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.

Bad Bois

Behold! Gloria Steinem has had a love child- with whoever will have a love child with her. And this lovechild is named Ariel Levy.

I first heard about Levy's book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, in a review in a Bitch magazine from 2004. I remember the review being positive, so I was excited to receive a copy for this past Christmas.

And then I read it. Cue angriness.

I don't have a problem with Levy's main premise. I'm fine with that. Her idea is that women are buying into the “let's objectify women!” raunch culture so long adopted by some men. If you can't beat them, join them.

And while her studies of Girls Gone Wild positively reek of Steinem's “I Was a
Playboy Bunny” article, she makes some excellent points regarding the line between women reclaiming sexual power and women feeling like they're reclaiming sexual power, only to find that they are instead encouraging one another to be objectified. She feels like she veers into the overly conservative, easily angered side of her one sided arguments, but I can forgive her that.

It's her chapter “From Womyn to Bois” that I can't forgive. Okay, in this chapter Levy focuses on the raunch surrounding lesbians who identify as being boi. Of course, most of her examples are of rude, underachieving, immature people who treat feminine women like “hos” and act like all the worst aspects of dumbass teen boys.

I'll credit her that, even, because these folks are definitely out there. Her problem here- like her problem throughout the book- is that she never presents an alternate side, which dramatically weakens her argument.

Plus, she generally treats the concept of a “genderqueer movement” as if it is silly, trying to punch holes in the concept. She explains the genderqueer movement she sees, and then tries to back it up by describing an FTM transsexual and asking why someone would bother with surgery and testosterone if they were trying to destroy the gender binary.

I feel like Levy threw in the word “genderqueer” without any real research or consideration, and I'm pissed. Furthermore, she's taking case by case examples of people's lives and holding them up to represent an entire demographic of people. Did I mention that the transman she used as an example never once identified as genderqueer? Weak.

This chapter was enough to ruin her book for me, I'm afraid. Hell, a paragraph in this chapter was enough. Ariel Levy makes so many excellent points in her book, but completely alienates me and everyone like me, people who otherwise might have supported her.

It's 2010, Ariel. The hardcore 2nd wave feminists are thinning out, and my generation is a hell of a lot more fluid than you're expecting. I'm in line with Kate Bornstein's view on this, really. As long as there are two and only two commonly accepted genders, one will always usurp the power and oppress the other. I'm not looking for Sultana's Dream- I'm looking for a world with one last tag to be held against me.