8. That Peculiar Sense of Identity
Considering all the damage done and the limitations encountered by the use of labels and categories, why not simply think of oneself as a person and leave it at that? Indeed, it is irresponsible labeling that gives rise to the mess so many people face, but it is actually very difficult to confront that mess, let alone seek allies who've been there and understand, if you can't differentiate at all; while an all-encompassing love for the entirety of people is beautiful and freeing, making ideas and behaviors the enemy rather than classes of people, it doesn't greatly help, when trying to understand and be understood, to describe yourself as a person and only as a person.
Can a people suffering from religious persecution draw attention to their plight and demonstrate that they are not, in fact, being treated like people without referring to the bond which they hold in common, for which they are victimized? And shall the persons of racial minority blind themselves and seek the company of other people so indistinguishably as to seek friends in the social milieu of such as the Ku Klux Klan?
Perhaps there are times for setting aside categorical distinctions, but not out of ignorance, not from failure on their own part to grasp the situation. To all victims of categorical oppression, a sense of identity that accepts and comprehends the problem is vital to their survival.
* **
The first and most important step for the alienated person to take in moving to secure happiness and become truly alive is to turn the spotlight inward and see the self, to take a probling and unabridged look in all the rooms and corners and judge whether or not it's good to be that self. This is especially vital for the sex role nonconformist, because the cultural notions of goodness itself are so gender-specific that the nonconforming male cannot help but question whether of not he is a bad man , the nonconforming female if she is a bad woman.
No one can do this for you, nor will the services of institutions such as psychiatry or religion be likely to be of help, given the tendency of such bastions of the status quo to maintain strong and biases standards for who a person ought to be. You have to do it yourself. Ntozake Shange wrote a choreopoem about self-realization which ends with the cast singing, "I found God in myself and I love Her fiercely"1; that's what I'm talking about; that's the first step.
The elimination of repression within as an ally of oppression without leaves the individual free to be, if not to do, and once this has been accomplished, fear and shame tend to give way to a determined curiosity and appreciation of oneself. Then, having met one's self, it is also time to turn the spotlight outward. The individual at this point is curious to see where she or he fits into the pattern of others and their behavior. It is time to look for the interpersonal solutions and the cause; and if, seeing that cause, the individual sees an ongoing phenomenon that continues to create new victims, there is a tendency to head for the monster's lair with every intention of destroying it.
* **
Masculinity is a straight jacket. If you're straight, you're supposed to wear it. The big repressive fear of the male sex role nonconformist is that of being gay, for regardless of how many butch and brawny men swagger into San Francisco bars to meet other homosexual fellows, our sexist society equates femininity with heterosexual women and homosexual men, and mainstream persons simply aren't inclined to go meet gay people and observe gay culture and perhaps learn that there's not a direct correlation between the two factors.
Similarly, it is the homophobia of a frantically queer-hating society that fuels the antagonism towards sex role nonconformity. The sexist term for sex role nonconformity is gender-inappropriate conduct.
The male sex role nonconformist confronts his deepest fear and asks himself, "Am I?"
"Well, are you sexually attracted to men?", his self answers quite logically. "Do you want to pursue that lifestyle to fill the void of a heterosexuality that isn't working?"
And in the space of a moment, a gay comes out of the closet, at least within himself...or a non-gay fellow stands unexpectedly "acquitted" and suddenly realizes it's really that simple. Which means that they are all wrong. And he can do anything a female is allowed to do, be any way she can be -- feminine, in sexist terms -- and, no matter what else the consequences may be, it won't change the answer.
His mouth opens. He smiles. He laughs.
* **
Had the answer been affirmative, the gay sex role nonconformist would think in terms of all his suffering being due to his sexual orientation: they treated me as they did because I'm gay. Which is a lousy reason. Why should being gay cause you to deserve misery and shame? Is a gay person not a person, that people would treat him this way? The oppression of gay people must cease!
His brother who answers his own question in the negative, meanwhile, stands there in his newly freed heterosexual sissyhood with a different perspective. Okay, he says, I know where I stand, all I need now is a way to define it. In relation to...uh...
His mind may seize on the fact of his having been accused of being a faggot all his life, and if he makes the traditional world's mistake of assuming all gay men are sissies (even if not vice versa), he may think of himself as a variation on the gay theme; after all, that is where his attention has been directed. A straight gay. Gay in every way except for being gay. Now he's ready to come out of the closet. The only problem is, no one will recognize him when he does.
* **
Just as many women's movement speakers may see in the male sex role only things which benefit men and which aren't allowed for women, while seeing in the female role only abject slavery, so the man in the mirror-image situation may ignore the intolerable aspects of the condition female in a sexist society and envy women while rejecting as a package those things considered masculine. I came close to that myself.
To put it another way, the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. In this stage, sometimes I wanted to tear down the fence to get to the other side.
I am like women in this way, this way, this way...none of which are tolerated in men. No fair! Women can do this, and this, and this, but if I do, assuming I even have that option, I pay a high price. No fair! Women are perceived and reacted to as being this, as this, and as this, and I want to be similarly regarded. No fair!
I am just like a woman except for the fact of my gender. I am like a woman trapped in a man's body.
Now, that's a possibility. The fellows will play with that idea much more seriously than women from the other side. We don't yet have a movement to change our plight. The operation is cheaper. Woman-to-man transsexuals have to put up with disfunctional genitalia, but man-to-woman is simpler.
Most transsexuals do live as postoperative heterosexuals, even though for many the choice of sex partners is not the most important facet of their sexual identity: after all, one could live as a gay male (defined as such by being biologically male) much easier if it were simply a matter of which body-type was sexually appealing. But in their own minds as well as in those of all who perceive them and react to them, there is a difference in personhood between male and female, and in their cases the bodies they were born in contradict that identity and vice versa.
There are even male-to-female transsexuals who live as lesbians after the operations, which is certainly a statement in itself of just how little the choice of sexual partner's gender can have to do with sexual identity, and how significant sexist polarization of personality and behavior and so forth can be.
If those concepts of masculinity and femininity were absent, no one would need to feel their body to be the wrong one. Even the typical transsexual who would be a postoperative heterosexual would be much freer to live as a gay person if there were no difference in the ways women and men were thought of as people; even if homosexuality remained stigmatized (it probably wouldn't), it might be better to deal with that than to sit and wait and hope for a chance at the expensive, dangerous, and availability-limited sex change operation. The transsexual planning on living as a lesbian represents a particular irony, especially since lesbians are so universal in their condemnation of sexism. The result of hopping the fence in this manner to get to the other side is obvious -- the fence remains intact.
* **
Even today, when the women's liberation movement in general has outgrown the phase, there are still remnants of the Grass is Greener on Their Side theory of liberation which gave rise to the image of feminists as women trying to become men. Every serious feminist has met or heard of a woman who manifests it somewhere along the line. In the early days of feminism (e.g., Mary Wollstonecraft), it was apparently much more the rule to find such thought: men have it made in the shade and we want ours! Looking at sexism, these feminists see women who reject their teachings as victims of patriarchal indoctrination, men as the free and deliberate oppressors.
As men enter the envious Grass-is-Greener phase, the scene will be / is different: you can hardly claim that sexism is specifically the will of women, and men to be oppressed by them, in a world where the only major forces acting to change things have been female; and why wouldn't men in general greet the concept of sexual equality with welcome if we were the oppressed? Unlike women in the movement looking at women outside of it, the male who rejects sexism and comes to hate its molding force doesn't easily see other men as being like him, only still unaware of their oppression. Oppressed by whom?
No, he thinks, it must be that there are regular men and "backwards" men, and regular women and "backwards" women. Inverts, sort of. Minority specimens in the garden. And it has nothing to do with the heterosexuality/homosexuality continuum. The "backwards" women would be the stereotype-confirming feminists, who want the freedom to do what men do, even to act like men act. The "backwards" men are yet to be heard from. That's us.
Thus, the newly liberated man thinks of himself as a man who is like a traditional woman, decides that people of each gender have different tastes in grass ("it takes all kinds..."), and that sexism is keeping some people of each gender on the side with the grass which they find unpalatable. Thus, the fence must come down, but when it does, some people will stay happily on the traditional side of the fence.
Well, that isn't quite an accurate depictation, as I eventually began to realize as I realized I didn't want to trade in my ship's anchor for a crushed foot, I want to climb mountains as a free and whole person...but I've toyed with the imagery, thinking maybe something of this sort might get Joe and Susie Normal to stop fighting so hard to maintain the fence.
* **
Liberated man, men's libber. Sure. That's what I am. Those are the male versions of liberated woman and women's libber. Yeah. Just like heroine is female for hero. Like majorette is to major.
What is a women's libber? Well, she's outspoken, determined, willful; she wants entrance into the male professional realms, with equal pay and equal authority; she rejects the sex symbol model for female appearance; she declares her right to call men up, to put the moves on them, to get on top, maybe to screw and ditch them; she wants her husband to cook and wash dishes; she wants the ERA to pass; she doesn't want to be a wife and a mommy; she calls God "She"; she smokes cigars, plays rugby, drinks the men under the table; she wants to be a man; a bitch; ballbreaker; dyke; burnt her bra...
Corny, perhaps, but even the least complimentary stereotype makes her sound like a formidable woman doing exactly what she wants to do.
What is a men's libber? His wife henpecked him into it; he supports women's causes; he's willing to wash dishes; he's mad because men aren't allowed to cry; if he's single, it's a euphemism for gay; he's trying to please those women's libbers...
Hell, I've even had people react to the term as if men's lib were a counterrevolution to preserve sexism and put those uppity women in their place!
Liberated man is even more useless -- a liberated man is just a swinger who does it all.
What am I? I already know who I am, I am to my sex role what women's liberation is to the female sex role, and I've reached the same conclusions. But I need a term that conveys it. These don't.
Okay, then....feminist. Not male feminist. That's like female athlete or male nurse. Feminist. Close, but still watered down; I've heard people call folks that for having mild sentiments on an issue or two. Committed feminist. Yeah. Raise consciousness. Raise eyebrows. Raise hell. But that still leaves a question unanswered.
* **
"Many of these ["prehomosexual"] boys tend to be overpolite and obedient, anxious to please adults, to be charming and witty and cute...
"In Tommy's case, his teacher decided to employ her full talents and sympathies at once, right on the first day of school...only Betty J.[the teacher] came to know...that he was a prehomosexual child...
When regular classes started the day after the open house, Miss J. thought that Tommy would find the separation very difficult. Nothing of the kind proved to be true...Tommy left her side quickly and without fussing. Miss J. was delighted. In amazement she wondered whether Tommy was perhaps less of a 'Mama's boys' than he had seemed to be the day before...however, his prehomosexual orientation quickly asserted itself.
"Clearly and pleasantly, Tommy chatted with the new teacher about his age and where he lived. He did not seem the least unsure of himself. But just as soon as he was invited to join one of the groups of other children, or to take part in class activities, he refused -- in the same careful, polite tone...
"When he did strike up a friendship, it was with one of the girls...He used a crayon and chalk, but just as soon as he finished he did something no normal boy would dream of doing: he washed his hands.
'His excessive daintyness reminded me of the fastidiously kept apartments of adult homosexuals...', Miss J. told us..."
-- Peter and Barbara Wyden,
Growing Up Straight, What Every Thoughtful Parent
Should Know 2
The Wydens might find themselves criticized these days for openly giving advice on how to keep their children from contracting homosexuality as if it were leprosy or something, because a quasiliberal tolerance of gays and lesbians is "in" right now, but there is still a widespread social acceptance of a direct correlation between sex role nonconformity (which the Wydens would probably call "gender-inappropriate conduct") and homosexual orientation. In Tommy's case, the "prehomosexual" label was applied not because Tommy was known or thought to have eventually grown up gay, but solely on the basis of his "unmasculine" conduct as a kindergartener. I chose this example because it is so unsubtle, but it is quite common for adults to claim to know who is gay on the basis of similarly sexually-unrelated observations.
This is prevalent enough to double-define the term through usage, much as fuck has come to simultaneously mean both sex and destruction. What is gay? Is it the way you are, or something you do? And what do you do if you are, but don't? The question of heterosexual viability, which caused me to wonder if the orientation I was accused of was the only thing available for me, trys to work as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Homosexuality is often described as a choice, or preference, and in a sense it may occasionally be a choice, but any factor that would cause someone to make that choice in spite of innate physical attraction for the opposite sex must be spoiling heterosexuality for them.
And sexism, by keeping heterosexual sex and its availability tied to conformity to its norms, does precisely that.
* **
From the beginning of my memories, I have been different, known and thought of myself as different, and I knew part of the difference was that I was a boy who was like girls. I knew that many boys and girls thought that was not okay, but with a confident liberalism I decided that they were wrong, it didn't matter, any more than being lefthanded mattered. Different wasn't wrong, and it was kind of neat to feel I was special sometimes. I had no problems with being a boy, that was all right, nor did I have any problems with being like a girl, feminine, in sexist terms, that was all right, too. The combination was fully acceptable to me, and I was just confident enough of my judgment of things to be unbothered by the fact that it was not okay with the rest of the world.
And it wasn't! With that extra twist that my head made in formulating this peculiar sense of identity, I eventually became a walking political statement merely by not fitting into any category on the existing psychosexual map. If straight, I should not be feminine, or at the very least should desire to be masculine instead; if gay, I should be sexually oriented towards men; if transsexual, I should desire to be female instead of male. Strike three. I'm out.
For years I flew into the totally unacceptable social message that who I was was not okay. They did not pressure me to reject my maleness, but to prove I possessed it and to me that didn't matter. I think I could have awakened suddenly and magically female one morning, very bewildered but without experiencing any fundamental identity change., But what they insisted on in the name of "proving I was a man" was to act like other males, to be masculine (and lose my sense of identity): "They want to make me one of Them! Yecch! They want me to justify being male as if I were being a male on purpose! Hell, I don't care if they want to pretend I'm a girl, I know, and who cares what they think? But how do I get them to leave me alone?"
It appears to be an odd pattern. There are not very many men who are on record as having grown up feeling cheated for not being allowed to be the way women are, although many women have made it plain that it is unfair for men to be allowed to be ways that women are prohibited from being -- for example, assertive/aggressive, adventurous, passionate, etc. Most of "men's lib" has been built around apologetic concern for women's oppression, and tends to sound moralistic in what it says to men. But, if anything, I view the problem more in terms of the need for men to be free to be more like women, to catch up with the women, rather than the other way around. And that raises a valid question.
Is a "boy who is like a girl" free of the restrictions of sexist conditioning, or is he (am I) the victim of the female sex role conditioning? Did I escape the crippling process, or did I just swap one form of it for the other?
Well, to an extent, I think I may well have assimilated a little bit of the overly-passive, nicey-nice genteel aspects of femininity in my attempts to prove I was not like the rest of the boys and was as good as girls. I was often surprisingly self-assertive, but usually unsure of myself and of whether or not I was okay. Still, I found it easy to develop a freer, more spontaneous self as soon as I had exorcised my head of the sexist worries folks had planted there. In addition, I don't think I paid much attention to conforming to elements of the feminine role that I didn't desire, expecially those that imply that females are a bit inferior, or subservient to men. In the long run, fitting myself to the female guidelines and standards probably proved less restricting because there was no collective voice to tell me whether I was doing that correctly or not. I mean, no one ever said, "Allan, speaking up like that isn't ladylike", or "Allan, running and climbing trees isn't dainty". Girls, who of course also measure themselves by girl- standards, do not assimilate messages such as these, the restrictive ones, without a lot of ongoing reiteration and reinforcement. I was spared that, so I didn't assimilate them as much.
So, in general, I got my with a minimum of personality-damaging molding as I grew up. I fought back. I chose who I would be. I grew up different.
And I never regretted that difference or envied the other boys until I came to that age when sexual viability was an issue.
It was when I was told that the "heterosexual club" did not admit sissies, and only then, that I really ached to belong and came to resent my difference from the other boys. Having a girlfriend meant so much to me...
* **
So, concerning personal solutions...God, what a mess! Is there an answer for me? Do I get to function as someone's lover, or do I live as a None of the Above?
Not easy questions, because the picture isn't rosy, but there are always options. Can I wait for what I really want without settling for a substitute? What do I want, anyway? I've been so busy worrying about what I don't want, I haven't had much time to concentrate on what I do want instead. Okay...let's see...
Heterosexual, but in a way that allows me to be myself. That means a woman who doesn't care that I'm not masculine? No it doesn't. That isn't strong enough. I want to be preferred. A woman who wouldn't be caught dead in the bed of one of Them...
And when I first realized that, I laughed about it for the first time:
"Hey, how come you act so weird? You queer?"
"No, man, I'm a coed dyke. Why, what's it to you?"
* **
Within the privacy of my own head, I've even made more serious use of that one. In conceiving of myself, I have had to make use of any role models and social images that I could adapt and wear with any degree of comfort, often including those tailored for the lives of women. It's kind of like being a wintertime hobo ransacking a Salvation Army drop box -- when you find something you can get into, you don't get too upset about becoming an inadvertent transvestite in the process.
Such borrowings have their limitations, of course. They may be conceptually useful to me, but they don't help much as far as telling other people who and what and how I am.
On the other hand, I've never found one that did.
* **
Recognizable label or not, I think I have reached an understanding of myself, and though I see myself as unusual, as a person of sexual minority, this is a weirdness I feel secure with.
That security has blossomed as I've grown with my new freedom. The first big turning point was identifying
my fears of being heterosexually ineligible -- which is not the same as fear of being gay, after all, and it turns out to be an important distinction -- and dealing with my worries that it was something wrong with me making me ineligible for sexual relations with women. Once I acknowledged the cultural tie between sissyhood and heterosexual ineligibility, I was able to reject it as an inescapable natural fact, and began to untie these in my head. Gradually I came to envision a completely new and unrelated heterosexuality which would not ask changes in my fundamental personality and sexual nature. I was able to relax in my sissyhood.
No longer afraid of being stalked by the gay life, I found myself occasionally becoming part of close companionable friendships with other different and sexually unorthodox males, including men who were bisexual or gay. I seem to have more in common with them, and they to be more interesting as people to me, than most hetero men, and I have been told in a friendly manner that I should come out; but for me, such relationships feel complete as they are, with no sexual component.
I became at ease with -- and at home in -- my body. Separated at last from stifling negative imagery of male sexuality, I discovered tender and lustily sensual reservoirs of sexuality within myself, and watched myself grow towards a vibrant erotic health all my own style and flavor. Expanding and developing my natural childhood sexuality ("masturbation") helped teach me to eroticize and appreciate my own body and to respect its appetites as much as I'd already come to value my sexual dignity and ability to turn my back on sexual opportunities that didn't appeal to my sense of what I wanted. At times, I sensed that to masturbate would keep me from developing closenesses with others during those periods when I was most interested in having that happen, so I would go into celibate phases for weeks, stretching often over a month, feeling vulnerable and open to sexual possibilities. But then time would pass, and I would get cynical or asocial again, and lose interest in the idea until next time around. I felt safer and more emotionally powerful as a result of feeling capable of doing without anything if it involved rehashing the same old expectation-problems. At the same time, I often felt that those were the only types of relationships available.
I liked the freedom of being able to turn my back on the ugliness of sex in a patriarchal setting, and to do other things in my life besides search endlessly for the person or situation where I could be sexually active and yet free of that ugliness. It's convenient to be able to scratch one's own itch, and I even considered identifying (at least to myself) as an autosexual, doing permanently without a partner, just enjoying the other aspects of closeness with other persons while taking care of my sexual needs myself without stumbling across the vulnerability that comes with having a sexual appetite. But that didn't set right, either. I guess maybe that, too, brought up the fear of being heterosexually ineligible.
Eventually I did get involved in relationships (yes, I am now an unvirgined person). The first major event after sorting out my head was coupling with an equally unorthodox woman in a friends/lovers relationship that lasted four years which was cozy, sweet, and sometimes earthily satisfying even when we quarreled. I missed that closeness later.
And yet something was not quite right. I wondered, was I left out in the cold long enough to become permanently embittered about sex and sexuality? Maybe the experience of living without as long as I did taught me that I didn't need it, didn't need to put up with the problems that come with the territory the way others do; after all, I did become angry and fed up with it all while still virginal, and swore that I'd not waste any effort on ending that condition. I spent the two years following our break-up wondering about these things. For awhile, I felt personally secure while single and not sexing with anyone.
Then I met someone really special, a woman incredibly tuned in to her own feelings and who had been figuring out what they meant for years. We found that we could talk to each other about anything, that talking to each other opened up parts of ourselves that went beyond what we had the courage to deal with alone. The degree of intimacy and sharing approached mind-reading. It was like staring deep into a mirror; we became part of each other. This time, the problem that appeared really underlined what this society does to love: it got too scary, that closeness did; it seemed too fragile to be that intimate in a world of distance and alienation. We found that our awareness of the trivial nature of the rest of human interactions was getting too strong to ignore, that our real selves was always on the surface and unwilling to play games. Eventually she pulled away first, and it hurt for a long time.
Now, I know what makes me tick. Sometimes I find myself feeling enthusiastic about the likelihood of getting involved with someone special like that again. Even if it means getting hurt like that again.
Then there are other days when I think of it as a lost cause, when I feel like just writing off the possibility of pleasant, workable relationships as a casualty of the struggle between patriarchy and feminism, and wasting no more time pining after it.
Still...
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