I don't identify as genderfluid myself. It's one more in a long list of terms that technically might apply, depending on how they're interpreted, but which would be misleading because of how they're more generally used.
If there's a widely shared notion of what "genderfluid" means, a cartoon caricature sort of simplification, it's the person who has "girl days" and "boy days", a person who oscillates between the two conventional genders at some oscillation-frequency. Like alternating current, or the progression of night and day, first one and then the other and repeat.
There really are people whose gender fluidity matches that description pretty closely. (And there is nothing wrong with society having a simplified cartoon caricature understanding of something complex, and certainly nothing wrong with individuals fitting the stereotype). A double handful of people in my online genderqueer Facebook groups have written specifically about their experiences on days when they were feeling femme or conversations they had with their mom on one of their masc days, and I recall one person saying they would realize who what gender they were each day when they stepped to their closet and looked at the girl clothes on the left and the boy clothes on the right side and felt which side called to them.
But there are also a lot of people whose identity as genderfluid has to do with squirming out of the confinement of any rigid gender identity because of its limitations. If you visualize the whole range of possible human experience and human behavior and personality and character attributes, a lot of what gender is about is a litany of shouldn'ts. Constraints. Boys don't cry. A lady wouldn't sit with her knees apart. A man ought not to let his fear show. Girls don't, boys don't, shouldn't shouldn't shouldn't. Many a genderfluid person attains escape from that by not feeling confined to any specific gender, and therefore not subject to those barriers.
That raises the question that my agender and neutrois associates might raise: "Then why have a gender at all, fluid or otherwise? If they're all about constraints, wouldn't it be more freeing to bail out on the whole gender thing entirely?"
But gender isn't solely about constraints. For any given gender, we have role models, heroes, social icons who have demonstrated a capability or attained something, and these can be powerful to draw upon. Gender can be about strengths, about what a person of a given gender can do, sometimes things that seem to step beyond the limitations of what we think a generic person is able to do. Or a way of being in the world, a set of characteristics that are most easily comprehended by referencing their widely-shared popularization as associated with a specific kind of person of a specific gender. A genderfluid person may embrace these libraries of potentials and strengths and other admirable traits, with all their previously-expressed nuances, as elements of a gender that they participate in.
Perhaps a neutral genderless notion of a person should not be scoured of these images and portrayals, but if our myths and stories and the portrayals of characters in books and films are embedded in a gendered world (as indeed they tend almost invariably to be), trying to evoke them without evoking the gender with which they are most associated can be like trying to think about how rose petals feel without conjuring up memories of how roses look and smell. It's just easier when you include the associated experiences.
A lot of people say that their gender fluidity is less like a binary either/or condition that flips from girl to boy and more like the progression of seasons. They may have times in their lives when they feel strongly anchored in one gender and other times when they are rather prominently rooted in another, but they may also have a lot of time spent neither strongly this nor that but with elements of both, or neither, or some of this and some of that intertwined.
The poles of a genderfluid person's variances may not be the two conventional ones of woman versus man. Some genderfluid people say that they vary between femme and agender; some explain that their fluidity ranges from demigirl to tomboy. There is a sense in which any given gender terms carries with it an assortment of positive and negative attributes, woven together to create an overall feeling or taste. A person exploring their gender identity may be observed to be trying on several of these in turn, trying to see which notion resonates with them best and feels like the most accurate description. (The various gender qroups I'm in are always well-populated with posts from people posing such questions as "Do you think I am nonbinary, or am I more demiboy?" and then describing what they like or don't like about the "fit" of each term). A genderfluid person is sometimes a person who decides that instead of needing to finally select the perfect term and stick with it, they can treat gender identities like items in their wardrobe, and populate their gender wardrobe with gender identities that look nice on them and fit pretty well and which they feel comfortable in. We have more than one outfit in our clothes closet, why not more than one gender? And why not more than two, for that matter. Not all genderfluid people have only two components that they vary between. There can be more.
I myself don't oscillate, really. Oscillating back and forth between two (or more) specified gender expressions or identities is not a specific requirement for being genderfluid, but it's what the term "genderfluid" brings to mind for most people who know the term at all, and that's the main reason I don't identify as genderfluid.
I haven't been immutably rooted in a single lifelong gender identity for myself, either, though. When I look back, what I see in my life is a long single curve that appears to have landed at a final stable destination. When I was a young kid, around 7 or 8, I saw myself as being a person who was like the girls were. I was in the inverse situation of a tomboy — I was male and unapologetically so, but very much out to show the girls that I deserved their respect as an equal, measured on their terms. And didn't want to be associated with or thought of as one of the boys. Then, in junior high and high school, as a consequence of being sexually attracted to girls, I slowly shifted towards a boy gender identity: the countercultural mellow hippie male, a variant type of male identity that didn't seem so horrible and foreign but which was also associated with sexuality and sexual liberation, especially with a form of sexuality that wasn't as laden with conquest and exploitation and was, itself, more mellow and loving. And then, in early adulthood, my path of my gender identity curved back again as I found the "countercultural guy" ultimately not a very good fit for me and came to realize that in an important sense I was still who I had been as a young kid, essentially one of the girls and proud of it.
I identify as genderqueer, and as a gender invert.
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Sunday, April 29, 2018
Monday, April 23, 2018
Finding Your People / Coming Out: Genderqueer Compared to Other LGBTQIA Identities
Part One: The Sense of Community
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When gay and lesbian people embrace their identities, they typically have the option of being part of a community of similarly-identified people. Maybe there are gay bars, or eating establishments that cater so significantly to gay and lesbian patrons that it's thought of as a gay or lesbian dining spot. There may even be a "gay part of town" where people can go, places where gay and lesbian folks are sufficiently concentrated that they are not in the minority. There are gay cruises on cruise ships, dances for gay folks, and other such opportunities.
I'm sure it's not quite as available when one is a lesbian or gay guy in Miles City, Montana or Hahira, Georgia, and attending such venues can leave one vulnerable to attack, but still, the opportunity is there in a generic sort of way.
And for gay and lesbian folks it has the dual purpose of networking with your allies and mixing and mingling with your potential partners.
I think the ways in which this is different for other people of minority orientation, gender identity, and intersex identities is worth looking at, because it shapes what coming out is like, and because since gay and lesbian people's experiences are more socially established, it is likely that some people extrapolate from what they know about gay and lesbian people's experiences as "out" and assume it's the same for the rest of us, if only because they hadn't given it much thought.
I had some preformed ideas about what it was like to be a male-to-female or female-to-male transgender person — that they didn't particularly want to be a part of some kind of transgender community (except for political networking and activism), they wanted to blend in with the larger world of ordinary men and women; that they wanted to be seen and accepted as men and women, not as transgender men and women. But I didn't want to rely on these and end up making statements about people that weren't necessarily accurate, so I did some informal polling in some Facebook groups for trans people.
The answers partially confirmed what I thought: that it is important to most binary trans people to be perceived as men and women, not as transgender people. One respondent wrote "the whole point of transitioning is to no longer be associated with the gender I was assigned at birth", and to be seen as transgender is to be reminded of that. Or, as another person put it, "that would defeat the whole purpose".
And yet, at the same time, a significant number of respondents said that they enjoy having safe spaces, places to socialize with other transgender people where they can talk about experiences specific to being trans. Most of those spaces are formal support groups but some said "hey, if there were trans cruises or a trans part of town, I'd totally check it out... I pass and I like being part of mainstream society and accepted without question as a woman, but I am not ashamed of being trans and it is part of who I am".
Several transgender respondends stressed that they were proud of their identities and did not want to leave the impression that they were slinking around shamefully trying to hide it. Many said they needed to connect to other trans people even if only for political purposes, to provide or receive support, and others said they'd like more social opportunities to be with other transgender people as well. But this was "in addition to", not instead of having the opportunity to pursue their lives as non-differentiated men and women; they didn't want to be confined to a transgender ghetto, because being trans was not their gender identity, being a man or a woman was.
A couple people said they weren't sure what would happen in a hypothetical trans bar or trans part of town: "I can see the need for 'gay districts', since gay people need to find other people they are physically attracted to, but I don't think trans people have that same need".
I also polled people who identify as genderqueer and/or as nonbinary, in several Facebook groups that specifically include us:
I wanted to rule out the possibility that, on the cusp of turning 60, my own experiences were not exemplary of what genderqueer / binary people go through, and that I was pretty isolated from the contemporary experience of coming out genderqueer, you know? Because for me, there's never been anything akin to a sense of community except in these online forums. And for most of my "out" life I have craved being in a space where my variation was normative, and not only for political / networking purposes but also for reasons akin to what gay and lesbian people get from it: to be in a space where I'd stand a better chance of meeting people who wanted to get romantically or sexually involved with someone like me.
In general, almost none of my genderqueer respondents said they were part of a face to face community aside from support groups, and only a few people had been in face-to-face support groups dedicated to genderqueer / nonbinary people. Several respondents reported having been in generic LGBT, LGBTQ, or LGBTQIA support groups where they felt accepted and could identify as part of the larger community.
That was likewise true for anything approximating a "genderqueer/nb part of town". People often gravitated towards the lesbian or gay clubs or areas, and were often made to feel welcome, but seldom felt recognized and understood as nonbinary or genderqueer — when people perceived them as having a variance from mainstream gender expression, their reaction was "oh you're gay like me, like the rest of us here". That was an improvement over "oh, you're one of those people" but it still meant not being perceived accurately.
Only one person mentioned anything akin to a genderqueer or enby bar, and that was to remonstrate against alcohol-based establishments as ideal places to flirt and date. When some other people inquired further to ask where this enby bar was, no specifics were given, and the reply may have been about generic gay/lesbian bars since the main focus of the reply was to advise people to not turn to drinking establishments for this purpose. Alcoholism and drug abuse are a concern for many people in the LGBTQIA world.
There was a lot of curiosity and interest in the possibility of such a thing, a genderqueer social scene. Apparently I'm not alone in feeling like this would be a wonderful thing, nor am I alone in the impression that we don't have it yet.
Gay and lesbian people, as I said, benefit from the existence of a gay/lesbian social environment because they can meet people they are physically attracted to who are attracted to them in turn. How is that similar or dissimilar for genderqueer / nonbinary folks? Well...
• It is reasonable to assume that the people that lesbian women are attracted to are other lesbian women, and that gay males's attraction is towards other gay males. It's a lot less inevitable that genderqueer people are primarily or exclusively attracted to — or are attractive to — other genderqueer people.
• But it isn't highly unusual either. Skoliosexuality is a neologistic term for people whose sexual orientation is to "transgender or nonbinary/genderqueer people". That's a complicated and problematic "or", insofar as many transgender people do not particularly want to be the target of someone's sexual interest on the basis of them being trans. The specific link I just referenced includes the additional bit "See also: transfan, tranny chaser, chaser". Be that as it may, genderqueer / nonbinary people are far less likely to oppose or resist the idea of people being specifically attracted to us for being the way we are. (Hence, it would be nice if a term were to evolve that pertains to being attracted to genderqueer folks without it simultaneously being tied to tranny chasing and objectifying trans people sexually).
• Genderqueer and nonbinary people are not a homogenous group with a single uniform preference. I know that, for myself, it was crucially important that I be perceived as a male very different from the typical generic males, specifically that I was a femme, a person with interests and tendencies and sexual nature and romantic inclinations akin to the girls and women... and that this not only be tolerated but found attractive, hot, that it be affirmatively found desirable. So for lack of a better term, I've always wanted to be surrounded by skoliosexual women.
• ...Or skoliosexual female people, at any rate. While I am not exclusively attracted to female people whose own gender identity is variant and atypical, it's an affirmative attraction for me if they are. I very much respond to women (no question about that); I haven't had anywhere near as much direct firsthand dating experience with female people whose gender identity is not "woman", but if there were opportunities to meet more such people and an appreciable number of them were at ease and comfortable with being female bodied and had a sexual attraction to the male body, and found the idea of being the boy to my girl, I've always sensed that the chemistry there would be powerful.
• Gay and lesbian people's variation from the typical is specifically defined as consisting of same-sex attraction. Genderqueer / nonbinary people are not defined in terms of sexual orientation at all. Some genderqueer people's sexual attraction is not anchored in a sexual preference for one body type or another; other genderqueer people do have a sexual orientation that takes that into account, for instance, as one nb wrote, "I am attracted to female people, women or people on the masculine spectrum as long as they are not AMAB (assigned male at birth)". So a community of genderqueer / nb people would not constitute in its entirety of people who fall into the general category of folks to whom genderqueer /nb people are sexually attracted. On the other hand, being a gay guy doesn't mean every gay guy is attractive to you (or vice versa) either.
• Reciprocally, meanwhile, it is rare to nonexistent that a genderqueer or nb person expresses a sexual orientation that disprefers other genderqueer or nb people. There is no equivalent to a (traditional binary) transgender person's preference to "pass" in the cis world and be accepted there.
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————
When gay and lesbian people embrace their identities, they typically have the option of being part of a community of similarly-identified people. Maybe there are gay bars, or eating establishments that cater so significantly to gay and lesbian patrons that it's thought of as a gay or lesbian dining spot. There may even be a "gay part of town" where people can go, places where gay and lesbian folks are sufficiently concentrated that they are not in the minority. There are gay cruises on cruise ships, dances for gay folks, and other such opportunities.
I'm sure it's not quite as available when one is a lesbian or gay guy in Miles City, Montana or Hahira, Georgia, and attending such venues can leave one vulnerable to attack, but still, the opportunity is there in a generic sort of way.
And for gay and lesbian folks it has the dual purpose of networking with your allies and mixing and mingling with your potential partners.
I think the ways in which this is different for other people of minority orientation, gender identity, and intersex identities is worth looking at, because it shapes what coming out is like, and because since gay and lesbian people's experiences are more socially established, it is likely that some people extrapolate from what they know about gay and lesbian people's experiences as "out" and assume it's the same for the rest of us, if only because they hadn't given it much thought.
I had some preformed ideas about what it was like to be a male-to-female or female-to-male transgender person — that they didn't particularly want to be a part of some kind of transgender community (except for political networking and activism), they wanted to blend in with the larger world of ordinary men and women; that they wanted to be seen and accepted as men and women, not as transgender men and women. But I didn't want to rely on these and end up making statements about people that weren't necessarily accurate, so I did some informal polling in some Facebook groups for trans people.
POLL for Traditionally Transitional (M2F and F2M) Transgender People
• Under ideal circumstances, would you wish to be a part of a community where you were known to be transgender? If there were trans-centric cruise ship vacations and transgender eating establishments and a transgender part of town and so forth, in the same sense that there are for gay and lesbian people, is that something you'd want to be a part of? Or would you mostly want to live your life as a man (if you're a trans man) or woman (for trans women) and not call attention to being transgender, that transgender isn't your identity, it's just your circumstance, etc?
• Mainstream impressions and media depictions portray trans people as not wanting to be perceived as "male to female" but simply as female, (or not as "female to male" but just as male for trans men) -- that a person's experience and history as a transgender individual is personal, no one's business; or, as some put it, to "pass". (A somewhat loaded term that some folks find laden with mainstream value judgments, but we've all heard it). Certainly some memoirs and coming-out stories have said this as well: "I don't want to be thought of as a transgender man, just as a man, period". Do you think this is a misrepresentation or out of date, or is it reasonably accurate and valid?
The answers partially confirmed what I thought: that it is important to most binary trans people to be perceived as men and women, not as transgender people. One respondent wrote "the whole point of transitioning is to no longer be associated with the gender I was assigned at birth", and to be seen as transgender is to be reminded of that. Or, as another person put it, "that would defeat the whole purpose".
And yet, at the same time, a significant number of respondents said that they enjoy having safe spaces, places to socialize with other transgender people where they can talk about experiences specific to being trans. Most of those spaces are formal support groups but some said "hey, if there were trans cruises or a trans part of town, I'd totally check it out... I pass and I like being part of mainstream society and accepted without question as a woman, but I am not ashamed of being trans and it is part of who I am".
Several transgender respondends stressed that they were proud of their identities and did not want to leave the impression that they were slinking around shamefully trying to hide it. Many said they needed to connect to other trans people even if only for political purposes, to provide or receive support, and others said they'd like more social opportunities to be with other transgender people as well. But this was "in addition to", not instead of having the opportunity to pursue their lives as non-differentiated men and women; they didn't want to be confined to a transgender ghetto, because being trans was not their gender identity, being a man or a woman was.
A couple people said they weren't sure what would happen in a hypothetical trans bar or trans part of town: "I can see the need for 'gay districts', since gay people need to find other people they are physically attracted to, but I don't think trans people have that same need".
I also polled people who identify as genderqueer and/or as nonbinary, in several Facebook groups that specifically include us:
• Are you now, or have you been, part of a genderqueer/nb community where you meet face to face and hang out in person?
• If you answered "Y" to question 1, was it an organized group with official meeting times and places, like a meetup group or a support group, or did you also have informal connections?
• Is there anything like a "genderqueer/nb part of town" you can go to and expect the people on the sidewalks and in the local businesses to be other genderqueer/enbies like you?
• Do you know of any genderqueer/enby bars, clubs, or places to eat where nonbinary or genderqueer people go to hang out?
• Do you interact in person face to face with other people who identify as you do? Or mostly only on the internet?
I wanted to rule out the possibility that, on the cusp of turning 60, my own experiences were not exemplary of what genderqueer / binary people go through, and that I was pretty isolated from the contemporary experience of coming out genderqueer, you know? Because for me, there's never been anything akin to a sense of community except in these online forums. And for most of my "out" life I have craved being in a space where my variation was normative, and not only for political / networking purposes but also for reasons akin to what gay and lesbian people get from it: to be in a space where I'd stand a better chance of meeting people who wanted to get romantically or sexually involved with someone like me.
In general, almost none of my genderqueer respondents said they were part of a face to face community aside from support groups, and only a few people had been in face-to-face support groups dedicated to genderqueer / nonbinary people. Several respondents reported having been in generic LGBT, LGBTQ, or LGBTQIA support groups where they felt accepted and could identify as part of the larger community.
That was likewise true for anything approximating a "genderqueer/nb part of town". People often gravitated towards the lesbian or gay clubs or areas, and were often made to feel welcome, but seldom felt recognized and understood as nonbinary or genderqueer — when people perceived them as having a variance from mainstream gender expression, their reaction was "oh you're gay like me, like the rest of us here". That was an improvement over "oh, you're one of those people" but it still meant not being perceived accurately.
Only one person mentioned anything akin to a genderqueer or enby bar, and that was to remonstrate against alcohol-based establishments as ideal places to flirt and date. When some other people inquired further to ask where this enby bar was, no specifics were given, and the reply may have been about generic gay/lesbian bars since the main focus of the reply was to advise people to not turn to drinking establishments for this purpose. Alcoholism and drug abuse are a concern for many people in the LGBTQIA world.
There was a lot of curiosity and interest in the possibility of such a thing, a genderqueer social scene. Apparently I'm not alone in feeling like this would be a wonderful thing, nor am I alone in the impression that we don't have it yet.
Gay and lesbian people, as I said, benefit from the existence of a gay/lesbian social environment because they can meet people they are physically attracted to who are attracted to them in turn. How is that similar or dissimilar for genderqueer / nonbinary folks? Well...
• It is reasonable to assume that the people that lesbian women are attracted to are other lesbian women, and that gay males's attraction is towards other gay males. It's a lot less inevitable that genderqueer people are primarily or exclusively attracted to — or are attractive to — other genderqueer people.
• But it isn't highly unusual either. Skoliosexuality is a neologistic term for people whose sexual orientation is to "transgender or nonbinary/genderqueer people". That's a complicated and problematic "or", insofar as many transgender people do not particularly want to be the target of someone's sexual interest on the basis of them being trans. The specific link I just referenced includes the additional bit "See also: transfan, tranny chaser, chaser". Be that as it may, genderqueer / nonbinary people are far less likely to oppose or resist the idea of people being specifically attracted to us for being the way we are. (Hence, it would be nice if a term were to evolve that pertains to being attracted to genderqueer folks without it simultaneously being tied to tranny chasing and objectifying trans people sexually).
• Genderqueer and nonbinary people are not a homogenous group with a single uniform preference. I know that, for myself, it was crucially important that I be perceived as a male very different from the typical generic males, specifically that I was a femme, a person with interests and tendencies and sexual nature and romantic inclinations akin to the girls and women... and that this not only be tolerated but found attractive, hot, that it be affirmatively found desirable. So for lack of a better term, I've always wanted to be surrounded by skoliosexual women.
• ...Or skoliosexual female people, at any rate. While I am not exclusively attracted to female people whose own gender identity is variant and atypical, it's an affirmative attraction for me if they are. I very much respond to women (no question about that); I haven't had anywhere near as much direct firsthand dating experience with female people whose gender identity is not "woman", but if there were opportunities to meet more such people and an appreciable number of them were at ease and comfortable with being female bodied and had a sexual attraction to the male body, and found the idea of being the boy to my girl, I've always sensed that the chemistry there would be powerful.
• Gay and lesbian people's variation from the typical is specifically defined as consisting of same-sex attraction. Genderqueer / nonbinary people are not defined in terms of sexual orientation at all. Some genderqueer people's sexual attraction is not anchored in a sexual preference for one body type or another; other genderqueer people do have a sexual orientation that takes that into account, for instance, as one nb wrote, "I am attracted to female people, women or people on the masculine spectrum as long as they are not AMAB (assigned male at birth)". So a community of genderqueer / nb people would not constitute in its entirety of people who fall into the general category of folks to whom genderqueer /nb people are sexually attracted. On the other hand, being a gay guy doesn't mean every gay guy is attractive to you (or vice versa) either.
• Reciprocally, meanwhile, it is rare to nonexistent that a genderqueer or nb person expresses a sexual orientation that disprefers other genderqueer or nb people. There is no equivalent to a (traditional binary) transgender person's preference to "pass" in the cis world and be accepted there.
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Sunday, April 15, 2018
Theybies
"Is it possible to raise your child entirely without gender from birth?"
The question is the title of an article by Alex Morris, a contributing editor for New York Magazine and Rolling Stone. It's not a question of his own posing, though; he's reporting on the fact that some parents have been contemplating that question, and how they're approaching the matter.
It's not a brand-new notion. I remember reading a reprint of Lois Gould's "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" when I was in my 20s and it was already nearly ten years old by then. Of course, that was fiction. The parents described in Morris's article aren't fictional.
In the actual world, parents who have worried about the effects of sex role socialization on their children have mostly tried to raise their children in a cheerfully agender "Free to Be You and Me" permissive world that didn't include a bunch of insistences that boys had to play with boy toys and wear boy clothes and display boy personality-characteristics while girls were pushed towards playing with girl toys and girl clothes and feminine attributes.
The parents in Morris's article decided that as long as people knew the children's sex, they would still project expectations upon them even when they were trying not to, and that many people would not see any problem with having gendered expectations or with treating kids differently based on what sex they were —
... and they decided to go the full Lois Gould / Baby X route and keep the sex of their children a secret. These are the so-called "theybies parents" (author Morris's term).
There is, of course, a predictable loud outcry of critical people who say this is bad, an irresponsibly destructive piece of social experimentation that not only won't work as hoped for but will do damage to the children involved. You can see some of these replies in the comments below Morris's article and you can find others if you do an internet search on "Morris" + "raise your child entirely without gender".
The critics' argument isn't a single argument, though, so much as it's a set of different arguments that all end up in the same conclusion-area. Even if we end up dismissing all of those arguments, I think it's worth looking at them in clusters (if not necessarily on a one at a time basis) and giving them separate consideration.
There are some people who are opposed to what the "theybies parents" are doing because they think it is natural and important for children to get gendered — to be treated as either boys or girls and to learn what it means to be a boy or a girl. The people making this argument are taking the diametrically opposite viewpoint from the "theybies parents". They're defending the gender binary as something critical to healthy development, and I don't see any difference between them and the people who would be horrified if their son were to wear a skirt. I'm dismissing them from further consideration.
But there are also people who are opposed to this because they visualize a few children being kept ignorant of their own biological classification, growing up in a world where other children are not having this information kept from them. In other words "we know what's best for you, your ignorance is a blessing, so we're going to keep you uninformed about gender for your own good".
I can see where that would be a matter of some concern if that was in fact what the "theybies parents" were proposing. But it doesn't seem to be:
The parents do not appear to be trying to keep their children from being aware of their own biological equipment. It's slightly less clear whether they intend on informing their children that most people fit into one or the other of two primary biological sex categories. It would, actually, be a more accurate and more truthful explanation if they were told that some people do not, in fact, fit into either of those physical categories.
The main focus of the parents' intent appears to be running some interference with how other people will perceive and treat their children. In a social/cultural context where there are a boatload of assumptions and interpretations foisted onto people based on their biological sexual equipment, where people altercast other people into identities based on their perceived sex, then the only obvious way to avoid that unwanted foisting is to keep the biological sex unknown.
Some critics point out that the whole rejection of biological essentialism kind of revolves around it not mattering what you've got betwixt your legs. If it doesn't matter, then it need not be kept a secret. But there's a gap between what matters in and of itself and what makes a difference in a social context. Keeping the children's sex secret is sort of like affirmative action: it's a patch, a temporary fix that only makes sense in the context of something already, historically, being wrong.
Finally, though, there are people who are concerned about children being raised this way because they visualize a few children being kept ignorant and unexposed to the social fact that most people are indeed treated differently depending on their sex. This is a more complicated and nuanced area than trying to keep kids oblivious about their biological classification.
It reminds me of the question of whether minority parents should raise their kids as blissfully unaware of racism and bigotry as possible, so that they aren't tainted by it, or if they should raise their kids to be savvy of the world's racist bigoted nastiness so that they aren't caught unprepared and vulnerable when they finally have to confront it.
Would we be setting up the children for a rude awakening? Would they feel they had been lied to, in the form of lies of omission, if they were not warned that the world tends to believe in sexual differences and has different expectations and treatments of people based on whether they're male or female in body?
I totally approve of the motives of the parents. I understand what they're trying to do here. And I loved "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" and thought it was totally cute. But I notice that both the situation described in the Morris article and the situation described in the Lois Gould short story all involve babies and very young children. When I do a fast-forward in my own mind and imagine older children, I see the control of whether or not to let the surrounding world know their sex shifting from the parents to the children themselves. If they were to continue to preserve that state of affairs, doing so would depend on a lot of body coverage. I mean, you can't do this and also live in a naturist community, if you see what I mean. In fact, you'd end up needing gunnysacks and burqas. It would be difficult to keep the project from being tainted by body-shame and the notion that this physical secret was somehow sinful or socially unmentionable or taboo.
I said earlier that keeping the children's sex secret in this manner is a patch, a fix to a social problem. I think it is also fair to say that doing this is a tactic. It's not a goal in and of itself. The goal behind all this is to someday have a world in which people knowing the sex of your children (or of you, yourself for that matter) would make no difference in how folks behaved towards them, would have no influence in expectations or how your behavior gets interpreted, any of that. But as a tactic, keeping the biological sex a secret works better as a thought experiment than as an actual endeavor, in my opinion. Secrecy is seldom a liberating experience.
I am not a parent and I suppose it is easy to say "Well if I were a parent I would do such-and-such" when you don't have to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. But if I were, I would attempt to teach my children...
• That most (but not all) people fall into one of two biological sex categories, male and female;
• That people have ideas and notions about what it means to be male or female, and these ideas have been around for a long long time, and lots of people don't like those ideas;
• That some of those ideas and notions do seem to be true in general, but there are exceptions to the rule and always have been, and that there have been particularly mean and nasty attitudes about the people who are the exceptions, but it's changing, it's getting better;
• That it is brave to be and do what comes natural to you instead of letting other people's attitudes and expectations shape you from the outside;
• That the body they were born with is beautiful and good as it is, regardless of anything else, and that no one has to have a certain kind of body in order to be a certain kind of person.
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The question is the title of an article by Alex Morris, a contributing editor for New York Magazine and Rolling Stone. It's not a question of his own posing, though; he's reporting on the fact that some parents have been contemplating that question, and how they're approaching the matter.
It's not a brand-new notion. I remember reading a reprint of Lois Gould's "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" when I was in my 20s and it was already nearly ten years old by then. Of course, that was fiction. The parents described in Morris's article aren't fictional.
In the actual world, parents who have worried about the effects of sex role socialization on their children have mostly tried to raise their children in a cheerfully agender "Free to Be You and Me" permissive world that didn't include a bunch of insistences that boys had to play with boy toys and wear boy clothes and display boy personality-characteristics while girls were pushed towards playing with girl toys and girl clothes and feminine attributes.
The parents in Morris's article decided that as long as people knew the children's sex, they would still project expectations upon them even when they were trying not to, and that many people would not see any problem with having gendered expectations or with treating kids differently based on what sex they were —
...society’s gender troubles cannot be solved by giving all children dolls and trucks to play with or dressing them all in the color beige
... and they decided to go the full Lois Gould / Baby X route and keep the sex of their children a secret. These are the so-called "theybies parents" (author Morris's term).
There is, of course, a predictable loud outcry of critical people who say this is bad, an irresponsibly destructive piece of social experimentation that not only won't work as hoped for but will do damage to the children involved. You can see some of these replies in the comments below Morris's article and you can find others if you do an internet search on "Morris" + "raise your child entirely without gender".
The critics' argument isn't a single argument, though, so much as it's a set of different arguments that all end up in the same conclusion-area. Even if we end up dismissing all of those arguments, I think it's worth looking at them in clusters (if not necessarily on a one at a time basis) and giving them separate consideration.
There are some people who are opposed to what the "theybies parents" are doing because they think it is natural and important for children to get gendered — to be treated as either boys or girls and to learn what it means to be a boy or a girl. The people making this argument are taking the diametrically opposite viewpoint from the "theybies parents". They're defending the gender binary as something critical to healthy development, and I don't see any difference between them and the people who would be horrified if their son were to wear a skirt. I'm dismissing them from further consideration.
But there are also people who are opposed to this because they visualize a few children being kept ignorant of their own biological classification, growing up in a world where other children are not having this information kept from them. In other words "we know what's best for you, your ignorance is a blessing, so we're going to keep you uninformed about gender for your own good".
I can see where that would be a matter of some concern if that was in fact what the "theybies parents" were proposing. But it doesn't seem to be:
Parents do not shy away from describing body parts, but are quick to let children know that “some people with penises aren’t boys, and some people with vaginas aren’t girls,” as one mom told me.
The parents do not appear to be trying to keep their children from being aware of their own biological equipment. It's slightly less clear whether they intend on informing their children that most people fit into one or the other of two primary biological sex categories. It would, actually, be a more accurate and more truthful explanation if they were told that some people do not, in fact, fit into either of those physical categories.
The main focus of the parents' intent appears to be running some interference with how other people will perceive and treat their children. In a social/cultural context where there are a boatload of assumptions and interpretations foisted onto people based on their biological sexual equipment, where people altercast other people into identities based on their perceived sex, then the only obvious way to avoid that unwanted foisting is to keep the biological sex unknown.
Some critics point out that the whole rejection of biological essentialism kind of revolves around it not mattering what you've got betwixt your legs. If it doesn't matter, then it need not be kept a secret. But there's a gap between what matters in and of itself and what makes a difference in a social context. Keeping the children's sex secret is sort of like affirmative action: it's a patch, a temporary fix that only makes sense in the context of something already, historically, being wrong.
Finally, though, there are people who are concerned about children being raised this way because they visualize a few children being kept ignorant and unexposed to the social fact that most people are indeed treated differently depending on their sex. This is a more complicated and nuanced area than trying to keep kids oblivious about their biological classification.
It reminds me of the question of whether minority parents should raise their kids as blissfully unaware of racism and bigotry as possible, so that they aren't tainted by it, or if they should raise their kids to be savvy of the world's racist bigoted nastiness so that they aren't caught unprepared and vulnerable when they finally have to confront it.
Would we be setting up the children for a rude awakening? Would they feel they had been lied to, in the form of lies of omission, if they were not warned that the world tends to believe in sexual differences and has different expectations and treatments of people based on whether they're male or female in body?
I totally approve of the motives of the parents. I understand what they're trying to do here. And I loved "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" and thought it was totally cute. But I notice that both the situation described in the Morris article and the situation described in the Lois Gould short story all involve babies and very young children. When I do a fast-forward in my own mind and imagine older children, I see the control of whether or not to let the surrounding world know their sex shifting from the parents to the children themselves. If they were to continue to preserve that state of affairs, doing so would depend on a lot of body coverage. I mean, you can't do this and also live in a naturist community, if you see what I mean. In fact, you'd end up needing gunnysacks and burqas. It would be difficult to keep the project from being tainted by body-shame and the notion that this physical secret was somehow sinful or socially unmentionable or taboo.
I said earlier that keeping the children's sex secret in this manner is a patch, a fix to a social problem. I think it is also fair to say that doing this is a tactic. It's not a goal in and of itself. The goal behind all this is to someday have a world in which people knowing the sex of your children (or of you, yourself for that matter) would make no difference in how folks behaved towards them, would have no influence in expectations or how your behavior gets interpreted, any of that. But as a tactic, keeping the biological sex a secret works better as a thought experiment than as an actual endeavor, in my opinion. Secrecy is seldom a liberating experience.
I am not a parent and I suppose it is easy to say "Well if I were a parent I would do such-and-such" when you don't have to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. But if I were, I would attempt to teach my children...
• That most (but not all) people fall into one of two biological sex categories, male and female;
• That people have ideas and notions about what it means to be male or female, and these ideas have been around for a long long time, and lots of people don't like those ideas;
• That some of those ideas and notions do seem to be true in general, but there are exceptions to the rule and always have been, and that there have been particularly mean and nasty attitudes about the people who are the exceptions, but it's changing, it's getting better;
• That it is brave to be and do what comes natural to you instead of letting other people's attitudes and expectations shape you from the outside;
• That the body they were born with is beautiful and good as it is, regardless of anything else, and that no one has to have a certain kind of body in order to be a certain kind of person.
————————
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Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Update on My Get-Book-Published Endeavors
I wrote a book about being genderqueer and I'm trying to get it published.
Those of you who've been reading my blog for awhile now are well aware of that, but I have recently joined several Facebook groups where I may not have mentioned that, and I'm now echoing my blog in more places in hopes of reaching a wider audience... and it's been awhile since I blogged about the book itself. Most of my recent posts have been about some aspect of gender or genderqueer experience.
Anyway, yeah, it's a memoir (nonfiction, my own story), a coming-of-age and coming-out story, about 97,000 words long (probably about 325 pages, give or take). And I've been querying literary agents since 2013 and small publishers (the sort that you can query directly) since 2015.
Here's where things are at at the moment:
THE REQUEST FOR A FULL
Every rare once in a while my queries to literary agents have resulted in a request to see and evaluate the full manuscript, an event known in the world of authors and author-aspirants as a "request for a full". It's akin to when sending in your resume results in an actual job interview. I've had six of those so far.
The most recent was from Lucinda Karter of Jennifer Lyons Lit Agency (or, more precisely, from her assistant Jadie Stillwell), on November 17 of last year. I sent in the full manuscript and didn't hear a peep, so on December 8 I sent a follow-up inquiry, just asking for confirmation that they actually received it. They had; Stillwell apologized for being behind and said they hadn't had a chance to look at it but would get to it in due course.
At some point in the spring, I went back to querying lit agents, if only to distract myself from the waiting.
Eventually, the 8th of March rolled around, and it had now been three months since I'd heard anything from them and four months since I'd queried them, so I sent a follow-up email, inquiring if I had perhaps missed a critical piece of correspondence. On March 20th, still not hearing anything, I repeated that inquiry, and on March 30th I got a somewhat formletterish "thanks for the opportunity to read but unable to fully connect with the characters and will have to pass" rejection letter.
THE DOLDRUMS
One of the literary agents that I subsequently queried wrote back to say my proposal looks interesting but that they have a policy of only considering material submitted to them exclusively — so did anyone else have it? Of course they did. So in a back-and-forth exchange of emails we established that they'd be happy if I waited until any still-outstanding queries were rejected or else timed out with at least six weeks elapsing from the time I queried them, and then subsequently didn't send any other queries out until they'd had a chance to make their evaluation. That point will be on April the 12th, two days from now. I'll let them know on the 12th that they now have exlusivity and then an additional six weeks will tick by before their exclusivity-window expires.
It's a long shot but all inquiries to lit agents are long shots. I decided to go for it. But it's meant not doing anything as far as lit agents are concerned from week to week and (at this point) month to month.
It's hard to feel fired-up and like you're doing something towards getting a book published when you're just sitting around waiting for a calendar date to crawl by.
Meanwhile, with the publishers, I'm in the same damn situation: there was a publisher I wanted to query, one that was highly recommended on the queer / nonbinary / minority orientation and sexual orientation and intersex FaceBook groups as a good solid publisher for LGBTQIA titles. They, too, have a policy of exclusivity. So I had to wait until the previous publisher submission (to Kensington Books) expired from lack of activity and then sent them my query, which they've now had since January 23. They want 90 days to evaluate manuscripts, so they've got exclusivity until April 23, another thirteen days from now.
So I've been sitting on my thumb, metaphorically speaking, not sending anything to anyone and watching the damn calendar.
BROAD OVERVIEW / REVIEW OF THE SITUATION
I have twice had a publisher sign a contract with me to publish this book. Generally what happens when a publisher signs a contract with an author is that the book goes into print. In the first instance, the publisher, Ellora's Cave, went out of business and revoked all pending books. In the second instance, with NineStar Press, the editor wanted to cut the first third of the book entirely, and we were unable to establish a working relationship. (I experienced the editor as heavy-handed and insulting, and I gather that he found me arrogant and impossible to work with). So I asked them revert my rights back to me.
This is extremely frustrating, as you can probably imagine. The relief and excitement and joy of having a publisher pick up your book, the anticipation of seeing it listed on Amazon and perhaps on a book stand in a book store, the enthusiastic planning of promotional talks and book-signings and lecture tours and all that... ripped out from beneath me.
I was going to write that this isnt fun any more. That's misleading: it was never any fun, this process of trying to sell agents and publishers on the idea of publishing my book. I detest this entire process, just as I hate doing job searches. I have said in the past that trying to sell myself like this ranks right up there with cleaning all the toilets in Grand Central Station with my tongue. So "isn't fun any more" isn't the applicable phrase here. What's changed, I think, is that I won't be able to feel any of that relief, excitement, anticipation or joy when I finally do once again have a publishing contract. At this point I don't think it will seem real until the damn thing's actually in print and I am holding a copy in my hands. Maybe not even then.
"Well", you may be thinking, "why don't you just self-publish?"
It's an easy enough process to create a print run of my book. I even have a routine that allows me to print the whole book onto 5.5 x 8.5 format, two pages to a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, double-sided, so it can be whacked neatly in two with an industrial sheet cutter and bound. I could get bids and go with the cheapest bid, and that's before I even look into companies specifically geared to help authors self-publish.
Electronic printing is even more effortless, and free. I can generate a PDF at will, and Amazon (among others) will readily help me convert it to other standard eBook formats for paid download.
None of that is at all difficult. Most of that is not relevant.
The difficult, and relevant, part of what makes publishing different than mere printing is distribution and publicity. Running off five thousand copies of my book (and/or generating an eBook for electronic distribution) doesn't get it into people's hands. It doesn't get it reviewed. There are human activites that successfully overcome those barriers, promotional activities. I'm not good at them. If I were good at them, this would be a very popular blog with hundreds or thousands of weekly readers. It isn't. I'm not.
I'll still have to gear up to plan and execute a promotional campaign even with a traditional-model publisher, unless I get a large publisher on-board (unlikely); but even a small publisher makes the book "authentic" to the world of reviewers and opens up opportunities for distribution and consideration. I'm particularly interested in seeing it picked up as reading material for gender studies, LGBTQ studies, feminist theory, and other related academic course work, and hopefully also to find shelf space in LGBT community centers and support group meeting spaces and whatnot.
READINGS
One thing I have been doing more of lately is attending authors' groups where people bring samples of their work-in-progress and read from them and get feedback from the others there. I've been attending the Long Island Writers' Guild and the Amateur Writers of Long Island in recent weeks. Of the two, I like the format used by the latter somewhat better, as they allow up to 1800 word samples to be read and spend more time discussing each selection before moving on to the next. I've enjoyed them both, though.
The feedback I've received is encouraging. The people say my writing in general is vivid and effective, the characters and their behaviors and dialog strongly drawn, the paragraphs and phrases well-constructed. That's not to say I haven't received useful criticism, of the sort "you could do more of this up here before he says that" and "I found it a bit confusing when it jumped to this next scene, is that supposed to be later the same week or what?" and so on. But the overall takeaway is very good: my writing does what I want it to do, it works. At least in 1800-word chunks. (I still yearn for more feedback on the entire book as a satisfying or less-than-satisfying whole).
STATS
total queries to Lit Agents (counting requeries): 1171
As Nonfiction, total: 944
As Fiction, total: 227
total queries to Publishers: 30
————————
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————————
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Those of you who've been reading my blog for awhile now are well aware of that, but I have recently joined several Facebook groups where I may not have mentioned that, and I'm now echoing my blog in more places in hopes of reaching a wider audience... and it's been awhile since I blogged about the book itself. Most of my recent posts have been about some aspect of gender or genderqueer experience.
Anyway, yeah, it's a memoir (nonfiction, my own story), a coming-of-age and coming-out story, about 97,000 words long (probably about 325 pages, give or take). And I've been querying literary agents since 2013 and small publishers (the sort that you can query directly) since 2015.
Here's where things are at at the moment:
THE REQUEST FOR A FULL
Every rare once in a while my queries to literary agents have resulted in a request to see and evaluate the full manuscript, an event known in the world of authors and author-aspirants as a "request for a full". It's akin to when sending in your resume results in an actual job interview. I've had six of those so far.
The most recent was from Lucinda Karter of Jennifer Lyons Lit Agency (or, more precisely, from her assistant Jadie Stillwell), on November 17 of last year. I sent in the full manuscript and didn't hear a peep, so on December 8 I sent a follow-up inquiry, just asking for confirmation that they actually received it. They had; Stillwell apologized for being behind and said they hadn't had a chance to look at it but would get to it in due course.
At some point in the spring, I went back to querying lit agents, if only to distract myself from the waiting.
Eventually, the 8th of March rolled around, and it had now been three months since I'd heard anything from them and four months since I'd queried them, so I sent a follow-up email, inquiring if I had perhaps missed a critical piece of correspondence. On March 20th, still not hearing anything, I repeated that inquiry, and on March 30th I got a somewhat formletterish "thanks for the opportunity to read but unable to fully connect with the characters and will have to pass" rejection letter.
THE DOLDRUMS
One of the literary agents that I subsequently queried wrote back to say my proposal looks interesting but that they have a policy of only considering material submitted to them exclusively — so did anyone else have it? Of course they did. So in a back-and-forth exchange of emails we established that they'd be happy if I waited until any still-outstanding queries were rejected or else timed out with at least six weeks elapsing from the time I queried them, and then subsequently didn't send any other queries out until they'd had a chance to make their evaluation. That point will be on April the 12th, two days from now. I'll let them know on the 12th that they now have exlusivity and then an additional six weeks will tick by before their exclusivity-window expires.
It's a long shot but all inquiries to lit agents are long shots. I decided to go for it. But it's meant not doing anything as far as lit agents are concerned from week to week and (at this point) month to month.
It's hard to feel fired-up and like you're doing something towards getting a book published when you're just sitting around waiting for a calendar date to crawl by.
Meanwhile, with the publishers, I'm in the same damn situation: there was a publisher I wanted to query, one that was highly recommended on the queer / nonbinary / minority orientation and sexual orientation and intersex FaceBook groups as a good solid publisher for LGBTQIA titles. They, too, have a policy of exclusivity. So I had to wait until the previous publisher submission (to Kensington Books) expired from lack of activity and then sent them my query, which they've now had since January 23. They want 90 days to evaluate manuscripts, so they've got exclusivity until April 23, another thirteen days from now.
So I've been sitting on my thumb, metaphorically speaking, not sending anything to anyone and watching the damn calendar.
BROAD OVERVIEW / REVIEW OF THE SITUATION
I have twice had a publisher sign a contract with me to publish this book. Generally what happens when a publisher signs a contract with an author is that the book goes into print. In the first instance, the publisher, Ellora's Cave, went out of business and revoked all pending books. In the second instance, with NineStar Press, the editor wanted to cut the first third of the book entirely, and we were unable to establish a working relationship. (I experienced the editor as heavy-handed and insulting, and I gather that he found me arrogant and impossible to work with). So I asked them revert my rights back to me.
This is extremely frustrating, as you can probably imagine. The relief and excitement and joy of having a publisher pick up your book, the anticipation of seeing it listed on Amazon and perhaps on a book stand in a book store, the enthusiastic planning of promotional talks and book-signings and lecture tours and all that... ripped out from beneath me.
I was going to write that this isnt fun any more. That's misleading: it was never any fun, this process of trying to sell agents and publishers on the idea of publishing my book. I detest this entire process, just as I hate doing job searches. I have said in the past that trying to sell myself like this ranks right up there with cleaning all the toilets in Grand Central Station with my tongue. So "isn't fun any more" isn't the applicable phrase here. What's changed, I think, is that I won't be able to feel any of that relief, excitement, anticipation or joy when I finally do once again have a publishing contract. At this point I don't think it will seem real until the damn thing's actually in print and I am holding a copy in my hands. Maybe not even then.
"Well", you may be thinking, "why don't you just self-publish?"
It's an easy enough process to create a print run of my book. I even have a routine that allows me to print the whole book onto 5.5 x 8.5 format, two pages to a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, double-sided, so it can be whacked neatly in two with an industrial sheet cutter and bound. I could get bids and go with the cheapest bid, and that's before I even look into companies specifically geared to help authors self-publish.
Electronic printing is even more effortless, and free. I can generate a PDF at will, and Amazon (among others) will readily help me convert it to other standard eBook formats for paid download.
None of that is at all difficult. Most of that is not relevant.
The difficult, and relevant, part of what makes publishing different than mere printing is distribution and publicity. Running off five thousand copies of my book (and/or generating an eBook for electronic distribution) doesn't get it into people's hands. It doesn't get it reviewed. There are human activites that successfully overcome those barriers, promotional activities. I'm not good at them. If I were good at them, this would be a very popular blog with hundreds or thousands of weekly readers. It isn't. I'm not.
I'll still have to gear up to plan and execute a promotional campaign even with a traditional-model publisher, unless I get a large publisher on-board (unlikely); but even a small publisher makes the book "authentic" to the world of reviewers and opens up opportunities for distribution and consideration. I'm particularly interested in seeing it picked up as reading material for gender studies, LGBTQ studies, feminist theory, and other related academic course work, and hopefully also to find shelf space in LGBT community centers and support group meeting spaces and whatnot.
READINGS
One thing I have been doing more of lately is attending authors' groups where people bring samples of their work-in-progress and read from them and get feedback from the others there. I've been attending the Long Island Writers' Guild and the Amateur Writers of Long Island in recent weeks. Of the two, I like the format used by the latter somewhat better, as they allow up to 1800 word samples to be read and spend more time discussing each selection before moving on to the next. I've enjoyed them both, though.
The feedback I've received is encouraging. The people say my writing in general is vivid and effective, the characters and their behaviors and dialog strongly drawn, the paragraphs and phrases well-constructed. That's not to say I haven't received useful criticism, of the sort "you could do more of this up here before he says that" and "I found it a bit confusing when it jumped to this next scene, is that supposed to be later the same week or what?" and so on. But the overall takeaway is very good: my writing does what I want it to do, it works. At least in 1800-word chunks. (I still yearn for more feedback on the entire book as a satisfying or less-than-satisfying whole).
STATS
total queries to Lit Agents (counting requeries): 1171
Rejections: 1092
Outstanding: 79
As Nonfiction, total: 944
Rejections: 866
Outstanding: 78
As Fiction, total: 227
Rejections: 226
Outstanding: 1
total queries to Publishers: 30
Rejections: 22
Outstanding: 1
No Reply 3+ Months: 6
Pub Contract Signed, went out of business: 1
Pub Contract Signed, rights reverted: 1
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Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Sixth Grade
It kind of started with third grade, along with the rest of it. That's when I first remember feeling different and being proud of it. I was good, like the girls. Not like the boys. Boys were bad. Of course I was proud of it. Boys were mean and stupid, an embarrassment. Embarrassing to me, because I was a boy myself, so people would see me as one and treat me as one and expect me to be like them, and I wasn't. So naturally I did things to distinguish myself from them and get people to think of me the way they thought of the girls, in other words as who I really was, what I was actually like.
Last September, I blogged about being a genderqueer third grader, but one of the things I didn't specifically write about was the fighting. Boys fought. Girls didn't. On the playgrounds, in the neighborhood, with their friends or against their enemies, boys got into fights. Shoving and trash-talking would escalate to hitting and wrestling, usually culminating in one boy straddling the other boy's chest and pounding his face and shoulders while his arms were pinned until he said he gave up.
So it was logical for me to drop out of fighting. It would go a long way towards distinguishing myself from the boys and being viewed more like one of the girls. Up until then, yeah I could dish it out, I knew how and I was reasonably adept at it. But grownups didn't want us to. It was against the rules at school and you could get into trouble for it. Most importantly, they talked about boys and how immature we were, and how we were discipline problems and couldn't be trusted, like if the teacher had to leave the room for a moment. A teacher would often ask a girl to take names of anyone acting up in her absence.
So I did that. Yeah, little Mahatma Gandhi, no kidding, I went totally nonviolent as a nine year old as part of showing I was different from the other boys, as good as the girls. It was easier than you might think. Little boys aren't all that efficient at inflicting pain; their punches insult more than they bruise. Also, they're surprisingly formal and stylized in how they escalate from taunting and shoving and daring and when I simply refused to lift fists they'd get frustrated and insult me harder, then get contemptuous and accuse me of being a sissy, which was sort of like trying to insult a witch by implying she's a witch if you see what I mean, and then they'd stalk off in disgust.
So anyway, since this is titled "Sixth Grade", you probably see where this is headed. The three years between being a nine year old and being a twelve year old are some pretty long years. I'd been the target of some really intense bullying and harassment, mocked and giving the most insulting pet names people could come up with, and the physical confrontations had gotten scarier. They'd circle me, several of them, egging on the principal assailant and adding additional threats. The adrenaline made my stomach churn and my voice shake and they could see how they were making me feel and they liked it, they got off on it, they found me quite entertaining. Meanwhile, they'd gotten a lot more efficient at hitting and hurting, and I was out of practice and hadn't learned what they'd learned in those intervening years. Somewhere along the line I had ceased to feel like I had a choice: I couldn't fight.
Mark Fiveash was one of those boys, the ones who thought it was funny and clever to make fart sounds with their armpits and clown around ridiculing and tormenting people for the entertainment of his amused followers. Sixth grade teacher Mrs. Mason had asked him to put the film camera up on the shelf and he held it between his legs with the lens barrel facing out and mugged for the classroom. I scowled my opinion. Then he made as if to insert the lens under Cindy Salter's skirt.
"That's rude", pronounced Betsy Johnson in the desk to my right.
I nodded. "Act your age".
Joey Joiner's seat was behind Betsy's. He leaned over and commented, "You never laugh at anything Mark does. Why not?" I said he wasn't funny, simple as that.
It was Joey who was waiting for me when the end of day bell rang. And he didn't bring a crowd. It was just him. "Fight me", he urged. Like he was suggesting that we go ride bikes together or something. "C'mon, fight. Put your fists up". Joey was a fairly quiet student, put off a little bit of a tough attitude but wasn't among the people who typically harassed me at recess or lunchtime. He was also not particularly large. I was taller and skinny as I was I probably weighed about the same. So by himself he didn't seem especially scary.
I wasn't going to fight him. I didn't do that. He didn't get louder and make increasingly boastful threats but he was relentless, intractible. He wouldn't get out of my way. To get home I first had to cross the grassy school campus. The initial throng of students leaving the building had thinned away and we had the schoolyard to ourselves and still we stood there deadlocked. So I started walking slowly towards him, my hands at my side.
If he had continued to demand a fight but didn't physically interfere with me leaving, that would have worked, but he saw how that was going to play out and began peppering me with punches to the face, shoulder, and chest. "C'mon, just make a fist!"
I walked into the punches and reacted as little as possible and kept going at the same pace. Joey began taking more care with what he was doing and made each punch land hard in painful places. It hurt, it really hurt. I was also shocked that he was doing this: how can someone just keep on hitting a person who hasn't done anything to them and who won't fight back?
He kept hitting me on the eyebrows and cheek and I got more sore and each impact hurt worse until with maybe thirty yards of grass between me and the sidewalk he succeeded in making me cry. I was hurt and I was angry and outraged, and I couldn't keep going on, couldn't take any more, and that frustrated me too, broke me. I turned around and walked back and into the library, which was still open. He followed me, still whacking me when and where he could, until he saw that I was going inside.
The librarian had seen the end of it and now saw me coming in crying and furious. "I'm so sorry, that was horrible, that was so mean! Are you OK? Want a tissue? I don't understand how people can behave like that. There's a bathroom down there if you want to freshen up. Stay here until you feel a little better, stay as long as you want. You can call someone if you need to."
I appreciated the sympathy and the protection. She let me sit in a dark office sniffling until the shock wore off. Then I thanked her and carefully looked out the windows before deciding Joey wasn't lurking in wait for my reappearance, then I headed home.
A couple weeks later, Mrs. Mason made a statement about how important it was for boys to treat girls and women with respect because their greater delicacy entitled them to this important consideration, and I snapped, "It's supposed to be that we're equal". I wasn't on the road to becoming a men's rights activist, exactly, but I was starting to sense a fundamental unfairness to the whole setup, a sense that I was not just a bullying victim but was being badly treated on a systemic basis.
There were double standards afoot. Karen Welch, the girl who lived across the street from us, was in Mrs. Mason's class too. She had a boyfriend, Tommy. I had had a girlfriend in third grade but not since, and missed having that in my life, missed it very much. And now boys and girls were starting to be interested in each other more often, to be boyfriend and girlfriend. That part was good, but it should have been me. Not with Karen, I didn't particularly like Karen, but I liked a lot of the girls and if anyone was going to have a girlfriend it should be me, not loud rude typical boys like Tommy.
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Last September, I blogged about being a genderqueer third grader, but one of the things I didn't specifically write about was the fighting. Boys fought. Girls didn't. On the playgrounds, in the neighborhood, with their friends or against their enemies, boys got into fights. Shoving and trash-talking would escalate to hitting and wrestling, usually culminating in one boy straddling the other boy's chest and pounding his face and shoulders while his arms were pinned until he said he gave up.
So it was logical for me to drop out of fighting. It would go a long way towards distinguishing myself from the boys and being viewed more like one of the girls. Up until then, yeah I could dish it out, I knew how and I was reasonably adept at it. But grownups didn't want us to. It was against the rules at school and you could get into trouble for it. Most importantly, they talked about boys and how immature we were, and how we were discipline problems and couldn't be trusted, like if the teacher had to leave the room for a moment. A teacher would often ask a girl to take names of anyone acting up in her absence.
So I did that. Yeah, little Mahatma Gandhi, no kidding, I went totally nonviolent as a nine year old as part of showing I was different from the other boys, as good as the girls. It was easier than you might think. Little boys aren't all that efficient at inflicting pain; their punches insult more than they bruise. Also, they're surprisingly formal and stylized in how they escalate from taunting and shoving and daring and when I simply refused to lift fists they'd get frustrated and insult me harder, then get contemptuous and accuse me of being a sissy, which was sort of like trying to insult a witch by implying she's a witch if you see what I mean, and then they'd stalk off in disgust.
So anyway, since this is titled "Sixth Grade", you probably see where this is headed. The three years between being a nine year old and being a twelve year old are some pretty long years. I'd been the target of some really intense bullying and harassment, mocked and giving the most insulting pet names people could come up with, and the physical confrontations had gotten scarier. They'd circle me, several of them, egging on the principal assailant and adding additional threats. The adrenaline made my stomach churn and my voice shake and they could see how they were making me feel and they liked it, they got off on it, they found me quite entertaining. Meanwhile, they'd gotten a lot more efficient at hitting and hurting, and I was out of practice and hadn't learned what they'd learned in those intervening years. Somewhere along the line I had ceased to feel like I had a choice: I couldn't fight.
Mark Fiveash was one of those boys, the ones who thought it was funny and clever to make fart sounds with their armpits and clown around ridiculing and tormenting people for the entertainment of his amused followers. Sixth grade teacher Mrs. Mason had asked him to put the film camera up on the shelf and he held it between his legs with the lens barrel facing out and mugged for the classroom. I scowled my opinion. Then he made as if to insert the lens under Cindy Salter's skirt.
"That's rude", pronounced Betsy Johnson in the desk to my right.
I nodded. "Act your age".
Joey Joiner's seat was behind Betsy's. He leaned over and commented, "You never laugh at anything Mark does. Why not?" I said he wasn't funny, simple as that.
It was Joey who was waiting for me when the end of day bell rang. And he didn't bring a crowd. It was just him. "Fight me", he urged. Like he was suggesting that we go ride bikes together or something. "C'mon, fight. Put your fists up". Joey was a fairly quiet student, put off a little bit of a tough attitude but wasn't among the people who typically harassed me at recess or lunchtime. He was also not particularly large. I was taller and skinny as I was I probably weighed about the same. So by himself he didn't seem especially scary.
I wasn't going to fight him. I didn't do that. He didn't get louder and make increasingly boastful threats but he was relentless, intractible. He wouldn't get out of my way. To get home I first had to cross the grassy school campus. The initial throng of students leaving the building had thinned away and we had the schoolyard to ourselves and still we stood there deadlocked. So I started walking slowly towards him, my hands at my side.
If he had continued to demand a fight but didn't physically interfere with me leaving, that would have worked, but he saw how that was going to play out and began peppering me with punches to the face, shoulder, and chest. "C'mon, just make a fist!"
I walked into the punches and reacted as little as possible and kept going at the same pace. Joey began taking more care with what he was doing and made each punch land hard in painful places. It hurt, it really hurt. I was also shocked that he was doing this: how can someone just keep on hitting a person who hasn't done anything to them and who won't fight back?
He kept hitting me on the eyebrows and cheek and I got more sore and each impact hurt worse until with maybe thirty yards of grass between me and the sidewalk he succeeded in making me cry. I was hurt and I was angry and outraged, and I couldn't keep going on, couldn't take any more, and that frustrated me too, broke me. I turned around and walked back and into the library, which was still open. He followed me, still whacking me when and where he could, until he saw that I was going inside.
The librarian had seen the end of it and now saw me coming in crying and furious. "I'm so sorry, that was horrible, that was so mean! Are you OK? Want a tissue? I don't understand how people can behave like that. There's a bathroom down there if you want to freshen up. Stay here until you feel a little better, stay as long as you want. You can call someone if you need to."
I appreciated the sympathy and the protection. She let me sit in a dark office sniffling until the shock wore off. Then I thanked her and carefully looked out the windows before deciding Joey wasn't lurking in wait for my reappearance, then I headed home.
A couple weeks later, Mrs. Mason made a statement about how important it was for boys to treat girls and women with respect because their greater delicacy entitled them to this important consideration, and I snapped, "It's supposed to be that we're equal". I wasn't on the road to becoming a men's rights activist, exactly, but I was starting to sense a fundamental unfairness to the whole setup, a sense that I was not just a bullying victim but was being badly treated on a systemic basis.
There were double standards afoot. Karen Welch, the girl who lived across the street from us, was in Mrs. Mason's class too. She had a boyfriend, Tommy. I had had a girlfriend in third grade but not since, and missed having that in my life, missed it very much. And now boys and girls were starting to be interested in each other more often, to be boyfriend and girlfriend. That part was good, but it should have been me. Not with Karen, I didn't particularly like Karen, but I liked a lot of the girls and if anyone was going to have a girlfriend it should be me, not loud rude typical boys like Tommy.
————————
This LiveJournal blog is echoed on DreamWidth, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
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