You know this one hits home for me as we have discussed it many times. I think it hits in a very specific way for parents of tween children who are just now beginning this journey of self-discovery without a sure feeling of what feels right for them. My 9-year-old talks a lot about sometimes feeling like a girl and sometimes feeling like a boy. On the one hand, I love that our society is becoming more accepting of this journey and I'm committed to providing loving support along the way. On the other hand, when we talk about these feelings and where they come from, everything cited by my child is based on the labels I have spent my entire life railing against. The reasons my child gives for sometimes feeling like a girl and sometimes feeling like a boy are: loving science and math but also arts and literature, wanting to sometimes wear a suit and sometimes a dress, playing with dolls and dinosaurs, etc. For me, none of these things have anything to do with gender, and the feminist in me is not okay with the idea that my child isn't comfortable calling herself a girl just because she wants to be an astronaut and likes hanging out with boys. However, I'm also aware that perhaps my child doesn't have the right words to articulate these feelings accurately yet, so they are falling back on citing stereotypes when that's not really what they mean. So, I toe this line between wanting my child to know their feelings about their own gender are valid as well as knowing that any person can be a specific gender and not fall into any of the stereotypes associated with it.
I am convinced that the soaring identity of "non-binary" is simply a desire for increased status and acceptance. If I recall, teenage girls crave attention and affirmation. It was how I got laid back then (I have three older sisters who coached me, oh how I love an unfair advantage). I suspect that this is not the performative empathy we see in 20-something "progressives." These girls desperately want to appear special, and this is a way for them to do it. The downside of course is that old, obsolete gender norms have a degree of social enforcement not seen since the 1950's. I cannot imagine any way in which that can be positive.
Thank you for wrestling with these questions out loud. I appreciate the bell curve image you offer, as I exist on one of those outer curves. I've also played male characters from time to time, and enjoy exploring the physical shifts and behaviors; but, my feminine characters also require study. I'm often vulgar, brash, loud, gassy, and distracted (thank you adult ADHD). I'm prettier in makeup but only wear it for stage or photoshoots. Menopause has eliminated the assessing looks of random strangers, which allows me a blessed/cursed invisibility. I'm a woman, though, she/her.
None of which is to deny or interrupt the experience, exploration, experimentations with language and identities you address here. My old school feminism is wrestling with the racist history of the movement, but more fully addresses my personal struggles negotiating my own identity. I just don't quite fit most of the time.
But - let me acknowledge I benefit from the privileges of my mainstream white lady identifiers. It's just that the high heels are never comfortable.
Oh how I wish we could ban high heels! Another funny note, I worked in finance in New York for years, and my colleagues would always refer to designer high heels "escort shoes." I guess high-price call girls all wear expensive high heels. Every time we saw female colleagues wearing Manalo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo shoes, the jokes would fly. I always wondered in women were aware of the joke. Those brands are from 20 years ago. I have been out of finance for over a decade.
Genderqueer folks aren't trying to put other people in different gender "boxes"; we're just wrestling with whether those boxes will be in our lives anymore. Many of us ask the people around us to acknowledge what's changing for us -- for example, by changing the way they address us -- but that's not the same as insisting other people change anything about themselves. I can't imagine a genderqueer person rolling up to you, Mo, and telling you that you can't identify as a woman, for example.
Some onlookers are more interested in this change than others -- especially young people who want to explore it, and older folks who are repulsed by it -- but exploring blurred gender lines is voluntary. No one is forcing anyone to explore different gender identities.
It's bizarre to me that asking for flexibility around gender, and recognition of new gender identities, causes so much fear and distress; only about 1% of the population in America identifies as trans, and all we want is to live our lives.
Thanks for sharing this perspective, Shar. To be clear, I'm all for people living their lives however they see fit. I always respect people's preferred pronouns. But I do think it's worth probing the ideology underlying this movement, not out of fear or distress but out of a desire for clarity and reason. Even if no one is making demands of me regarding how I identify, we're all being asked now to state our pronouns at the beginning of every meeting, list them in every bio, etc. To me, that implies that we have a shared understanding of the meaning of "she," "he," they," etc. And I detract from the meaning of those terms that's being proposed.
Maybe the ultimate goal is that we all have our own individual conceptions of what womanhood, manhood, and genderqueer/ genderfluid/nonbinary identities mean, but I think that living in society does entail some measure of consensual reality, where words mean things. So if womanhood now means stereotypical femininity--which is increasingly how it's being framed--then I feel I need to push back on that. I reject the idea that gender is a box at all. I think it's a bell curve.
That said, I remain curious about what the current widespread gender experimentation will deliver in terms of social effects. (It's far more than 1% among kids--more like 10% according to a recent study in Pittsburgh: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/nearly-1-10-teens-identify-gender-diverse-pittsburgh-study-rcna993#) I'm open to the possibility it will lead to greater happiness, connection, and creativity, and the unleashing of people's full potential. That would be a great outcome. I think the odds of that happening are increased by having rigorous, respectful, good-faith discussions along the way.
Hey Shar, not sure why Substack isn't letting me reply to your most recent comment, so I'm replying out of order here. I really appreciate your thoughtful and vulnerable engagement here. I think a lot about your point #1, re: historical examples of people resisting what in hindsight is clearly positive social progress. I'm keenly aware of that possibility here, so I'm very much trying to tread with caution, reflection, and care in my own thinking and discourse around this issue. I appreciate your reminder on that front, and I do recognize that feelings can be tender in these discussions, in which people feel their identities are being challenged or questioned.
I guess part of what I'm after here is articulating that that feeling is also present for many women, who feel wary and alarmed about how womanhood is being redefined, and what that means for girls, women, and feminism. It's a narrow tightrope to walk--holding all these questions and vulnerabilities at once, with gentleness and care, but also rigor, logic, and clarity. Dare I say, it requires a sort of careful balance of masculine and feminine energies. Not avoiding the conversation out of fear of conflict, while also honoring the many deeply felt truths and lived experiences we all bring to the issue. Anyway, again, I appreciate your input here and I hope you're doing well.
Can you define "felt truths" for those of us that cannot understand such a statement alone? If I "feel" that 2+2=4, is that "my truth?" Can one hold a "felt truth" such as "woman are subservient to men" or "ethnic minority X is inferior to ethnic majority Y" and insist to others that this is "my truth?" I cannot see this kind of thing and be faced with the specter of totalitarianism. Once "truth" is not longer constrained by facts, then how is the term not oppressive, or worse?
1) My go-to comparison for concerns about the social effects of new expressions of gender today, is social concern over accepting mixed marriages and integrated schools in the last century. (Bear with me a minute.)
When folks like the Lovings wanted to marry, there was a wide spectrum of reactions, from "That's an abomination in the eyes of the Lord" to "About damn time America recognized mixed race marriages!", with a lot of folks in the middle just not being sure what it might mean and whether it was ok. Integrating schools caused race riots, with adults spitting on children, and incredible displays of bravery by those same children -- and at the time, some of their parents were accused of child abuse.
Consensus on mixed marriages and school integration has changed in the US, and the majority no longer bats an eye at either. But during the 1960s, there was great resentment and confusion, and in particular many people violently resented being asked to accept mixed marriages and kids of color in white schools. 20 years later, that resentment was fringe behavior, and 40 years later it was history. In hindsight, the "good-faith discussions" on the social impact of integration and miscegenation look like racism to most everyone; at the time, it only looked wrong to the people of color whose human rights were being questioned.
I mention all of this to try to explain how genderqueer folx might react to what seems, to cis folx, like reasonable discourse or concern. The intentions of questioners may be good, but the discussion may be very painful for genderqueer people. I think well-meaning interlocutors could improve things a lot by acknowledging that.
2) 1 in 10 is the approximate distribution of queer to straight in the US, and may be what's really being measured in that study. Note also that being genderqueer is not the same as identifying as transgender.
3) I don't think the rigid definitions of man, woman, and genderqueer in the graphic design book you cited are authoritative, or even a good rule of thumb, but I will offer that their use of the word "traditional" leaves a lot of room for interpretation. A young person born in 1998 may have a very different definition of "traditional womanhood" than I do. My 4 year old nephew will likely have a very different view of that, when he's grown, than today's 25 year old.
Actually kids are being forced to explore different gender identities. I live in Canada and gender identity is part of the public school curriculum. It has no business there. This is a personal and private choice by some, but everyone is being made to participate in it in the public system. I believe this is happening in the states too, but I'm not sure. I've heard that it begins as early as kindergarten.
Kids will mess around in a variety of ways at young ages, and most of the time it will mean absolutely nothing beyond the innocent expressions of children. Insisting that it really MEANS something and pushing ideas on to kids could easily be considered abuse. I consider it that.
When I was a teenager (I'm female) I rejected the stereotyping of magazines who were desperately trying to sell me on an idea of who I am supposed to be. I refused to be stereotyped and I personally find it very confusing why so many are now clinging to stereotypes or trying to construct their own. It's nothing but a prison.
Hi shar. I'm not sure if you'll see this...for some reason I'm not able to reply to your message below. The intention behind what I wrote is to simply share my perspective. It is all well and good for those children who do happen to be questioning their gender to have resources available to them and to have acceptance. That is great. I do not wish to take that away from you or anyone. But not every child is questioning. Having gender identity be part of the school curriculum at a really young age actually forces them to question their gender. It literally does that. And who among us can accurately distinguish between 'Johnny just likes to wear dresses but actually feels pretty boyish inside' and 'Johnny is transgender'. The whole thing is based on very unstable stereotypes, but the fallout from making a mistake in incorrectly assessing Johnny's gender could be really disastrous, when Johnny himself is really too young to understand what all of it even means.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't consider gender-questioning kids or that I don't want children to know about them (you). I'm saying this is not being approached with adequate caution for those children who just do not care a bit about gender for themselves. Suddenly they are being made to question their own gender and I think that is really inappropriate. Kids should do that on their own terms. Not a curriculum's. So when I feel like it is abusive to kids, I'm not talking about kids like you. I'm talking about kids like me. If I had been asked to label my gender identity as a 8 year old, god knows what would have happened. I was weird. All over the place. I had no understanding of this stuff except that my brother got to do stuff that I didn't and I thought it was unfair. As a rather clueless kid, I might have taken that as an opportunity to go down a path that I definitely would have regretted...if I would have been immediately affirmed in my choice, that is. I definitely recall thinking to myself, "I wish I was a boy" at least once. But I didn't WANT to be a boy. I just wanted to get to do what the boys were doing. These are easily conflated things. And it's gender stereotypes that get in the way of the kind of freedom I was craving...not misgendering. Now I have a son of my own, which was a choice I made WAY late in the game and I never saw that coming. My point is, I just don't think we are aware enough to make these potentially permanent decisions at such young ages.
Eliminating gender identity from the public school curriculum does nothing to erase the presence or knowledge of gender-questioning kids. It just means that not every child MUST question their gender. I wonder if you can see the significance of that.
Regardless, I wish you well, and all the happiness and freedom that you deserve.
"I live in Canada and gender identity is part of the public school curriculum. It has no business there."
Or this:
"Kids will mess around in a variety of ways at young ages, and most of the time it will mean absolutely nothing beyond the innocent expressions of children. Insisting that it really MEANS something and pushing ideas on to kids could easily be considered abuse. I consider it that."
But whatever your intention in saying these things, what I take away from them is a) that you don't want children to know about people like me, and b) that you think it's child abuse to affirm the identities of kids like the kid I was. Both ideas are very painful for me to hear/see.
I think it is more of an age issue. This kind of material does not make sense before puberty and sufficient maturity to understand. Many young girls assume being a boy is "easy" and that they have it made. Similarly, many teenage boys think girls have it "easy" because they get attention and can have sex easily. By definition, children are not yet sufficiently mature to make major life decisions. They often hold ridiculous ideas.
No one wants to hurt you. I sincerely apologize on the other person's behalf for any idea that might have harmed you. That said, becoming an adult means learning to accept that there are people who are different than you, and who want to avoid you. There exist people who probably hate your religion and your ethnicity, You need to understand that seeing the ideas of others CANNOT hurt you. You are CHOOSING to hurt yourself. I hate to pitch religion, but I learned a lot becoming a Buddhist. The best parts are learning to control your emotions. No one else can make you angry. No one else can hurt you with words. You are choosing that path. Ideas do no harm, and neither do words. Your own thoughts are betraying you. When I learned that, a huge burden was lifted and I have been so happy. Perhaps you can learn this some other way, but I strongly recommend that you find something, anything to get you to that point. The world will destroy you if "ideas are painful." Getting past that will set you free and let you thrive.
I wish you the best, and I hope you have a great day. Most people want you to have a great life. The sooner you realize that, the happier you will be.
I strongly agree with this, but can we all accept this within the constraints of proper grammar? I am fine with he or she, or even invented pronouns like zinn, but I cannot refer to any individual as "they." I worked so hard to not have any hint of working class Chicago in my speech. Bad grammar pains me. I simply cannot do it. Please do not force me to do this.
I had a very brief discussion with a young person awhile back who was struggling with their pronouns. I asked if maybe they didn't need to categorize into a smaller box yet and their response was that they wanted to because they felt that it would help them feel like they belonged somewhere. I don't have fully formed thoughts on that discussion but it stopped me in my tracks. I tend to be thinking along the same lines as yours in this essay. But perhaps my young friend's wishes are where the grey areas of this all lie. How do we make the boxes big enough for all but feel small enough for some to find their people?
I often find myself thinking that this is a fundamental generational difference. Gen X and older Millenials spent our time vehemently rejecting labels while newer generations have spent their time carefully and purposefully creating them. They're both tactics for navigating the same thing - a feeling that society is pre-determining facts about you as an individual that simply aren't true. I do think that the use of the internet is the main difference in which tactic you are more likely to use. For those of us who had to find our people through in-person social interaction, labels often got in our way. With individuals who have found a majority of their people through online interactions, the labels help to cut through the noise and find those individuals quickly.
Or I could be totally off, but this is the path my brain has taken. LOL!
It is the lack of formal philosophy, either from religion or culture. I became a Buddhist, and I learned how to navigate life in ways that had eluded me for the previous forty years. We used to get this on Sunday at church, or Friday/Saturday Mosque or Temple. As religion faded away, we never replaced it, and its absence is crushing us. I think the popularity of the Stoics is a great example of this. I have gotten into large, deep discussion of Marcus Aurelius in random public spaces here in Chicago. That just did not happen years ago.
I've never considered this. Interesting! The trouble with labels is that they fall off. No label will ever really satisfy in the first place, and we change over time. So much work to do to keep reasserting our place in the world with these limiting words! It's really bizarre to me that so many people seem insistent on being reduced to labels. I guess you know what my generation camp is :)
Online may be a great place to explore ideas, but I think it's a terrible place to tease out one's identity. There are so many facets of a life that simply can not be conveyed like this. These words I'm writing are only a part of who I am—the ideas that I have about this particular topic. No one reading this knows how I interact with my parents, my child, my spouse, or what my history is, or how I like to spend time. And no one reading these words ought to feel obligated to. It's too much for all of us to offer that to and to expect from each other. But we can still explore ideas without becoming overly attached to them. I think. I hope.
Rejecting my gender stereotype in my youth felt like a rite of passage. I made it through! And so did many of my friends (some more elegantly than others), boys and girls. We did our own thing. We lived our own life. And we thought we had made it easier for others to do the same. I think that's at least a little bit true. But here is stereotyping all over again...with a vengeance!
This is the fire that puberty walks through. It's not easy (did anyone have an awesome puberty?) and I don't think it is supposed to be. I would never wish to be a teenager again, but I would hate to have been robbed of the opportunity to grow beyond what the establishment had in mind for me. When we offer such simplistic solutions to tender and struggling minds we are doing them a great disservice. And the world is weakened by it.
Not everyone will fare as well as I or my friends did. But the more healthy adults we have, the more help will be available for those whose struggles are greater.
Beautifully written, Mo. Thank you for this gentle, yet potent contribution.
I agree with you. I am a man, but I was an effeminate boy. Other than desiring women, I mostly liked reading. I was into debate. My only athletic activity was skateboarding. I attended a high school dance in drag. But I am 100% a man. I probably would have transitioned if I grew up today because I had mental health issues at that time. I would have done anything to feel better.
I would also include one minor critique. You state that you "manage our finances." This is very much a traditional female role. It always has been. Women make budgets. Before the internet, women wrote checks to pay bills. I have never seen any man in my family ever write a check (I was born in 1977). You handling a budget is very much a female role. Doing an oil change or remodeling a bathroom, that would be more male-ish. I have come to refuse using terms like masculine and feminine because they are misleading and they are being abused. Men can enjoy dancing. Women can be good at math or enjoy messing around with computers (another one of my life-long passions). A kid liking stuff has nothing to do with what is between her legs. It is either willful ignorance, or more likely, malice that is driving this debate. We should be inclusive and allow adults to identify however they want, be it sex, race whatever, but do not force this shit on school children. That shit is hard enough. At least when I was a kid girls would have sex with you. These poor slobs today only have pornography. It sounds dreadful.
You know this one hits home for me as we have discussed it many times. I think it hits in a very specific way for parents of tween children who are just now beginning this journey of self-discovery without a sure feeling of what feels right for them. My 9-year-old talks a lot about sometimes feeling like a girl and sometimes feeling like a boy. On the one hand, I love that our society is becoming more accepting of this journey and I'm committed to providing loving support along the way. On the other hand, when we talk about these feelings and where they come from, everything cited by my child is based on the labels I have spent my entire life railing against. The reasons my child gives for sometimes feeling like a girl and sometimes feeling like a boy are: loving science and math but also arts and literature, wanting to sometimes wear a suit and sometimes a dress, playing with dolls and dinosaurs, etc. For me, none of these things have anything to do with gender, and the feminist in me is not okay with the idea that my child isn't comfortable calling herself a girl just because she wants to be an astronaut and likes hanging out with boys. However, I'm also aware that perhaps my child doesn't have the right words to articulate these feelings accurately yet, so they are falling back on citing stereotypes when that's not really what they mean. So, I toe this line between wanting my child to know their feelings about their own gender are valid as well as knowing that any person can be a specific gender and not fall into any of the stereotypes associated with it.
Reading this helped me breathe a big sigh of relief. Elegantly expressed, kind, and genuine.
"But--but--but--extra categories make us feel extra special!" Eloquently unfurled. And yes, I concur on that paranthetical about gay men.
I am convinced that the soaring identity of "non-binary" is simply a desire for increased status and acceptance. If I recall, teenage girls crave attention and affirmation. It was how I got laid back then (I have three older sisters who coached me, oh how I love an unfair advantage). I suspect that this is not the performative empathy we see in 20-something "progressives." These girls desperately want to appear special, and this is a way for them to do it. The downside of course is that old, obsolete gender norms have a degree of social enforcement not seen since the 1950's. I cannot imagine any way in which that can be positive.
Thank you for wrestling with these questions out loud. I appreciate the bell curve image you offer, as I exist on one of those outer curves. I've also played male characters from time to time, and enjoy exploring the physical shifts and behaviors; but, my feminine characters also require study. I'm often vulgar, brash, loud, gassy, and distracted (thank you adult ADHD). I'm prettier in makeup but only wear it for stage or photoshoots. Menopause has eliminated the assessing looks of random strangers, which allows me a blessed/cursed invisibility. I'm a woman, though, she/her.
None of which is to deny or interrupt the experience, exploration, experimentations with language and identities you address here. My old school feminism is wrestling with the racist history of the movement, but more fully addresses my personal struggles negotiating my own identity. I just don't quite fit most of the time.
But - let me acknowledge I benefit from the privileges of my mainstream white lady identifiers. It's just that the high heels are never comfortable.
Oh how I wish we could ban high heels! Another funny note, I worked in finance in New York for years, and my colleagues would always refer to designer high heels "escort shoes." I guess high-price call girls all wear expensive high heels. Every time we saw female colleagues wearing Manalo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo shoes, the jokes would fly. I always wondered in women were aware of the joke. Those brands are from 20 years ago. I have been out of finance for over a decade.
Genderqueer folks aren't trying to put other people in different gender "boxes"; we're just wrestling with whether those boxes will be in our lives anymore. Many of us ask the people around us to acknowledge what's changing for us -- for example, by changing the way they address us -- but that's not the same as insisting other people change anything about themselves. I can't imagine a genderqueer person rolling up to you, Mo, and telling you that you can't identify as a woman, for example.
Some onlookers are more interested in this change than others -- especially young people who want to explore it, and older folks who are repulsed by it -- but exploring blurred gender lines is voluntary. No one is forcing anyone to explore different gender identities.
It's bizarre to me that asking for flexibility around gender, and recognition of new gender identities, causes so much fear and distress; only about 1% of the population in America identifies as trans, and all we want is to live our lives.
Thanks for sharing this perspective, Shar. To be clear, I'm all for people living their lives however they see fit. I always respect people's preferred pronouns. But I do think it's worth probing the ideology underlying this movement, not out of fear or distress but out of a desire for clarity and reason. Even if no one is making demands of me regarding how I identify, we're all being asked now to state our pronouns at the beginning of every meeting, list them in every bio, etc. To me, that implies that we have a shared understanding of the meaning of "she," "he," they," etc. And I detract from the meaning of those terms that's being proposed.
Maybe the ultimate goal is that we all have our own individual conceptions of what womanhood, manhood, and genderqueer/ genderfluid/nonbinary identities mean, but I think that living in society does entail some measure of consensual reality, where words mean things. So if womanhood now means stereotypical femininity--which is increasingly how it's being framed--then I feel I need to push back on that. I reject the idea that gender is a box at all. I think it's a bell curve.
That said, I remain curious about what the current widespread gender experimentation will deliver in terms of social effects. (It's far more than 1% among kids--more like 10% according to a recent study in Pittsburgh: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/nearly-1-10-teens-identify-gender-diverse-pittsburgh-study-rcna993#) I'm open to the possibility it will lead to greater happiness, connection, and creativity, and the unleashing of people's full potential. That would be a great outcome. I think the odds of that happening are increased by having rigorous, respectful, good-faith discussions along the way.
Hey Shar, not sure why Substack isn't letting me reply to your most recent comment, so I'm replying out of order here. I really appreciate your thoughtful and vulnerable engagement here. I think a lot about your point #1, re: historical examples of people resisting what in hindsight is clearly positive social progress. I'm keenly aware of that possibility here, so I'm very much trying to tread with caution, reflection, and care in my own thinking and discourse around this issue. I appreciate your reminder on that front, and I do recognize that feelings can be tender in these discussions, in which people feel their identities are being challenged or questioned.
I guess part of what I'm after here is articulating that that feeling is also present for many women, who feel wary and alarmed about how womanhood is being redefined, and what that means for girls, women, and feminism. It's a narrow tightrope to walk--holding all these questions and vulnerabilities at once, with gentleness and care, but also rigor, logic, and clarity. Dare I say, it requires a sort of careful balance of masculine and feminine energies. Not avoiding the conversation out of fear of conflict, while also honoring the many deeply felt truths and lived experiences we all bring to the issue. Anyway, again, I appreciate your input here and I hope you're doing well.
Can you define "felt truths" for those of us that cannot understand such a statement alone? If I "feel" that 2+2=4, is that "my truth?" Can one hold a "felt truth" such as "woman are subservient to men" or "ethnic minority X is inferior to ethnic majority Y" and insist to others that this is "my truth?" I cannot see this kind of thing and be faced with the specter of totalitarianism. Once "truth" is not longer constrained by facts, then how is the term not oppressive, or worse?
A few more thoughts here:
1) My go-to comparison for concerns about the social effects of new expressions of gender today, is social concern over accepting mixed marriages and integrated schools in the last century. (Bear with me a minute.)
When folks like the Lovings wanted to marry, there was a wide spectrum of reactions, from "That's an abomination in the eyes of the Lord" to "About damn time America recognized mixed race marriages!", with a lot of folks in the middle just not being sure what it might mean and whether it was ok. Integrating schools caused race riots, with adults spitting on children, and incredible displays of bravery by those same children -- and at the time, some of their parents were accused of child abuse.
Consensus on mixed marriages and school integration has changed in the US, and the majority no longer bats an eye at either. But during the 1960s, there was great resentment and confusion, and in particular many people violently resented being asked to accept mixed marriages and kids of color in white schools. 20 years later, that resentment was fringe behavior, and 40 years later it was history. In hindsight, the "good-faith discussions" on the social impact of integration and miscegenation look like racism to most everyone; at the time, it only looked wrong to the people of color whose human rights were being questioned.
I mention all of this to try to explain how genderqueer folx might react to what seems, to cis folx, like reasonable discourse or concern. The intentions of questioners may be good, but the discussion may be very painful for genderqueer people. I think well-meaning interlocutors could improve things a lot by acknowledging that.
2) 1 in 10 is the approximate distribution of queer to straight in the US, and may be what's really being measured in that study. Note also that being genderqueer is not the same as identifying as transgender.
3) I don't think the rigid definitions of man, woman, and genderqueer in the graphic design book you cited are authoritative, or even a good rule of thumb, but I will offer that their use of the word "traditional" leaves a lot of room for interpretation. A young person born in 1998 may have a very different definition of "traditional womanhood" than I do. My 4 year old nephew will likely have a very different view of that, when he's grown, than today's 25 year old.
Actually kids are being forced to explore different gender identities. I live in Canada and gender identity is part of the public school curriculum. It has no business there. This is a personal and private choice by some, but everyone is being made to participate in it in the public system. I believe this is happening in the states too, but I'm not sure. I've heard that it begins as early as kindergarten.
Kids will mess around in a variety of ways at young ages, and most of the time it will mean absolutely nothing beyond the innocent expressions of children. Insisting that it really MEANS something and pushing ideas on to kids could easily be considered abuse. I consider it that.
When I was a teenager (I'm female) I rejected the stereotyping of magazines who were desperately trying to sell me on an idea of who I am supposed to be. I refused to be stereotyped and I personally find it very confusing why so many are now clinging to stereotypes or trying to construct their own. It's nothing but a prison.
Hi shar. I'm not sure if you'll see this...for some reason I'm not able to reply to your message below. The intention behind what I wrote is to simply share my perspective. It is all well and good for those children who do happen to be questioning their gender to have resources available to them and to have acceptance. That is great. I do not wish to take that away from you or anyone. But not every child is questioning. Having gender identity be part of the school curriculum at a really young age actually forces them to question their gender. It literally does that. And who among us can accurately distinguish between 'Johnny just likes to wear dresses but actually feels pretty boyish inside' and 'Johnny is transgender'. The whole thing is based on very unstable stereotypes, but the fallout from making a mistake in incorrectly assessing Johnny's gender could be really disastrous, when Johnny himself is really too young to understand what all of it even means.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't consider gender-questioning kids or that I don't want children to know about them (you). I'm saying this is not being approached with adequate caution for those children who just do not care a bit about gender for themselves. Suddenly they are being made to question their own gender and I think that is really inappropriate. Kids should do that on their own terms. Not a curriculum's. So when I feel like it is abusive to kids, I'm not talking about kids like you. I'm talking about kids like me. If I had been asked to label my gender identity as a 8 year old, god knows what would have happened. I was weird. All over the place. I had no understanding of this stuff except that my brother got to do stuff that I didn't and I thought it was unfair. As a rather clueless kid, I might have taken that as an opportunity to go down a path that I definitely would have regretted...if I would have been immediately affirmed in my choice, that is. I definitely recall thinking to myself, "I wish I was a boy" at least once. But I didn't WANT to be a boy. I just wanted to get to do what the boys were doing. These are easily conflated things. And it's gender stereotypes that get in the way of the kind of freedom I was craving...not misgendering. Now I have a son of my own, which was a choice I made WAY late in the game and I never saw that coming. My point is, I just don't think we are aware enough to make these potentially permanent decisions at such young ages.
Eliminating gender identity from the public school curriculum does nothing to erase the presence or knowledge of gender-questioning kids. It just means that not every child MUST question their gender. I wonder if you can see the significance of that.
Regardless, I wish you well, and all the happiness and freedom that you deserve.
I'm not sure what you intend when you say this:
"I live in Canada and gender identity is part of the public school curriculum. It has no business there."
Or this:
"Kids will mess around in a variety of ways at young ages, and most of the time it will mean absolutely nothing beyond the innocent expressions of children. Insisting that it really MEANS something and pushing ideas on to kids could easily be considered abuse. I consider it that."
But whatever your intention in saying these things, what I take away from them is a) that you don't want children to know about people like me, and b) that you think it's child abuse to affirm the identities of kids like the kid I was. Both ideas are very painful for me to hear/see.
I think it is more of an age issue. This kind of material does not make sense before puberty and sufficient maturity to understand. Many young girls assume being a boy is "easy" and that they have it made. Similarly, many teenage boys think girls have it "easy" because they get attention and can have sex easily. By definition, children are not yet sufficiently mature to make major life decisions. They often hold ridiculous ideas.
No one wants to hurt you. I sincerely apologize on the other person's behalf for any idea that might have harmed you. That said, becoming an adult means learning to accept that there are people who are different than you, and who want to avoid you. There exist people who probably hate your religion and your ethnicity, You need to understand that seeing the ideas of others CANNOT hurt you. You are CHOOSING to hurt yourself. I hate to pitch religion, but I learned a lot becoming a Buddhist. The best parts are learning to control your emotions. No one else can make you angry. No one else can hurt you with words. You are choosing that path. Ideas do no harm, and neither do words. Your own thoughts are betraying you. When I learned that, a huge burden was lifted and I have been so happy. Perhaps you can learn this some other way, but I strongly recommend that you find something, anything to get you to that point. The world will destroy you if "ideas are painful." Getting past that will set you free and let you thrive.
I wish you the best, and I hope you have a great day. Most people want you to have a great life. The sooner you realize that, the happier you will be.
I strongly agree with this, but can we all accept this within the constraints of proper grammar? I am fine with he or she, or even invented pronouns like zinn, but I cannot refer to any individual as "they." I worked so hard to not have any hint of working class Chicago in my speech. Bad grammar pains me. I simply cannot do it. Please do not force me to do this.
I had a very brief discussion with a young person awhile back who was struggling with their pronouns. I asked if maybe they didn't need to categorize into a smaller box yet and their response was that they wanted to because they felt that it would help them feel like they belonged somewhere. I don't have fully formed thoughts on that discussion but it stopped me in my tracks. I tend to be thinking along the same lines as yours in this essay. But perhaps my young friend's wishes are where the grey areas of this all lie. How do we make the boxes big enough for all but feel small enough for some to find their people?
I often find myself thinking that this is a fundamental generational difference. Gen X and older Millenials spent our time vehemently rejecting labels while newer generations have spent their time carefully and purposefully creating them. They're both tactics for navigating the same thing - a feeling that society is pre-determining facts about you as an individual that simply aren't true. I do think that the use of the internet is the main difference in which tactic you are more likely to use. For those of us who had to find our people through in-person social interaction, labels often got in our way. With individuals who have found a majority of their people through online interactions, the labels help to cut through the noise and find those individuals quickly.
Or I could be totally off, but this is the path my brain has taken. LOL!
Great insight, Penny!
It is the lack of formal philosophy, either from religion or culture. I became a Buddhist, and I learned how to navigate life in ways that had eluded me for the previous forty years. We used to get this on Sunday at church, or Friday/Saturday Mosque or Temple. As religion faded away, we never replaced it, and its absence is crushing us. I think the popularity of the Stoics is a great example of this. I have gotten into large, deep discussion of Marcus Aurelius in random public spaces here in Chicago. That just did not happen years ago.
I've never considered this. Interesting! The trouble with labels is that they fall off. No label will ever really satisfy in the first place, and we change over time. So much work to do to keep reasserting our place in the world with these limiting words! It's really bizarre to me that so many people seem insistent on being reduced to labels. I guess you know what my generation camp is :)
Online may be a great place to explore ideas, but I think it's a terrible place to tease out one's identity. There are so many facets of a life that simply can not be conveyed like this. These words I'm writing are only a part of who I am—the ideas that I have about this particular topic. No one reading this knows how I interact with my parents, my child, my spouse, or what my history is, or how I like to spend time. And no one reading these words ought to feel obligated to. It's too much for all of us to offer that to and to expect from each other. But we can still explore ideas without becoming overly attached to them. I think. I hope.
Thought provoking comment.
Rejecting my gender stereotype in my youth felt like a rite of passage. I made it through! And so did many of my friends (some more elegantly than others), boys and girls. We did our own thing. We lived our own life. And we thought we had made it easier for others to do the same. I think that's at least a little bit true. But here is stereotyping all over again...with a vengeance!
This is the fire that puberty walks through. It's not easy (did anyone have an awesome puberty?) and I don't think it is supposed to be. I would never wish to be a teenager again, but I would hate to have been robbed of the opportunity to grow beyond what the establishment had in mind for me. When we offer such simplistic solutions to tender and struggling minds we are doing them a great disservice. And the world is weakened by it.
Not everyone will fare as well as I or my friends did. But the more healthy adults we have, the more help will be available for those whose struggles are greater.
Beautifully written, Mo. Thank you for this gentle, yet potent contribution.
I agree with you. I am a man, but I was an effeminate boy. Other than desiring women, I mostly liked reading. I was into debate. My only athletic activity was skateboarding. I attended a high school dance in drag. But I am 100% a man. I probably would have transitioned if I grew up today because I had mental health issues at that time. I would have done anything to feel better.
I would also include one minor critique. You state that you "manage our finances." This is very much a traditional female role. It always has been. Women make budgets. Before the internet, women wrote checks to pay bills. I have never seen any man in my family ever write a check (I was born in 1977). You handling a budget is very much a female role. Doing an oil change or remodeling a bathroom, that would be more male-ish. I have come to refuse using terms like masculine and feminine because they are misleading and they are being abused. Men can enjoy dancing. Women can be good at math or enjoy messing around with computers (another one of my life-long passions). A kid liking stuff has nothing to do with what is between her legs. It is either willful ignorance, or more likely, malice that is driving this debate. We should be inclusive and allow adults to identify however they want, be it sex, race whatever, but do not force this shit on school children. That shit is hard enough. At least when I was a kid girls would have sex with you. These poor slobs today only have pornography. It sounds dreadful.
I have often felt like we are trading two big porous boxes (man and Woman) for 100+ very tight, constrained boxes.
Very well expressed