We are defined by the identities society assigns to us and by the ones we assign ourselves to. In order to get down to the meat of what is true about ourselves, we must peel away layer on layer of superfluous labels and frames. This series of posts is part of my attempt to define what and who I really am.
I begin with the topics of Sex and Gender, two separate but inextricably connected types of identity. Our sex is the identity constructed for us by society based on our perceived biological characteristics. I say 'constructed' because sex categories are based on perceptions, not facts. There is no possible definition of 'male' or 'female' which does not exclude a vast number of people commonly socially assigned to the male and female sexes, and one does not commonly inquire after a person's chromosomes or reproductive capacity or even necessarily their genitals before assigning them to a sex category. Every year, thousands of newborns are surgically 'assigned' to a sex category because the appearance of their genitals does not permit them to be sexed using the less invasive 'cursory visual inspection' method applied to the rest. I stress this to dispel immediately any hint of sex-determinism here, any conception that sex is something 'intrinsic' to who a person is. Biologically speaking, there are no 'males' or 'females'. There are people with certain organs, people with certain genetic structures, people who are capable or incapable of supplying certain types of gametes to the reproductive process. Male and Female are statistical artifacts, convenient labels we apply to people to simplify and streamline the process of social interaction.
Once we have been sexed, the concept of gender comes into play. Where sex is the social construction of our biology, gender is the social meaning attached to sex and the social expectations one is expected to fulfill once one has been sexed. Because sex is as much a social construct as gender, the separation between the two is not as strong as a lot of people like to think; but it can be a convenient distinction to draw. The socially assigned definition of your sex is more or less static from the moment it is assigned to you. Transsexuals and the Intersex movement have made significant headway in redefining the social construction of sex and the possibility of altering sextype once assigned, but it is still a significant social fact that having been born male one is largely considered male for the rest of one's life no matter what one's biological or social reality may be. Gender, as commonly understood, consists of expectations that are inherently nonbiological; sex, though also a nonbiological construct, is grounded directly in biology whereas gender is grounded mainly in the perception of assigned sex. Therefore, gender expectations function at a remove from any explicit reference to biological reality. Where the construction of the sextype explicitly references such biological facts as penises and testicles, vaginas and uteri, breasts, beards, and X or Y chromosomes, most gender constructs not explicitly involving body shape and the physical acts of genital intercourse or reproduction reference only the sextype, using it as shorthand. Gender constructs therefore tend to be more fluid, culturally dependent, changing with time, place and observer. Gender is much more amenable to social manipulation than sex. Its boundaries are more nebulous and, must be policed much more actively and continuously than sex. Cisgendered people -- those who perform, be it enthusiastically or reluctantly, the gender obligations attached to their assigned sex -- gain considerable social privileges over the transgendered, those who for whatever reason cannot or will not conform to gendering and sextyping; but those obligations are often implied rather than explicit, unwritten rules rather than codified laws. They can be adapted, subverted, remixed, and deliberately altered. Sex is a hard and fast social fact, but gender can be negotiated.
At birth, I was assigned to the 'male' sex for commonly accepted reasons. (No surgical intervention beyond routine circumcision was involved.) I grew up as a male, with masculine gender expectations. I have a vivid memory of being at a friend's house, wanting to watch My Little Pony, and being told with intense disgust that "that's a girl's show". Likewise, I always preferred She-Ra over He-Man; and looking back, I think a large part of it was the latter's explicit gender policing, its offering of the eponymous man-among-men and the craven, laughingstock Prince Adam as delimiting points of the continuum of masculinity. I often took on female roles when playing make-believe, and was incessantly mocked for it. I came to internalize the idea that I was somehow broken, that I was continually failing at being a boy.
Around the age of 15, I began to lose interest entirely in performing the social expectations attached to the male gender role. I had never been especially good at it, having little aptitude for understanding these rules and regulations; my behaviour had never been particularly 'masculine' as commonly defined. But this was the time at which I underwent a transition in self-identification from being less-than-a-man to being something completely other. It was slow at first, and was bound up in the various processes of 'searching for identity' that are part of adolescence, in my embrace of satanism, anarchism, feminism, transhumanism, and the goth counterculture. My yearning for freedom from the strictures of gendered behaviour was part of what drew me to these ideals and philosophies, and in turn they helped me loose those internalized strictures and redefine what gender would be in relation to my own self-concept. I moved into social circles in which it was much more acceptable for males to modify their appearance in ways traditionally reserved for females -- wearing their hair long, wearing makeup, jewellery and nail polish, dressing in styles of clothing generally reserved for women. Bit by bit I moved along the continuum from acceptable masculine appearance to 'guyliner' and black nail-polish Gothboi; then, in a sudden rush, to full-on transvestism. For a brief period I tried to 'dress like a girl' -- to make my appearance over into a perfect performance of femininity -- but soon came to understand that feminine gender expectations (particularly those attached to appearance) are even more restrictive and more actively policed than masculine, and that no matter how perfectly I performed them it would never be satisfactory, to myself or to most of the population, not even to my friends and social circles. But I had no intention to give up the feelings of freedom and comfort in my own body that deliberate defiance of gender norms inspired in me. Instead, I went in the other direction, wearing women's clothes and outrageously elaborate night-mask makeup while making little effort to conceal the obvious markers of my 'male' sex.
It was not long before I began to learn that many of my male privileges were largely contingent on properly performing my assigned social role. Though my wild 'costumes' were accepted, sometimes enthusiastically, by my friends and acquaintances; though my family were understanding and remarkably patient; perfect strangers felt the need to publicly shame me. I was ostracized even at gay bars, social spaces purportedly intended to cater to those who do not fulfill socially constructed gender norms, by cross-dressers dedicated to the perfect performance of femininity and masculinity that I found myself incapable of sustaining. I learned that, if the cisgendered are privileged at the expense of the transgendered, those who conform to any gender role at all are privileged over those who conform to none. One evening while walking home from a night at the club, literally a block from my own home, I was propositioned, then sexually and physically assaulted when I refused, by a cisgendered man who seemed to project his own sexual confusion on to me, conflating transgenderism, homosexuality and pedophelia, repeatedly screaming as he punched me in the face that he had a girlfriend and didn't want to fuck little boys. The Goth clubs and parties which had once been the arena of my metamorphosis became my only refuge, the only place where I could be what I had come to think of as the person I truly was. What had been a source of happiness and comfort became a further source of angst and depression.
Slowly, I have retreated back into the shell of cisgender privilege. I rarely dress up anymore, and when I do I feel self-conscious and ugly. My body shape has changed and my pretty skirts and dresses no longer fit me. My wife loves her 'pretty gothy boi' and would like to see me like that again, but I have trouble summoning the courage to try. I feel like a butterfly with broken wings.
But even if I never get back into that place of freedom and beauty that I had for so very brief a time (and I will not stop trying, but I need to be in a place where I'm not so beholden to others and find some of the old fire and rage I once had before I make the attempt again), the experience has permanently changed me. I am no longer a 'male' in my own eyes. My penis does not define who I am. Social expectations of what is or is not masculine have no hold on me, except insofar as I would face direct consequences for failing to fulfill them, and even then I willfully defy them whenever I think I can get away with it. I have lost most of my internalized gender expectations, masculine and feminine both; and any I realize that I still carry, I work hard to root out; they mean nothing but captivity and shame to me.
I'm not sure what my 'gender identity' is now, having not found a construction that really appeals to me; I tend to use the term 'androgynous', although it has some implications I'm not comfortable with. I don't get hung up on pronouns that way a lot of people do, more out of lack of desire to get into a big hassle than anything else -- 'he' and 'she' are equally incorrect, 'zie/zer' is awkward, and getting into a fight with grammar nazis about singular 'they' just makes me tired. (One major attraction of my wife's obsessive Finnophilia is that Finnish third person pronouns are intrinsically non-gendered; I like the idea of insisting on 'han/hanet/hanen'.) There's a lot that's uncertain, but the one thing I am certain of is that no matter how I dress or what my body looks like, I'm out of the prison of my socially assigned sex and gender and I'm never going back.
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