(Dedicated to Mary Daly and the other feminists who have helped form my thought about sex, gender and social role.)
I cringe when I see an activity with a blurb like "open to women and men of all races, ethnicities, abilities, sexual identities, faiths and religions." Most people may react by thinking, "Oh, how inclusive!" but I wonder what exactly is the point of saying "women and men?" Are all others excluded, or is this a warning that people will be treated differently, like it or not, based on their identity as women or men?
This women/men thing permeates the culture, it infects everything from restrooms to toy stores to entire academic curricula. One can't get a job, shop for clothes or take a piss without casting one's lot with the women or the men. It's as bad as racial segregation ever was. Women and men welcome this division and look for ways to strengthen the dichotomy, labeling those of us who don't play along 'freak.'
Well I don't want any part of it. As much as I can while living in a culture built on sex-based apartheid, I'm working to dismantle the whole thing. That means working toward a civilization of people not divided into arbitrary classes.
It's taken me a long time to arrive where I am today, though in a sense I've come full circle. When I was very young, in nursery school and kindergarten, I was confused by gender and sex and could not understand why boys and girls were supposed to be different. I couldn't figure out why I was laughed at or punished some times and not other times. I put together a set of rules to follow when I was around other people, and eventually I realized this is what gender is all about: rules you have to follow or else get beaten up.
What's the point of being transsexual? Is it a cop out? That depends on what I make of it.
Some trans people are eager to build the gender wall higher and higher, once they are on the side they like. I'm thinking of 'post-op' transsexual women who feel they belong at the Michigan Womyns Music Festival and work to keep the 'pre-op' and 'non-op' trash out. It's sad to see so much energy wasted on perpetuating the many problems caused by the stereotypes of male and female, masculine and feminine, men and women.
I am not 'transgender.' I have my own gender, built over the years from bits and pieces of gender offered by this and other cultures, from my own feelings, and from the results of my experiments with what works to communicate my feelings and desires to other people. I did not choose one of two available genders, I made my own, and that is something anyone can do, transsexual or not.
I'm not gay or lesbian or heterosexual, either. What do those labels mean outside of a system of gender apartheid? Bisexual is meaningless and pansexual is redundant. We're sexual, damn it, simply sexual!
Don't make the mistake of thinking I do not believe in gender, or that I want to do away with gender. No, I want to release gender from its simple two-category boundaries and let it flourish and run wild. There are differences between people! The mistake is in forcing the myriad of differences into the two categories men and women.
There should no more be state mandated separation between male and female than between white and colored. (Half of Tulsa, Oklahoma was burned to the ground in 1921 because a black man rode an elevator alone with a white woman. Is this so different than the fear of what will happen if restrooms are sexually desegregated?) It is not the state's business what anyone has between their legs, in their chromosomes, or in their heads.
Separate but equal does not, cannot, work. Walls between people, whether those walls be based on color, religion, sexuality, gender, ability, or anything else, can only make it more difficult for people to work together. Tear down the walls!
I am proud to simply be me, to not meekly assume any identity held out to me by others. I've lost security, safety, power, privilege, comradeship, and love by walking my own path. But only by so doing, do I arrive at the destination that is mine; only by so doing, am I truly myself; only by so doing is my pride my own.
[Published in the spring 2000 "Pride" issue of Q-News at Michigan State University.]