The tl;dr version of the previous post

[textualdeviance]

Dear The World:

Asking you to stop requiring people to be either butch or femme doesn't mean I'm denying those gender identities to others.* It certainly doesn't mean I'm denying gender identity itself. I'm not trying to take away your lipstick. I'm just asking you not to support a cultural paradigm that says I'm a worthless, pathetic creature (or should at least have the decency to identify as butch instead) because I don't wear it.

See also: just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I'm trying to burn your church down, asexuals aren't anti-sex, blah blah blah.

This isn't like voting, where abstaining can have negative effects on others. It's just a matter of how one goes through the world on a personal level. If you can't enjoy playing a game without coercing everyone else into playing it, too, the problem lies with you. It's possible--really, it is!--for people to be different and yet have equal value in the world.

*Assuming those identities are, in fact, natural or at least freely chosen. If I see someone who's trying to do the femme thing but it's obvious she's not happy with it, and is only doing it because she feels obligated? I'm still going to call her on it.

Comments

[caraeileen.livejournal.com]

I don't understand. I do identify as femme. actually, a queer femme if you want me to be more specific. i don't expect anyone to be one way or the other in the butch-femme continuum. I am who I am. are you saying that by me being me and identifying as a femme, I am denying your right or ability to be whoever.you want to be?

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

No, that's definitely not the issue. The problem isn't in the identities themselves, but in how some people execute them.

It's kind of like religion: the problem isn't in how someone believes or prays, but in religious practices that potentially affect other people. Once the practice of one's given religion (or identity) goes beyond oneself, it ceases to be about one's personal freedom and rights, and is instead about the freedom and rights of others.

Let me see if I can explain this without getting too wordy!

The two key pitfalls that often come with executions of strong gender identity:

1. The implication that gender is a binary, that it's indelibly linked with biology, or that it's in any way consistent historically or cross-culturally. In short: essentializing and/or mandating rigid ideals of butch and femme (usually for non-trans people, but trans people often get caught up in this, too; for instance, the insistence that FTMs are all supposed to be butch.)

2. The support of institutions and ideals that further the oppression of women and trans folks.

Let me do this as a couple of examples, which I hope make sense!

1. Christie is a cisgendered woman who feels very inclined toward biological motherhood. Because this feeling is so strong for her, and because of generations of cultural conditioning that have come before her, she has come to believe that biological motherhood is natural for all women, and that biological mothers are the ones who are naturally best suited for parenting.

Thus, when Christie talks about parenting, she talks about it exclusively in terms of biological motherhood. She teases her husband about "babysitting" his own children, admonishes other women for choosing career over family, insists that hardcore attachment parenting (which requires stay-at-home biological mothers) is the only way to do it, etc.

Christie's expression of her own interests isn't the issue. What's at issue is her insistence that her interests are universal, because that contributes to a culture in which people who don't fit her ideals of gender are considered lesser parents, and are frequently discriminated against: men and male-identified parents, people who choose daycare, adoptive parents (and their children), trans parents, women who can't do natural childbirth or breastfeed, etc. All of these people get the short end of the parenting stick--often in very damaging ways. And that keeps happening because of people like Christie who believe that birthparenting is an essential part of womanhood.

2. Sandy is a cisgendered, femme-identified middle-class white woman who lives in a liberal region. Because she enjoys wearing makeup, she buys products from large cosmetics companies that have historically promoted unreasonable beauty ideals for women--using heavily altered photos in their ads, directly or indirectly implying that women who don't use their products are inferior, etc.

Because Sandy is privileged enough to live in a subculture in which she is allowed not to wear makeup if she chooses, she doesn't understand that she's furthering the oppression of other women by patronizing those companies. She knows she has a choice, and incorrectly assumes that every other woman does, too. She doesn't understand that the sexist advertising of the company she's supporting is contributing to a culture in which women without her privileges are punished if they don't fit the ideals set by those ads.

Does that make sense at all? In short, it's not about how Christie and Sandy identify, or about the things they enjoy doing. It's about the specific choices they make in executing their gender identity, and how some of those choices make it hard for non-cisgendered people to get by.

I don't want to deny Christie the right to bear and breastfeed her children. I only want to ensure the right of others not to do so. I don't want to deny Sandy the right to wear makeup. I only want to ensure the right of other women not to.

Gender is a very personal thing, but it's also political. And while it remains so, it's important that people are mindful of the gender-related choices they make, and choose to act in a way that helps ensure the rights of others.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

So what is your solution for example 2? You don't want to stop Sandy from wearing makeup, you want to ensure the right of other women not to...how?

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Pretty easy: she makes a point of purchasing stuff from companies that don't do sexist advertising. There are quite a few indie cosmetics companies out there that don't do the awful stuff the big guys do. And the bonus is usually that they're more environmentally friendly/not tested on animals, etc.

Shopping mindfully is probably one of the easiest--and in large scale, most effective--things an average person can do to make the world a better place. Sometimes there aren't good alternatives for something, and sometimes life's just too busy to research everything you buy, but there are almost always a few better choices folks can make. I'm hardly perfect about it myself, but I do try to make better choices when I can: organic, local, not from homophobic companies, etc.

I'm really looking forward to the app Darcy Burner wants to develop: scan a product's bar code and it tells you how "blue" the company is.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

So how do you know that any given person is or is not shopping mindfully?

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

If it's a friend, I'll make a suggestion to choose a different company if I see they're patronizing a bad one. Most of the time they have no idea that the company in question is a problem. Urban Outfitters, for instance, is really under the radar as far as awful companies go.

Strangers? Hard to tell sometimes, which is why I throw out general pleas to the universe like this.

FWIW, I'm not demanding hypervigilance. That's impossible, and does no one any good. Just asking folks to, when they have the bandwidth, stop and take another 30 seconds to think about the choices they make, and whether those choices might be furthering something that makes someone else's life miserable. I think most people don't even realize how damaging things like mandatory gender roles are. If I can get folks to think about that a little more, then perhaps they'll make different choices, and eventually lighten the load on folks like me.

[caraeileen.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. You are saying it's not how a person presents themselves, it's how they act and the choices they make around that presentation? FWIW, I don't know any Butch, femme, or trans people who do consider gender binary. the ones who I think might are either young, new to the lifestyle, or both.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's the idea. Pretty much the same as making other choices about what one's doing, buying, saying, etc., with the needs of others in mind: like people who are clearly identified with one race acknowledging the more-complex identities of multiracial people, instead of accusing them of being traitors or ashamed of themselves for not sticking to the racial identity they're "supposed" to have.

I've met very few folks around here who don't get the whole intersectional/blended identity thing--yay for living in an area with so many bright, progressive people. But I've definitely encountered it elsewhere. I've seen some newly transitioned folks, for instance, who are trying really hard to establish themselves, and that spills over into trying to push other gender-noncompliant people into transitioning. Pretty much the same as someone who's found religion. They're so thrilled that they found something that works for them that they want to bring everyone else on board, too. They don't get that it doesn't delegitimize their transition for other people not to feel doing so is right for them. It's a reasonable concern, I spose. I know trans men often get the, "but why can't you just be a tomboy?" speech. Which is undoubtedly annoying. (I've also seen some butch women argue the opposite--that the very existence of trans men devalues butch identities. They get smacked down just as hard if I'm around to hear that crap.)

Really, like religion, it seems that people who somehow have less conviction in their own identity are the ones who want to reinforce it by molding everyone else around them in that image. It's evangelicism borne of insecurity. Like gay folk utterly convinced that bisexuals don't exist just because some people have used that identity as a waypoint or a (totally misguided) way of being partly closeted. I've also seen some people argue that if gender is a construct or in any way fluid or non-constant, then somehow we'll all devolve into formless clones. Like folks who believe that if we allow same-sex marriage, everyone's suddenly going to go gay and our species will die out. Just ... it would be hilarious if they weren't so convinced about it.

It's definitely young folks sometimes, too. Especially young women who have yet to really have that "aha!" moment about feminism. It can be really painful to have that moment of realizing that the world's been lying to you all this time about what you're supposed to be, and to realize that all the angst and effort you've spent trying to be as femme as your culture insists you should be is really unnecessary. Cognitive dissonance tantrums can be rampant in college kids, poor things. They often go for killing the messenger, even if that messenger is just pointing out their own existence as evidence that there's life beyond binary cisgender. I've even had some young women tell me I have no business discussing feminism, much less benefiting from it, because I point out that sexism isn't about deingrating femme characteristics, but about the systematic oppression of all women, regardless of how feminine they are or how their bodies are configured. Just because I'm never going to be a bio mother and don't shave doesn't mean I'm magically benefiting from male privilege. Sheesh.

And I guess that's why this is all so important to me. Just by existing, I tend to be a lightning rod for people who want the world to be neat and tidy and easily understandable. People who are bent on shaping everything and everyone they see into "us" and "them" boxes have a really hard time handling someone who doesn't fit, or who doesn't even have the decency to believe those categories exist along a line, rather than in three dimensions. Life can get very complicated and confusing when you can't use binary labeling as shorthand for how you deal with everyone you meet. People like me are a wrench in that plan, so folks often react as if I'm "really" something other than what I am, so they don't have to understand that people aren't so simple.