School and a surprisingly active social life have been keeping me pretty busy lately. Although I am not usually a big music buff, I was tempted by four concerts in two months: Tori Amos, Tegan & Sara, Sia, Regina Spektor. I see a trend. Anyway, my sex life has also been markedly more interesting this fall, with visitors from near and far adding spice to my bedroom. I also purchased a new sex toy, although this one has been quite disappointing thus far. But putting an old one to new use, on the other hand (or, on the other person)....

I digress. My point is this: I have been a little mentally absent from the sociopolitical world outside my personal life. So forgive the slight un-timeliness of the discussion to follow. Our primary topic: gender identity protection in Montgomery County, MD.

According to a press release by Montgomery County, "more than 100 U.S. jurisdictions, including 13 states and the District of Columbia, have already passed similar legislation, covering 37 percent of the country’s population."
The county's new bill providing protection for gender identity, passed unanimously by the council and signed off on by the county executive,

...prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in housing, employment, taxi and cable service, and public accommodations. …Initially, council members in committee agreed to allow a person to use [private facilities, such as health club locker rooms,] based on the gender that a person "publicly and exclusively" asserts…[The bill sponsor] agreed to pull references to such facilities after hearing concerns of colleagues and the community. The county's anti-discrimination code makes exceptions for areas considered "distinctly private or personal," and Michael Dennis, compliance director for the county's Human Rights Commission, said the exemption would extend to locker rooms and restrooms. This would allow a facility owner to segregate based on biological sex.
     -- Washington Post

County law now defines gender identity as "an individual's actual or perceived gender, including a person's gender-related appearance, expression, image, identity, or behavior, whether or not those gender-related characteristics differ from the characteristics customarily associated with the person's assigned sex at birth."

I particularly like to check out the conservative reactions to this kind of legislation, much as it sometimes elevates my blood pressure in a most alarming fashion. Negative reactions focus largely on the safety of defenseless women and children, whose privacy will surely be preyed upon by men who are "confused about their 'gender identity'":

The council and county executive have publicly stated that access to these areas will be decided by their operators. But all they are doing is kicking the issue into the lap of the county's Human Rights Commission, which is on record saying it will grant bathroom rights to transgenders according to their perceived gender when a case is brought before it," Turner said. … In other words, a male teacher or student will be able to use the female restrooms and locker rooms if he thinks he is a female.
     -- World Net Daily

It always surprises me when religious conservatives, who should be focused on our spiritual well-being, are so incapable of looking past our physical bodies.

In a separate but related article from WND:

The problem, according to [the Transgender Law Center], is that many transgendered people have few safe places to go to the bathroom. They claim to "get harassed … and arrested in BOTH women's and men's rooms." One sufferer, who had clearly entered a restroom of the opposite sex, whined that he had been "dragged out by security guards."
     -- WND

It's interesting that not only is the woman's gender claim being refuted and male gender asserted ("clearly…of the opposite sex"), but then the loaded vocabulary ("whined") that immediately follows deliberately undercuts the supposed masculinity. So we see the discomfort the authors feel, their unwillingness to fully accept either the person's self-identified gender or their assigned gender. The "claims" of harassment are dismissed as whining, the people (and we can reasonably assume it is MTFs being targeted in this article) told to toughen up and get over their "confusion"—nevermind that some of the discomfort and harassment transgender people face centers around the same privacy and personal security concerns that women are asserting.

A brief excerpt from the truly frustrating, to which I feel no need to comment:

According to [the TLC's document supporting gender neutral restrooms, called] 'Peeing in Peace,' it is important that transgenders be allowed to use multi-stall facilities with mixed company. The guide states, "If people are worried about privacy ...stall doors could extend all the way to the ground and locks on individual stalls could function more effectively."

Why would such desires be so important?

Considering that, according to Yale and Harvard-connected psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover [link added], pedophilia is more than three times more common among homosexuals than among heterosexuals, and since the GLBT population is strongly unified, doesn't it strike you as odd that a major transgender organization endorsed by the homosexual lobby would consider having children undress in a teacher's office? And that they would insist on using multi-stall restrooms of the opposite sex? And that they would desire stalls that extend to the floor and securely lock? (If only Sen. Larry Craig had been so lucky.)
     -- WND

Some unrelated German litigation for thought: an intersex woman is suing the doctor she claims removed her female organs without proper consent 30 years ago.
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I recently watched Tipping the Velvet with some friends. I thought the direction, cinematography and much of the acting wretched (please, movie gods, never let me see a periscoping effect again) and utterly without subtlety, but I just couldn't resist this BBC film chock full of Victorian gender bending and lesbian sex. As you might suspect, the title comes from a euphemism for cunnilingus. One of my friends liked the romance, two of my friends mocked it relentlessly, and I started out the film trying to unfocus my eyes slightly and imagine Keeley Hawes as Keira Knightley and Rachel Stirling as Martine McCutcheon, if that gives you any idea. Fingersmith, another movie based on a Sarah Waters novel of Victorian lesbianism, is the better film. But where Fingersmith stays primarily with closet lesbianism, pickpockets and cons, Tipping the Velvet takes a broader path with male impersonation, gender roles in employment, the lesbian social scene, strap-ons, prostitution and socialism. It starts with drag, as a fascinated young Nan (Nancy) views Kitty singing and dancing in male impersonation.

I was amused then, when the very next week found me referred me to Ciara's gender-bending music video for Like a Boy:

And then there's this kind of sad performance of What it Feels Like for a Girl (Spanish version here) by gay-boy-adored Madonna:



Or take a look at Boys and Girls by Blur. It's more a commentary on indiscriminatingly sexual British vacation culture, but I've danced my ass off to this song at many a gay bar. It really gets at the fluidity and confusion of sexuality and gender performance these days, even if it is probably criticizing that same blurry haze of loveless sex--let's say the criticism comes in knowing that the same sexually exploratory vacationers would cling to a rigid binary and self-identified sexuality.

Thus segueing away from pop culture and toward science, I'd like to note that Robert Epstein announced in Scientific American his study finding, among other things, that "fewer than 10 percent of subjects score as 'pure' heterosexual or homosexual." He presented on Sexual Orientation Lies Smoothly on a Continuum: Verification and Extension of Kinsey's Hypothesis in a Large-Scale Study while at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality last week.

Unfortunately, here ends my lighthearted banter on sexual orientation and gender expression. Now for the serious stuff. GPAC in August reported on an Ohio University study exploring the intersection of race, gender and sexuality in American classrooms:

A new study shows that teachers tend to view the behavior of black girls as not "ladylike" and therefore focus disciplinary action on encouraging behaviors like passivity, deference, and bodily control at the expense of curiosity, outspokenness, and assertiveness.

You can find the extended article at an academic library near you:
Morris, Edward. (2007) "'Ladies' or 'Loudies'?: Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls in Classrooms." Youth & Society. 38(4): 490-515.

This sad but unsurprising study reminds me of similar articles in my Education & Social Control class, discussing how cultural means of communication that do not fit within the dominant racialized and gendered mold (for example, too much or too little eye contact) are misread as behavioral problems. Blogger Kameelah has already done an excellent job responding to this information--including providing the referral to Ciara I mentioned above--so kindly check that out.

A recent article in the NY Times, Should Hillary Pretend to Be a Flight Attendant? reveals the continuing gender differences in heterosexual attractiveness of intelligence, looks and economic success, as well as workplace disparities regarding adherence to gender expectations, sexy attire and displays of anger. No comment is made on race in this article, which is rather a shame. I would especially like to see further analysis given to Obama's "fired up" campaign in relation to perceptions of not merely masculinity but black/African-American masculinity.
There is just one thing the article casually mentions that I must highlight:

Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route, with lots of speed bumps.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could avoid assumptions about the necessity of the "opposing" sexes and their struggle for domination? Tough Stuff blames it on capitalism, at least partially. What do you think?

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I admit I have the travel bug. Life and hard work have granted me the means to scratch that itch more than once. That said, there are certain countries I hesitate to visit because of gender issues. While my sexuality makes some countries uncomfortable or less desirable to visit, it’s the gender flag that makes me worry about being physically unsafe. I don’t necessarily mean my genderqueer status, either—I can pass as "female" and still worry about the security of my body.

A recent NY Times article reminds us that boys and men can be similarly vulnerable—and can face even more difficulty accusing their rapists in the face of both hegemonic masculinity and homophobia. Alex, a French adolescent studying at the American school in the United Arab Emirates, was threatened and chain-raped by three UAE natives: a 17 year old classmate, an 18 year old, and a 35 year old.

"The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he, his family and French diplomats say; they raised the possibility of charging him with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected for weeks to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had tested H.I.V. positive while in prison four years earlier. … The doctor, an Egyptian, wrote in his legal report that he had found no evidence of forced penetration, which Alex's family says is a false assessment that could hurt the case against the assailants. … United Arab Emirates law does not recognize rape of males, only a crime called 'forced homosexuality.' "

I find the language of this article of some interest, particularly as it references nationalities and "former convicts" and the like. For now, however, we focus on its two central claims: 1) that UAE justice system does not treat its foreign residents as it treats its native residents. 2) that homophobia allows not only direct harassment of gays but influences the way the health system responds to HIV.
"At least 90 percent of the residents of Dubai are not Emirati citizens and many say that Alex's Kafkaesque legal journey brings into sharp relief questions about unequal treatment of foreigners here that have long been quietly raised among the expatriate majority. The case is getting coverage in the local press.

"It also highlights the taboos surrounding H.I.V. and homosexuality that Dubai residents say have allowed rampant harassment of gays and have encouraged the health system to treat H.I.V. virtually in secret. (Under Emirates law, foreigners with H.I.V., or those convicted of homosexual activity, are deported.)"

Reading this, however, I have to wonder whether an Emirate boy would have even tried to press charges. Sometimes the bindings of culture and religion are stronger than legal barriers. I remind you that I'm very ignorant: all I previously heard of Dubai was that it is a popular tourist spot, economically successful, and widely considered a safer, more progressive point in the middle east. According to the CIA World Factbook, UAE is "a destination country for [human trafficking of] men, women and children…for involuntary servitude and for sexual exploitation." It seems also that the cultural and legal environments provide no safe space for males who are victims of rape.

Curiously, UAE is the safe haven for the three child actors whose work in the film Kite Runner may have made them unsafe in Afghanistan. Two of the boys are involved in a rape scene (left mostly off camera in the final version of the film). Part of the problem is political, inflaming already unstable relations between Pashtun and Hazara ethnic groups.
"In January in Afghanistan, DVDs of "Kabul Express" — an Indian film in which a character hurls insults at Hazara — led to protests, government denunciations and calls for the execution of the offending actor, who fled the country."
Part of the problem is cultural, that of masculinity and homophobia:

"the Kite Runner actor who plays Hassan…told reporters at that time that he feared for his life because his fellow Hazara might feel humiliated by his rape scene."

Needless to say, the film will not be making its way into Afghanistan officially; the concern for the actors' safety rises from the inevitability of a pirated film release.

In closing, I want to shift from homophobia in the middle east and southern asia, the difficulty in getting legal and media attention for real concerns like male rape and HIV, and the censorship of film…to transphobia in the US lgb(t?) community, and the censorship of film. Catherine Crouch's 20 minute science fiction film, The Gendercator, expresses her concern that butch lesbians are being socially pressured into transition and gender assignment surgeries.

"The movie caused widespread outrage within the transgender community after it was screened in Chicago earlier this year. Objections were raised to the film's depiction of transgender people and activists successfully petitioned Frameline, producers of San Francisco's LGBT film festival, to remove the movie from its schedule.

"The unprecedented decision enraged lesbians upset at what they considered censorship and they demanded that the film be shown. The LGBT Community Center's women's program then stepped in to organize a screening and panel discussion with both sides of the debate." Please, read more.
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Today's beltcast is a discussion built from Fannie's post, ZOMG 100th Post!! aka eDating Do's and Don'ts. Outlawed moderates, and panelists include Fannie, Manontheside, and NforNeville. As always, you can listen to beltcasts from the beltcasts widget on the right pane of the blog.

Highlights include: discussion of various situations addressed by panelists in their recent posts, including the idea of dating HIV+, closeted, or married individuals, as well as other general questions about eDating. People interested in dating any of the panelists should tune in, as this is likely going to be more revealing than any gay.com profile you might stumble upon!

Sincerely,
ts
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We have long discussed the imbalance between male and female nudity in American film. Similarly (yet in an opposite vein), we have discussed the way women’s sexualities are rendered invisible, or at least outside their own control and purpose, in society and in film. And gender variant folk are relatively lucky to appear in film in any state of clothing. For sake of focus, however, I shall play mostly within a binary gender system for this entry.*

So, I’m not kidding when I express some excitement at the increasingly common vibrator jokes in comedy.

Sure, they’re poking fun—but this comedy only works because female pleasure is becoming valued, "female self pleasure" is consequently exiting the closet, and a male-proclaimed "natural" view of what sex should be is actually yielding (albeit slowly and through obliquely subversive means) to a more sex-positive "what works" approach. (Hell, in this Cultural Revolution, even straight men are being freed to enjoy a sex toys.) It’s also moving ever-so-slowly beyond the proprietary ownership of an American Pie style, pseudo-lesbian, beautiful young woman…to a place where even the old lady in Smokin’ Aces can have a dildo hanging out by the bathtub. Granted, we’ve a long way to go yet, in all the -isms, when this quick laugh occurs in context of literary absurdity. And female masturbation, much like lesbianism, is often co-opted personally and commercially for male pleasure. (But this is also yet one more power tool in the female arsenal, should she choose to own and use it.)

One can hardly imagine Gidget taking time away from her breast-building exercises to jerk off. We’re making headway. (yes, headway. Did you see what I did there?)

And it’s not just niche movies like Shortbus or Secretary that are looking at sex, and especially at women’s experiences of their own sexuality, differently. We also have suspense films like In the Cut, where girl-next-door Meg Ryan (of all the actors!) sheds her cute innocence to play a real person, one who lies on her belly and masturbates while thinking dirty thoughts. Mrowr.

Now, in addition to increasing the acceptability of cultural references to women's sexual pleasure, we really need to work on getting governmental and health care systems to value female sexual pleasure as highly as they do male sexual pleasure (see: the old debates on insurance and viagra). For that matter, we need to get comparable general care for women's bodies. My half-assed insurance won't even cover something as basic as an annual gynecological exam. (Yes, if it was ever in doubt, this genderqueer was born with a vagina.) Condoms aside, pharmaceutical companies don't bother to develop testes-based contraception when they can so easily continue placing much of this burden on the ones with the uteri. What about the massive expense that menstruation causes for roughly half the population? My Spanish friend wisely suggests the government pay for this is a general public health/sanitation service. (And again, what about the transgender patients?!)

But, we're out of space. On one last film tangent, I’m in my midtwenties, and I think it only just hit me that Johnny from Dirty Dancing ought to be a ‘mo, and Penny his hag. Maybe I just identified really strongly with idealistic, uncoordinated, determined, socially inept, loyal, sheltered, utterly without artifice Baby--therefore never questioned his interest in "big girls don't cry" Baby. More intriguingly, how did I never really question why the scenes where Penny and Baby dance together (with or without Johnny) were so erotic for me? I mean, at the end of the day, whatever, maybe Johnny’s cousin is the gay one.


*But while we’re on this tangent, check out 20 centímetros for an interesting foreign take on the transgender musical genre, nudity and sex both included.

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Drinking some rum & (probably chemically toxic) wyler’s light, listening to two drunk people talk politics. It seldom gets better than this. Our proposed topics for my blog today? Gender and divorce. The government’s ideal role, if any, in marriage. Housing discrimination. Gender neutral bathrooms. The recent Ohio ruling. How the Ohio ruling drew on science or scientism.

As my roommate and my friend argue religion, I do some quick Googling. Did you know that “gender news” leads you to http://www.gender-news.com, a ministry of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood “informing the Evangelical community of gender-related news”?

I think it’s all fascinating.

First, we have a religious claim of truth about gender:

“I am saddened, because the solution to feeling uncomfortable about ‘having to choose a gender at the bathroom door’ is not a change in the signs but a return to the biblical truth about God’s design of men and women.” [source]

Simultaneously, we have a religious claim of ideals about gender and the effort needed to attain them:

“The thing you need to understand about biblical manhood is that a male does not check off a manly to-do list (get a well-paying job, buy a house, get married, raise some kids, teach Sunday school), and once accomplished "becomes" a "man." Rather, a male is always "becoming" a man. I know we're getting a little philosophical, but stick with me.” [source]

Curious and...curiouser.

My drinking buddies, as they continue discussing belief and worship, have now left politics well behind for a more heated debate on the existence of a higher power. But I cannot forget the political ramifications of this entire conversation. Because this ongoing consideration of science “versus” religion (for they are so often posed in opposition) does affect my civil rights, especially when schools like Patrick Henry aim to create “champions of God” by developing strong debaters and politicians.

I guess part of the problem is when people base political and social morality, through legislation, not on moral reasoning, but on obedience to a particular higher power…while proclaiming that all citizens are welcome to believe (or not believe) in whatever higher power(s) they choose. You can have religious freedom and ethics-based legislation at the same time, but you cannot base those ethics on religion.

I’m not religiously intolerant the way many of my queer friends have become. I recognize the power of faith in our lives as one which can be quite positive. Granted, I also tend to take a Dune-like view on organized religion. I mistrust the direct influence of faith on government. I think faith is meant to be personal, is best kept personal, and the Bible often supports this view for Christians. And anyway, what’s the point in free will, if government requires us all to conform to one vision of ideal behavior?
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Did you know that I am generally unprepared to write about politics? I studied many things in college, but I am no political scientist. My thinking also tends toward the radical and revolutionary, which makes finding a party to support (in the USA) excruciatingly difficult on both idealistic and pragmatic levels. My tentative and uneducated assertion has long been as follows: if you could somehow combine the best of socialism and libertarianism, I’d be all for it. In all likelihood, this is an ignorant and unsustainable position (obvious conflict aside), but I have yet to spend sufficient time immersed in the economic and political theory needed to advance my understanding. At heart, I’m just someone who cares about society and realizes that politics shape even the most intimate personal experiences.

We pomos are an interesting lot, suggesting that people are fettered by social construction, yet many of us believing (hoping) there must be ways to "liberate" ourselves from one set of constructions in favor of a new construction that will somehow be more empowering. The goal of unabashed individual expression undeniably requires constructing others ourselves to tolerate, accept and even embrace what to them us is distasteful. We seem easily to do this with things like food preference, so people argue that we could and should feel similarly about nearly all difference, including sexual interests. It will take social construction to extend that thinking (just as our attitude toward food is itself socially constructed), though—and this policy of embracing and encouraging difference may well make society harder to operate smoothly.

As an ex of mine always said, "We have heuristics for a reason. If we had to constantly evaluate people as they wanted to identify—without drawing on stereotypes to process the person’s skin, dress, body type, accent, and so on—we’d be spending so much time just on figuring out how to relate to individuals that we’d be in overload, and we couldn’t get to the point of our would-be conversations, the actual relating." Maybe this is true. It’s hard to say, because none of us grew up in this purely theoretical, fluid-identity society.

And maybe this observation by my ex is also telling us something about the society in which most of us did grow up: everything is pointed. I converse with you to get something out of it. The conversation itself, the process of meeting new people and learning new things and figuring out how to relate, is secondary and sometimes even inconvenient. I don’t mean to be simplistic or glib, but we do often seem to care more about efficiency and utility than about the nature and quality of our lives. People often contrast "Western" and "Eastern" thought at moments like this: the individualistic versus the communal, the plot-driven story versus the exploratory tale. I don’t think that’s really fair or thorough, though, not to mention that it poses a contrast between two (flattened) concepts as if one must have all the right answers. (And again, it’s about solutions. Where’s the process?)

I do want to know whether/how we can acknowledge and openly use social construction—as we are silently participating in unnamed constructions regardless—without becoming just as uncompromising and rigid as the current rules suggest. This is where my previous idea of utopia comes into play, and I think we need to focus on self-reflection and the process of monitoring social construction, rather than reaching a static ending point where the construction is considered forever perfect and complete. Much as I’d love to rely on increasing transparency and setting up a process for change, however, part of me wonders what powers will be rendered invisible in this new world order, and whether they’ll be even harder to unveil given the illusion that all is already revealed.

This post was originally going to be about the latest controversial article on Michael Bailey and his questionable scientific methods. Coincidentally, I’m 85% certain that a fellow Equality Rider worked in his laboratory at Northwestern, or at least in the same department. But anyway, as you can all see, I distracted myself with broader thinking about social control. The NY Times article mentions criticism of unpopular research versus criticism of unscientific research; perhaps in another post I’ll explore our privileging of "the scientific" as unconstructed fact and how we are constantly policing that boundary as well.

But for now, I bid you "Happy Tuesday!" (And, if you like, happy feast day for St. Augustine of Hippo, who embroiled us all in sin.)

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A milestone for Below the Belt, indeed! Today, BTB launched a new widget on our right-hand menu, "beltcasts". Beltcasts are streaming audio segments produced by our contributors. The widget conveniently maintains a library of our programs, much like any other music player.

Today's beltcast is a discussion of the recent Logo Debate. Manontheside moderates, and panelists include AskFannie, Outlawed, and Toughstuff. Highlights include: discussion of the general ebb and flow of the debate, questions about honesty vs. political/constructed personalities, Hillary's clothes (YES!), and ...well...an opportunity to hear the awkward voices of some of our contributors!

Sincerely,
ts
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It seems Below the Belt is on a literate kick of late. But then, I’m a librarian; my nose is perpetually stuffed in at least one book or movie.

So, let me now link a relatively recent article on how patient care continues to suffer in the area of reproductive health with a 1976 sci-fi novel that manages both to describe the appalling nature of health care—particularly toward women—in our past and to envision a compelling utopia in which gender becomes just one more attribute.

Okay, then. So. The article discusses how not only pharmacists, but also physicians, are claiming their moral/religious beliefs require them to refuse involvement in various aspects of birth control, the morning-after pill, fertility assistance, and abortion. Although a few states have laws to protect patient rights in this arena, laws and medical policies typically privilege the medical professionals. This priority holds particularly true regarding the ever-controversial issue of abortion; Congress allows federally-funded health providers to refuse to provide abortion services, and of the 46 states with their own physician opt-outs, 27 recently broadened the refusal policies. But lest our anti-abortion readers think the legislation stops there, 16 states have refusal clauses for performing sterilization and 8 for prescribing contraception.

"This is about the rights of the individual, about our constitutional right to freedom of religion," says Frank Manion, an attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group in Washington, D.C. Founded by minister Pat Robertson, the organization has represented health care providers and lobbied for laws that protect them. "We're not trying to deny anybody access to treatment," Manion adds. "We're saying, 'Don't make your choice my choice.'"

This is particularly problematic when insurance and income prevent some patients from seeking more comprehensive services elsewhere. Thankfully, some legislation seeks to protect patient rights. About one-fifth of states now require or strongly encourage emergency rooms to counsel about and/or offer emergency contraception to rape survivors. Although the effort failed, Virginia’s HB2842 would have required pharmacists to, oh you know, fill prescriptions. Obviously we have a long way to go, but people are wrestling with these issues.

And that bring me back to how far we’ve come since Marge Piercy wrote Woman on the Edge of Time. We aren’t quite as bad about putting (poor, minority) women into mental health facilities just for challenging the patriarchy in some way. Yay, us. Survivors of domestic abuse are now much better-supported, on the whole, in both medical and legal fields. The ethics of medical experimentation have vastly improved, although there remain concerns about the overparticipation of underprivileged groups.

But we still treat gender and race as significant, innate categories. We still glorify a tough masculinity. We still mistrust people’s ability to understand their own bodies and be involved in their medical and psychological assessment and treatment. We still tend to blame the individual for society problems. (Go back another century and we have Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper.")

So, not to sound like I don’t appreciate the progress we’ve made, but…that’s all pretty depressing to me.

I was, however, rather delighted by the utopia Piercy offers. Fluid, self-chosen, yet communal identity. Self-chosen, changeable names. Person/per for pronouns. Sexuality however consenting parties like it. The only real taboo is violence. Work enough to support the community but not so much to prevent growth and creativity. Respect the power of rituals. Value both inward and outward knowledge. Keep technology around to do what makes people miserable. Use resources responsibly. Don’t worry much about luxuries until everybody’s needs are met. Realize that beauty is productive. Teach by doing. Discourage competitive materialism. Encourage diversification of strengths. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

You know you’re intrigued.

I just wish the book gave more suggestions for how society moves toward even an imperfect utopia. (Yes, yes, seeming paradox, I know. But utopia’s not a final state; it’s a way of moving.) With all the dissatisfied radicals I know are out there, are we all stuck in some Field of Dreams waiting period? Dude, somebody’s got to start building. The conservative Christians already realize this. Enough with criticizing, let’s get to creating.

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If you can get your hands on it, read Julia A. Greenberg’s article “Defining Male and Female: Intersexuality and the Collision Between Law and Biology,” published in the 1999 Arizona Law Review. (Try a public or academic library with access to Lexis-Nexis.) This applies some complex perspectives on gender—held by pomos, feminists, anthropologists, biologists, etc.—to our legal system. Foucault and the others certainly were clever at times. In Greenberg’s law review article and in court cases across the world, we see discourse and control intertwined; it becomes not just socially but legally mandated to define identities and even to shape bodies to support these ways of talking and perceiving the world. A rigidly policed gender binary is necessary in order to sustain heterosexism (and, arguably, sexism).

I did a lot of reading for this blog and was going to reference many an article and news case. I find, instead, that I feel like ranting.

Most states in the USA have some method of changing one’s legal sex (whether by revising or replacing birth certificates). But throughout the country, and definitely across the globe, these methods vary. Is the petitioner’s identity claim enough? Does it take a letter from a psychologist? A physician? Both? Must a supporting letter diagnose gender identity dysphoria? Intersexuality? Is prior treatment required—hormonal, therapeutic, surgical? How much treatment?

On, and on, and on, it goes. And I can’t help but think: we can change our hair, nail, eye color at will; darken pale skin with chemicals or sun damage; eat and laze ourselves into life-threatening obesity; staple our stomachs into submission and liposuction the fat out of ourselves; augment or reduce breasts for aesthetics or health or self-confidence; pierce nearly anything (and gauge those piercings); enlarge a penis with chemicals, gadgets or surgery…but add something like a penis or breasts where they’re not expected, and suddenly the matter moves from a decision between either you and you, or you and your doctor…to one between you and the government.

It especially matters to the government if you want possession of a penis to entitle you to being treated like everybody else with a penis. Because you already recognize that what’s in your pants is not just of private significance, but also strangely important to government/society and pivotal in their regulation of your relationships. If you want, say, to bring your Mexican wife into the country, you’d better be able to prove you have a legitimate marriage, which usually means you’d better prove your maleness, which usually means prove you have a penis. And, in case you’re wondering at my failure to mention snatch: at birth, we’re sorted into 1) those who have a penis, and 2) those who do not have a penis (or, in some cases, have too small a penis to count). That’s right, feminists. Women are still defined by their lack, from the get-go. And courts are inclined to look at it as “but you don’t have a penis!” or “what’d you do with your penis?!” or, more quietly, “well, you do have a penis….”

But let’s get back to the general concepts of body modification. A state-recognized woman can change her breasts at will. A state-recognized man can (try to) change his penis. In cases of intersexuality, surgery is often expected in order to move someone more in line with an idealized male or female body form. This is because we realize there are plenty of recognized “dudes” who are overweight and have breasts, plenty of women with mustaches and flat chests and slim hips, and so on. And we want you to be able to (spend your money to) correct these unfortunate physical inadequacies and further polarize yourself. But don’t ask to move across the sex lines, and definitely don’t ask to straddle both sides of the line, or to live on a different plane entirely. Our culture will continuously ignore intersexuality and the fact that the bajillion factors in so-called straightforward biological sex do not always align in this binary fabrication we call male/female. (did you see what I did there? Straightforward. Ha.) There are testes with tatas, XY with a side dose of extra X, and many other variations in the human form (including the much-feared Clitorises of Unusual Size). But hey, why question the binary sex system and its associated stereotypes, when we can just call out these individuals with “abnormal” genotypes and phenotypes, these “freaks of nature”?

Well, excuse me, darlings, but maybe an unadjusted body is as friggin’ “natural” as it gets, and we should get over this socially constructed discursive and medical regulation of our bodies and recognize evidence of life outside the binary.


Some food for more academic thought:
DOJ - Recognizing Sex Change to Allow Immigration by Marriage
What’s up in Egypt
Miss Spain rules to allow transsexuals and mothers
HRW: Resource Library for International Jurisprudence on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Spanish Government to approve transsexual rights law
Legal aspects of transsexualism (Wikipedia)
An identity under scrutiny in Palestine (Human Rights Watch, 21-6-2007)
Gender Recognition Act 2004 (Wikipedia)
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So I read a random blog post this week. I’m going to try to pick out a few of the more interesting questions it raises.

A magazine published by the main Teachers Union in Sweden recently suggested several ways preschool teachers can promote gender equality and sexual equality. No surprise, homophobes are intensely worried that their young children would be allowed to experiment and make up their own minds “force-fed lectures on gay sex by some sex freak from the Teachers’ Union.” Especially intriguing is the conservative concern that children need to be allowed to “play and discover entirely on their own,” without being indoctrinated and “forced to have an opinion on gay sex”—and that such proposals as the Teachers’ Union made are downright abusive of these defenseless children.

I especially love the limited (and privileged) understanding of society expressed in these statements. The notion that any children are ever allowed to “play and discover entirely on their own” is meaningless given the pervasiveness of media imagery and home life on which child’s play is modeled. What social progressives are, in fact, suggesting when they would seek deliberately to introduce children to new/alternative models for play (and thus for real life, if the play is enjoyed) is not to change something intrinsic in the children, but to expand the children’s repertoire of play and subsequent understanding of the surrounding world. It takes a lot to get over the indoctrination already in place through parenting, media influences, ignorance and fear.

Not speaking Swedish, sadly, I can’t go to the magazine and figure out the exact suggestions made by the Teachers’ Union (if such a magazine truly exists—who trusts the internet?). The blogger, however, describes existing actions in Stockholm kindergartens (again unsourced):

“In a kindergarten in Stockholm, the parents were encouraged by the preschool teachers - apparently ideological pioneers - to equip their sons with dresses and female first names. There are now weeks in some places when boys HAVE TO wear a dress.”

Now, I’ll admit it, this is a radical move. It’s also one that warms my heart, of course, as someone who strongly opposes a rigid gender system. At first, it sounds really disturbing to force a child (of any gender, even) to wear a dress. There’s a difference, too, between allowing and requiring. But think about it. Let’s ensure that this is not actually done as a requirement for boys, but for all schoolchildren, and you have a rather painless and interesting scenario: say part of a school uniform or dress code is that every Wednesday all children must wear trousers, and every Thursday all children must wear a skirt. The rest of the week they pick for themselves. Just imagine that for a while…..


The blogger reports alarm at similar trends throughout the country:

“The Swedish Consumers Association reacted angrily to a star-shaped, pink ice-cream because it represented gender-profiling. “Girlie, GB’s new ice pop, is pink and has make-up inside the stick. It says a lot about what GB thinks about girls and how they should be,” the association said in a statement. According to them, Sweden does not need more products that reinforce existing prejudices about sex roles, so they asked the producer to make the product less gender specific.”

Okay, okay, things are a little murky when we’re talking about requesting businesses change their marketing to avoid gender stereotypes. That’s getting toward censorship. But Anders Nelson (a researcher quoted by the blogger) does have a point that children, raised within gender structures invisible to them, will be susceptible to gender marketing. Parents can help encourage exploration of gender roles, but as long as that societal image is there, it will be very difficult for children to really gain independence of the gender structures. That’s where schools can be helpful, as they are grounds for academic and social learning. By increasing gender flexibility at school—even though it may mean introducing initially-uncomfortable conversations and play—the school ultimately seeks to free children from the power structures and biases of the society.

Some people, like our blogger, will always say “this has thus absolutely nothing to do with ‘tolerance or diversity.’ It’s done in order to break you down and to mold you into a new human being.”—after all, we are talking about giving people options to live differently from the status quo. But I say the two have everything to do with each other. The “old” human being is, on the whole, bigoted, privileged and ignorant. Why not remove the ignorance and privilege, and see if the prejudice remains?
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Too many people die because prejudice and fear take such deep hold of individuals, and because society repeatedly sends the message that it does not care equally about all its members.

The appalling police (non)response in this case has many of us thinking about hate crimes legislation. Whatever your feelings about taking into account motivation when sentencing a criminal, this case suggests another reason to sometimes give federal authorities jurisdiction for local crimes. As much as we need to trust our police officers to investigate impartially—whether the victim is an investment banker or a sex worker, a white person or a person of color, etc—can we always trust them to do so? Putting the FBI in charge of cases where bias runs deepest ensures full and fair treatment of these cases, but does it also suggest, even allow, that partiality and bias to exist within our local law enforcement agencies?

I do not know whether hate crimes legislation is the best way to go. I do know, however, that hate crimes legislation already exists in various forms, and discrepancies within those forms ought to be addressed. Hate crime statistics are gathered where the victims’ actual or perceived race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation partially or wholly motivates the criminal. Based on 1968 law, the FBI is authorized to investigate hate crimes based on race, religion and ethnic origin. At present, “limitations in federal statutes prevent the FBI from investigating crimes of bias motivated solely by gender, disability, or sexual orientation.” (source) HR 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) sponsored by John Conyers (D-MI) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), would extend that investigational authority to crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, disability and gender identity. (Note that this would include misogyny and misandry, not just hatred of folks who are transgender or gender variant)

Will hate crimes one day expand to include other broad categories of people? Class and socioeconomic status? Profession? Criminal status? Age? How can the FBI recognize the compounded, interactive status of these identity groups in hate crimes (the confusion between perceived gender performance and sexual orientation being only one very obvious example) What differentiates personal hatred from the manifestation of societal hate? It seems to me that hate crimes legislation seeks, in part, to affirm that society does care about the lives of even those with controversial identities or affiliations. At the same time, it calls out (confirms) these sources of difference and dispute.

It is a time to be sad and concerned. Yet we draw strength from the positive responses, by individuals and society, to these devastating tragedies. From productive legal responses to the increasing creation of and popularity of films telling the true stories of our losses and bringing to light the very human suffering involved (award-winning Boys Don’t Cry and Lifetime TV’s A Girl Like Me: the Gwen Araujo Story both come to mind).

Least we think, however, that all transfolk tales are stories of victimization and abuse. I leave you with a few reminders. Popular films do not solely mourn our losses, but they also celebrate our lives and proclaim our victories with comedy, family drama and documentary. A few examples from 90s through today The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, The Birdcage, Transamerica, and TransGeneration. Bit by bit, we are becoming more whole and real in our onscreen gender representations.

Last fall Kim Coco Iwamoto became the transgender person with the highest-ranking elected office in the USA. Her post to the Hawaii Board of Education is particularly nifty when you consider Americans’ tendency to be especially protective of their children and especially confrontational around said children’s education. However, while Kim Coco is out and proud to her friends and family, the issue was not raised publicly during her campaign and has only created a media stir since. Stay tuned to continuing reactions as she serves the education system in this role. Here Hawaiians have a great opportunity to be welcoming and affirming pioneers. And maybe, just maybe, we won’t see a repeat of the 1990s when the people responded to a Hawaiian Supreme Court declaration—that limiting marriage to opposite sex couples is sex discrimination—by amending their constitution.
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This weekend I signed a waiver promising that I would not engage in electrical play above the waist. Then I walked downstairs into a women-only space at a club normally packed with gay males. I went in drag. (Of course, in a binary-gendered society I’m always in drag) I had no idea what to expect; I was to attend an S&M party in the middle of International Mr. Leather.

What I observed and experienced in the basement spoke to gender within the broad and trans-friendly spectrum of "women." Of the master/slave pairs (yes, collars included), those with a femme/butch distinction invariably positioned the femme in the dominant master role. Is such a dom displaying a necessary ultra-femininity to counterbalance the culturally taboo claiming of power and sexual control by a woman? (But then, would mimicry of male/female dominance through a butch/femme dom/sub pair be considered more justified or at least more “normal”? Or would this instead reinforce the shocking dangers of a woman taking on “a man’s role”? Does putting the femme on top soften the cultural blow?) Perhaps the femme/butch dom/sub pair is a deliberate reversal of power relations normalized in the wider culture. Or, does the dominant femme embrace and reclaim the age-old fear that a woman’s power is in her sexuality? (And that her sexuality is tied irrevocably to her womanhood…)

And how many of those possible explanations factor into how hot I found those pairs? How did my own gender performance affect my relation to the women I voyeuristically observed giving and receiving commands, spanks, floggings, kisses, slaps, and more?

I find it very telling that this party was limited to women. There’s a strong sense that straight men cannot be trusted to enter a space of vulnerability and power like an S&M party. Of course, one has to question whether someone who comes to a place of group sex and public S&M isn’t automatically queered (gender attraction aside). The mere thought of someone accustomed to exercising male privilege would prevent (through intimidation or disgust) many queer women from attending. It doesn’t seem to matter that such a man might be well-behaved and play by the rules; his very presence changes the atmosphere. The gay men whose territory we had, after all, invaded, seemed a bit confused at being barred from the basement but they continued to dance merrily above. While I’m less concerned about their ability to deter women from attending, I hardly think they suffered from exclusion. This was the one event of International Mr. Leather catering exclusively to women. That specialization in itself is sexy and creates a sacred space, paradoxically freeing women from their gender by its very invocation: hence the wide range of costume and personality along (what I’ve reluctantly labeled) a butch/femme spectrum. It’s less about “my womanhood grants me entry” and more “as I am attracted to women, how wonderful that no men will be in the way.”

A friend of mine believes strongly in the power of S&M to release and heal embodied trauma, benefits accessible to all and entirely independent from the sexual thrill some people experience. Violations of the body, in particular, are carried with us almost like muscle memory. But as long as we live in a body- and sex-negative society, it’s likely that people suffering these particular wounds will continue relying upon either the talking cure or therapy in a bottle, nevermind the relative efficacy of these approaches. There is little room for exploring alternate therapies.

It’s a wonder someone was able to advertise and throw a party like this, then, and no surprise at all that every participant signed a consent form and legal waiver.

But S&M is increasingly present in mainstream culture, filtering its way in through films like Secretary and popular comedy. [Make sure you check out the SNL opener after Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House] And as more talk happens, we’ll find a growing, subversive channel for power, sexuality and gender expression.

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I once admitted during an undergraduate scholarship interview, “I read romance novels.” As I became personally, politically and academically more aware of queer issues, my relationship to this genre changed. I find some heterosexual romances make me uncomfortable by so firmly reinforcing gender stereotypes and heteronormativity. Other het tales are filled with deliciously subtle cues that create queer spaces. Just last week I told Tough Stuff how much more relaxed I was while reading my then-current paranormal romance, even though I couldn’t put my finger on what queered it. No sooner had our conversation ended than I turned the page and met a gay character. Bingo.

The predominantly gay slash movement in fanfiction increasingly questions the assumption that m/m and f/f pairings are attractive and marketable solely to readers who are gay. We find that self-identified straight women are arguably the most common writers and readers of m/m erotic romance. E-books and small publishers are increasingly recognizing these markets, as well.

So what makes a gay-affirming, HRC-approved hotel chain like the Hyatt pull all of m/m romance author Laura Baumbach’s promotional materials at a recent Romantic Times convention, and what makes Romantic Times allow it?

Here is the poster that was considered most offensive to the businessmen passing by the public promotional display area of the convention:

Now personally, I think that’s a great ad for reading. American Library Association take note! Yet this promotional set, just this one amongst countless others typical of the romance genre, was silently and rapidly pulled by Hyatt staff.


Is it because a naked man is more offensive than a naked woman? We still don’t see full frontal nudity equally between the sexes, true. Just check out this poster they allowed to remain:

It’s okay for us to see a nude woman in a submissive position, hands bound; but a sexily recumbent man is taboo. Can we not objectify the male form yet? Is that what this is about? The businessmen felt their own sexuality commoditized and challenged?

Or, perhaps, rather than being offended by his masculine sexuality, the businessmen passersby were offended by the URL along the bottom of the poster. Is romance between two men itself a paradox and a challenge to the businessmen’s worldview?

And I know we all hate to do the race analogy, but…would the hotel have yanked promotional materials featuring sexually attractive black women, had businessmen passersby complained?

Hey, when the hotel referenced said “offended businessmen” were they using a quasi-neutral masculine form of the word, or did they really mean that only men complained? Is the eroticized male/the suggestion of homosexuality the sort of thing businesswomen complain about?

Oh, the politics of the publishing industry. I know we often look critically at the production and marketing of textbooks and journals in academia, but I’m every bit as worried about popular literature. Romantic Times staff member Carol Stacy replied to the Hyatt fiasco and questions about Romantic Times’s refusal to review m/m romance as follows:

My decision is based on my "print" readership and the fact that the majority of my "print readers" are not interested in m/m books at this time.

As I have explained to Ms. Baumbauch if that readership changes in the future so will my policy to review this type of fiction.

This is a space consideration AND a business decision. If you will forgive the analogy: one does not cover yoga in a NASCAR magazine if you get my drift.

It's that simple.

[quote source]

Romantic Times renders its Queer readers, and its straight readers of queer romance, invisible in further privileging the interests of the assumed “majority” of readership. This majority status isn’t even clear. I’m not going to call it hard science, but in Carol Stacy’s own poll on m/m erotic romance, only 16% of respondents asserted that they would never consider reading a romance with two male leads. That leaves a lot of wiggle room. Not to mention that this kind of thinking—give the majority exclusively what they already know they like—shortchanges the majority as well, rather than providing door-opening reviews of new areas within the very broad romance genre. Finally, the tactless yoga/NASCAR comparison indicates intensive Othering in its assertion that m/m books obviously cannot also be romance novels.

This is an incident that spreads well beyond the world of romance readers. It exemplifies the pervasive obstacles we face in seeking affirmation of different genders and sexualities.

Oh, and while I’m feeling marginalized and unloved by promoters of a genre I’ve been loyally reading for more than a decade, please check out the “About Us” section of the Romantic Times website. If you find room for me there, be sure to drop a line.

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In a society where binary gender equality has yet to be fully realized, few spaces exist—politically, socially, or linguistically—for transgression of gender categories. Those that do strive to transgress carve out these spaces with fierce courage and perseverance, often working tenaciously upon our very flesh. To be not just sexually queer, but genderqueer, is to enter an especially vulnerable space where our personhood itself is challenged.

How does this play out when one enters a progressive social justice movement such as the Equality Ride? LGBT may be the phrase scrawled across the side of our bus, but I find this abbreviation inadequate and stifling. “Queer” is the only label I claim. And it is a label I claim because it connotes shifting instabilities and fluid identities, a blurring of boundaries.

Shortly after being interviewed by a gay-themed newspaper for my work on the Equality Ride, I found myself pacing agitatedly. I had not mentioned my nonconforming gender identity or preferred pronouns. Trembling over the possible repercussions for my current job at home (no gender nondiscrimination policies where I live), I asked myself, ‘And yet, what kind of activist lets hirself be a silent participant in hir own gender closeting? Step up.’ I called the reporter back.

But as it turns out, I was informed by the reporter (for a prominent gay news magazine, no less): “Well, the problem is…it’s a copy-editing issue. Gender-neutral pronouns (like ‘ze’ and ‘hir’) aren’t real words. We can only use words from the Merriam Webster Dictionary. So unfortunately I don’t think we’ll be able to accommodate that request.” Pause. “I can write that you’d prefer gender-neutral pronouns be used, though.”

So hey, folks, forget petitioning society to change or calling on our queer-friendly publications to serve as revolutionary allies in this struggle. Instead, contact the administrators at Merriam Webster! On the Ride we speak a lot about the power of words in both Christianity and queer activism, but what about who determines what is a word? Do we really need a dictionary to affirm our existences?

Politics and language are inextricably and powerfully connected. And my goodness…are they both fucked up these days. We see nondiscrimination policies that explicitly include “gender identity” or “gender expression” under “sexual orientation” (when, if anything, the opposite would make sense). I mean, yay for nondiscrimination policies, but do we want to write even well-intended misinformation into the law? And here on the Equality Ride, we find additional bizarre misuses of language on many campuses. For example:

Does Northwest have any openly gay students?

While we cannot presume to know the private choices, struggles, and behavior of all individuals in our campus community, we are aware of students who have struggled with gender identity and have agreed to live by our Community Life Standards and remain celibate. We are committed to providing a safe, respectful, and loving environment for all individuals.

This answer demonstrates regrettable ignorance about both sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s a shame that “ignorance” carries such negative connotations. Places of ignorance are not necessarily places of blame. One of many goals of the Equality Ride is to point out these areas and provide an opportunity for institutions of higher education to better educate themselves. We trust their intentions and therefore challenge them to accept responsibility for remedying this not only unfortunate but outright dangerous misinformation.
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