Since when is androgyny not an overt expression of gender? (Above: Androgynous model, Andrej Pejic)
My lover was playing an impromptu game of Scrabble with someone ze met in the park. I passed by, squeezed hir hand and was introduced to hir Scrabble partner before leaving for work. As I walked out of earshot, hir companion loudly whispered, “When you can no longer tell a woman from a man, it’s the end of the world.”
Ze did not continue the game.
These instances are not abnormal. Rather, I’ve become accustomed to my “indeterminate gender”—as a recent National Public Radio article dubs my androgyny—in a piece titled “The End of Gender?” The article drifted through the internet last month and has garnered now (as of July) 455 (mostly pejorative) comments.
The article uses recent examples of subverting the gender-binary: Andrej Pejic, an androgynous Australian model who walked both (“male” and “female”) runways at the Paris fashion shows. Kathy Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, raising their 4-month-old without revealing the child’s gender. Colleges adopting “gender neutral” dorms, Kanye West wearing a “woman’s shirt…”
For those of us that spend surreal amounts of time discussing, contemplating and unpacking (literally) “gender” as a concept and a construct, the article provides no new information. But still, I was startled to read a mainstream-media article (does NPR count as mainstream?) examining the “issue” of an out-of-the-binary existence.
The author, Linton Weeks, provides a healthy examination of gender as used in governmental record keeping, and interviewed transgender rights activist and FTM champion Dean Spade (founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City). Weeks also details the sobering journey of Arwyn Daemyir, writer of a blog called “Raising My Boychick” about “adventures in gender-neutral parenting.” And then Weeks provides the rebuttal, an argument for “why gender still matters” in the words of Leonard Sax, a family physician, psychologist and founder and executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Sax has written several books on gender, including Why Gender Matters and Girls on the Edge. Sax writes, “the determined lack of awareness of gender difference which you describe puts both girls and boys at risk but in different ways. Not merely academically, but physically — increasing girls’ risks of knee injury and concussion — and spiritually — increasing girls’ risks of drug and alcohol abuse; increasing boys’ risk of disengagement and apathy.”
As someone equally enmeshed in the gender-variant community and the media sphere, I believe that selling news is about creating an inflammatory conversation. Judging by the comments on this article, NPR has succeeded. I appreciate the trans-clusive and out-of-the-binary conversation that this article poses, but NPR utilizes the same tact that dominates most major news reporting, FEAR.
Why does a conversation about androgyny and transgender have to include an apocalyptic account of gender ending?
This type of fear regarding “conversion” has swept my own family—I have family members who are personally uncomfortable with me discussing “gender” with their children. They fear their kids will “catch” what I have.
Examples of gender-variance appearing in society and therefore, our news, does not signify the end of something—this is literally just the beginning. I would like to argue for integration rather than a complete overthrow of “gender.”
And since when is androgyny not an overt expression of gender? My gender-identity looks like a blender full of glam rockers, Shakespearean fairies, and Beat poets—I have many, many trans/genderqueer friends whose gender expression is very different from my own.
The conversation is not about creating a neutered “gender neutral” existence, rather, developing an acceptance for people living their chosen gender, loud and happy.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
just like you say, we don’t need gender neutral, we need gender acceptance.
still, i can’t imagine how girls raised in a gender neutral environment are at increased risk of knee injury….
Knee injuries are the most common injuries in “male” sports. The increased risk of knee injury comes from the increase in women participating in traditionally male dominated sports. These sports are seen as more dangerous and stressful on the body.
I like the description if gender paranoia as apocalyptic. People tend toward extreme expressions of their fears even when the situation in question has little impact on their own identities. An androgynous model doesn’t negate all of those that clearly embody the binary. Difference doesn’t “end” gender, it broadens it. Gender is growing up. It is getting past the childish limits of the binary in order to encompass a more genuine reality. But it is interesting how defensive people can be in the face of these changes.
I’m kind of boggled by the end-of-the-world thing. I guess that’s not going to be the kind of person that realizes that androgyny and genderfucking is anything but new.
Well said. I’m always taken back by the audacious cis-privileged comments of anti-androgyny and oppositional sexism as a defense to the gender binary, a sentiment that sometimes even permeate within the trans community.
Yes it seems that to not be female or male scares them more than going from one to the other, I find that to be true at least in my own life experience. I have long been curious as to why being neither or both scares them more.
Peace always Abby
I Love You Emerson!! I LOVE your gender!! Love your brathah Clay
Thanky Thanky for all this good inofraimton!
I may be one of those mainstream NPR listening people of which you all refer. When I read this article it felt like I was being introduced to another world, one that is unfamiliar to me. My first reaction is to feel afraid, grasp on to what is familiar, even if what I clutch are invalid beliefs. Ani Difranco said, “If you don’t ask the right question, every answer seems wrong.” Emerson, I’ve got some questions for you.
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