexism is broadly cultural, not merely individual, so the true picture is more complex.

For the record, I fully acknowledge that entitled men exist and regularly oppress women on an individual basis, both consciously and unconsciously. That said, men and women are all victims of sexism and contributors to the culture of male dominance and female subordination. (For the purposes of this post, when I say “men,” “male,” “women,” or “female” I mean “most” cis-men or cis-women – it’s a generalization.) Continue reading “Victims contribute: Sexism”

June 6, 2017June 10, 2017

Reclaiming the Conversation: “Cowardice”

Whenever there’s a new terrorist attack such as the May 2017 attack on Ariana Grande concertgoers in Manchester, I hear myriad voices proclaiming it “cowardly” or an act of “cowardice.” I always thought this was strange. What in particular about a suicide bomber coincides with the meaning of “cowardice”?

From dictionary.com, cowardice is: “lack of courage to face danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.”

Suicide bombers are perhaps the ultimate facers of danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc. Even non-suicide terrorists face substantial danger and difficulty. If anything, terrorists virtually fearless; one wishes they were more fearful (fearful enough not to do such horrible things). Continue reading “Reclaiming the Conversation: “Cowardice””

April 23, 2016June 10, 2017

Bad Androgyne

I am a bad androgyne. Or maybe I’m just tired. I live in a gender-fluid soap bubble. Externally, well, there aren’t 13 moon cycles (months) and there aren’t 3+ genders either. There are, but there aren’t. So I just go-along to get-along and I don’t make much effort to correctly gender we who exude ambiguity.

I am drawn to androgyneaity, to ambiguousness, to ambivalence. Of course! I love it and I am it. But I don’t know how to articulate it within a linguistic-cultural structure which just has no concept of a gender-neutral person.

Even in Spanish, a language where all objects are routinely gendered, there is a workaround gender-neutral pronoun for persons built into the language (su/sus which can mean his, her, their and your). English has no such concept, only “it,” which denotes a thing. Continue reading “Bad Androgyne”

February 9, 2016June 10, 2017

Bowie-esque Requiem

When I first heard of David Bowie’s death (Jan 10, 2016), I was mostly indifferent and even slightly annoyed. It seemed my entire (non-work) social sphere expected me to be devastated. Normally, I find it irksome that our celebrity culture encourages people to think they “know” celebrities and be emotionally invested in celebrity lives, so it was that my first knee-jerk response was a “So, what?” mild annoyance, as I’ve never touched or talked with this person. And to be honest, I’ve loved only a small portion of DB’s music, most of it older stuff that I listened to as a teen in the 1990s. I’ve paid little attention to DB or his albums in the 21st century, so it seemed I had little cause to be “affected.”

That said, DB was important to me, so much so that I made a “self-portrait” collage all about him (as me or vice versa) when I was 20: “Rock Starr” (the prints hang in my bedroom). For a time, I even had an email address ending in davidbowie.com (when he had a social networking site in 1999 or so, long before facebook or patreon). David Bowie was a beloved cultural icon/pioneer and hugely important to counterculture as a non-conformist superstar, in the pre-internet days where finding out about independent musicians was quite difficult. DB was a Gender Outlaw inspiration (not only to male-borns, check out 1967’s “She’s Got Medals,” a tale of a drinking, fighting, cross-dressing woman soldier), as well as a White Ally, long before I had any concept of institutional racism (e.g., this 1983 video of him criticizing MTV for not including more black artists in their lineup). Continue reading “Bowie-esque Requiem”