"Even though I see myself as a male, often I'm talking to other people, especially within the LGBT community, and I refer to myself with feminine pronouns and nouns and think nothing of it," said [a UW student]. "(It's) kind of a dichotomous relationship between my anatomy and my mannerisms and behavior."Is "gender fluidity" the next public debate after gay marriage? Gay marriage requires legal changes and demands that others readjust their behavior. To make "gender fluidity" into a political cause, do you need to generate tangible political demands that the individual should have choices about which sex-segregated facilities to use or that sex-segregated facilities be abolished? I'm not a fan of strict sex stereotypes, and I'm very tolerant, especially of young people experimenting with their identity. But as soon as males claim a right to use the women's bathroom, I'm flipped over to the other side. But those who want "gender fluidity" to be a political movement seem intent on creating this opposition (see the linked article). Too bad!
Eric Trekell, the director of the campus center, referred to this kind of expression as "gender fluidity." He believes that the way society reacts to people who don't conform to gender expectations will be the next public debate after gay marriage.
"What we're seeing more and more are students coming out of high schools who are rejecting the common notions of gender," Trekell said. "They say, 'I express myself how I want, whenever I want.'"
While researchers have yet to quantify the trend, Caitlin Ryan, a clinical social worker at San Francisco State University who's conducting a long-term sexual orientation and gender survey of youth and their families, says in the last five years, she's seen more young people coming out as transsexual - those who believe they are one gender trapped inside the body of the other.
She and others in her field also are seeing a noticeable number of young people who are ... taking it further by purposely evading gender definition, expressing androgyny with wardrobe, hairstyle or makeup - sometimes going as far as calling themselves a "boi" or a "grrl."...
[P]eople who stretch gender stereotypes do not always feel safe doing so publicly. Trekell, of OutReach, said many of the gender-fluid students he meets conform to their biological gender at school, work, or any place they perceive as hostile toward gender variance....
But as young people continue to challenge gender distinctions, the answer to the question "boy or girl?" will become more complicated. Trekell said it may be more difficult for the straight public to accept gender fluidity than gay or transgender culture.
"Gender identity is still such a pervasive part of our society that students that are really fluid in that are still seen, I think in some ways, more as 'freaks' than trans(gender) people," Trekell said. "It's like, 'Choose. What are you?'
"We still have that dipolar concept of what you should be."
MORE: I've written about the "transgender bathrooms" before. Here's an old post (collecting links to earlier posts). There are detailed discussions of the problems in the comments.
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I think though that if you expand your thinking about gender beyond bipolarity you realise it's not "males" asking to use the women's bathrooms, but people who self-identify as female or 'nongendered', therefore there's not such a huge problem
I think that in terms of specific demands there are some that can be put forward in order to ensure that public debate doesn't descend into something like "but you can;t just decide you want to be a woman" etc.... So demands for changes in birth certificates and passports, the right to be recognised as father/mother on a child's birth certificate, the right to marry someone of your born gender etc... can all be used as focus points for the debate as they have been in Europe (see the ECHR cases on Article 8 of the COnvention relating to gender reassignment and recognition thereof, especially Goodwin v UK).
Interesting times ahead for the US...
Just as a last note - I don't like the automatic connection of trasngenderism and genderfluidity with the gay movement: gender identity is different to sexual identity but because of the shared stigma and 'outcast' status we tend, for the most part, to be connected politicaly which can take away from the truth of gender identification issues.
You will start to see more activist judges ruling that private businesses must allow men, who see themselves to be women, be allowed to use the woman's restroom. It is their civil right!
For an example, see http://www.ntac.org/law/goinsvwestgroup.html
In that case the Minn Court of Appeals decided that "An employee who is denied use of a workplace restroom facility because of an inconsistency between the employee's female self-image and the employee's anatomy states a prima facie case of sexual orientation discrimination under the Minnesota Human Rights Act."
Believe it... there are judges who come up with this stuff.
Honestly... beyond bathrooms... what is the political fight here? Are people going to try to turn acceptance into a political fight? I've never been a fan of trying legislate acceptance of someone's lifestyle. People may have to tolerate it, and you have every right to do what you want, but you don't have the right to force acceptance of your lifestyle on others. Besides, it never really works anyway.
I truly feel bad for transexuals because it would be torture to be stuck in the "wrong" body. But when someone refuses to adopt either gender it seems like their whole point is to be rebellious or unique. I doubt they are truly struggling with their identity like transgendered people. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with someone calling themself a "boi" or "grrrl" and dressing or acting accordingly... but I don't want public bathrooms made co-ed for any reason and the thought of the potential lawsuits is depressing.
but knoxgirl isn't the point that we presume a bipolarity of gender that most people who study this stuff in depth (like Judith Butler) tend to reject - gender is a contiuum rather than simply two polar opposites!
Paul, if you are correct, then I have to ask this: why did conservatives stop teaching, leaving the field to be dominated by the liberals?
The problem with that slippery slope is that it's so damned slippy.
fdelondras,
Yes, I do believe it's possible that gender exists on a continuum. But I believe that the number of people who truly, psychologically cannot bring themselves to identify one way or the other is probably infinitesmally small.
I am certainly not in favor of forcing them to conform, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But I have no interest in letting someone who looks totally male and may call himself "she" in the stall next to me! It's just not safe (because of the sexual predators who could take advantage of the situation)
I don't think it's intolerant of me to feel that way. I think it's intolerant of anyone to expect women to sacrifice their physical safety in this way.
Well I'm with you on the safety issue - it's complex and certainly these issues have to be considered in some depth. But it would probably be equally unsafe for a man who identifies as female and is open about that to be in a male bathroom (think of all the gay bashing that goes on in male bathrooms; 'tranny bashing' is not far behind it). Perhaps the solution might be something quite pragmatic like 'men', 'women' and 'unisex' bathrooms so people who have security fears can use the women's bathroom and people who identify as non-gendered or are not particularly worried can use the unisex bathroom??
All these practicalities can be worked out once the principles are agreed upon. And of course the issue goes much further than bathrooms - birth certs and passports and social security numbers etc... would be of more immediate concern on the transrights agenda.
Bathroom usage and gender fluidity-- Now that's funny.
I am still waiting for the culture to mature beyond its outdated religious oriented taboos so that I may express myself 'how I want, whenever I want.'
Like Arlo Guthrie in 'Alice's Restaurant', "I wanna kill-- I want to see blood and guts and gore and veins in my teeth-- I wanna kill!' I have found that if I express that, people look down on me.
Oh, yeah, I guess the Neo-Nazis, Skinheads, Bloods, and Crips already have that market cornered.
Well, I just need another avenue by which to demonstrate my uniqueness.
MMMmmmm... Beer!
Based on my own youth, and the people I knew back then, I think that gender confusion and/or ambivalence is something that many people have in their teens and twenties, but grow out of. As such, it isn't likely to be the basis of a political movement, except on college campuses.
There's a tendency on the part of students in each generation, to compare themselves not with the students of ten years ago, whom today's students can't see, but with the adults of today. Thus each generation may believe that its confusion and ambivalence about sex and gender is something new.
How does one define for example a gay male with a female gender identity or a heterosexual female with a male gender identity. Is the end purpose to eliminate all gender reference, specifics and divisions?
How do drug companies conduct gender specific tests for new drugs? Would gynecologists be subject to lawsuit if they refused to examine a male with female gender identity?
I am not the least bit surprised. Eugene Volokh talked a lot about the Slippery Slope of gay marriage when it first came out. He concentrated on polygamy, etc., but no reason to not extend it here.
I don't think that most people are really in favor of having the other gender, sex, etc. in their bathrooms.
But before women think that our shorter lines are a godsend, they should think about all the times when they asked another woman at the table if they wanted to visit the restrooms (together). Maybe now her date will join her instead.
You are starting to see a lot of "family" bathrooms now. With the sometimes addition of a second, lower toilet, they are identical to normal ones. But they provide an answer of when kids need to start using the gender appropriate restrooms - even with the opposite gendered parent along. I know my daughter wasn't really ready for this.
So, we just have a third set of bathrooms some places, with the M/F or F/M logo on them. No big problem. If the weakly or inappropriately gendered don't have one available, they would just go elsewhere. That really just leaves truly public facilities.
I should add that sometimes women use women's restrooms to escape from certain guys. At least my girlfriend does, so was somewhat shocked a couple of years ago when she was followed in there by a Lesbian. I thought that it was a lot funnier than she did.
I agree with Kathy Herrmann (aka Roaring Tiger) that those most concerned about this on a personal basis will tend to migrate to the avante guard, etc. section of town, where there will be a financial incentive to solve this problem - as is apparently happening.
The problem with this, as I see it, though is that of companies that, say, have one or two people like this in a population of hundres, if not thousands. How much should a company have to pay to set up facilities for this sort of thing?
I find it hard to believe that "gender fluidity" is any more prevalent today than, say, 50 years ago, but Calfornia law now dictates that high school students can self-identify which gender they are. Sorry, but this is crazy, and many parents are fighting this. If a child is truly in trouble, solve it on the local level. We do not really need yet another nanny state law that assumes that the majority of adults are incapable of dealing with this situation.
Does a school system now have to deal with ever changing statistics on who's who, lawsuits about children who have been "discriminated" against, etc. to satisfy what I believe is a small number of confused children?
*How much should a company have to pay to set up facilities for this sort of thing?*
Sooner or later Will a case be made for coverage under the Americans with Disabilites Act?
It's simple. Like most large bathrooms now have a wheelchair-accessible stall, let each "Men's" room and "Women's" room have a "gender-fluid" or "questioning" stall. The "Women's" room addition could have a urinal in the stall, while the "Men's" room addition could have... a cleaner toilet.
I think this is a late-stage density effect. The cultures that manage density durably do so with fairly rigid cultural norms. Those that don't, see the same manifestations in people as people in rat-crowds - gender confusion or reversal, slinked fetuses, aggression, collapsing birth rates. It functions as a feedback loop; population collapses until there's new vigor, either autochthonous or imposed; or until the society drops below a threshold and winks out.
I think the whole idea of self-identification of sex is ridiculous on its face. Suppose a blonde self-identified as having black hair. "I know that I have blonde hair, but I feel like a person with black hair." She could feel that way all she wanted, but until she actually dyed her hair black, her driver's license would still describe her as blonde.
By the same token, a boy can say he feels like a girl all he wants, but he is still going to be a boy until he actually has himself physically altered into a girl.
People are always saying "be happy with yourself" or "learn to love yourself." Why then all the verbal gymnastics? Why can't a masculine girl love herself as a masculine girl instead of trying to say that she is a boy which she clearly is not?
Freeman: You say "until he actually has himself physically altered into a girl." But a man can never become a woman. He still has his Y chromosome. He has no womb or ovaries. I doesn't get his period, cannot become pregant, etc. He's simply had some surgery done and takes hormones to resemble a woman. If we call him a woman for doing this, we are just being accommodating and cooperative. Why not go along with other things? As long as they don't impose on others: by demanding to use the women's bathroom, the women's locker room, etc. For those facilities, I support a simple penis rule. And anyone who doesn't ought to just think about how you'd feel if your young daughter had to change her clothes in a locker room at school where boys who said they felt like women got to hang around. Or if your 8 year old daughter went into a public restaurant and you -- if you're male -- could not go in to protect her, but you saw a man go in after her.
Ann, if anything your argument convinces me that we shouldn't call a "girl" the boy who has himself physically altered. You ask, "Why not go along with other things?" Because words have meaning.
It is for the same reason that I will not call an atheist friend of mine an Episcopalian. He has stated that he does not believe in God, but he self-identifies as both an atheist and an Episcopalian. I have told him that I find this utterly ridiculous. One cannot be a denominational subset of a religion that he does not believe in no matter how he self-identifies.
I will not, as far as I am able to recognize it, acquiesce my language usage to someone's self-identification that bears no resemblence to reality. Words have meaning. A feminine boy being called a boy is not hateful or bigoted or intolerant. It is up to him to learn to love himself as he is and not up to everyone else to pretend that he is something he isn't by using inaccurate pronouns.
Note: I'm not saying that "a boy should act like a boy." As far as I'm concerned, a boy (or girl) can act or feel however he wants. That is entirely up to him. I'm just saying that he shouldn't expect everyone else to tiptoe around their own use of pronouns to accomodate him.
I agree with Freeman on the language issue. My biggest beef with PC-ness is the Orwellian use of language as a means of re-ordering culture to suit one's political agenda. The complicity of the media in this was one of the major things that unmoored me from the "left".
The "gender is a construct" academics and their media fellow travellers have engaged in a 30-year long (at least) campaign to define language in their terms and render any dissent as thoughtcrimes.
Shielding a sexual minority from violence is one thing, but forcing the other 90% of humanity to subscribe to their way of thinking about human nature is quite another.
Take it from one who knows: if you make pretending to be the sex you are not any easier, you will have more of it.
People at the margin always measure the relative costs to themselves of taking a certain path. If it's easier to pretend to be a girl, those at the margin (and they are there, at the margin) will do so.
Ann is right. One's mere wish to be something not only doesn't make it so, it surely doesn't mandate societal participation in the charade, especially at risk to your safety.
And here I'd always thought "boi" was how a certain subset of gay men referred to themselves (without any androgyny), and "grrl" was an attempt to be more "assertive", short-lived in mainstream culture, and mainly mocked.
Now evidently these are somehow transgender terms, it seems. Somehow.
I can't help but join the doubt that there's any more real gender confusion (in the sense of a body/mind mismatch) now than previously; I do strongly suspect that it's more of a campus fad or rebellion thing. (Like girls "playing lesbian" for a while in college, which evidently makes Professional Lesbians very unhappy, but I don't follow such infighting.)
*... I do strongly suspect that it's more of a campus fad or rebellion thing.*
This sounds more serious than just a fad:
http://www.transgenderlaw.org/
Stephanie,
No, you are right. The older group are just as thoughtless, myopic and selfish. Perhaps less 'screw the sytem' than sheer 'screw my family, I have my own needs'. Kinda sad mostly, in both camps.
Freeman said:
"A feminine boy being called a boy is not hateful or bigoted or intolerant. It is up to him to learn to love himself as he is and not up to everyone else to pretend that he is something he isn't by using inaccurate pronouns. "
...this is a pretty good point. The whole world can't be re-ordered to accomodate someone who's made uncomfortable by what the vast majority of people consider the standard.
A feminine boy being called a boy is not hateful or bigoted or intolerant.
Excellent point, Freeman Hunt. It does seem rather counter productive to rail against gender stereotypes, and then embrace them by declaring that being a boy or girl is defined beyond just having the requisite equipment.
Yeah, why isn't it like the way I could say I don't really feel that I'm my real age? I feel that I am 28, so I insist that everyone's records, my driver's license, etc., all list me as being 28. They would say no, and they wouldn't be trying to interfere with my sense of myself in a way that would be right for me to object to.
Yeah, why isn't it like the way I could say I don't really feel that I'm my real age? I feel that I am 28, so I insist that everyone's records, my driver's license, etc., all list me as being 28.
On second thought, I reverse my support. Excellent point, Ann. I want this option available to me at some point. Now, I'm all behind the boi/grrl movement.
As Prof. Althouse has already demonstrated with respect to age, identity fluidity should extend to all aspects of life and be truly fluid, static identities are the oppressive tools of the evil majoritarian culture.
When going to movies and eating at restaurants then I am a 92 year old man so should be eligible for discounts.
When applying for law school I am a 23 year old lesbian Navajo (nevermind my penis, that shouldn't get in the way of my identity, I still prefer women, so that makes me a lesbian and ethnic identities are purely social constructs so if gender can be fluid then obviously ethnicity must be fluid) double amputee (I know you can see that I have all my limbs, but internally I've always felt both my legs were missing) with dyslexia (so I should be allowed extra time on the LSAT even if I've never personally exhibited any reading problems, I've always identified with people who do).
And on plane flights the terror of the moment regresses me to the status of an infant (age 18 months or so, with some verbal skills and potty trained) so I should be allowed to fly free and sit on my mother's lap for the duration.
This is a fun game, clearly the fluid identity game can be played to win.
and as far as the bathroom issue, in Santa Monica the city ordinance already allows anybody to use any bathroom if there is a line of more than three people outside of either bathroom (mainly meant for the benefit of women who would rather head for the men's stalls rather than wait for their normally assigned seats).
Freeman Hunt wrote:
Why can't a masculine girl love herself as a masculine girl instead of trying to say that she is a boy which she clearly is not?
>>>>>
This is what we used to call a "tomboy." For me - and a lot of other males, I suspect - finding one that was willing to wield her own rifle or shotgun when you were hunting; take the oars or the motor when you were rafting the Grand together; leave you splayed on the Slickrock Trail near Moab? I'd swap fifty whining delicacies for one such.
Why fight over bathrooms? There are practical solutions already in place.
1. The 'family restroom.' They have one in more and more places, primarily for the purpose of people training young children, but when not in use, this bathroom is assumed to be open to either gender.
2. A lot of small businesses just have one public restroom with a locking door and available on a first come first serve basis. I know of a small business in Flagstaff that has two restrooms. Instead of making them male and female, they have both either in use or not in use by whoever enters. There is no reason you couldn't design new restrooms in the same way. It would be no more of an architectural problem than complying with ADA was a few years ago, and they managed to do this.
Honestly, why do people assume that the way things are now sets the framework for the way they will always be?
For a century, inebriated English men, sooner or later, have ended up dressed as women, often in a chorus line dancing.
The exception to this is Monty Python's Search fo the Holy Grail, solely because the armor of the knights in the chorus line did not lend itself to cross-dressing.
I vividly remember a dozen or so men walking down the middle of the street in a wide line in the rain from London's China town after a 4:00 am ending to a rather alcoholic computer business dinner, hands over each others' shoulders, oh...never mind.
John:
Of Mad Dogs, and Englishmen...
Europeans don't have the hangups about discussing sexual matters that Americans have.
a survey out today confirms that. And one line I found really interesting:
African-Americans (44 percent) are more likely to have the conversation (about STD status with a potential partner) than whites or Hispanics (38 percent and 40 percent, respectively).
What this tells me is that a lot of it has to do with societal or 'prudish' hangups, because African-Americans have in past surveys tended to be less prudish when talking about sex than whites.
First of all, I first read "Trekell" as yet another form identity, one that I identified as for many long years and still do.
Second, bathrooms are not the problem, but restrooms may be. But restrooms are terribly designed anyway. Ask my two young daughters that have to stand in a fifteen minute line at the State Fair to get into the women's restroom while I stroll in and out of the men's room within three minutes.
Where I work has two restrooms side by. One says men. One says women. Both have locking doors and contain only one toilet.
The Marin Headlands for the Arts is a former Army Barracks. It's a wonderful, beautiful place to have a wedding. It has one large, co-ed restroom. Works fine.
peter hoh asked: "why did conservatives stop teaching, leaving the field to be dominated by the liberals?"
Starting in the sixties, there was a lot of talk on the left about embarking on a "Long March through the institutions." Lots of lefties were interested in teaching, journalism, etc as ways to propagandize for radical left ideas. This had a great deal to do with the imbalance.
Furthermore, the intolerance of these leftists not only tended to make more conservative people feel unwelcome, but also manifested in active discrimination.
Lawyapalooza's post
Did you read "gay marriage" in Ann's post title and think that this was a discussion about gay marriage in general? Oops. It's not. We're talking about "gender fluidity" or how gay marriage relates *specifically* to the issue of "gender fluidity."
They are actually much more common than we would think.
Exactly how common then? I hear this often, but on what basis? I'm sure that there do exist people with both or neither sexual organs, but I am inclined to think that this is *extremely* rare.
If we're talking about boy/girl minds or chemical processing as opposed to boy/girl sex organs, I think that's something else entirely. My point is that boy/girl designates sex and refers to sex organs. Gender, a term which encompasses the vague world of feelings and identity, is not even something I would bother labeling.
If I refer to someone as "he," it's because I think he has, to the best of my knowledge, a penis. If I refer to someone as "she," it's because I think she has, to the best of my knowledge, a vagina. Nothing is implied beyond the sex organs.
I am not going to alter my use of "he" and "she" to mean "someone who feels like a boy" or "someone who feels like a girl." Aside from being too subjective and potentially meaningless, I think this would be extremely hard to keep up with and to use appropriately. There may be all sort of genetic, mental, and physical anomalies, but I don't think it's necessary for us to have gender labels for every one and then alter our use of sex-related pronouns to match.
Diane said:
"I’m actually comforted by the idea that men might come in the bathroom with me."
Sorry, but this is too much to believe!
I'm sorry that your friend was raped, but this is most certainly a rare occurence, as male sexual predators presently have to *sneak* into the women's room. If restrooms become unisex, it's no longer an anomaly to see a man go in.
Besides that, if you're female, and straight, and you don't mind men being in the room while you take care of business, you're... unique. I don't buy it.
I have to agree with knoxgirl. Plus, the idea of being hit on in the bathroom. . . ack!
Who wants a man to overhear every plop-plop, every fizz-fizz...
especially if he's cute!?!?
Interesting; I found this post on Althouse more than a year later, and so it seems unlikely anyone will notice my response. But where ever did I suggest a "political cause"?
Not all public debates must inherently become a political cause. I personally believe that morality cannot and ought not be legislated; gay marriage is a case in point - it was turned into a political cause, but in the end, we will see gay marriage in the US because of the public debate, not the political cause. We have proof of that already; the public debate will eventually overturn the constitutional amendments (i.e.: political cause), which are nothing more than attempts at legislating morality.
I often think of Anne Frank and her family croutching in the corner of an attic in the Netherlands when I think about the life quality of many gender varient persons across the world. I wonder what heterosexuals would do about who they held hands with in public were they under some sort of persecution by a genderless foe who outnumbered them.
As for the costliness of bureaucracy, is it not more important that our bureaucracy reflect identity as it is and with honesty. If that is not the case, are we not toppling near the edge of anarchy? Good government had better be about doing the right thing for each person as they perceive themselves and less about preserving a comfortable misrepresentation of gender identity.
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