The Toast’s previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here.
I’d never thought about being genderqueer until I had to: instead, I tried to think about my gender (a confusing, uncomfortable thing) as little as possible, like a student loan I couldn’t pay yet, or a dentist appointment I’d yet to have scheduled.
The first time I’d really considered how genderqueerness might matter to me was while picking a fight at a nonprofit leadership conference for LGBT people, as sometimes happens.
After a long day of mock fundraising, team building exercises, and more powerpoints than there were humans in the room, people were tired. This being a conference for professionals, that meant it was the perfect time to interrogate our notions of gender identity and expression.
Preferred pronouns came up, the notion of asking others which pronoun to use to describe them, instead of intuiting which pronouns to use, as a gender witch might do. A power player business professional from the Midwest made a statement.
“I don’t see the point of that genderless stuff. Like ze/zir, or genderqueer, or whatever.”
Heads bobbed in agreement across the room. The older people in the group seemed pleased by the pronouncement, while the younger people, conscious of who makes the hiring decisions at LGBT nonprofits, nodded more noncommittally.
After three years of gender studies classes and 3000 hours on Tumblr, I was momentarily dumbfounded. The coherent part of my brain urged patience.
“Do not, do NOT, use the word neoliberal when responding,” it cautioned. “You are the only person in the room wearing flannel.”
I resorted to the well worn tool of the bitter activist: passive aggressive questions.
“What don’t you like about those phrases? What feels wrong about them to you?”
He wrinkled his nose with obvious distaste. “Why can’t they use the same words as everyone else? Why do they have to be so…fancy?”
Fancy. “Elaborate in structure or decoration.” Implicitly: unnecessary or excessive. Adorned with ribbons. Glittery (admittedly those last two connotations might just be me.)
Fancy is a polarizing word, particularly when applied to notions of queerness. I knew Mr. Midwest’s picture of genderqueers because it was one I shared. In his mind, and mine, genderqueerness was the epitome of fancy. Rather than “normal” gays, lesbians, or trans folks who identify their gender as aligning with notions of “male” or “female,” genderqueer people threw their gender identity all over the place. They went to fancy liberal arts schools, wear fancy sweater vests, and buy fancy monocles for tea parties. Fancy genderqueers are white, transmasculine, well dressed, able bodied and distinctly classed. Even knowing that this narrative is wrong–that it erases people who embrace the feminine side of the spectrum, people of color, disabled folks, and people who aren’t willing or able to pay for $50 for a tie, but are still gender nonconforming, the “fancy” archetype prevails as the singular representation of genderqueer, nonbinary experience. Of course, this erasure is intentional: this “fancy” archetype stands alone because white supremacy, misogyny, and classism conspire to keep narratives of queerness that don’t fit within this narrow category as out of sight as possible. Thus, we’re left with fancy. Fancy genderqueer, genderfluid, and gender non-conforming folks, under this man’s definition, are genderqueer because they choose to be, not because they “have” to be.
But “fancy” is more than just aesthetics: it’s elaborate. Why can’t they pick one or the other? Midwest Power Gay was asking. Why do they have to configure their gender in such ornate ways, with spectrums and genderbread people and brightly colored hair? Why do they need pronouns that aren’t grammatically correct, or have unexpected “z”s? In short: why can’t they just be like everyone else?
This is part of a narrative of queerness as linked exclusively to oppression. The popular narrative of both sexual and gender nonconformity is based on norms of rigid, compulsive sacrifice: “born this way,” “I can’t change,” or “trapped in the closet.” Even as we celebrate gender and sexual diversity, we demand proof that deviation is compulsive, uncontrollable, and that one has suffered innumerable tribulations as consequence. The monolith of gay culture creates an understanding of gender identity as linked to personal pain. You can’t use weird pronouns unless you’ve shown how you’ve suffered for them (our Puritan roots are showing.) Without that conditional of coercive queerness, genderqueer people don’t have a right to take up space.
It was in that moment, the incongruity of anti-fanciness advocacy in a hotel conference room with a chandelier, that I realized my own fear of fancy. The “fanciness” of genderqueerness made it seem impossible to apply to my own gender expression. I don’t have time to think about my gender identity, I had always thought. Not when there’s more important things to think about, like the criminalization of poverty or the evisceration of the ecosystem. I realized that not feeling male or female, feeling uncomfortable in “women” only spaces while feeling sure I wasn’t a dude, and getting called “sir” a lot, were not extraneous feelings and experiences that I needed to ignore. Just because they didn’t perpetuate my abject suffering, didn’t mean they weren’t worth acknowledging.
Not to mention prioritizing “serious” problems over figuring out my own gender identity was not only nonsensical, but offensive, considering the other things I made time to think about. (The criminalization of poverty is more important than my gender identity, but not as important as whether or not I could put pizza in a waffle maker?)
For the next six months, I often laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling. “Is it okay for me to be genderqueer?” I asked the crack in the shape of a rocket ship. “Is that appropriation of a term meant for other people? For trans-ier people?” The ceiling didn’t respond: it was my own question to answer. Plus, rocket ships don’t have genders, so it didn’t have a clue.
Finally, after the fifteenth iteration of the “Am I genderqueer? Is this exploitative?” conversation, a friend of mine had had enough. “Do you feel genderqueer?” she demanded. “When I use “they/their pronouns to describe you, does it feel right?”
I paused, but I already knew the answer. “Yeah, it makes sense.” She shrugged. “Then ask people to use they and their pronouns when they talk about you. Take up space.” More or less: forget fancy.
Being genderqueer is recognizing what makes me feel comfortable, and being okay with taking up space–not to dominate, or to speak over others, but to make myself heard and recognized. For me at least, it doesn’t come from a place of unhappiness or suffering. It simply feels like I’m paying attention to who I am and who I want to be. It lets me be comfortable with me, sans bow tie, and listen.
It’s not fancy, but it’s me.
Tags: genderqueer, H. Kapp-Klote, lgbt, the trans* series, trans* issues
Oh man, this WHOLE THING was so, so terrific. Thank you for getting into the $50 ties thing.
What do you think about people who hate they/their pronouns on the basis that they are grammarians and it just doesn’t “sound right”? Are they also afraid of being fancy, or are they fancier than thou? Mostly this is people who are older and more experienced than me in academia and usually in a position of power, so it is very frustrating to realize nothing I can say or do will ever make them believe me.
Anyone who doesn’t think singular they/their doesn’t “sound right” doesn’t talk to actual people tbqh
Just throwing this out there as a tactic: when I don’t want to go on my usual rant about how prescriptivism is an exclusionary practice that benefits the culturally-centered privileged classes upholding it, I usually go with “It was good enough for Shakespeare; it’s good enough for me.” It’s actually not the world best argument, but since they’re already making an appeal to authority, it does usually shut ’em up for a bit.
So much of prescriptivism is based on preserving the sanctity of the Canon. That seems like a good shut-down. (I think that whole “this is how it was meant to sound” argument is a cheat anyway. We haven’t lost Homer or Virgil even though we don’t really know how their works were spoken.)
Print out copies of the OED entry on singular “they” (or buy/acquire whole volumes of the OED*, depending on the annoyingness level of the person in question) and hit them with it until they give in and admit it’s been in consistent use since the 1300s, is an integral part of the language, and only “sounds wrong” because Victorians ruin everything.
* I suggest using the OED not because personal pronouns must be validated by some external, “respectable” source, but simply because it’s often the fastest way to get a self-proclaimed “grammarian” on your side. On a more fundamental level, suggesting the comfort of the person objecting should be prioritized over the comfort of the person asking to be referred to by those pronouns is absurd.
Also (and this is why I love the OED), the OED was the first dictionary (at least the first English one) to define language by how it’s used, not how it should be used, so it’s super useful in this sense.
Also large enough for serious bludgeoning. Shouldn’t take more than 2-3 whacks to get someone to give in.
I think they (heh) are kind of jerks, because they have almost certainly used “they” for a single person colloquially — one can argue about whether it is “proper grammar,” but it is certainly grammatical.
On that note: is there anyone out there interested in linguistics who can talk about the introduction of actually new pronouns (the hir/xe/zir etc. set)? The only nonbinary people I’ve known have used they or it, and I’ve found those very easy to use because I already use those sets of pronouns for groups — I just have to mentally include the person in those groups. A friend of mine has a roommate moving in that uses a combination of hir/zir that I can’t totally remember (it was mentioned only in passing, and I never met this person) and I’m wondering how I’ll deal with it linguistically*. Instead of adding a person to an existing category, I have to create a category for this person. It certainly takes a lot of effort and feels ungrammatical now — I wonder how long it will take for a mental shift to occur (or if I will just always have to consider pronoun use before speaking).
*Socially, I am absolutely fine with non-standard pronouns! I don’t mean this to come off as “silly person, your pronouns are too difficult for me” as it’s not what I mean at all.
Well, I don’t know of any specific studies done on the subject, but I would suggest that it’s good sense to assume the speed at which a new word or phrase becomes widely accepted as grammatical depends largely on how much it used. Internet linguistics can provide some analogues, perhaps: in that some terms coined for online use and new uses of existing words have become almost universally accepted in a very short space of time – and continue to do so all the time. This is simply a feature of how well the web has become integrated with mainstream life. For new forms used almost exclusively by, or with reference to, less visible groups, I suspect a thorough linguistic study will reveal it is a lot harder to get them into common usage.
I would also suggest that it pays to compare these pronouns to other new forms, and how they are made. By far the most common way of making new words is to derive them from others that already exist. The problem with trying to use “ze/xe/hir” is that they are derived from German, not English, and as such are going to be quite difficult for most speakers to accept. In fact, none of the gender neutral pronouns I’ve seen look like they’re derived from English words in a way consistent with normal English phonology and morphology. Spivak comes close, although for entirely suspect reasons, and “thon” feels like it could work if it’s subject and object forms didn’t look like a possessive. Most seem to be derived from German or Dutch, or just made up out of nowhere. While it’s possible to end up with words that fit into English like that, they’d first have to undergo the same phonological changes as all loanwords do. All in all, I’m not sure anyone has come up with a gender neutral pronoun that will be easier to accept than just using “they”. If there really is a need for one (I can’t comment on this, other than denying the ungrammaticality of singular “they”), then better efforts are needed.
On a slightly different note – try to distinguish grammaticality on the basis of i-language and e-language. If you use a linguistic form and it feels perfectly fine to you, and it doesn’t give you pause except when other people don’t understand it, then it is completely grammatical in your i-language. It doesn’t have to be grammatical in other people’s i-language to be grammatical in yours. Where different i-languages meet, you get an e-language, which consists of all the forms on which the separate i-languages agree. (Also realise that forms can have degrees of grammaticality and it’s not a simple on/off status.) So when you’re talking about new terms you want to be more widespread, don’t be afraid to just say “it’s grammatical to me”.
Not that you were asking me, but as a professional copy editor, I hereby grant you GRAMMATICAL SANCTUARY, which includes permission to tell those people that basic human dignity and the right to determine one’s own identity trump their pedantic yearning for consistency.
Fellow copy editor seconding sanctuary!
And another thirding it!
And fourthing, here!
I deeply enjoy the number of copy editors present on this site.
Alright, but why does dignity and respect specifically require the singular they? Why is a set like e/em/eir not okay?
yeah, I mean, there are lots of things about English that don’t sound right, though. One language can’t do everything, which is why we get those listicles* about untranslatable words and stuff. So like, the language fails, we’re humans, we have to adapt. The English language (or any language) is not this precious, perfect thing that’s 100% right for every situation.
Using “they/them” as a singular pronoun sounds wrong to me, too, but you know what, I fucking got over myself. (I realize that telling people to fucking get over themselves is not a useful tactic in an argument, sorry.)
*here’s a fun one: http://www.boredpanda.com/untranslatable-words-fo…
Somehow I always get irritated when I see schlemazel without schlemiel. How can you remember one without the other? The schlemiel spills the soup on the schlemazel!
*breaks out into the Laverne and Shirley theme song*
Inform those people that the prejudice against singular they was invented wholecloth by 19th century grammarians who thought that English should behave exactly like Latin and saw no reason that centuries of evidence to the contrary should stop them from making it so. (Ditto split infinitives and dangling participles.)
I knew this about split infinitives and dangling participles but not about singular they. I am pleased to add this knowledge to my brain. Thank you! =D
Is this in reference to the roughly five actual grammarians who have dedicated their lives and 60 hours a week to Grammar and edit Strunk & White reprints, or self-assigned grammar police who are boring crackers unduly enamored of their own middleschool command of English, who like to sneer at people for using “y’all” or making casual conversation with dangling participles
Either way: living language, fuckholes *lights blunt with English degree*
I am graduating with a BA in English soon, and *lights blunt with English degree* is the perfect motto to control my anxiety about the future, THANK YOU (sincerely!)
They are probably bright 18-year-olds who tried to get their French teacher’s goat in high school by openly reading Teach Yourself Latin in class. They are earnest, and they enjoy being right. They are used to it. They don’t realize they’re assholes; it’s just that other people are wrong. They are going to take linguistics courses in college because they want to learn the Ultimate Long-Ago Secrets of Proto-Indo-European and along their way they are going to get their minds blown by this whole living language thing.
They have an increased risk of growing up to be underemployed classics PhDs who spend too much time on the internet mocking prescriptivists like their former selves.
As someone who is agendered AND has issues with “singular they”: The absolute and immediate hate generated by a simple preference is absolutely astounding. “E/er/em” is a perfectly fine pronoun set which is linguistically clear, verbally low-impact, and conceptually sound. “Singular they” muddles language, in the same way that “you” as both singular and plural results in misunderstandings.
No, I don’t need to shout every time somebody uses a singular they. No, it isn’t some horrifyingly offensive slight against my world entire. No, I’m not some stuffy old professor typing this from a throne-like leather armchair. I’m just some geek kid sitting in the dark and thinking “but why do we need to make English worse?”.
Amen! I have a personal dislike for “singular they” as a chosen pronoun because it is often used in conversation to imply “I don’t know or care about the gender of the person being discussed”, and so using it to refer to a person whose gender I DO know and/or care about feels rude. It’s like calling someone’s baby “your baby” instead of using a name – not technically inaccurate, but if you know it, use it! Of course, if I know that someone’s preference is for singular they, I use it to refer to them – but it drives me crazy when people claim that “they” is a gender-neutral singular pronoun. It may not imply a specific gender, but, for many people, it carries an implication that gender is irrelevant, unimportant, or as-of-yet-undetermined, none of which are things I want to imply when talking about a friend, especially one whose gender is often marginalized.
Also, while we’re mucking around with pronouns, distinct and widely accepted singular and plural versions of both you and they would be great. If I were a gender witch, I’d totally make that happen.
This is actually an important distinction: everyone uses the singular “they” in conversation. BUT, it is generally only used to refer to a person whose gender is unknown. “When the waiter comes, can you ask them for more cheesy bread?” sounds fine, but “John sounds like they’re having a hard time” sounds weird. So, when used as a personal pronoun for a specific person, it breaks linguistic norms. This isn’t even a prescriptivist argument (“the singular they is bad because that’s the rule!”); it’s a descriptivist one (people don’t use “they” in that way). This realization was actually what made me go from wholly in favor of the singular “they” as a GN pronoun to simply disliking it no more than any other option.
(As an aside, my problem with e/er/em is that it makes you sound like you’re doing a bad pseudo-British accent or something. “‘E was telling me that ‘er flatmate wouldn’t get in the lift, so I said just leave ’em!”)
One thing I’ve found very interesting is that pretty much everyone I’ve met who identifies as genderqueer has wrestled with the “am I genderqueer ENOUGH to claim this term for myself?” Surely there’s someone who’s felt confident with it from day one, but I have not run across such a person.
Thanks for sharing! I drift in and out of the gq identity-space (I’ve kind of given up on trying to describe my gender for now; in desperation a few weeks ago I just pointed to Pusheenicorn and said “there, THAT is my gender”) but I always appreciate perspectives on genderqueerness!
I did the same wrestling with being bi, and have occasionally contemplated my possible genderqueerness. I think especially those who have not Suffered For Queerness (as the piece describes) feel somehow guilty claiming any kind of queer identity because it’s like we haven’t “earned” it. Sigh.
Oh interesting! I don’t think I’d really thought of it as a Degree of Suffering issue, but I can totally see that.
I’ve talked with people who id as bisexual but have never had same-sex relationships who worry that their sexuality is invalid; considering how many folks love invalidating bisexuality, I don’t blame them, although I don’t agree at all that there’s some minimum of real-world experience needed to “prove” bisexuality to anyone else.
Sadly the takeaway lesson seems to be that identity policing is everywhere and fear of the identity police can keep people from feeling ok about claiming identities that fit them.
“I don’t agree at all that there’s some minimum of real-world experience needed to “prove” bisexuality to anyone else.”
I’ve been thinking about sexual orientation, and the strange ways it’s demanded we prove it (I quietly-to-myself identify as asexual, but I have the whole proving-a-negative thing to contend with so I’m still struggling with how much I want to invite that discussion into my life).
If sexual orientation requires some level of proof, does that mean no one has an orientation until they have a sexual encounter (that they enjoyed)? If people can’t identify as bi before they’ve had sex with both men and women, how can people identify as straight before having any sex at all?
Oh yeah, I’ve been told (by a genderqueer/pansexual friend) that I’m not bi enough to be bi. And I listened, because ze’s got bona fides, right? Ze’d know better than me, because ze’s up on all the theory and stuff, and so my thinking “Huh, that tall lush-bodied lady is hotttttt” is probably just having been trained to look at women’s bodies as sexual objects and probably unfeminist. I should just get back in my straight box with my husband and be happy and privileged. :/
YES. I’m bi, married to a cis dude and have spent many an hour thinking about visibility, being queer enough etc. Less frequently I have thoughts about where I fit on the gender spectrum and how I present.
I deeply appreciate this piece because someone very dear to me is taking their first steps into non-binary identity and I want to be the best ally to them I can. So thank you very much for your words H.
I came to basically say “same” and then was like, oh, hi, I know you.
I spent long hours in high school worrying that I wasn’t bi ENOUGH for it to count. Maybe I just liked that one girl — I obviously didn’t like kissing my girlfriend. I now recognize this as the precursor to the ‘maybe I’m just not ace ENOUGH’ worry sessions of my grad school years. (I…don’t really worry about not being gay enough now.)
I also spent a long time thinking about my gender identity and the pull I felt toward androgyny then, but unlike my bisexuality worries, that is something that has only become more complicated over time, as my temperament and grown up life pressures have made me more and more femme. It doesn’t help that my sister identifies as genderqueer and has a thousand trans and agender friends and her utopian queer school, and she sees me as the hopelessly cis one, to the point that sometimes I just want to yell, “YOU’RE AN UNDERWEIGHT ART NERD AND CAN LOOK HOWEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT. Androgyny is not in my body’s wheelhouse or my professional wheelhouse anymore but I was there first, kid.”
Anyway. Layers upon layers of insecurity when all your identities are liminal and invisible. Extra fun to add not-visibly-biracial to that too.
(Um. Out loud to my sister I was more like “I support and love you and I can empathize with some of your experiences” because I am actually not a terrible older sister. But I did try and explain how being fat and being a professional in a slightly conservative field can impact one’s gender expression.)
It’s like we all have genderqueer-impostor-syndrome
‘But “fancy” is more than just aesthetics: it’s elaborate. Why can’t they pick one or the other? Midwest Power Gay was asking. Why do they have to configure their gender in such ornate ways, with spectrums and genderbread people and brightly colored hair? Why do they need pronouns that aren’t grammatically correct, or have unexpected “z”s? In short: why can’t they just be like everyone else?’
YEEAAHHHHhh
I feel this whole thing so hard. Thank you!
I myself have the genderweirds. I like cooking. I also like making my own bow ties. Sometimes I’m all, ‘Am I missing something? Am I half-arsing my gender in addition to my British-Thai identity and willingness to make my own coconut milk?’ but no, it doesn’t work like that. It takes me like 2 hours to break open a coconut every shitting time, and I am a queer. These are truths as I experience them.
Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. I have something to share now when I am too tired to explain.
thank you! that is really really flattering because I mostly wrote this to send to my dad. 🙂
As an outsider to this conversation, I will just quote Mr. Rogers: “Everybody’s fancy, everybody’s fine; your body’s fancy, and so is mine!” (I bet he would have included gender if he were making the show today.)
Mr. Rogers was the real deal.
I got another word for it: gender-cide. “Fancy” is code for “visibly queer” and “queer culture”. The UN Convention on Genocide states unequivocally that the repression and destruction of the culture of a people is the legal definition of genocide, even if the people have not been physically injured or killed. The erasure of queer culture, the repression and denigration of a visibly queer culture, is on the path to genocide, or what I call ‘gender-cide.’
Okay, I know all the other comments are positive, and now I’m that person, but since we’re all supposed to take up the space we need: um, no. No, absolutely, to comparisons with genocide. I’ve lobbied hard to get cases like Darfur referred to the ICC, and look: acting like people not getting or respecting your feelings about your gender identity is comparable to genocide is like those celebrities who compare paparazzi to rapists. Taking pictures isn’t rape, and people not wanting to use your preferred pronoun is not genocide. This is exactly the attitude that can make people like me, who otherwise like to be polite and respectful of others, including addressing them however they like, within reason, to feel like worrying about pronouns is a shining example of a first-world problem.
Yuuuuuup. Genocide trivialization is bad news.
In short: why can’t they just be like everyone else?
It knocks me sideways that the people who (tacitly or explicitly) keep asking that question never seem to get: because that “everybody else” set it up that way. That “everybody else” wants it that way. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be so vociferous over a pronoun.
“Take up space” is the best advice, thank you for quoting that!
This post is so great, thank you so much for this! I feel myself slipping into those “why can’t they just be like everyone else? why do they have stand out?” judgments sometimes and I have to remind myself that I’m here for all the queer (in multiple senses) variations on sexuality, attraction, and gender in human experience. Reading this post has helped me think about why I have that inner old conservative voice sometimes and what arguments I can use to shut it down in the future.
but most importantly: what happened with the pizza in the waffle maker?
This post was really really amazing and wonderful but also…could you cook the pizza in the waffle maker?
According to Serious Eats you can both MAKE pizza in the waffle iron AND REHEAT pizza in the waffle iron.
Serious Eats is not working very well today, so those links may or may not work.
Can i get the links now? I want to make one for me.
Man, I really wish this post did not prompt “Fancy” by Iggy Azealia to pop into my head and lodge itself there. :/
I have decided to feel NOT AT ALL BAD for liking that song; I welcome you to join me
Have you considered, as an alternative, Reba McEntire?
Or this perfect mashup of the two?
I SAID BABY I DO DIS I THOUGHT THAT YOU KNEW DIS
(I love everything about this song except when she says retarded. So close to perfect, Iggy.)
Nothing’s really made me happier than being called handsome, and treated like the effete and terribly picky man I truly am. Everyone says I take after my mother, who is Conan on her horse with her sword and paintbrush, but in truth the older I get – and the fussier – the closer I am to my father, who wilts like a lily on exposure to sun or liquor.
Dad taught me clothes, my mother said never to afford cheapness in cloth, and all my long-dead gorgeous ‘uncles’ make me believe that just maybe, in the right light, clothes can make a man.
I’m fancy because it’s the most punk thing I can manage. DIY.
This post is so, so great. I want to print it out so I can hug it to my chest and squee. As a Midwest/Southern queer, I hear this attitude from older people all the time. For me (and my own personal definition of queer), part of what makes queer appealing as an identity is the recognition of the complication of gender and sexuality and the inherent politicalness of the label. I fully identify as queer sexually, but I feel like genderqueer is something that I’ve been flirting with a long time but have felt that I wasn’t “queer” or masculine enough to fully claim.
People’s dogged resistence to calling other people what they want to be called always amazes me. Especially when it’s people who don’t have some explicit ideological beef with whatever your gender situation is. I mean, what do you lose by being polite? Maybe a slight amount of cognitive energy to remember it? Guess what, even that goes away, when you practice.
Also I enjoy the phrase “gender witch” very much.
It’s not “fancy”, it’s courtesy. Perhaps politeness in general is too fancy a concept for them?
“Is that appropriation of a term meant for other people? For trans-ier people?”
OMG THE FEELING OF APPROPRIATING QUEER WORDS AS A BLOSSOMING QUEER. Also, the phrase “Midwest Power Gay” made my day.
This this this. Relating so hard to this.
Also I love love love love The Toast and Toast readers and commenters because there were multiple people like “this is a great article but please could you talk more about pizza and wafflemakers” and then others linked them to relevant material
H, thank you so so so much for writing this. I feel closer to understanding my own gender and identity thanks to your article.
Granted, I’m still not sure what my identity is. Yesterday, for the first time I told a group of friends that I did not have a preferred pronoun. But at the same time, my thoughts were along the lines of “I guess I’m kind of like genderqueer, maybe something close to it, but not really?”
I don’t feel male, and I don’t feel female. I don’t feel like I fit inside either box. And I find myself scared to identify as genderqueer because I’m scared of just putting myself into another box.
I think masculinity and femininity are both social constructs with no innate truth, and I reject them both and just want to be me, whatever that is. Is that genderqueer? I don’t know, but I would really love if someone would talk to me about it.
My wee liberal church is going through a whole discernment process to be more intentionally welcoming to the LGBTQ community, and it’s the T and the Q that (mostly older) folks have a hard time with. Not that they are intentionally mean or close-minded, but that’s *not enough,* and the Midwest Power Gay could easily have been a member of our well-meaning but occasionally fumbling congregation. So this kind of thing is so, so lovely (and funny! and well-written, and meaningful) to find. I have quietly shared it on FB. Thank you thank you.
I would love to hear about that process! Is it the whole (or most) of the community? Do you just hang out in a town hall setting or have more focused sessions or….?? I am really curious about this.
It’s for the whole community, although obviously different people are going to continue to be in different places throughout the process. There’s a whole list of things to try, to gain some discernment and figure out where we are now, where we want to go, etc. The goal is that our congregation will intentionally be a welcoming, safe space regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity (which in central Texas is no small thing, sigh). Here’s a link that talks about it: http://www.uua.org/lgbtq/welcoming/program/
What we have done is first, poll the congregation about their comfort levels with various ideas, orientations, etc. That’s where I get the info that people are very comfortable with gay and lesbian members, couples, families, etc, but some are still weirded out by thinking about folks who are bisexual, transgender, or genderqueer. We’ve had several adult faith development class (grown-up Sunday school, lol) about definitions and clear speech – just helping people differentiate between gender identity and sexual orientation was a huge accomplishment, lol. We talked about pronoun choice, microaggressions, privilege, and so on. We have also invited several speakers to our pulpit (we don’t have a full-time minister at the moment) to speak directly about being a person of faith and a person who identifies as transgender, gay, lesbian, etc. (There’s an interesting book called Coming Out in Faith, and we had one of the editors come and speak two or three times.) We have our own liturgical year that connects various seasons and months with our values, and June’s theme happens to be “This Light of Mine,” and is related to our principle of affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person, which just happens to give us a great excuse to talk about Pride Month and have parties and so on. 🙂 I should say, I guess, that I’m a Unitarian Universalist, and it’s my wee UU church that is doing all this. Can you tell I’m kind of invested? Lol. I love it. Two of our members, with some help from others, recently got our city to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the city’s list of protected statuses for city employees, so now you can’t be fired for being gay here anymore, at least not by the city. (Oh, social action outreach is another aspect of being a Welcoming Congregation, but we have been doing that around LGBTQ issues for so long, it’s just a continuation of ideas and dreams that were already taking place.) I personally have gone to get my online ordination so I am ready to marry anyone and everyone if/when Texas finally pulls its head out of its ass and allows equal marriage rights to all. It may take a federal injunction, but by damn, we’ll get there.
Sorry, that is DEFINITELY tl;dr. Now you know: be careful of what you ask for. 🙂
Your church sounds so cool..
Omg NO that was awesome and wonderful and I’d be back in a church in a heartbeat if I found one so open and willing to self-evaluate as yours. My one and only remaining question is – how long has this process been going on/how long are you expecting it to take? Or is it an never-ending, always-evolving type of process?
Thank you so much for writing that out, you are obviously so proud and so dedicated!
Aww, thanks! I am proud of us for working at it. 🙂 Becoming a Welcoming Congregation takes anywhere from 6 months to a year. We have tried it a few times and not completed it – it’s a lot of work! – but this time should be the charm. Then we will revisit it/re-educate ourselves every few years – maybe do another round of adult Sunday school, keep working for marriage equality, etc.
Check out a UU church or fellowship if you have one nearby. I’m a hardcore secular humanist with Buddhist and atheist leanings, and a dedicated UU. It’s very flexible, open and welcoming. That said, the churches vary a lot – there are some that are more Christian than others, at least one in DFW that is intentionally pagan, and so on. Each church has its own flavor. 🙂
UU Toasties represent!
This post and comment thread feel like such a safe space, thank you.
I have a lot of feelings about not being trans-y enough in my genderqueerness. I want most of all to feel a sense of community with other gender nonconforming/gender deviant people, but constantly feel like I have too much privilege to participate or take up space in trans spaces. I am masc presenting, white, female bodied…all the identities that take up too much space in genderqueer and trans spaces. I know we need more space for femme-presenting, non-white genderqueers so in a way my feels are kind of derailing and privilege denying.
But I wish I didn’t so often feel unacknowledged or unrecognized by my trans siblings. It makes me sad. Hi. It is a delicate balance we walk seeking to gain recognition from others, and give recognition in return. I feel invisible because I’m not physically transitioning, like I’m not “really” part of the trans umbrella or community. Like I haven’t paid my trans dues because I’m not clashing with institutional structures, just flying under the radar.
(sad trombone)
“Do not, do NOT, use the word neoliberal when responding,” it cautioned. “You are the only person in the room wearing flannel.”
This made me laugh.
Great piece. I really liked how you took us on the journey with you.
Oh man, I remember my parents explaining that to me when I was, like, seven. Also that chutzpah is killing your parents and then asking the court for mercy because you're an orphan.
Sadly, many people do think politeness is "fancy," but that is another rant for another day.
Hello, me too! We can be a queer community together!
(Not that the need to feel part of a larger, more diverse queer community is invalid or unimportant, but still – hi, me too!)
That is how I feel too! I want to dress like a dapper gentleman, have sex with queer, male-identified folks who dig my masculine side, and not have hormones or surgery. I often find myself doubting my genderqueerness by thinking "but surely everyone feels this way!" – but when I write it out like that, it occurs to me that perhaps they don't?
Genderfluid androgyne is the closest I've come to a label that feels right. Where do I pay my dues? What do I have to do to feel like those are words I'm allowed to use, and that I'm allowed to exist in queer spaces, something I feel a desperate need to do?
Because nobody is like everybody else.
““Do not, do NOT, use the word neoliberal when responding,” it cautioned. “You are the only person in the room wearing flannel.”
I resorted to the well worn tool of the bitter activist: passive aggressive questions.”
<3
*Fist Pump* YES TAKE UP SPACE. You know what the best feeling in the world is? Not budging on the sidewalk while some guy in an expensive suit yakking on his phone barrels towards you. Make the bastard move.
This is so illuminating and well-written. Thank you.
This is one of the best articles on approaches to genderqueerness that I’ve read. It’s also just one of the best pieces of writing that I’ve read, ever. The sentence that you included, “Just because they didn’t perpetuate my abject suffering, didn’t mean they weren’t worth acknowledging.” – yes. So much yes to that. Whether related to genderqueerness or any other “issue” that a person might be going through. As someone who comes from a background of eating disorder and depression and a different sort of self-discovery and self-acceptance fight, the “take up space” motto is something I’ve had to come to terms with too.
Basically, holy moly, this whole piece is amazing and relevant and well-written and widely applicable and wonderful. Good going. Yes.
“Take up space”
Yep, I needed this. Fantastic, really.
Wonderful insightful description – thanks so much… writing an article about genderqueer selfies and whether taking up this visible space constitutes empowerment – I think you’ve given me my closing argument!
THANK YOU
I’m a person who is very in the “middle” of things (bisexual, androgynous, attracted to androgyny) and have been told and have felt that I was not “queer” enough. Thank you for actually spelling out what I think a lot of us have been feeling for a long time–it helps so much to have this article.
THANK YOU
I'm a person who is very in the "middle" of things (bisexual, androgynous, attracted to androgyny) and have been told and have felt that I was not "queer" enough. Thank you for actually spelling out what I think a lot of us have been feeling for a long time–it helps so much to have this article.