Episode two of the Some Gender Going On podcast! Expanding the gender club! You can play it or download it here:

My second episode! I’ve figured out some more of how to do this, like not sitting in a creaky chair, and I’m still having buckets of fun!

Notes

As always, I’ll post my notes that I base the podcast off of, if you prefer reading to listening:

Izzy Grosof

Some Gender Going On Podcast

Second Episode

Expanding the gender club

Cis vs. Trans is the wrong separation in the world. Wrong separation of discourse community, interpersonal community, activism community Cis vs. Not Cis is also the wrong separation in the world.

Transgressing gender, is what I like. Pushing gender norms, breaking out of them entirely, burning gender to the ground, making your own gender with blackjack and hookers, it’s all transgressing gender. I’m transgressing gender. All trans people transgress gender. Nonbinary people transgress gender.

But it’s not just us. There’s a friend of mine who’s a woman, and she loves performing male characters in D&D, and she uses a voice changer to make the character sound deeper and more gravelly, and when I showed her <this voice>, she was really excited and wished she could do it herself, and showed me her deep melodramatic villain laugh.

She’s transgressing gender. She’s got some gender going on. She’s in the club. And she’s a cis woman. There’s no contradiction there. Cis isn’t the end of the story.

I have a friend who’s a somewhat-masc lesbian with a short haircut and mostly wears boxy, masc-cut clothes. She’s transgressing gender.

I have a friend who’s male and wears little pink crop tops when he’s going to an event. He’s transgressing gender.

There’s a lot of ways to transgress gender. Transgressing the gendered norms of a hobby or a line of work is also transgressing gender.

A woman using the single-occupancy men’s room in a restaurant because the woman’s room is out of order.

Drag queens, even if they’re only performing fem when they’re on stage, they’re transgressing gender.

A feminist theorist deconstructing what it means to be a woman and building something new - she’s transgressing gender.

What transgressing gender looks like can vary by time and place. There are times and places and social circumstances where programming and science fiction and playing long board games is and was seen as unmasculine, and so a man or boy who did those things was transgressing gender. In other times and places and circumstances, not so much.

In many times and places, to be gay, or to be a lesbian, or to be bi, or to be ace, is transgressing gender. Cisheteropatriarchy is real, and it declares that a keep component of manliness is to be attracted to women, and a key part of womanliness is to be attracted to men. Escaping that designation is transgressing gender.

Transgressing gender doesn’t mean you’re exactly the same as me. But it means we have some shared interest, shared concern, shared desires. That’s enough for me. Maybe we’ll each have our own communities, but we’ll talk, we’ll hang out. Hopefully, we can support each other. Hopefully, we can recognize our shared experience. If you transgress gender, maybe you’re not just like me, but you’re definitely cool.

You’ve got some gender going on. That’s what this podcast is all about.

It’s not just those who transgress gender who are in our circle of concern and mutual support. People who are considering it, who are interested, who would maybe if circumstances were different. This includes closeted trans people, and eggs, but it also includes a guy who watches Drag Race and wonders if he’d maybe be good at that, if it wouldn’t get him fired of course.

Sometimes, people tell eggs that cis people don’t think about gender all the time. That has an element of truth, but it’s not the end of the story. There are definitely cis people who think about gender a lot, and they’re in the club too, regardless of whether they’re outwardly performing that transgression.

Another group of people who are in the mix are the co-conspirators. The people who actively go out of their way to help. A friend who fronts the money for some gender-interesting clothes at the mall, so the recipient can pay them back and not have the entry on their credit-card statement. A parent who gets their ‘son’ the princess dress they want and supports them in wearing it to school and backs them up against a school that wants to shut them down or a would-be bully.

I don’t have a perfect name for this wide, wide circle of shared experience and shared struggle, but it’s real and it matters. Some people have more of the experience, some people more of the struggle, all good and valid.

Who’s not in this circle? Who’s not in the club?

Opposed to gender transgressers are people who enforce gender. “Boys don’t dress like that.” “Girls are bad at math and spatial reasoning.” A gym teacher splitting 8-year-old girls from boys to play separate sports. Someone who hears about a nonbinary person and says “Oh, that’s just a fad, he’ll drop it in a few years.” A thousand different ways to enforce gender normativity, a thousand different ways to crush our spirits.

The agents of gender enforcement, they don’t get to be in the club. They’re not cool.

To be clear, there are plenty of people who simultaneously transgress gender and enforce it. Maybe they support certain kinds of transgressiveness but not others. Maybe they like it when they’re doing it but not when other people do it. Maybe they’ve built up internalized bigotry, so they put themself down even as they transgress. Maybe they’re blind to the whole system, and don’t consciously notice what they’re doing.

They’re complicated. The borders are complicated, the people are complicated, the club is complicated. That’s how life is, oftentimes.

Why does this matter?

Who gets to talk? Whose gender experiences are worth discussing and uplifting?

A narrative gets pushed: Cis people should step back and let trans people talk. This isn’t completely wrong, but it’s not right either. “Trans people” isn’t the right category of people who should be talking it. Sometimes, in some situations, being cis is as transgressive as anything a person could do. There are masc lesbians who constantly get “sir”ed and “he” and all that misgendering bullshit. Their voices should be heard. They should not be taking a step back - they should be speaking.

There’s a Medium article: “I Am a Trans Woman. I Am in The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.”, by Jennifer Coates. It discusses the pain of being seen as cis (and male) and being told to shut up, that one’s gender experiences aren’t valid, that one should step back. It’s miserable and it forces people away. The subtitle of the piece is “Resentments on the theme of ‘the only real trans woman is an out trans woman’”. Go read it.

Ultimately, the mindset that the only kind of people who get to talk are people who are visibly, uncomplicatedly like this is a bigoted mindset. It’s bigoted against everyone whose life is complicated. Who hasn’t yet understood themself. Who you haven’t yet understood. Who doesn’t have the time or energy or inclination to explain themself to you. Who the words haven’t been invented to convey that depth of meaning. Who can’t come out, or isn’t ready to, or is stealth. Who would be reduced and confined in the telling.

So everyone who’s transgressing gender gets to talk. And everyone who’s thinking about maybe doing that someday. Everyone who wants a spot in this conversation gets one. And that means a lot of people get to talk. And that’s the way it should be.

The only people who need to take a step back are people who are enforcing gender. It doesn’t make you a horrible person if you find yourself enforcing gender sometimes - internalized gender binary and cisnormativity occurs within all of us, we all live in a society. But it does mean we need to work on learning, be attentive and open to the reality that we have ways to improve, and to give space and opportunity where we might be in danger of crushing things.

So what might we talk about?

Let’s talk about mandatory pronoun sharing. Let’s say we’re going around a circle and introducing ourselves. The facilitator leads with their name and pronouns, and a few people follow along, and then someone doesn’t share pronouns. Sometimes, people think that the only people who get a say on gender-related topics are (out) trans people, and think that all trans people want pronouns to always be shared, and make sharing pronouns a signalling thing - if you share you support trans people, if you don’t you don’t.

This is bad. Pronouns as a normalized part of an introduction are good, pronouns as a mandatory part of an introduction are not. Pronouns as social allegiance signaling is shit. It’s too weighty to be converted into an “I’m on this side” thing.

If you talk to the wider gender club, there’s a lot of good reasons someone wouldn’t want to share pronouns.

Some people are neutral when it comes to others placing a label on them, but it feels worse when they are compelled to actively claim that gendered label. They’re in the gender club, their voice counts.
Some people haven’t figured things out to the point where they want to claim something non-normative and face the attendant scrutiny, but also they know it feels wrong to claim what they’re leaving. They’re in the gender club, their voice counts.
Lots of closeted or partially-out trans people share different pronouns with different people, and sharing in a large-group setting goes against that. They’re in the gender club, their voice counts.
People don’t want to invite scrutiny, but they don’t want to lie.
People who it hurts to be associated with their assigned gender, but it’s all they’ve got for now None of these are hypotheticals. I’ve either read essays where people are talking about these feelings, or met people on internet forums, or talked to people, or personally experienced, every single one of these.

Trans people are more likely to actually know some of these people, or have been some of these people, or currently being some of these people. So when you hear people trying to push mandatory pronouns, or pronoun-signaling, it’s often cis people who think they’re being allies. Or maybe it’s trans people. Either way, they haven’t been listening to enough of the gender club.

Ultimately, this is about more than discourse. It’s about whose experiences are valid, who’s being supported and uplifted by the movement, who deserves a place in the circle.

And the answer is: More people. Trans people, cis people, people who don’t like those terms. “It’s complicated” people. People who are exploring. People who will never tell a living soul. People I’ve never heard of or thought of or met or experienced.

Statistically speaking, given who’s listening to this, there’s a good chance that you, yes you listening right now, you’ve got some gender going on, even if that’s not something you or others have recognized so far. Take your time to think about it - your gender transgression, or interest therein, might not look simple, or look like the examples I’ve listed, or might not be visible to others. All of that’s Ok. All of that’s real. All of that’s you.

I want to support you and uplift you, if you’d like my support. I want you in the movement with me, if you want to be here. You are valid. Welcome to the gender club.