Gender Expression is for Everybody

It catches me off guard whenever someone is surprised that I research and advocate for transgender rights. I do not identify as trans; I keep my bisexual identity pretty private.

To many, I appear to be a straight, cisgender[1] woman spending a lot of time researching a community to which she does not belong. Aside from the long-standing history of support and collaboration between bi and trans communities, however, I do have a deep personal connection to researching trans issues. Everyone has a gender identity and everyone expresses gender. Those who may not realize this fact are most likely benefiting from what Julia Serano terms cissexual privilege. Gender identity and expression are the basic elements of trans studies (at least in how I approach my work from a feminist sociological paradigm).

People who do not belong to the LGBT community may also experience discrimination based on gender expression. For example, my brother is a straight man who used to dress all in black, paint his fingernails, and wear his hair in braids (people labeled him Goth although he never claimed that identity). My brother is secure enough in his identity that he feels comfortable trying on new and different expressions. However, his alternative expression sometimes creates a heightened self-consciousness: he knows he sticks out. While some people respond positively to my brother’s unique expression, other people avoid him. When he started applying for summer jobs, no one would hire him. Even when he toned down his alternative expression, he still struggled to find a job. That summer my brother picked berries—a job he thoroughly enjoyed, being the good sport he is.

Which brings me to my summer project with the Task Force: identifying research on transgender discrimination. Unfortunately, the data is sparse, especially in areas such as education, housing, and public accommodations. Personally, I don’t understand why more people aren’t researching these issues. Not only is the subject matter important, it’s fascinating and has the potential to open up so many possibilities. I have personally benefited from researching trans issues. Gaining a better understanding of the diversity of gender identities and expressions has helped me become more comfortable and secure in my own gender identity and expression. Witnessing the variety of expressed womanhood and femininity has helped me embrace my own experience of womanhood and unique expression of femininity. The realization that gender is not a binary, oppositional system that herds people into two restricting options that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive has opened up a world of possibilities to me. My genderqueer friends show me how to play with gender and push boundaries. Discovering transgender identities has made it okay for me to be a woman as I no longer find that so restraining.

So when I have been blessed so much by researching transgender identities, how can I not spend my time and energy researching transgender concerns and advocating for transgender rights? The transgender population is one of the most overlooked and misunderstood. Furthermore, advocating for transgender rights is really advocating for gender identity and expression rights, which benefits us all.

[1] Cisgender: gender identity opposite of transgender on the gender spectrum whereby one’s birth sex and gender identity match (i.e. a person assigned a female sex at birth identifies as a woman).

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Wednesday, 8/13/2008, 6:09 AM (EST)

I read your blog on Gender expression with great interest.

I am a gay man and activist for transgender rights and i am always faced with the same sort of questioning about my intentions and agenda. I thought i was the only one being drilled on the gender expression question. You have put the issue in terms i can understand.Thx.

Currently i am researching a new video project on transgender success stories emphasizing how they overcame discrimination in health, housing and employment.

Good luck with all your endeavors.

dante Alencastre
Activist/Filmmaker

Wednesday, 8/13/2008, 9:40 AM (EST)

As I've attempted to express discomfort with transgender identities, and with the notion of an "inclusive LGBT"community," I've been accused of hatred and worse. But there's a major context for that discomfort that's evidently been banned from discussion as "LGBT" has become the movement's official Party Line.

I remember a time when the concept of gay liberation involved a wholesale rejection of everything implicit in the question, "Which one of you is the guy, and which one is the girl."

This approach represents a rejection of gender -- and goes beyond any rejection of "butch/femme" identities during what may have been merely a passing phase in lesbian feminism. The obliteration of gender -- and, thus, the viability of the very concept of "transgender" (or gender transition) -- is implicit in such a rejection.

When a "transgender man" who recently gave birth was in labor, was "he" truly "living as a man?" Or perhaps -- just perhaps -- is there something wrong with the very legitimacy of the concept of "living as a man (or woman)?"

It's in this context, too, that, while I acknowledge the prominent presence of transgendered people at Stonewall, I view their "gender expression" to be a vestige of an unliberated identity.

I'm familiar with Julia Serano's counter-argument that such a view stems from "cisgender privilege." I obviously reject that argument -- and have personally experienced Serano's utterly reprehensible attempt to suppress dialogue on the subject by calling it "hurtful" and disparaging opposing viewpoints as motivated merely by ignorance or hate.

Incidentally, the fact that transgendered people may face many of the same enemies as gay people doesn't, in and of itself, make us members of the same community: Stalinists aren't members of a political or cultural community with others who may have shared a common enemy in Hitler -- even, for that matter, if they shared some overlapping reasons for Hitler's enmity.

None of this disparages the notion that transgendered people are entitled to rights to housing, employment, etc.

It merely rejects the cant behind the rationale for "an inclusive LGBT community," along with the view that those who "pass" for their born gender are merely more privileged or less "queer" than those who don't -- and with the notion that those who reject gender (or the notion of an "LGBT community") are prompted by hate. We may be motivated by having (often painfully) fought to transcend and reject gender, and insulted by the notion that our fight was for nought.

Mitchell Halberstadt
Oakland, CA

Wednesday, 8/13/2008, 9:57 PM (EST)

Mitchell,
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my blog post. I appreciate and welcome healthy discussions of these issues and would like to respond to some of your comments.

In reading your response, it seems that you are conflating two very important and related, but different, issues: 1) that everyone has a gender identity and expression and 2) how the "T" fits in "LGBT." I would like to address both issues but separately.

First, my original intent in the blog post was to point out that issues of gender identity and expression transcend the LGBT population. Everyone has a gender identity and expression gender. Not seeing this reality is analogous to not recognizing the race-identity of white people. The invisibility of "white" as a racial identity is a form of white privilege. Conflating "race issues" with "people of color issues" reifies the invisibility of whiteness and white privilege.

The question here is what is being named and who is being named. This is part of the reason I identify as a cisgender woman. Without such a term, only transgender women are named. My identity, my social location, is unnamed and invisible. The invisible becomes the norm making the named "not normal." Identities that receive a label (in this case, transgender) are set apart as needing specification; they are differentiated from the assumed norm.

To provide another illustrative example, my friend used to challenge me every time I referred to her as an African American. Why did I get to be an American, but she was an African American? Why did my racial identity remain invisible while hers was constantly pointed out? Language is so powerful that even when it is missing, it says something. Think about "basketball" vs. "women's basketball." When I was in high school, a "basketball" game was assumed to be a men's basketball game unless otherwise specified. These special labels"women's basketball," "transgender women"allow the unnamed to inhabit the realm of the norm.

What I am trying to say is that we need to acknowledge and name everyone's gender identity and expression in order to disrupt the current system of cisgender privilege.

Second, the issue of everyone having a gender identity and expression is related to but not the same as transgender inclusion in LGBT communities. In the latter issue, the question is not should we "allow them in." The fact is transgender and gender non-conforming people have always been a part of LGBT communities (although the language and identities have changed over time). I do want to acknowledge that some heterosexual transgender people do not feel connected to LGBT communities nor do they want to be. On the other hand, some transgender folk are also lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (because everyone has a gender identity and a sexual orientation). I think our community does need to keep discussing how our different identities relate to each other but the solution is not exclusion. I would recommend reading Phyllis Randolph Frye. She has an excellent piece on the relationship between gender identity and sexual orientation.[1]

What concerns me is that LGBT communities are spending so much time arguing about who should be included/excluded. Talk about divide and conquer! Yes, these are important discussions. But more important is the fact that LGBT people are getting fired, being denied health insurance, and facing escalating violence.

Which brings me back to my original intent of the blog post. I recently read the 2007 National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs' report on anti-LGBT violence.[2] According to the report, 6% of the victims of anti-LGBT violence identified as heterosexual. Something in their gender expression must have been read as queer by their attackers. Gender expression, and the potential ensuing discrimination, harassment, and violence, affects everyone. Therefore, passing fully inclusive nondiscrimination and hate crime legislation is in everyone's interest.

Finally, I wanted to address the discomfort you mentioned feeling with transgender identities. I do not want to ignore your discomfort and am sorry that you have felt shut down in the past. I ask you to reflect that perhaps the way you're expressing this discomfort is coming off as offensive to trans people who already face severe oppression and marginalization on a daily basis. On campuses, white privilege groups are forming where white people come together to ask ignorant questions, examine their privilege, and learn how to become allies. I wish we could have similar groups for cisgender people. I find that discomfort often stems from not knowing. I was not always as comfortable with trans identities as I am now. Such identities were unknown to me and confusing and I did not get it; therefore, I was uncomfortable. Only through researching trans identities, reading trans words, and getting to know trans people has this discomfort dissipated. I suggest you explore a similar route. I'd be happy to send you resources to get you started. For instance, in reading your post, I started to wonder if you were conflating transgender and transsexual identities. It seems like your main contention with "transgender" identities is that they reify the gender binary system, something which you feel gay liberation is working to dismantle. Let me recommend you read Gender Queer, edited by Ricki Wilchins, Joan Nestle, and Claire Howell. This book is an anthology of personal stories about transgender people whose identities transcend the gender binary.

Kyla Bender-Baird

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[1] Phyllis Randolph Frye. FACING DISCRIMINATION, ORGANIZING FOR FREEDOM: THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY. From the textbook CREATING CHANGE: PUBLIC POLICY, AND CIVIL RIGHTS, Edited by John D'Emilio, William B. Turner and Urvashi Vaid, St. Martins Press, 2000. http://www.transgenderlegal.com/.

[2] http://www.ncavp.org/common/document_files/Reports/2007HVReportFINAL.pdf.