Now that my official Blog Against Sexism Day duties are done and my server is back up, i can finally write my post for Blog Against Sexism Day - a day late. No, this picture has nothing to do with what i am about to write. In fact, i don’t really want to talk about sex at all. I just wanted a picture that fit my title and i liked this one.
My post for the first BASD was directed at other trans people as a way to spark conversations about socialized and internalized sexism within ourselves. This year, i’d like to turn the mirror around and talk about how transphobia/homophobia and the oppression of Queer people is a part of institutionalized gender oppression. Since this is a blog post and not a book, i’ll only touch on a few things and encourage others to extend my initial thoughts.
For a system of oppression to be easily maintained, it is best to have a binary system of power: the oppressor and the oppressed. Since we don’t live in the socialist utopia described by George Orwell in 1984, where identity has been erased and oppression is based upon a simple and somewhat arbitrary social ranking, we are a combination of oppressor and oppressed. White men can experience oppression because of their ability, class, sexuality, age, and so forth. Likewise, a womyn of color may share the unearned privileges of oppressor status if she is of the owning class, heterosexual, cisgendered, etc. Just to give a couple of examples. So for the purposes of this post, i will focus solely on one form of oppression - gender oppression.
The problem with basing power on identity is that identity is fluid. Therefor gender oppression is made a little easier by creating a broader category for the oppressed. Rather than the categories being Male and Female, it is Man and Other. The oppression is not based solely on genitalia, but upon a set of slightly blurred definitions of gender. If you don’t fit clearly into the category of Man, then you are shoved into the category of Other. This is why trans men are not awarded the full spectrum of male privilege upon declaring themselves as men or even after injecting hormones or electing for a phalloplasty. The Country Club of Manhood, like other clubs of oppression, is fairly exclusive and very finicky about its membership base. It requires full complacency. And like other elite clubs, its easier to get kicked out than let in.
Leonard Schein points out in his essay, All Men Are Misogynists:
“I believe therefore that the cultural bias against male homosexuality stems directly from these two facts: That patriarchy requires that men maintain their brotherhood through a common contempt of women; and that the male homosexual act is construed as a threat to the male-male bond, since there is the implication that one of the partners gets fucked as a woman.”
What Schein illustrates is that Queer men are, at least to some extent, shoved into the Other category along with wimmin. The reason being that Queer men fail to comply with the rules of Manhood. Does this mean that Queer men do not share male privileges? Certainly not. It means they are not awarded the full benefits package and goes to show one way in which oppression based on sexuality is interconnected with gender liberation. However, i don’t feel it is the role of wimmin to reach out to Queer men to join together in the struggle for gender liberation. Rather, Queer men must resist the urge of over-compensation and hyper-masculinity and recognize their role in gender liberation. Easier said than done, i know.
There are, however, Queer people who have attempted to enter the fight for gender liberation and have been demonized by those with whom they are trying to work side-by-side. We saw this in the 70s when straight wimmin claimed that lesbians were “hurting the movement,” and we continue to see it today when bisexual, pansexual and trans voices attempt to assert themselves and are marginalized with the same fervor and rhetoric (often by lesbians who have since won a place within the movement). I believe that this demonization is a direct result of the same gender oppression against which those doing the demonizing are fighting against.
Going back up to what i said before, oppression requires an easily categorized binary to effectively function. As Schein pointed out, homosexual men threatened the categorical definition of Manhood by breaking the rules of Manhood. If it was accepted that men didn’t just fuck wimmin, but could in fact fuck other men and get fucked by other men (i won’t even go into the idea of getting fucked by wimmin or of sex without the implied power dynamics), then what other truisms that we are taught are also nothing more than options. Allowing the rules of Manhood to bend (no pun intended), exposes the shaky foundation of the rigid binary upon which the system of oppression is built.
Its scary to think that everything you know to be true about your Nature is built upon a shaky foundation. I think this is one reason why lesbians were first rejected from mainstream feminism. Homosexual wimmin threatened the category of Womanhood (and Manhood) just as homosexual men threatened Manhood. The Women’s Liberation Movement was based entirely on one concept - the liberation of wimmin. A threat to the definition of Woman could easily (and perhaps understandably) be portrayed as a threat to the movement. That’s why i feel it is equally as important for Gender Liberationists to talk about wimmin’s liberation. Persynally, i’m not out to destroy the categories of Man and Womyn. They are identities and we should be able to recognize them for their fluidness and not enforce hierarchies of power based upon them. Ok, we shouldn’t enforce any hierarchies of power, but you get what i’m saying.
The responsibility does not fall solely on the shoulders of trans, bisexual or pansexual people to reach out to cisgendered wimmin, however. It is important for such wimmin to recognize that we are not here to destroy the movement for wimmin’s liberation, but merely to add more voices to it (and perhaps different perspectives). If wimmin are ever to be able to reach beyond the confines of rigid gender roles, all Queer people must have the same ability - and vice versa. For that matter, cisgendered men must also be able to step outside the gender lines without fear of retribution. But i’ll leave that for the cisgendered men to discuss.
