What is Gender…?

I want to discuss gender. I want to discuss this from a place of questioning and experience, rather than a place of oppression and theory. While both theory and oppression are important to the discussion of gender, too often gendered experiences are dismissed (particularly when the experience comes from a trans person). Before I can properly discuss “gender” I have to define what I mean as “gender”, because there really isn’t a consensus. Language fails us here.

One thing I’d like to talk about are some of my earliest understandings. It is important to understand how children learn about the world. Children learn through instruction, but mostly it is through observation. Most children will pay close attention to adults who closely match their sex. Boy children will learn how to be a man by watching the men in their life – thus you have generational abusers who may have been instructed not to hit women, but observed men hitting women.

As far back as I can remember, my observations have always been of the women in my life. The men were simply not that important or interesting. If a book, movie, or TV show didn’t have a compelling female character, I was not interested. I watched and learned how to be an adult by watching my mother, grandmothers, aunts, and to a lesser extent books, movies, and television.

I was aware of inequality in the work my mother performed (she was a stay-at-home parent) and my father (construction). Unequal as far as how their individual contributions were regarded. I was, and have always been, very aware of sexist comments, because those comments didn’t reflect ME or the women I knew – not because “mamma raised me right” (although she didn’t do a bad job either).

When I say “I always knew I was a girl”. I am NOT saying “I liked to play with dolls” or “I wore momma’s heals when she wasn’t looking.” What I am saying is for SOME reason, I took all my social cues from the women around me, even when cues by males were equally available. MEN were the “other” in my life as a child before elementary school. I had a close relationship with my father until I came out (first as gay, then trans) so it isn’t like we had a strained relationship, or he was absent from my life. I just didn’t relate to him as a model for who I was to become as an adult.

For some reason, my awareness was always directed towards females in a way that was not true for my brothers. Men were “other” and while I received conditioning and socialization as a male, It was the socialization of women that I paid attention to and learned and internalized. Someone would say “All women are manipulative” and my reaction was “No I’m not!” rather than “Yeah!” or “Really?”

It is that understanding that I think of when discussing “gender”. It isn’t the social affectations like hair and make-up or the social rules that make women avoid conflict, talking loudly, and taking up as little space as possible.  It is that thing that heard “girls play with dolls and boys climb trees” and told me to play with dolls and wish I could climb trees. (For example. I neither played with dolls nor climbed trees)

In adulthood, my housemates were always women, mostly Lesbian women, and always Feminists. We were all very politically active, centering on GLBT, Women’s, and Anti-Racist issues. I bring this up to offer another example of that something- that understanding, that thing that hasn’t a name yet (other than the problematic “gender”). I GOT sexism, I saw it, I understood it, I could feel it. It was that way that boys and men acted that made me feel like I didn’t belong. It was those comments they made and the way they looked at women that made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t a political theory, or a social critique – it was the name of a very real part of my internal conflict and sense of self.

This was in marked contrast with how I came to understand race and class issues. Coming from a place of relative race/class privilege, I wasn’t aware of how I contributed to racism or classism. Thankfully, I usually had the sense to shut up and listen when POCs would talk about Race. I accepted what they said as, at the very least, their truth. However there was a (probably common) period where I just really didn’t “get it”. I had to unlearn and examine myself in light of race and class oppression.

I’m not saying I didn’t have male privilege or use it. I’m also not saying that I had a childhood exactly like a  like a girl of my peer group has a childhood. What I am saying is I saw my childhood and processed all the information I was given in a way that made “woman” the normal and “man” the other thing that wasn’t safe and wasn’t particularly important (except for being cute). Unlike my racism, which was the invisible, unseen, unchallenged “way things are”.

My use of race and racism isn’t intended to compare oppressions. Rather, I hope to show how a Trans identity can filter social messages by using an example of social messages about race/class that were (unfortunately) more traditionally filtered and processed and challenged.

I have no idea if other Trans* people have anything like this. I am simply stating how I understand my childhood. Any comments or observations on this are welcome.

I found this very helpful.

~ by laughriotgirl on November 11, 2009.