Stumbling Over Gender, and an Apology
My awareness and understanding of gender issues is … well, let’s just say there’s an ongoing and deliberate evolution.
As a kid, I got the basic Kindergarten Cop lesson: Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.
By the time I got to college, I was starting to recognize more layers. I distinguished between sex (a biological binary) and gender, the (again binary) performance of cultural sex-roles.
I met a friend who introduced me to the concept of transgenderism. He (at the time we met) was in the process of coming out as female. I stumbled over pronouns a few times, but then got it through my head that she was now R—-, a woman, and that was that. No problem.
Along the way I also sorted out transgender vs. transsexual vs. transvestite in my head (a process that might have gone more quickly if I had been into Rocky Horror half as much as some of my friends were).
Later on, the term “cis” started popping up. “Cisgender” and “cissexual” both threw me for a loop the first time I encountered them, and they still don’t feel like an entirely natural part of my vocabulary. Yet. But I recognize them as useful terms to identify “an individual whose self-perception of their gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.” (From Wikipedia.) They also help move away from the flawed premise that cisgendered individuals don’t need a particular terminology because we’re “normal.”
I’ve finally started getting past the deeply-ingrained binary assumptions I grew up with. I learned the genetics a while back. Yes, we have XX and XY chromosome sets. We also have XXY, XYY, and other variations. They may be less common, but they certainly exist. If we have that much range at the genetic level, why the hell should gender identity be fixed or binary? For that matter, why the hell should gender be tied to biology at all?
I’m still learning, I’m still struggling, and I’m certainly still screwing up from time to time. I tossed out a joke yesterday that a few people challenged as cissexist. I didn’t get that at first. After walking away … well, I still may not agree with every single comment, but I think I better understand and agree with a lot of what people were saying.
I went through the typical defensive reactions in my head, of course. But that’s not what I meant! Why are you attacking people who are on your side? How hard do you have to be looking for offense to find it in that comment? Look how many people thought it was funny. And so on.
All bullshit. But bullshit that still goes through my brain when people call me on stuff like this.
Where I usually seem to mess up here is by asserting the implied equivalence of biology and gender. Or, to put it bluntly, with dick jokes.
I don’t make them often, because I try to keep a generally PG tone out of personal preference. But in my opinion, penises are goofy-looking bits of equipment, and as such, are useful elements for humor. (Or maybe a part of me is just perpetually stuck at age 12.) So when another all-male anthology or awards ballot comes out, I find myself wanting to make quips like, “Because everyone knows True Literature must be typed using only your penis!”
I think that’s a rather funny (and disturbing) image. It’s also problematic, because it equates “male” with possession of a penis. It reinforces that limited, binary, and demonstrably false worldview.
Defensive Brain immediately jumps in to say, “Okay fine, maybe you’re right, but it’s not like I’m committing hate crimes here or intentionally trying to hurt anyone!”
Defensive Brain needs to shut the &%^$ up. Because what I am doing is suggesting that a subset of people don’t exist. As they struggle for rights and recognition and legal protection, I’m making them invisible. Sure, it may not seem like a big deal to me … any more than “lady editors” was to a pair of SF authors from a recent sexism flap. But it’s one more unthinking erasure. One of a thousand daily slights, indignities, and assaults.
And I’ve contributed to that.
I won’t say that I fully get it yet, but I’m working on it, and certain things have finally begun to click. What can I say … sometimes I can be a little dense.
I apologize for my mistakes and missteps along the way.
—
The cardinal photo is from http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/a-gynandromorph-cardinal-one-half-male-the-other-half-female/
Annalee
July 2, 2013 @ 10:44 am
I saw that joke yesterday and found I couldn’t fit my discomfort with it into 140 chars, so I didn’t say anything. Thanks for this post.
I’ve had the term ‘magic man sparkles’ suggested as an alternative, as in “oh I guess you need magic man sparkles to get on that shortlist,” or “the conference room’s acoustics are so bad you need magic man sparkles to be heard in there.”
Doesn’t really work for the joke you were telling yesterday, but in a general sense I think it pegs male privilege better.
Jim C. Hines
July 2, 2013 @ 10:46 am
Yeah, Twitter definitely wasn’t the ideal medium for that particular conversation.
Magic man sparkles, eh? Hm…
AMPillsworth
July 2, 2013 @ 11:08 am
Wow, that cardinal makes me flash back to the infamous half-black/half-white Star Trek episode. Would the cardinals care which side was red and which buff?
Yeah, gender’s a fluid thing, as far as I can see. The more comfortable we all get with that, the better.
--E
July 2, 2013 @ 11:18 am
“Talking in a shower of magic man sparkles.”
Elizabeth
July 2, 2013 @ 11:24 am
I’m really glad to see this.
Liz Argall
July 2, 2013 @ 11:31 am
By Zeus! I think you’re onto something there 😉
Jayle Enn
July 2, 2013 @ 12:13 pm
I have to concur with you about the appearances of penises– even when they’re ready for business, they are goofy looking things! I mean, they look like knock-off Muppet blanks: just add a turtleneck, googly eyes and you’re ready to flail your arms like Kermit introducing the next act.
I also want to say ‘thank you’. Defensiveness is a natural reaction to hostility, perceived or real. Being able to put yourself in the aggrieved’s position and apologise is a difficult next step for most of us. Unfortunately, when erasure (or worse) is the order of the day, even the most innocently intended comment can feel like a blow.
Jim C. Hines
July 2, 2013 @ 12:14 pm
“I mean, they look like knock-off Muppet blanks: just add a turtleneck, googly eyes and you’re ready to flail your arms like Kermit introducing the next act.”
Can. Never. Unsee!!!
roach
July 2, 2013 @ 12:29 pm
Jim, thank you for continuing to provide positive examples of how to be a better human being.
Fred
July 2, 2013 @ 12:38 pm
I doubt anyone “gets it right” 100% of the time. I know I’ve heard more than a few people slip on pronouns in conversations around my college’s LGBTQ – even people who aren’t themselves cisgendered. Language is a slippery little thing and as you (correctly) point out, new terms can be hard to make a natural part of our vocabulary. (I have friends who are neutral or bi-gendered. Though I have no trouble with ‘zie’ and ‘zier’ in writing, I often stumble a bit with it when speaking.) I think the important part is that you do recognize it as important and that you make the effort to try, even when you don’t fully understand it yourself.
Brooks
July 2, 2013 @ 12:43 pm
One of the interesting things with that joke is that the “all-male” sets of authors could also almost certainly be described as “all cis-gendered male” — and it’s rather likely that the sets of privilege that are leading to those imbalances really are applying to cis-gendering as well as maleness.
What’s interesting is that, despite that explanation, the joke remains problematic. I think that implies some rather nuanced things about how gender implications work.
(A question: Does the joke avoid being problematic if one explicitly focuses it with an “Another panel of only cis-gendered males?” preamble?)
Jenn Reese
July 2, 2013 @ 1:40 pm
Oh, wow, I love “magic man sparkles” so incredibly much.
wanderthe5th
July 2, 2013 @ 1:44 pm
Regarding your question, I suspect that both, “So many dudes, what a sausagefest!” and “So many cisgender dudes, what a sausagefest!” could be problematic. Some trans men have dicks, after all, and I could see the latter joke coming off as an implication that they do not or that theirs don’t count.
It may be more an issue of audience than framing. Which is true of many types of jokes.
pericat
July 2, 2013 @ 3:00 pm
They also help move away from the flawed premise that cisgendered individuals don’t need a particular terminology because we’re “normal.”
This has just made a sparkler of a light bulb shine for me. Thank you so very much!
Elaine
July 2, 2013 @ 5:03 pm
Coming from a conservative, religious background, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all. I have a cousin who recently came out as transgender, and that has caused a huge upheaval in my family. I’m very proud of her bravery and want to support her however I can. Reading things like this gives me more to think about. I never realized certain things I take for granted or assume to be “normal” could offend or further alienate her. I find your honesty and vulnerability refreshing.
Adela
July 2, 2013 @ 5:12 pm
I really wish we had better language terms than cis and trans to start with since I’m more used to the prefixes being used in certain fields as absolute terms and humans do not come in absolutes for anything. Gender and sex are blurry fractals all the way down. Cis and trans endorses a binary view by saying you are this or that with a default and other perspective. Conforming or non.
We need a language version of something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Symmetrical_5-set_Venn_diagram.svg ,though 5 is still not enough sets.
SunflowerP
July 3, 2013 @ 3:37 am
Yep. I don’t mind applying it to myself to acknowledge the privilege I have as a cissexual genderqueer/nth-gender person, because while it’s technically ‘passing privilege’ I’m in little danger of losing that privilege by failing to ‘pass’: my gender ID is geek; no one doubts that I am a geek (except for the contingent that whines about ‘fake geek girls’, and that’s a whole ‘nother sort of ‘failure to pass’), they just don’t parse it as a gender. But on the other hand, that erases my non-binary experience.
I think it partly depends on whether one is talking directly about cis* privilege, or about the wide variety of human experience/expression of gender – much the same way that I will sometimes refer to myself as a woman when talking about male privilege (because typing out ‘person who is socially classed as a woman’ every time is a pain in the arse), but not usually in other contexts. That’s not a complete answer, because it still reinforces the binary, but OTOH, when you’re calling someone on their unexamined privilege, that’s no time to get mired in complex explanations of nuance.
Sunflower
Jim C. Hines
July 3, 2013 @ 10:07 am
Thank you. I’m glad it was helpful, and doubly glad you’re working to try to understand and support her.
Rose Fox
July 3, 2013 @ 1:11 pm
Sex and gender are definitely spectrums, but there are a lot of people–cis and trans*–who find value in the endpoints of those spectrums. Saying “it’s all blurry” is like saying “everyone is a little bit bisexual”; it erases people just as surely as saying “everyone is a man or a woman” or “everyone is gay or straight”.
CaitieCat
July 3, 2013 @ 1:41 pm
Thanks, Jim. It helps, the acknowledging and the sorry. It helps.
I told my kids, when they were growing up, that making mistakes isn’t a problem. People make mistakes, it’s one of our defining characteristics, I think.
Everyone makes mistakes; what matters is what you do next. If you knocked over and smashed the vase that Mum loved, don’t tell me the dog did it, or your sibling broke one last week, or the vase was ugly anyway, or you were only joking around.
Admit your responsibility, apologize for the error, and get on with life.
If you don’t mind a minor linking, I wrote about this kind of thing about three weeks ago at FreeThoughtBlogs:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2013/06/16/guest-post-undigging-the-hole-fofissamo/
You get a passing grade on this learning experience from this Nana*. 🙂
* Grandmother to four, and who also happens to be trans*, and has room for allies to mess up, if they know how to get it right after.
Razor
July 3, 2013 @ 4:48 pm
I’m arguing semantics a bit, but isn’t the definition of normal that it’s the average or mean? So statistically, with maybe <5% of the population categorized as trans-anything, the term normal is not inaccurate to describe those that are not cis-anything.
Connotation wise I guess it makes it seem like others are beneath those that are considered normal.
CaitieCat
July 3, 2013 @ 4:53 pm
You do see that your comment contains its own answer, right?
I guess it makes it seem like others are beneath those that are considered normal.
DING DING DING DING! We have a winner! It’s pretty basic sociology, the concept of markedness, like “lady editor” vs “editor”, or “lady firefighter” vs “firefighter”. If the only thing that gets marked is one group, then that group is being set apart, or “othered”, as the kids will have it. Using both markers reduces that effect.
chris.
July 3, 2013 @ 11:58 pm
Thanks for this post, Jim. I appreciate that not only are you thinking about these subjects, you’re willing to do so publicly. Contributions like this to the larger ongoing conversation make me so happy when i see someone upthread saying, “Oh, a light bulb just went off!”
Linkspam, 7/5/13 Edition – Part 1 — Radish Reviews
July 5, 2013 @ 8:31 am
[…] Stumbling Over Gender, and an Apology […]
Richard Gadsden
July 5, 2013 @ 12:30 pm
As someone who is exactly that – “a little bit bisexual”, it’s really obvious that there are a lot of people who aren’t. Some people are just not sexually interested in cis[men|women] at all.
Richard Gadsden
July 5, 2013 @ 12:38 pm
Why do you want to emphasize that this is 95% of the population? What is the purpose of that emphasis? Is the purpose to imply that the non-normal are inferior?
Assuming that’s not the case, then your semantics isn’t the problem – it’s that the argument is not “this word is technically inaccurate”, but “the aspect you have chosen to emphasize is damaging”.
I was reading a story about trans-rights somewhere today on a right-wing blog (I won’t link) where there was a comment that used exactly this frame:
If you don’t like that framing, then don’t pander to it.
Stephen A. Watkins
July 8, 2013 @ 1:44 pm
I’m like you, Jim, in that I’m definitely an evolving entity – and in that the signifier “cis-” is a relatively recent addition to my vocabulary. (I still stumble over it sometimes when I encounter it; having been acculturated to accept a non-labeled version as normative.)
One thing that strikes me about the joke you mention, though:
Inasmuch as the point of the joke is to point out (humorously) that there is an over-sampling of males in anthologies, and inasmuch as I might gather, additionally, that the over-sampling of males also skews toward cis-gendered males, doesn’t the point of the joke still stand? I mean, I see that there’s a cis-gendered assumption that being male = having a penis, but for the purposes of highlighting the problem of under-representation of non-males, wouldn’t that equally hold true for non-cis-gendered males?
Granted, again, as an admitted ingenu on this topic, I suspect I’m still missing something. I realize, too, that there’s an inbaked assumption on my own part that a preponderance of the males published in such anthologies are cis-gendered. I don’t have any evidence to support that assumption. I guess perhaps that’s where the problem lies?
Stephen A. Watkins
July 8, 2013 @ 1:49 pm
I forgot to add that, on a personal level, I’m not over-fond of jokes that reference any sort of genitalia, as a general rule. I can’t think of an instance in which I would consider such a joke appropriate. At the same time, I’m not one to tell others that I consider it inappropriate: I try to live-and-let-live when it comes to things like tastes in entertainment and humor, etc. But I actively try to avoid making or repeating such jokes. That’s irrespective of any genderist or cisgenderist considerations.
Jim C. Hines
July 9, 2013 @ 8:21 am
Stephen – I was thinking along very similar lines, actually — that “mansplaining” is, at least in my experience, a phenomenon almost exclusively limited to cisgendered males.
The two things that were pointed out to me were that maybe it’s not as exclusive as I thought it was, and that even if it were, the joke I’m making implicitly linked the “man” part of “mansplaining” with the “dick” part of the dick joke. The linkage might be slightly indirect, but it’s still there.
Frotee
July 16, 2013 @ 7:32 am
I suppose I have even more of a problem than you, Jim: I’m not a native speaker and I continuously stumble over gender-related vocabulary that no one, ever, really explained to me (I am also kind of wondering whether we have adopted quite as many words for these concepts in German yet, or whether I simply haven’t heard them so far). I can make some sense of most of it by now, but I doubt that I’ll ever really understand all of it.
Could someone kindly point me at a comprehensible overview/explanation for the most commonly used or accepted terms?
Apart from the basic understanding though, I think that language will still pose a problem for quite some time: I don’t always think before I open my mouth _or_ use my keyboard, and remembering not to use certain terms, concepts or images because they might be offensive to someone is difficult enough as it is, even more so when the vocabulary to remember keeps increasing. I should probably ask some of my gender-swapped (I did say I’m confused about the vocabulary?) acquaintances about it…
Jim C. Hines
July 17, 2013 @ 10:38 am
I’m sure there are some good overview, 101-type sites out there, but I’m not familiar enough to make recommendations, unfortunately. I referred to Wikipedia for a basic sense of the “cis” prefix and how it came into being.
I think one of the most important things is to simply ask people how they prefer to be addressed. Or if they tell you they don’t like a particular term, to listen instead of arguing or getting defensive.