In which, like most physical entities, I must occupy space

I've been thinking a lot about gendered spaces lately.

This semester, I'm taking a class on women in comics. When the teacher commented on the first day that the class appeared to be all-women, I piped right up and said, "Actually, I don't identify as a woman!" It all went over well, I was pleased, and I mentally categorized the class as a neutral space.

But then, earlier this week, discussing multilayered identity, one of my classmates made the point that specific identities are often called to the forefront of self-perception based on context. "If a guy came into this room, for example," she said, "he'd probably feel a lot more aware of his gender!"

I was surprised how physical my reaction was, and how fast it happened. The classroom became a female space, and in an instant, my entire body tensed, and it felt like my fever had shot up several degrees. (I still had pneumonia at this time.) One of the other students looked directly at me, clearly expecting me to say something, but seeing the recognition in her eyes just made my throat close up. I literally couldn't breathe; it felt like my body was trying to will itself into no longer existing.

When I say I'm uncomfortable in female spaces, this is pretty much what I mean.

She didn't mean anything by it, of course, and if I'd spoken up I'm sure everyone would have agreed that the classroom wasn't really a women-only space. But it's part of a larger loss, for me; women's spaces used to be safe spaces, the places where I felt most capable of speaking up. Now, it's like going 'home' to my parents' new house in Arkansas instead of my childhood home in Kansas; I remember a sense of belonging and familiarity, but I don't feel it any more.

This is the part where I start to wallow in self-pity, because I don't feel any more comfortable in male spaces. I learned the rules of femininity very explicitly; my best friend in high school said she wouldn't want to be my friend if people kept making fun of me, so she taught me how to dress and act like a girl. It involved a duffel bag of example outfits, and more than one practice session. Nobody ever taught me the rules of being a man, so I'm always worried that there's some secret code I'm missing.

I'm not actually all that interested in following the rules of traditional manliness, since I'd much rather come up with my own queer, feminist interpretation of masculinity. I would be OK with being a too-feminine guy in a male space. But instead, I tend to feel like I am seen as an insufficiently-masculine woman, and it's even worse than being in a female space.

Put another way: when I think about entering a women's space, my womanhood doesn't 'measure up', and that's uncomfortable because it's always uncomfortable to be an outsider. But when I think about entering a men's space, I'm worried that my manhood is insufficient, and that's uncomfortable because holy fuck how can I even express how awful and scary that is?

As with all my anxieties, most of this is in my own head; I don't think I've ever had someone explicitly say to me that I don't belong in a certain space. But I've also never been successfully read as male, ever. So I prefer to dodge the question by occupying co-ed spaces as much as I possibly can.

In this way, my classmate was absolutely correct. My awareness of my gender is directly related to my context. In class, at work, or with close friends, I don't worry about fitting into a specific category, and sometimes I even enjoy being a little 'in between.' (A much cheerier blog post is pending on just this topic!) But as soon as I'm reminded that gender is apparently supposed to be a binary, I panic.

And that's where baby blog posts come from.


P.S. - Starting to wish for a neutral space of your own to explore your gender expression? Consider visiting Spectrum, a discussion group for "all individuals who do not conform to gender norms or embrace the sex they were assigned at birth, including those who identify as transgender, genderqueer, transsexual, intersex, gender questioning, or are reading this blurb and getting excited that there might be a place for you on campus." We are open to anyone who would like some support as they deal with questions of gender, with no policing, but please be aware that this group is not intended for allies. Membership is not publicised. Meeting times are on the LGBT center events page; email jess.evans@duke.edu for more information. We are especially hoping to connect with those who fall onto the feminine side of the spectrum!


And if you're an ally who just wants to know more about trans issues, as always, feel free to ask me a question here or email me any time at lawrence.evalyn@duke.edu!

In which I have a lot of wine at Christmas

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

Merry Christmas, folks!

Transgender Day of Remembrance was a while ago now, but I've found myself almost haunted by a question someone asked. I attended a reading of Gender Outlaw at the Regulator, and a woman in the audience said, "I want to raise my children to be gender neutral, but what do I say if my son asks for a Barbie?"

At first, I thought she was objecting to Barbie on feminist grounds, and I found it a really interesting question-- should you allow your sons access to toxic marketed images of femininity that you wouldn't give to your daughters?-- but then it turned out she didn't actually have a problem with Barbie. She had a problem with boys playing with girl toys. She didn't want her son to be picked on by other kids, she said; wouldn't it be better to teach him to fit in?

I have kind of a lot of problems with this.

First, I really object to the idea that a child's gender is readily apparent. Mine wasn't. How do you know it's your son asking for a Barbie? If it's your daughter, you're only going to break her heart if you deny her gender expression just so she can fit in with the "other" boys. This was my girlfriend's experience, and it caused her a lot of pain for years.

I lucked out a bit due to another flawed assumption-- the idea that "male" is somehow "gender neutral." It's way more okay for a girl (or, in my case, a "girl") to act boyish than the other way around (good ol' sexism!). So, if your goal is to give your kids a gender-free environment but you ban Barbies for the boys... you have epically failed to understand gender. Honestly, if you banned Barbies for girls, you'd still be failing at "gender neutral."

But I think the most difficult thing for me to swallow was the idea that, somehow, if the rest of the world is going to disapprove of your kid, it would help if you disapproved, too. This is the argument my mother still uses when she tries to convince my brother and I to stop dating people of the same (or in my case, "same") gender. She claims to have no problem with gay people, but wants us to be straight to make our lives easier.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I've always felt that I could deal with everybody else in the world with no problem if I knew I could count on supportive parents at home. I would almost certainly be going as Lawrence in class by now, for example. No problem is easier to overcome if you think your parents can't accept who you are as a person.

I'm actually a little intimidated by the prospect of ever having children, just because childhood is so full of gender policing, and I couldn't possibly protect my children from all of it. I can't bear the thought of the kids on the playground picking on my child for liking Barbie. I might go on a one-man crusade and talk to all those kids' parents. I might just give my kid a lot of pep talks about how some people are terrible. I would probably spend a lot of my time very worried. But I would still give my kid the Barbie. For me, that would never be in question.

And, you know, I don't give my mom a lot of credit for tolerance (largely because she remains "devastated" that I like girls, six years later) but she was pretty good about letting me just be myself. And this today we had a conversation that gave me hope (for the first time ever) that when I finally tell her I'm trans, maybe I won't have to be estranged from my whole family.

I usually get some nice new clothes for Christmas. Usually it's fancy dresses, shoes, or maybe a really stylish coat. Always in hyper-feminine prints and colors. This year, it was pajamas and some nice shirts from J Crew. Two or three of them had a few ruffles but they were all in earth tones, and they were probably the least-feminine clothes my mom had ever bought me.

"I noticed you were sort of dressing more neutral," she said, "so I tried to do that."

I didn't even care that she was conflating "masculine" with "neutral." I was just so, so happy. I'm pretty sure this is the first time my mom has had anything nice to say about my unfeminine tendencies. Usually it's a constant stream of criticism because I don't shave, she liked my hair better when it was long, I should wear earrings or my piercings will close, etc. But this time... when I mentioned that the ruffles were maybe too much, she said we could go exchange them tomorrow for something I'd like better.

And then, she asked if I had dress pants for an upcoming fancy dinner; I told her I'd outgrown my last pair, and said that I was just planning to wear a dress. I groaned when I said it, but I'm not sure I needed to. She immediately dismissed the idea of wearing a dress and insisted that we'd get dress pants. This is a huge turnaround from this summer, when she nagged me into waxing my legs specifically so I could wear dresses.

And you know-- it really does make a difference in how I feel about tackling the rest of the world. So I'm only more convinced that no matter what kind of consequences it has everywhere else, parents have to resist gender-policing.

As always, I'm just chitchatting about what's on my mind to get a conversation started. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here or email me at lawrenceevalyn (at) gmail (dot) com. I'd especially love to hear from other gender-non-conforming folks to hear your point of view. Come on, queer up my break for me!

In which it gets complicated

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

It's still Friday night, right? It's not Saturday morning until the sun rises.

I feel like "it's complicated" has been my mantra ever since I started questioning my gender. Today I want to untangle my identity a little, but I want to be clear that all this is only true for me, personally. I make no statements, or even guesses, as to how other transgendered folks relate to these things.

So, I guess I think of myself as having three selves. There's me, which is whoever I am when I'm completely alone, and then there are the slightly-processed versions of myself that I allow to be seen in public. I don't want to make it sound like these are totally different identities-- I think it's pretty normal to have a private-self and a public-self. You know, like, maybe your private-self likes to eat peanut butter out of the jar with your fingers, and thinks your boss is ugly. But your public self doesn't show this side of you to the world. Normal! Right?

Except for me It Gets Complicated, because right now I have me, my girl-public-self (whom I shall call Lavinia), and my boy-public-self (Lawrence). Lawrence is basically me, plus underpants, and minus nose-picking. Lavinia, though-- hoo boy, is Lavinia something else!

Lavinia is the perfect daughter my mother always wanted, plus all the coping mechanisms required to get me to go along with the act. Lavinia is high femme, and totally straight. She has an incredible work ethic. She's unfailingly polite. She's ambitious.

But in order to be that person I could never let myself make any close friends. It required momentum to keep Lavinia going; it broke my heart every time I had to put Lavinia back on after leaving a friend; I couldn't imagine going through the world as anyone other than Lavinia; clearly, the friend had to go.

Lavinia got a little tainted by my misery. She was a snob and a cynic and kind of a bitch. She was very aggressive and not very empathetic. She was so, so self-absorbed. I didn't like Lavinia, which only made her more unlikeable.

In a particularly tough period of my life, I tried to kill Lavinia. They made me stay in the hospital for a week. This was, as you may imagine, a bit of a wake-up call. I decided that I didn't care if I had no idea how to live without the facade, I obviously couldn't live with it, and I gave myself permission to find out what was underneath.

I am afraid I became an even more unbearable person at this point, as I removed all my self-censoring instincts and thus spewed my drama onto any and all unsuspecting passerby. I quit and re-joined all kinds of groups and projects, and changed majors every week. I flirted mercilessly with a cute girl and never called her back. I ate three gigantic ice cream sandwiches in a row one night, and skipped class to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But gradually-- so, so gradually!-- I began to put myself together, and make myself presentable to society again. And I found out that I don't really care about making money, that I don't like to be in charge, that I do care about social justice -- and, oh yeah, I found out that I'm a guy. Surprise!

I am working hard to put Lavinia behind me, and to become a better, happier, truer person. A lot of this doesn't really have to do with transitioning at all -- though I don't think I could have gotten so carried away with the facade if I hadn't been so deep in denial about my gender.

It's not so bad, really, pretending to be Lavinia, now that I know that's what I'm doing. She's less of a bitch now that I'm less miserable. And hey, that work ethic is great!

But the rapid switching I have to do on campus causes its own stress. I have to be on the watch for people who "don't know," and if just one shows up I have to immediately switch to Lavinia. When they leave, I try to work her off again, but it's a slow process, and there are a lot of people on campus who know Lavinia. This is why, if I introduce myself as Lawrence to someone, I refuse to tell them my legal name (which is not Lavinia) -- they can't expect a facade they don't know.

I do have to "put on" Lawrence as well, but mostly this involves consciously rejecting Lavinia. I don't think I'd notice changing my gestures, voice, posture, etc. if I didn't have to change them from something radically different, several times a day, at a moment's notice. And, well, I have to put on pants to go out in public, too. So I don't worry too much right now.

But anyway, that's why I don't really feel a connection to my former, girly self. I am kind of the most effeminate guy in the universe, but Lavinia never got to have fun with her gender expression; all the terribly stereotypical love for fashion, Lady Gaga, and camp-- that's all me, and I'm Lawrence. The more baby steps I am able to take towards transition, the more I feel... congruent. And Lavinia has nothing to do with it.

"Wonderfully and Beautifully Human": Remembering Mike Penner, Transsexual Sportswriter

Every other Thursday I will be writing about LGBT Issues in Sport. Between each regularly scheduled post I may chime in with more posts if something comes up and/or I have the time. I have a serious academic interest in sport and in this column I’ll be highlighting current events, sharing resources, reflecting on complex issues and sharing athlete’s stories among other things. For more about me, you can read my first post, here. Please feel free to email me with thoughts or if you come across something you’d like me to include on the blog.

This post is the second in a miniseries about trans-identified folk in sports. Two weeks ago I wrote about Kye Allums, the first ever D1 collegiate athlete to openly identify as trans. He plays basketball on George Washington University’s women’s basketball team.*     *     *     *     *
I want to start this post by saying that I’m an ally for trans-identified individuals. That said, I’m still learning how to be a better and better ally (thanks, Lawrence, for already educating me in your first post!). I might make a mistake and I hope that if I do, you readers will correct me. I identify as cis-gendered. I don’t write that because I’m afraid that by talking about these issues someone might think I was trans…I write that because as a cis-gendered person, I have to acknowledge that while I can sympathize with transfolk’s struggles in our society, advocate on their behalf, and support the people in my life who identify as trans or genderqueer or something that isn’t 100% cis, I can’t positively know what it’s like. As human beings who share some characteristics, we have many shared experiences, but we also have different experiences and I am cognizant of that.

Before I even worked at my first women’s basketball practice my first year (and despite having spent the previous summer in the PR office for the Mercury), I pretty much thought that the only people intimately involved with the team were the coaches and players. Like some of the other naïve things one thinks as a first year, I was WRONG. There are other administrative staff members, athletic trainers and doctors, sports information and marketing folk and the media themselves (I’m probably still leaving out some people). It became pretty clear to me that a team isn’t just the 12 players and 4 coaches on the bench during the game. Just like those 16 people on the bench, though, media personnel themselves lead pretty public lives.

November 27th will mark the 1 year anniversary of Mike Penner’s suicide. A Los Angeles Times sportswriter for 25 total years, during his career he covered high profile events such as the Olympics and the World Cup, in addition to being the LA Angels’ beat writer and writing about tennis, the NFL and sports media, among other things. Despite some high profile assignments, Penner’s most famous column ran on April 26, 2007. Titled “Old Mike, New Christine,” he wrote that “Today I leave for a few weeks’ vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet another incarnation. As Christine [Daniels]. I’m a transsexual sportswriter.”

Anonymous Posts (6.21.10-6.27.10)

Every week, we collect anonymous entries sent in using the link on our sidebar and post them all on Monday. We post anything as long as it doesn't contain personal attacks or hate speech. Feel free to submit your thoughts and questions :)

This post is already superlate, so I'm not going to delay much longer. Hope everyone in The City had a great time at Pride last weekend - I know that The Entire Community was together and I'm really upset/jealous I wasn't there. I miss y'all trillions.

#1

She or he or whatever they want to be

It’s concerning to you, I can see

Maybe tomorrow they’ll want to express

More freely

And you’ll stare

And wonder why they’re in a tie

When just yesterday

They were in a dress and isn’t

It a mess?

He or she or whatever they need to be

It’s puzzling you, I can already see

But dear the jokes on you

When your face is bent

In confusion

At the sight of them

In a tie and dress and isn’t

It a bigger mess?

You are she, you are he,

You will hold the hand of what you see

As the opposite of what you were

Born to be,

Male parts bind you to your tie

Female parts bind you to

Your dress

And if that’s where you find happiness

I wish you all the best

While your judging eyes

And thoughts make

You

The biggest mess

Butch/Femme

“I like butch girls and I cannot lie

You other femmes can't deny

When a butch walks in all the femmes make a fuss

Because there's like one of them and thirty of us”

-“Butch/Femme” by Team Gina

Don't hate me but...I can somewhat relate to the characters on the L Word. Don't get me wrong- I am just as annoyed that there were no real butch characters. I find the level of wealth and glamor unrealistic. Yet I can't help myself. I am attracted to the women on the show and aspire to be like them. My race and socioeconomic status also play a role, but I will address those identities another day.

Today is all about gender expression.

I see myself as a queer femme. It makes me feel like I’m in a burlesque troupe. While I am not the typical femme girl, I am a femme girl nonetheless. (And really, regardless of sexual orientation, who is the "typical" femme girl?) Before this year I assumed that since I wasn't “femme” in the most narrow, stereotypical sense I wasn’t a “femme” at all. I also assumed that in order to be “femme” I would have to date only “butches.” I changed my mind partly because Tiffany kept telling me how femme I was. I also realized that well…I wasn’t like all the other LGBT girls I knew. This realization wasn’t of the “OMG I’M SO ALONE WHAT EVER AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE” variety (we've all had plenty of those.) Rather, it was accompanied by a sly grin. One more hitherto unanalyzed part of me was finally beginning to make sense.

Part of the reason why I was so hesitant to claim the identity was because I was I was a flaming tomboy growing up. When I was younger I would often pass for a boy. I envied girls who could wear shorts and a t-shirt and still look like girls. In many arguments with my mom and grandma where I have been accused of “not being feminine enough.” Someone was always willing to explain to me that I was too loud, too logical, too brash, too sporty, too ugly, too to-the-point to be a girl. I still don’t feel like I have correct femme foundation. Whatever “femme” is, it’s not completely instinctive.

We all have many sides and histories. The word “femme” to me is not about wearing heels everyday, wanting to be a mother, having a million cute pictures on Facebook, heightened sensitivity to colors or shopping stamina. It’s not about only dating women who can pass for men, though I do find masculine women appealing. The aforementioned qualities are more stereotypical than realistic, though sensitivity to colors is based in biology. What makes me a femme? Well, my love for skirts, dresses and all things beautiful. My hair-flipping ability. My freakish emotional intelligence and sensitivity. My aversion to physical pain. My desire to comfort others. To you this may sound like outdated stereotypes. Yet for me the details are less important.

I am constantly "hacking" the word femme, teasing out of it new meaning.

Putting a definition to “feminine” and “masculine” is one of the hardest tasks I can imagine, slightly less hard than running the Federal Reserve or being a neurosurgeon. I understand why someone wouldn’t want to identify with a label. This may surprise you, but I can wear a suit and tie or play a contact sport and it has no effect my status as a femme. I have femme tenure.

Femme is also more liberating because I made the choice to identify as such and feel no shame in it. Of course I would feel no shame- as a woman I am encouraged by society to be "femme." And you'd be right to assume that it's easier for straight women and I to find common ground when I look similar to them. I also find it easier to introduce straight women to a girlfriend who looks like a boyfriend. But I don't have a firm ally in men or women. While straight women can relate to me and make up most of my friends, I am still too often seen as the tainted lesbian. I'm like a slut or a whore. And I have difficulty forming strong friendships with straight men.

This exercise has taught me to me more sensitive to the unique gender expressions of those around me. You are free to identify as butch/femme, genderqueer, androgynous or just yourself. I not vulnerable to harassment because of how I look, walk, dress or talk. I am vulnerable to harassment because I choose to be visible. I'm angry whenever I hear the line "If I wanted someone who looked like a man, I'd date one" on a television show, especially one that is LGBT themed (Sugar Rush comes to mind.) The gender expression chauvinism is our community needs to stop. I know the butch/femme dynamic seems passe, but it's just as passe as only valuing feminine (or non-butch) lesbians.

Identifying as femme is not about putting myself in a box. It’s about finally finding a box that so many people hid from me and saying

“Hey! That’s my box!”