A recent notice to GLFSA-L said that GLFSA is looking for people to fill several positions on its board, including:
"Graduate Student Liaison: female. (this is a shared position between a female and a male graduate student who is currently enrolled)."
How does sharing this position between "a female and a male graduate student" fit with a mission that includes "promoting understanding of and respect for issues of sexual orientation and gender diversity?"
What exactly is the purpose of this partition into male and female? Is the assumption that these two people represent different constituencies? Can one infer from the acronym of the organization that these constituencies are gay men and lesbian women? If that is not so, is anything said or done to explicitly indicate otherwise?
What test is applied to determine whether an applicant is male or female? Does the male also have to be a man and the female a woman? What variants of masculinity and femininity are allowed or not allowed? Does the male always have to use the Men's Restroom and the female the Women's Restroom?
Does a student loose their position if their male/female signifier changes during their term of office? If what you're really looking for is representatives of the gay and lesbian graduate student populations, does a bisexual student in such a position who dates or–horrors–marries a member of the 'opposite sex' while in office get kicked out of office?
You may say that these issues don't come up in practice, so why worry about them? Well of course these issues don't come up! No one who has or foresees having such issues would ever consider volunteering for such a position. And that's just my point. Such people are erased and rendered invisible by GLFSA's insistence on enforcing this part of society's sex and gender norms.
If GLFSA (and LAHR*) insist on applying separatist labels such as male/female and man/woman to people who participate in their organizations and ceremonies, they are not and cannot be inclusive or understanding of the many varieties of human sexuality and gender identity.
(* An article in the Winter 2001 issue of Moving Forward stated that LAHR used the categories Allies, Women and Men in handing out the 2000 Prism Awards.)
[Published in the Spring 2001 issue of Moving Forward, the newsletter of the Michigan State University Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Faculty and Staff Association (GLFSA).]