Lesbian Gay and Bisexual (1975) —> LGBTQ (2010): Those of us with a variant / atypical gender identity became grouped with the people with a minority form of sexual orientation. Why? Well, in our culture, a person whose body is perceived to be male but whose observable behavioral characteristics are feminine will usually have been assumed to be gay, and treated as such — homophobia definitely included.
So we’ve been regarded and treated in much the same way, and that gives us experiences in common. And reasons to join forces politically and socially, as an immediate consequence of that.
Generally speaking, if you’re gay or lesbian, people understand that you are different, whether they perceive you as an oppressed minority, a standout spectacle against a backdrop of duller conventional people, an immoral pervert, or whatever. There’s widespread agreement: you either have sex with people of the same sex, or you don’t, and doing so marks you as different in a heterocentric and homophobic society.
If you’re gay or lesbian (or even if you’re bisexual), people rarely walk up to you after knowing this bit of information about you and say “Well, I really don’t see why you insist on this notion that you’re different”.
Gender, on the other hand, is an identity. There isn’t a specific behavior that, if you engage in it, definitely makes you this gender as opposed to that behavior.
When I was in graduate school, I wanted to do my dissertation on feminine male people, male people who identified as being more like women and girls than they were like other male people in general, and to delve into how they saw the world of heterosexual prospects and possibilities, non-hetero opportunities, and how they negotiated their sense of sexual self. But one of my sociology professors told me, “There’s a problem with that. ‘Considering yourself feminine’ is something that takes place in a person’s head. You can’t operationalize it as an objective difference, it’s just subjective. And then you want to interview them about what else they think and feel about sex and sexuality. It’s all intercranial. That’s not sociology. Now, you could focus on people who say ‘Yes I wear a dress’ or ‘Yes I wear women’s undergarments’. That is an objective behavior. You either do that thing or you don’t”.
But there’s no behavior that I identify that makes us “us”, that determines that this male person or that male person is femme.
One response I could make to this situation is to point out that it isn’t so simple for gay and lesbian definitions after all. Sexual appetite isn’t the same thing as sexual behavior. What about gay and lesbian virgins, who have never had sex? And while we’re at it, what constitutes “same” versus “other” sex? We have intersex people in this world. If an intersex person becomes sexually involved with a person who isn’t intersex, does that make them heterosexual, regardless of whether the partner is male or female? See, sexual orientation involves how people think of themselves too!
But my goal was not to undermine the identities of gay and lesbian people, but to deal with people telling me my gender identity is a figment of my imagination.
And yes, people do tell us that. It’s a part of the experience of gender variant people, it’s something we generally have to wade through a lot more than our gay and lesbian colleagues and allies. “Oh, so you think you’re a woman because you like to attend the ballet? That doesn’t make you a woman! Oh, you like to dance the ballet? So did Nureyev and Baryshnikov. Oh, but you want to dance ballet in a tutu? But it’s just a sexist social convention that marks it as female apparel, that doesn’t mean you’re a woman if you wear it! Oh, but you cry at movies, you care more about cooperation and listening than you do about competition and risk-taking? Are you saying men can’t be nurturant counselors or good communal hippies?”
And if we focus on the fact that other people throughout our lifetime have altercast us as being wrongly gendered for our sex, if we testify to a lifetime of being called butch or tomboy or sissy or whatever, “well, all guys get called that, it’s part of razzing and hazing and we all go through it”.
The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a victim by her husband in Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gas Light,[6] and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944.[7] In the story, the husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she points out these changes.
Unless you just climbed out of a dark cave after raised by wolves you know damn well that our world has gendered expectations. And that, no, we do not all get equal doses of being identified as variant, as sissy or butch.
We’re in the position of begin tagged by others for this then being told it’s all in our heads.
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Do you counsel young people trying to sort out their gender identity? You should read my book! It’s going to add a new entry to your map of possibilities when you interact with your clients!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women’s Studies Class, is also being published by Sunstone Press. It’s a sequel to GenderQueer Stay tuned for further details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
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genderkitten 