This is fantastic.
So exactly right on, too. There only seem to be three so far, but I hope there are more on their way.
Category: gender
Topics
Posted by – November 26, 2011
Here’s a short list of the topics my students researched for papers this term:
- Marlene Dietrich
- Intersex activism
- Justin Bieber’s gender
- David Reimer, or the John/Joan case
- The invention of heterosexuality
- Korean pop band f(x)
- Kyle Alums and gender in college sports
- Genderqueer identities
- Femininity in male-bodied people
- African trans identities/activism
- De-homosexualized femme identities
- Tribe 8’s “Femme Bitch Top”
- Pete Burns’ gender
- Barsexuals
- Feminism and femme activism
- GIDC
It makes grading a lot easier, that’s for sure.
College-Aged Genders
Posted by – October 3, 2011
Though Google created the “other” option for privacy reasons rather than as a transgender choice, young supporters of preferred gender pronouns (or P.G.P.’s as they are called) could not help but rejoice. Katy is one of a growing number of high school and college students who are questioning the gender roles society assigns individuals simply because they have been born male or female.
“You have to understand, this has nothing to do with your sexuality and everything to do with who you feel like inside,” Katy said, explaining that at the start of every LGBTQQA meeting, participants are first asked if they would like to share their P.G.P.’s. “Mine are ‘she,’ ‘her’ and ‘hers’ and sometimes ‘they,’ ‘them’ and ‘theirs.’ ”
P.G.P.’s can change as often as one likes. If the pronouns in the dictionary don’t suffice, there are numerous made-up ones now in use, including “ze,” “hir” and “hirs,” words that connote both genders because, as Katy explained, “Maybe one day you wake up and feel more like a boy.”
I’ve generally seen and heard PPP more often (preferred personal pronoun) but whatever: liberation from gender, either way.
GaGa’s Drag King Performance
Posted by – August 29, 2011
She stayed in drag & accepted the “best female performance” award in drag, too, which I can’t help but appreciate. I can’t stand the song – ugh, rock ballads. So what’s the vote? Does she make a decent king? I like the way her physicality changed – you can see how she’s keeping her shoulders, torso and hips a little stiffer.
One of Everything
Posted by – August 3, 2011
Another amazing story out of India: a man’s stomach complaints turn out to be a uterus & ovaries. Imagine going into a hospital as a man with abdominal pains and winding up having a hysterectomy.
“The external reproductive organs of the patient were masculine and he has no problems whatsoever with his sexuality. He had functional male genitals and there was no formation of breasts in the patient. It’s an embryological accident at the time of embryonic formation,” he said.
The patient, who was said to be as “stunned” as his doctors at the discovery, is recovering in hospital and is being supported by his family.
It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? I had a doctor tell me once about a patient who had terrible acid reflux, and it turned out his stomach was backwards, so that the shallow end of it was at the end of the esophagus.
‘Realness’ as Reality
Posted by – July 13, 2011
‘Realness’ may be a ball contest category, but when it turns into a litmus test, it’s a bullying stick.
Tobi Hill Meyer has pulled together a list of what it means to be a “real” transsexual woman. Here are a few:
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you transitioned after 45 (or 35, or 25, or 18 depending on who you ask)
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you ascribe to feminist gender deconstruction theory
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you buy clothes in the men’s department
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you don’t have a GI/GID diagnosis or can’t afford the process to get one
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you are caught without makeup on
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have facial or body hair that you don’t shave
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have facial or body hair that you have to shave
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you don’t wear dresses and skirts all the time
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you never crossdressed before transitioning
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have ever identified as a crossdresser
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you become sexually aroused while wearing women’s clothing
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have sex with men
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have sex with women
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you are not sexually available to men
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have sex using a strap on
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have sex
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you allow yourself to be seen naked before vaginoplasty or with anything others might consider a penis
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have ever done sex work
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you haven’t considered suicide
You’re not a real transsexual woman unless your only alternative to transition is suicide
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you’re still attending Southern Comfort
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you didn’t keep up with your dilation
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you are not stealth
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you are stealth
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you’ve been to camp trans
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you perform as a drag king
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you have ever performed as a drag queen
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you ever pee standing up
You’re not a real transsexual woman if you play sports (no exceptions for being on the women’s rugby team, but maybe for softball)
She points out that most cis women wouldn’t pass these tests, even the ones that aren’t trans specific. One of the things I feel like I say over & over again is that all women, trans and non-trans, can fail the test called “woman”. Plenty of us do on a regular basis. Obviously her comments come out of this whole transgender/transsexual argument, which tires me.
Turning Girls Into Boys?
Posted by – July 10, 2011
Okay, here’s some odd news:
Girls are being ‘converted’ into boys in Indore – by the hundreds every year – at ages where they cannot give their consent for this life-changing operation. This shocking, unprecedented trend, catering to the fetish for a son, is unfolding at conservative Indore’s well-known clinics and hospitals on children who are 1-5 years old. The process being used to ‘produce’ a male child from a female is known as genitoplasty.
I don’t understand how this could even be possible, to be honest, since genital surgery for FTMs is notoriously difficult and expensive.
Tweet O Gender
Posted by – June 13, 2011
Here’s some new bullshit. There’s a new website called tweetolife that, according to its tagline, is “the science of human life in Twitter messages”. Oh boy. The idea is that you can put in phrases & find out how men & women use them. So you might come up with results that when men use the word “suck” it’s often accompanied by, say, “Favre” and when women, or teenaged girls, use “suck” it’s more often with “Bieber”.
So what’s my problem? In the About section, they explain:
We analyzed millions of tweets collected by researchers from the University of Edinburgh between November 2009 and February 2010. For gender differences, we separated the tweets into two subsets as male and female tweets by using the first names of the Twitter users.
So now we can come up with amazing data on the differences between male & female tweeters, right?
Um, no. For starters, (1) I’d like to know where they put Chris, Pat, and Alex. I assume they (2) weeded out any Twitter feeds from groups or organizations, since who is actually doing the tweeting is variable. Then, too, there’s probably (3) a shared computer or 2 (hundred thousand) out there, which means at least a few people are tweeting as people they are not. Plus there are all the (4) intentional gender switches, (5) the genderless/multiply-gendered people who don’t have an option that describes their genders, the (6) emerging trans people who are “trying on” their new gender online first, the (7) guys trying to hit on women by pretending to be women online, (8) the women using male IDs to avoid the detection of said men, etc. etc.
Someone may know you’re a dog, but no one knows if you’re male or female on the internets.
Global Gender Diversity Map
Posted by – June 11, 2011
PBS has put together an interactive map of third gender traditions from all over the world for the new documentary “Two Spirits”. Their blurb:
On nearly every continent, and for all of recorded history, thriving cultures have recognized, revered, and integrated more than two genders. Terms such as transgender and gay are strictly new constructs that assume three things: that there are only two sexes (male/female), as many as two sexualities (gay/straight), and only two genders (man/woman).
Yet hundreds of distinct societies around the globe have their own long-established traditions for third, fourth, fifth, or more genders. Fred Martinez, for example, was not a boy who wanted to be a girl, but both a boy and a girl — an identity his Navajo culture recognized and revered as nádleehí. Most Western societies have no direct correlation for this Native “two-spirit” tradition, nor for the many other communities without strict either/or conceptions of sex, sexuality, and gender. Worldwide, the sheer variety of gender expression is almost limitless. Take a tour and learn how other cultures see gender diversity.
Very cool stuff indeed.
More Sissy Boys
Posted by – June 10, 2011
The CNN Anderson Cooper special on “The Sissy Boy Experiment” continues to inspire blog posts in both the gay and trans blogosphere.
At Joe.My.God, an open thread features hundreds of comments from gay men about their gender non-conformity of childhood.
Meanwhile, on Mercedes Allen’s blog, Marti Abernathy clarifies that in fact, Ken Zucker of CAMH is still conducting reparative therapy on gender non-conforming children.
I highly recommend Rottnek’s Sissies & Tomboys
More soon too on the complicated interplay of transphobia, homophobia, & (what I like to call) gender panic.
“Herbivore” Men
Posted by – June 8, 2011
It’s something akin to metrosexualism, but in Japan, there is a male gender called “herbivore men”. The term was coined based on the play between “flesh” and “sex” and “meat”.
Author and pop culture columnist Maki Fukasawa coined the term in 2006 in a series of articles on marketing to a younger generation of Japanese men. She used it to describe some men who she said were changing the country’s ideas about just what is — and isn’t — masculine.
“In Japan, sex is translated as ‘relationship in flesh,’” she said, “so I named those boys ‘herbivorous boys’ since they are not interested in flesh.”
We might use the term effete in English, but that might be a mistake because this term isn’t about men being feminine per se — it’s about them being less sexual, less lustful, or maybe even asexual. I’m sure it varies greatly depending on the “herbivorous” man in question.
There has always been a connection between meat-eating and passion, of course, as Graham well knew when he created Graham crackers – the intent of which was to curb lustfulness – but as someone who has recently returned to vegetarianism, I find the equation of sexless and meatless a little ridiculous, along the lines of thinking rhino’s horn will embolden erections.
In that same CNN article, the author also notes:
Typically, “herbivore men” are in their 20s and 30s, and believe that friendship without sex can exist between men and women, Fukasawa said.
Aside from the obvious heterosexism of that idea (assuming all men desire women, & vice versa) thats the When Harry Met Sally thesis all over again, isn’t it? It makes me tired.
I am very interested in separating out the various threads in this mishmosh of ideas. On the one side we’ve got desire, meat-eating, & masculinity; on the other, asexuality/low libido, vegetarianism, & femininity.
Which makes my brain go in about a million directions at once: yes, we could use more monkish men in the world, absolutely. But also: the whole dislike of virility/violence/masculinity kind of pisses me off, too.
Discuss.
“Curing” the Sissy: Anderson Cooper Tonight
Posted by – June 7, 2011
Tonight, Anderson Cooper 360 is doing a show on the reparative therapy offered one male child to “cure” him of his effeminate behavior.
Box Turtle Bulletin has a complete breakdown of the events of Kirk’s life as well as information on the doctors who were responsible for this “therapy”.
Activist Abigail Jensen adds that she is upset “about the erasure, at least in the headlines of this & Anderson Cooper’s upcoming special report, of the fact that this story is as much about treating children who may be transsexual, as it is about children who may be gay.”
His brother Mark says the therapy “turned his light switch off”.
I fully expect more and more families will step forward about this kind of therapy as a result of this documentary, and I’m thankful to Anderson Cooper and team for doing it. This is NOT a historical issue; reparative therapy is still “offered” to gender variant children. For a more recent take, do read D. Scholinkski’s The Last Time I Wore a Dress
B&N Censors Nude Male Chest
Posted by – June 1, 2011
There are too many turns of the screw to count now, but Barnes & Noble has just demanded that the magazine Dossier bag its magazine because of the cover photo: featuring a bare-chested male model. Why? Because he looks like a woman otherwise. It’s a pretty stunning image and is being heralded as the “new face of androgyny”.
Stunning.
The Revolution: Taylor Mac
Posted by – May 22, 2011
Lawrence King was killed in 2008 and Taylor Mac performed this piece that same year – the very first year I taught Transgender Lives at Lawrence. Ever since then I’ve shown this video, but somehow failed to put it here.
I love this piece so much, and it’s so good to see Taylor Mac getting credit from the likes of PBS. He’s a very old friend of ours who acted with Betty in an era that seems like a lifetime or two ago now.
Writing About Bodies
Posted by – May 12, 2011
Dean Spade recently wrote a short piece about how we might use language to de-gender bodies. It’s smart and concise – just as you’d expect from Dean Spade.
About Purportedly Gendered Body Parts
I have been thinking about how much I would like it if people, especially health practitioners, exercise instructors and others who talk about bodies a lot, would adjust their language about body parts heavily associated with gender norms. Lots of people who identify as feminists and allies to trans people still use terms like “female-bodied,” “male body parts,” “bio-boy,”and “biologically female.” Even in spaces where people have gained some basic skills around respecting pronoun preferences, suggesting an increasing desire to support gender self determination and release certain expectations related to gender norms, I still hear language used that asserts a belief in constructions of “biological gender.” From my understanding, a central endeavor of feminist, queer, and trans activists has been to dismantle the cultural ideologies, social and legal norms that say that certain body parts determine gender identity and gendered social characteristics and roles. We’ve fought against the idea that the presence of uteruses or ovaries or penises should be understood to determine such things as people’s intelligence, proper parental roles, proper physical appearance, proper gender identity, proper labor roles, proper sexual partners and activities, and capacity to make decisions. We’ve opposed medical and scientific assertions that affirm the purported health of traditional gender roles and activities and pathologize bodies that defy those norms. More
Coontz on Mothers
Posted by – May 8, 2011
For Mother’s Day, a cool piece by Stephanie Coontz about moms. Coontz’s Marriage, A History
For their part, stay-at-home mothers complained of constant exhaustion. According to the most reliable study of all data available in the 1960s, full-time homemakers spent 55 hours a week on domestic chores, much more than they do today. Women with young children averaged even longer workweeks than that, and almost every woman I’ve interviewed who raised children in that era recalled that she rarely got any help from her husband, even on weekends.
In the 1946 edition of his perennial best seller, “Baby and Child Care,” Dr. Benjamin Spock suggested that Dad might “occasionally” change a diaper, give the baby a bottle or even “make the formula on Sunday.” But a leading sociologist of the day warned that a helpful father might be suspected of “having a little too much fat on the inner thigh.”
I’m not even sure what exactly that’s supposed to mean: can any of you explain that expression? I’m guessing it’s a bit of gender baiting, in the sense of more fat = less muscle and less muscle = not sufficient masculine, but it’s not familiar to me.
Happy Mother’s Day, moms and non-moms and dads. For me, to be honest, this day is a very pleasant reminder of why I’m child-free.
DOL Adds Gender Identity to EEOC
Posted by – April 29, 2011
Good to see.
TLDEF applauds the United States Department of Labor’s announcement yesterday that it has taken steps to protect its transgender workers from employment discrimination. The Department of Labor added gender identity as a protected category in its equal employment opportunity statement. The policy applies to all hiring, promotion and disciplinary practices for the approximately 17,000 employees of the Department of Labor.
“Whether in private or public employment, what matters is not who you are, but how you do your job,” said TLDEF executive director Michael Silverman. “The Department of Labor now joins the many public and private employers that have recognized that discrimination is bad business. We applaud Labor Secretary Hilda Solis for her leadership on this issue.”
Transgender people face tremendous discrimination in the workplace. In a recent survey, 47% of transgender people reported being fired, or denied a job or promotion, just because of who they are. In a recent case, TLDEF filed a lawsuit on behalf of a transgender man who was fired from a male-only job solely because he is transgender.
“Employers like the Department of Labor set an example for other employers to follow. It is a great day when diversity is embraced and discrimination is rejected in the workplace,” added Silverman.
Pakistan Allows Third Gender
Posted by – April 29, 2011
Pakistan has recently adopted a new law that allows people who don’t identify as male or female to choose another gender on identity documents.
Allows is the key word. They don’t require it. It seems like a good thing – not just for those who are third gender, but for those during transition, and for those who don’t have passing privilege.
If only we could manage something similar here.
