Pivoting
In 2020, I blogged a lot about my first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, which was released in March, and about gender issues and identity. The book is focused on my own life from 8th grade through early adulthood, culminating in me coming out, and with my book on my mind a lot, the perspective that I brought to gender was strongly shaped by tying things to what I'd been through and how I thought of it during those critical years.
I'm expecting my second book -- That Guy in our Women's Studies Class -- to come out in 2021, and I'll probably be focusing a lot more on that and less on the first book.
The second book picks up shortly after the first book ends, but it represents a pivot from one way of looking at the issue to a different way of framing it. During the months when things first clicked into place for me -- winter vacation break of 1979-1980 through mid-spring 1980 -- I primarily thought of myself as a different kind of male person, as different as gay guys were different, as different as trans people who transitioned to female were different, but different from either of those two identities as well: I was femme, in the same sense that a lot of gay guys were, in the same sense that our culture's stereotype about gay guys tended to project onto gay guys in general, but I was a heterosexual femme instead; and like the male-to-female transitioners, the person I was, my essential self, made a lot more sense when thought of and recognized as one of the girls or women, but unlike them I didn't wish to change my body or to cause people to assume I had a female body, so I was different from the transsexual people as well. There wasn't a word for a person like that, there wasn't a social concept of such a person, but thinking of myself in that fashion made everything make sense to me.
But trying to come out, trying to explain myself to other people that way? I wasn't making much sense to anyone except me.
When you spend some time trying to make sense to people, you end up focusing on the things that people already understand and using that as a starting point, and then moving from there.
In 1980, when there was no movement or concept of anything like "genderqueer" or "nonbinary" (or even the larger-umbrella notion of "transgender") to latch onto, the existing viewpoint that seemed like the easiest starting point was feminism. Feminists were the main people who didn't take it for granted that the way things generally were and historically had been, as far as what it did or did not mean to have the specific sexed body-type that you'd been born with, was simply how it was. They said it was sexist to say male people were supposed to be this way and female people were supposed to be this other way.
So I made that pivot -- instead of trying to explain myself as a fundamentally different kind of male person, a different identity, I started my conversations with references to the unfairness of being measured against a different set of expectations than I'd be measured against if I'd been born female.
I would weave into the discussion the fact that it affected me more than it might affect a male who more closely matched the expectations, but it affected all of us to some extent. It's a different argument. Instead of identity politics, where you're arguing that you are in a category that needs accommodation because it is currently mistreated, it's a system politics kind of argument, the same way that arguing for the right to free speech is -- if you've been arrested for saying something that's been banned from public discourse, you may argue that everyone should have freedom to speak, rather than arguing that you're in a category of silenced people. You can make both arguments (that lack of freeom of speech has a disproportionate affect on people in your category) but if you choose to frame it first and foremost as "everyone should have freedom of speech", you're positioning it as a system politics issue instead of primarily as an identity politics issue.
Of course, feminism was also an identity politics movement itself: it was centrally about women's historical oppression, and the unfairness towards female people of the system politics issues that feminism was raising. And most people thought of the feminist movement more as identity politics than as system politics.
Would I be able to express my issues and explain my situation from a starting point of feminist understandings, or would people disregard what I was trying to say because feminism was supposed to be about women's situation and not mine?
I didn't know, but it seemed like my best opportunity to engage people and communicate, so I set forth to find out.
-------
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
comments at Dreamwidth -- https://ahunter3.dreamwidth.org/72032.html#comments
I'm expecting my second book -- That Guy in our Women's Studies Class -- to come out in 2021, and I'll probably be focusing a lot more on that and less on the first book.
The second book picks up shortly after the first book ends, but it represents a pivot from one way of looking at the issue to a different way of framing it. During the months when things first clicked into place for me -- winter vacation break of 1979-1980 through mid-spring 1980 -- I primarily thought of myself as a different kind of male person, as different as gay guys were different, as different as trans people who transitioned to female were different, but different from either of those two identities as well: I was femme, in the same sense that a lot of gay guys were, in the same sense that our culture's stereotype about gay guys tended to project onto gay guys in general, but I was a heterosexual femme instead; and like the male-to-female transitioners, the person I was, my essential self, made a lot more sense when thought of and recognized as one of the girls or women, but unlike them I didn't wish to change my body or to cause people to assume I had a female body, so I was different from the transsexual people as well. There wasn't a word for a person like that, there wasn't a social concept of such a person, but thinking of myself in that fashion made everything make sense to me.
But trying to come out, trying to explain myself to other people that way? I wasn't making much sense to anyone except me.
When you spend some time trying to make sense to people, you end up focusing on the things that people already understand and using that as a starting point, and then moving from there.
In 1980, when there was no movement or concept of anything like "genderqueer" or "nonbinary" (or even the larger-umbrella notion of "transgender") to latch onto, the existing viewpoint that seemed like the easiest starting point was feminism. Feminists were the main people who didn't take it for granted that the way things generally were and historically had been, as far as what it did or did not mean to have the specific sexed body-type that you'd been born with, was simply how it was. They said it was sexist to say male people were supposed to be this way and female people were supposed to be this other way.
So I made that pivot -- instead of trying to explain myself as a fundamentally different kind of male person, a different identity, I started my conversations with references to the unfairness of being measured against a different set of expectations than I'd be measured against if I'd been born female.
I would weave into the discussion the fact that it affected me more than it might affect a male who more closely matched the expectations, but it affected all of us to some extent. It's a different argument. Instead of identity politics, where you're arguing that you are in a category that needs accommodation because it is currently mistreated, it's a system politics kind of argument, the same way that arguing for the right to free speech is -- if you've been arrested for saying something that's been banned from public discourse, you may argue that everyone should have freedom to speak, rather than arguing that you're in a category of silenced people. You can make both arguments (that lack of freeom of speech has a disproportionate affect on people in your category) but if you choose to frame it first and foremost as "everyone should have freedom of speech", you're positioning it as a system politics issue instead of primarily as an identity politics issue.
Of course, feminism was also an identity politics movement itself: it was centrally about women's historical oppression, and the unfairness towards female people of the system politics issues that feminism was raising. And most people thought of the feminist movement more as identity politics than as system politics.
Would I be able to express my issues and explain my situation from a starting point of feminist understandings, or would people disregard what I was trying to say because feminism was supposed to be about women's situation and not mine?
I didn't know, but it seemed like my best opportunity to engage people and communicate, so I set forth to find out.
-------
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
comments at Dreamwidth -- https://ahunter3.dreamwidth.org/72032.html#comments