While I like to think of myself as being pretty open-minded,
hip and with-it, I know I am getting old because the vocabulary of
self-identifications is getting, in my humble opinion, to be a little excessive.
(My friend Phoebe will probably chastise me for worrying about being old when
I’m not, but that’s not what my concern is. I just sort of find the different
phases of life fascinating. You go from knowing you’re the shit, to being pretty
sure you’re still the shit but seeing that people just behind you are going to
become the shit, to growing into an age when people younger than you think you’re
the shit because they think you know everything when you know damn good and
well that it’s the people just in front of you who know a lot more. It’s
weird.)
Speaking of “self-identify” — a term that’s being thrown
around a lot as of late—while not exactly redundant, still seems a little silly
to my aging ears. If one “identifies” as something doesn’t it follow that one
necessarily “self-identifies?” I dunno.
In writing, I often use the acronym LGBT, which I think most
people understand to stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. I
believe I first heard the term around 1990, and considered myself very
progressive for embracing it enthusiastically. Pretty soon, people began
tacking a “Q” on to the end, which stands for “Queer.” Now queer is fine,
nothing wrong with that word at all—in fact I like it—but I’ve resisted using
it only because it seems unnecessary. Doesn’t queer just mean gay or lesbian?
Well I looked it up, and no, that’s not necessarily what
“queer” means anymore. (Say whaaaaa???) According to the wisdom of Wikipedia,
queer may be used by those who reject traditional gender identities as a
broader, less conformist, and deliberately ambiguous alternative to LGBT. Okay.
I get that, I guess. If you wanna use “queer” amongst yourselves in the college
library or at a rave and truly understand what that means, that’s fine. But are
you really going to tell your grandma you’re “queer” and then correct her when
she tells you she knows what “queer” means because that’s a word she’s heard
her whole life and then go on to inform her you have reclaimed the word from
her generation freeing it from its negative connotations because you “reject
traditional gender identities?” Isn’t it just easier on grandma (and everyone
else) to say you’re gay or lesbian or bisexual or in the process of changing
your gender?
Facebook has jumped on the self-identification bandwagon and
now offers 53 gender identities (self-identities?) for users to choose from.
This I think is a good thing, because Facebook is mostly about interacting with
your peer group. If you wanna be pangender amongst your friends, go for it.
Following are just a few of the “new” genders that the young
people have added to the American lexicon:
Agender—Apparently agender people see themselves as not
having a gender, or not willing to “self-identify” as a particular gender.
Doesn’t that just mean “too cool for you?”
Androgynous—Pssssh. My generation wrote an entire book on
this identity. See: David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Grace Jones, Adam Ant, Prince,
Boy George, Joan Jett, etc. etc.
Bigender—someone who self identifies as two distinct
genders. Could be male and female or could be queer and female or any number of
combinations. I tend to think of myself as a mostly heterosexual female with less
girlie tendencies than a lot of my girlfriends. Never thought about being
“bigender.” I’ll have to chew on that one … Nah.
Cisgender—this means heterosexual. Do we need a new word for
heterosexual? Sorry, but I call bullshit.
Gender fluid—this means someone whose identity flows to any
number of genders and identities. Can’t we just say “bisexual” or “bi-curious”
and be done with it? Does it really matter what a person is wearing?
Genderqueer—this is supposedly somehow different than
“queer” but when I look up the definition I just don’t see any difference.
Intersex—this is a person born with some aspect of both male
and female genitalia. This one makes sense to me. And it’s more precise than
“hermaphrodite” which implies someone who has fully formed male and female
genitalia which is rare to the point of impossibility.
Oh and also the word “transvestite” has fallen totally out
of favor. Even though Eddie Izzard, a totally cool comedian of my generation
who occasionally enjoys wearing women’s clothes and/or makeup still refers to
himself as an “action transvestite” and not “gender variant.” C’mon, admit is.
Isn’t action transvestite just more fun?
I’m not gonna list any more gender definitions. Because I’m
tired now. And because I think it’s a little silly. The fact of the matter is
that most people’s sexuality and gender and self-identity is fluid. That means
that there could be the same number of descriptions of gender and sexual
identity as there are people on the planet. For all practical purposes I’m a hetero
female. Not because I want to put myself into a box—it’s just a shortcut for
quick identification.
So you kids go on with your transmasculine gender
questioning. That’s okay. I’m gonna stick (mostly) to LGBT. And Grace Jones.
Because Grace Jones fucking kicks ass.
I asked my good friend Michael, as a gay man, what he thinks
about all the new labels. He has this to say:
You know I'm not your typical fag. I think it is silly too.
The whole political correctness, gets on my nerves!! The only label that we
need, is the label human being. Although that is the one that always seems to
be forgotten. I don't know why we as a society feel the need to label
everything. The way I look at it, is that it does more harm than good. All it
does is separate us! When what we really need is to come together!
That, I think, says it all.
So it's two years later, and reading through this again, I would definitely take a lot of it back.
ReplyDeleteHello Amber,
ReplyDeleteAlthough this is an entry from years ago and you've already stated yourself, you'd take a lot of it back... I do would like to say quite a lot about it.
Why labels really, seriously, matter :
I grew up as a boy in a rural small town village... like really small, back in the later '80s early '90s. I would describe my parents as quite modern for their time, they weren't close minded or in the habit of stigmatizing people or raising me to think some people were less than us. Yet I felt less than normal most of the time.
I didn't fit in with the boys, clearly. They saw it, I saw it... but no-one put a label on it. I was just different. Girls flat out told me I shouldn't hang out with them since I was a boy, and boys were supposed to hang out with boys according to them.
There were some nasty comments, by both gender camps... enough to make me withdraw altogether.
I felt out of place and quite lonely most of the time. So I 'escaped' into my own world or creativity and spend most of my time taking care of my many, many, pets.
I remember I fantasized a lot about the future... would I own a house? What would I do for a job? where would I live? what would the house look like? Would I have kids? I assumed I'd have kids... 'caus isn't that what you do when you grow up? There was just one thing that never seemed to fit. I couldn't imagine myself in a relationship with a girl. I just couldn't see it. Maybe I could see myself in a relationship with a boy… but… well… I couldn’t think about that, ‘caus that didn't exist, right?
One day, I was 12 by this time, I was watching a show on TV. A girl told her father she was a 'lesbian'. I had no idea what that meant. But I instantly recognised the father's reaction to his daughter's statement. The horror, the abnormality.
I ran into the kitchen where my mom was making dinner... and I asked her what 'lesbian' meant. Without an inkling of repulsion or shock she said "oh that's a name for when a woman doesn't fall in love with men, but with other women".
While I processed that... I remember I felt some sense of joy... or relief is maybe a better word. I asked her, filled with anticipation, whether there was also a word for when a man loves another man. I remembered feeling so incredibly relieved when she replied with the same 'normality': yes, men who love men are called 'homo'.
For the first time I didn't feel like something was wrong with me.
'It’ existed.
‘It” was a thing other people ‘had’.
And most of all, “it” had a label, a label people could use to identify it.
I was no longer some abnormality. No longer a boy that didn’t fit in anywhere.
That unnamed thing I felt was something others felt too, and could be talked about.
That’s why labels matter. So kids don’t grow up with the idea they don’t belong or are abnormal.
I’m talking about all labels, both the sexuality ones and the gender ones. They all have a name and they are not all the same. You can’t just say “LGBT… and well maybe some others who don’t matter enough to be acknowledged”
Each letter in that abbreviation matters. ALL of them matter.
Now, about gender:
ReplyDeleteFor most of my life, I haven't identified with either women or men, mostly because they told me I didn’t belong to their group, and when you keep being told this repeatedly… you grow into it.
Maybe I also grew into it because a big part of me agreed with them.
And although I identify as "a" man physically. I don't identify with what people call "men" when they are talking in general terms. But neither do I identify with woman.
The problem is most people don’t see / or want to see there is a difference between your physical anatomy and your identity. Sure, I am a man on paper, yes I have a penis, but never have I identified with ‘men’ in general. When people talk about “men” they roughly imagine half the world population with a penis while in fact they mean specifically cis heterosexual men and their specific -often ignorant- habits and their specific behaviour towards women, or their hunger for power and domination, their incredible small egos, their need for ‘big’ cars, and their eagerness to settle disagreements with their fists, their powerful leadership or their seeming lack of emotions.
I myself, and I know many other penis-barriers, don’t identify with that rhetoric.
Not a single cis heterosexual man cares about labelling himself that way, but it matters to understand the meaning of that label to understand not everybody fits the rhetoric of what a ‘men’ are. It matters to know the world isn’t just M/F by genitals, but really M/F/T/B/A/… by personal identity.
What matters most? That we classify the world into penises and vaginas… and keep pretending all vaginas think and behave alike, and that all penises think and behave alike, OR that we finally acknowledge fully fleshed out humans with different perspectives regardless of their genitals?
If you can at least acknowledge the world is made up of more than just M/W, than be my guest and talk about M’s in general terms all you want, because I will know, you acknowledge you aren’t talking about me.
And I am not saying we should make up endless lists of genders and end up with a new unique specific gender for every unique human being… I am saying we should listen when a group says “we are genderfluid”, and acknowledge they exist. They aren’t trying to take anything away from you, they are trying to tell you there are more things in the world than “soft emotional caring vaginas” and “strong emotionless powerful penises”.
And lastly, I would like to point out that in your article you are freely mixing up gender, genitalia and sexual preferences and making incorrect statements.
ReplyDeleteSelf-identify – we still live in a world where identification is being made by others regardless of what we feel about it ourselves. When you are born with a penis, you are a man, behave like one, act like one. We identify people we see in public into 2 categories: male/female. Identification totally disregards what people SELF-IDENTIFY as.
Cis – means born as, and identifies as, the same. It has nothing to do with heterosexuality. It means you were born as a man / woman physically an also identify with that gender psychologically. A gay man can be a cis-man. A Lesbian woman can be a cis-woman. It just means you identify with the sex given at birth.
Agender – people who don’t identify as either M or F gender. Who feel neither truly says anything about them.
Bigender – people who identify with both M and F genders together at the same time.
Genderfluid – people who one day identify as M and the other as W gender.
Interesex – only refers to the body / genitalia. Babies born with (parts of) both genitalia and where an M/F sex can’t be determined at birth. It doesn’t say anything about gender or sexual preference. You can be an intersex man or woman. Meaning you have (parts of) both genitalia yet identify with one specific gender, or both… it depends on the person.
Gay / Lesbian / Bi - are sexual preferences and sexual preferences only, meaning who you go to bed with, it doesn’t say anything about who you are in terms of gender identity.
Androgynous – I would argue that androgynous is a style and not a gender. It’s about a look or aesthetic. If people identify somewhere ‘in between’ M/F they would probably identify with one of the above-mentioned genders.
Transvestite just has a very negative connotation to it since it was often used by CIS hetero people to mock and criticize. Transvestism just means someone who likes to dress as the opposite sex. It can also be called ‘crossdressing’. I would argue this is a behaviour or a lifestyle preference since any gender, any sexuality and regardless or your genitalia you can dress in the opposite sex as you are identified as by the public. But it ‘mostly’ refers to heterosexual CIS men (born as a man, identifies as a man, sexually liking woman) who like to walk through life every once in a while, dressed as a woman.
I would argue that a lot of CIS heterosexual women over the past century have been doing transvestism. It is publicly acceptable for woman to dress as men, wear pants and wear suits. But when a heterosexual man wants to dress for a day in women’s clothes, it’s still publicly unacceptable and is labelled negatively as “transvestite”.
The point of crossdressing / transvestism is trying to blend in as the opposite sex in day-to-day life.
When it is done as a ‘show’ / performance it is an artform called ‘Drag’, mainly done by gay men (dressed as girl - DRAG).