Same Old Cliche

"Most times you can't hear 'em talk,
Other times you can
All the same old cliches,
"Is that a woman or a man?"
And you always seem outnumbered,
You don't dare make a stand"

-"Turn the Page" by Bob Seger

So, when I'm not reading the books I told myself to read first, I've been perusing Nobody Passes edited by Mattilda aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore. It was here that I found an essay called "The Death of 'Genderqueer.'" Needless to say, I was worried. Here comes another Ariel Levy, I thought.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. The author of this essay only wants rid of the word Genderqueer because it no longer encompasses what it originally did, being an umbrella term for everyone who plays with gender or doesn't always fit the gender expectations of society.

And I can understand this. However, I can't quite come up for a term to replace it either. For that matter, the author lived in an urban area with a genderqueer community.

I live in podunk. Defying gender norms is a huge deal, particularly at my college. Butch women and effeminate men stick out like sore thumbs. Plus, I only know two "out" transgender individuals, a MTF transsexual and my bff transman. So really, whereas "The Death of 'Genderqueer'" treats the term as a cliche that has been used to death, most people in my school, even those who are LGBT, have probably never heard it.

So for me and my community, genderqueer is still a fairly new term. But this is Arkansas, and things take awhile to catch on around here.

And it may not catch on at all. As much as I love my home state, it's still a strenuous environment in which to be gay, and the key marker of a gay identity is an "unusual" gender affectation or appearance.

It makes me think back to my first semester in college, where I met my Auntie Mame of gay men, Josh. Josh is the queen among queens, in his midriff shirt and booty shorts (to show off his tramp stamp) at marching band practice. We hung out, and I remember being mortified by his huge high heels collection, as well as his drag Halloween costumes. It wasn't something I had encountered before college outside of watching Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course, a by the end of that year I'm learning to use Ace bandage to bind down my breasts.

So maybe genderqueer needs to be retired, at least in larger communities. The problem is, how do I find a term for people like me? For female bodied people like me especially. Maybe it's a matter of grass being greener on the other side, but a lot of nonstraight women I know are feminine. Finding the more masculine and androgynous women takes some searching, and finding ones who aren't stuck up or hung up on on gender roles is even harder.

Maybe genderqueer isn't yet dead in Arkansas because it hasn't been properly born yet. Well, I'm waiting.