Category Archives: Gender

Overcoming “Oppression” and the Challenge of Being Yourself

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Many resources designed to help people who are questioning their sexual orientations and gender identities can be strikingly simplistic. These resources suggest a particular set of normative actions to take if you think you might be LGBT. Gay men and lesbians are encouraged to tell their friends and family about their sexual orientations when ready, and eventually dating people of the same sex. Transgender people are encouraged to have conversations with professionals about beginning hormone replacement therapies, having surgeries, and navigating various legal webs to change their gender identity markers on official documents. In some ways, such resources present the coming out process as the first step in a natural set of life cycle rituals that unfold reasonably uniformly for all LGBT people. Ultimately, these resources articulate an LGB life where everyone feels free to enter into sexually active same-sex relationships, or a T life where almost everyone eventually chooses to transition medically and correct gender on legal documents. Failure to accept these particular narratives can lead to assertions that an LGBT person simply has not yet “accepted” himself or herself. If one claims to have a happy life outside of these norms, one might find oneself accused of caving to fundamentally oppressive social systems.

As we see it, many “coming out” resources attempt to replace a restrictive conservative message with an equally restrictive progressive message. Typical conservative messages are laced with religious overtones to induce fear and suggest that feeling any resonance with LGBT experience is fundamentally suspect and likely immoral. However, we’ve noticed that many progressive messages are full of troubling undertones that the fullness of an LGBT person’s life can be objectively observed by an outsider. Progressive messages act as a gatekeeper of LGBT identities. We’ve encountered countless people who ask themselves, “Can I be LGBT if I have absolutely no desire to attend Gay Pride events?” Yet, many progressive narratives view attending one’s first Gay Pride event as a rite of passage associated with the coming out progress. Both conservative and progressive messages can be used to manipulate LGBT people into conformity to the expectations of others. People questioning their sexual orientations and gender identities can find themselves torn between these two narratives even if neither fits their experiences.

We have to wonder if’s better to encourage LGBT people to be their true selves on their own terms, recognizing that everyone is constantly deepening his or her self-understanding. As members of gender and sexual minorities, it’s only natural to seek someone to validate our experiences. After all, feeling different from everyone else often plays into a person’s initial questioning of his or her sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s fantastically freeing when you can find someone who says, “Wow, what you’re saying really resonates with me.” It’s also wonderfully refreshing when you can find someone who says, “Your experience sounds different from mine, but I’m interested in hearing more of your story and walking with you as you find your way.”

Sometimes, LGBT people can need concrete affirmation that it is okay to understand sexual orientations and gender identities differently. A 2013 survey of transgender people revealed that 23% of respondents identify as gay, 25% identify as bisexual, 23% identify as straight, 4% identify as asexual, 2% identify as other, and 23% identify as queer. While some LGB people feel a strong resonance with the word “queer,” the vast majority of LGB prefer LGB terms because they identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. A transgender person who is negotiating the complexities of his or her own sex and gender and the sexes and genders of people he or she is attracted to might find terms like “gay” and “straight” incredibly limiting.

It’s good to listen to what people have to say about themselves. We have friends on the transgender spectrum who say, “I have a body. I am male. Therefore, I have a male body,” well before ever even thinking about pursuing medically-facilitated transition. This line of thought can be incredibly empowering to another transgender person because it permits a person to affirm his body as male immediately after becoming aware of his male identity. These thoughts grate against many dominant conservative and progressive messages about sexual orientation and gender: conservative messages usually assert that since one’s body has identifiably female parts, then one has a female body, and some progressive messages assert that the next rational step is to consult a doctor, effectively prescribing medical treatment. Transgender people who would rather not pursue medical interventions should not need to worry about losing the claim on their gender identities.

To offer another example, we also know know gay, lesbian, and bisexual people interested in entering monastic life. Many conservative voices argue that LGB people are unsuited to monastic life because they are likely to corrupt the monastery with sexual immorality. However, many progressive voices actively discourage LGB people from pursuing any kind of celibate lifestyle lest they fail to become fully actualized people in the context of sexually active relationships. In rare instances when progressive messages affirm that an LGB person should be able to choose celibacy, the statement almost always followed up with, “…but only if your reason for being celibate has nothing to do with your sexual orientation.” This leaves no room for the possibility that one can fully embrace his or her sexual orientation while still understanding it as a factor in discerning vocation. It also doesn’t make sense if one applies the same standard to expectations for how straight people discern vocation. We’ve never met anyone, conservative or progressive, who would advise a straight person considering celibacy to follow this pathway only if the decision is completely unrelated to sexual orientation.

In our own experiences and those shared with us by friends and readers, we’ve seen that people on both ends of the ideological spectrum can have impossible expectations for LGBT people without even realizing it. If you believe the only way for an LGBT person to follow Christ is to “become straight” and enter a heterosexual marriage, you’re probably not inclined to listen to the stories of people who have been harmed by these standards. Today, more people are challenging this narrative, and we’re glad for that. But few are quick to challenge the opposite set of expectations — the one that excludes LGBT people who don’t fit the mold assumed in progressive literature about the coming out process. The one that insists a person is caving to bad theology and toxic religious norms if he or she is not open to the idea of marriage or has no intention of taking up membership at a queer church. The one that inadvertently (sometimes even directly) forces some to the margins of an already marginalized group. We hope that as LGBT people continue to become more visible, there will be more questioning of what constitutes oppression and who gets to determine the meaning of “be yourself.”

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Affirming Kids in a Gendered World

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A reflection by Lindsey 

The story of Ryland Whittington has been traveling around the world at viral speed. Ryland’s family created a YouTube video to tell a bit more about Ryland’s story. The video highlights two events in Ryland’s life where the family really had to come together: 1) Ryland was diagnosed as deaf, received a cochlear implant, and learned to talk a bit later than most children, and 2) Ryland took to saying “I’m a boy!” almost immediately. The family sought advice from various folks in preparation for permitting Ryland to live as a boy. The video ends with Ryland making a public remark at the 6th Annual Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast saying, “I’m a transgender kid. I am six. I’m a cool kid. I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. Thank you to my parents.”

From where I sit in the world, it’s not incredibly surprising to see Ryland’s story making waves. Facebook has unveiled myriad gender options. Laverne Cox appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Students at Christian and public schools have been suspended until they wore clothes and accessories associated with more traditional cisgender presentations. I’ve heard plenty of people lamenting the degree of “gender confusion” present in the world while others gleefully shout, “Down with the gender binary!” However, I’m more of the opinion that adults frequently forget that children are people who have intrinsic senses of the mystery of gender.

I’ve been absolutely blessed beyond measure by getting to know many kids from birth. My current Christian tradition has greatly facilitated these introductions by welcoming people of all ages to the same service in order to affirm the oneness of the Body of Christ. As I’ve known more and more infants and toddlers, I catch myself thinking frequently, “Wow, what a marvelous little person!” These kids strike me as being full of a personalities uniquely their own. Some parents have told me that they think of their children first and foremost as “children of God who had been entrusted to [their] care.” That idea has really stuck with me. Oftentimes, I think the world gets caught up as viewing children as emerging adults rather than people.

If we posit that children at all life stages are people, then it makes sense that our call when getting to know children is getting to know them first and foremost as people. I’m at that age where lots of my friends are having children, and I find myself particularly in awe of parents who wait a few days after their child is born before settling on the child’s name. I regard naming a child as a sacred duty. If I’ve remembered my own naming story right, my parents had picked out two names for me before I was born and decided to go with Lindsey, a choice much farther down their list, when they met me. (And of course, if I’m remembering my own naming story wrong, I know my mom will correct me on the details.) I’m proud of my name, and I’m grateful for the time my parents took to discern my name. Many parents have shared with me their angst in naming children. I can appreciate that; a name is a big deal. Names are reflective of so many things. Taking time to discern the personality in a child, even before giving a name, can go a long way in helping affirm a child in a gendered world.

Kids have natural ways of expressing themselves. Freedom to explore different hobbies and personal sense of style can go a long way in helping kids become comfortable in their own skin. Will the world come screeching to a halt if a 4-year-old wants a buzz cut, a 10-year-old wants to learn how to solder electronics, a 7-year-old wants long flowing locks, a 6-year-old wears a suit and tie, a 3-year-old brings a doll everywhere, a 12-year-old begs to take babysitting classes, or an 8-year-old wears a dress? We communicate something about the intrinsic value of any of these things when we assert “No, sorry son, but that’s a girl thing.” or “Well, you know you have to because all boys should.”

I’m personally grateful for all of the ways that my family has allowed me to be Lindsey. I rarely experienced any sort of consequences for how my sense of self developed. I could experience great comfort in my own skin, knowing that my family totally supported me shrugging my shoulders and saying “So?” when others confronted me in an effort to use gender to police my activities. However, I am all too aware of how different people have been pigeonholed by the gender police. It seems that the wake of various feminist movements, women have greater latitude in gender expression than men do. It’s not terribly uncommon for gender non-conforming women to carry on without consequence up to a certain point. Nonetheless, the more a person brushes against various social expectations of gender, the more that person risks all forms of violence. Transwomen of color are frequent targets of violence as evidenced by the recent case in Atlanta were two transwomen were assaulted and stripped of their clothing on a public bus.

I think it’s a gross oversimplification to describe gender as a set of social interactions. Gender, in my best estimation, goes deeper. If pressed, I’d say something like the mystery of gender allows our souls to dance. When we love children, we want to see them come alive as their souls dance. Our bodies are the vessels that present our souls to the world. All of our embodied capabilities exist to showcase the dance of the soul. And in this world, all of us encounter difficulty as we try to present our soul to the world while seeing the beauty in another’s soul. My own opinion is that aggressively policing gender is one way to squash the soul of another.

I wonder what life would look like if we tried to peer more deeply into a person’s soul in order to see the image and likeness of God imprinted therein. What would happen if we accepted all children as, first and foremost, children of God? How would we journey alongside children if we wanted to see their souls dance?

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How Is Gender Used?

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A reflection by Lindsey

As many people know, I’ve been aggressively job hunting for several months. I have lost count of the number of applications I’ve filled out, cover letters I’ve written, phone interviews I’ve fielded, and on-site interviews I’ve attended. Every time I enter a new environment, I’m constantly interrogating how gender is enacted. Failure to read gender appropriately might cause a disaster for me as a person who is rather easily identified as a part of the LGBT community. The majority of states do not have any legislation to protect LGBT people from workplace discrimination. (But, it should be noted that actually proving one has been discriminated against in one’s workplace regarding perceived LGBT status is incredibly difficult.)

Recently, I posted an article on my personal Facebook account where the author asked people to “please stop calling people you don’t know ‘ladies.’” I’ve posted similar articles in the past on my Facebook page, and these articles about gender tend to generate some of the more vocal conversations. On one side, I’ve heard people make an argument that boils down to “Gender doesn’t matter. Simply treat people with respect.” On the other side, I’ve heard people make an argument that boils down to “That’s spoken with a real degree of male/cisgender privilege.”

Because of these conversations, I wanted to take a step back and think about where I’ve seen gender most strongly enacted.

Gender is an essential part of our language of respect. When you call a random help desk for technical support, the person on the other end of the line greets you with the pleasantries of using a gendered title or with “Sir” or “Ma’am” as deemed appropriate. Being gendered is not the purpose of the call. Most of the time, I’m so relieved to be speaking to a human that I just want to get the call over with as quickly as possible. The gendered aspects of the call go smoothest when secondary sex characteristics match what is on record. I have a decent number of transgender friends in various states of medical transition who have had to fight any number of uphill battles because their vocal tones didn’t sound appropriate for their first names or their legal gender markers.

I think one of the reasons why people react so strongly when they are corrected about their use of gendered language is that correcting gender is akin to correcting manners. Kids as young as 3 already practice automatically gendering people they meet. Gender is supposed to be easy.

When you tell someone he or she is getting gender wrong, I wonder if that person feels like he or she has failed kindergarten. Every time people feel like their first guess of my gender is wrong, I can’t help but notice how profoundly embarrassed they are. Here they are, simply trying to be polite, and they feel like they’ve insulted me in the first sentence they’ve uttered. Going from being polite to uttering an insult by making the “wrong” choice of a 2- or 3-letter word…the idea that this is possible is in itself confusing. It’s no wonder the question, “How is gender used?” can elicit such strong responses.

Gender can reinforce valuable social hierarchies. Some of the most gendered environments I’ve been in are the military and educational institutions. There’s a reason why the military wants lower-ranked people to sound off “Yes SIR!” and “No MA’AM!” It seems you get a gender when you’re important enough to pay attention to. I’ve been in many a drill environment where people have been dropped for push-ups because they have misgendered their interrogating superior. After all, “attention to detail” is a core skill being taught to newcomers. Less cynically, it seems that gender is used in educational environments as a way to teach children about respecting their elders. The adults have a last name; the kids have a first name.

Gender can imply to women that they are included in a particular conversation. The Declaration of Independence begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” A student of history knows that the writers of the Declaration focused on the rights of land-holding, white males. Many feminist movements have included an effort to adopt more inclusive language in many areas of life that clearly reflects the presence of both men and women. Shifting language from “man” to “human” can do something psychologically where people clue in that we’re not just talking about the male gender. Clarifying that a community development program wants to support “male and female farmers” can correct an assumption that “All farmers are male” in a proactive fashion. I’m of the opinion we’ve gotten so much better at adding gender where it’s important that we have developed this odd tendency to insert gender where it shouldn’t matter.

I’ve been cultivating the practice of waiting to hear a person use pronouns before adopting a set of them myself. Admittedly, I started this habit because I lived in England and heard a person call his spouse “partner.” Being an American, I’m so used to “partner” being a covert way for a person to come out as LGB that I had to do a double-take when his next sentence uttered was about his pregnant wife. When my gut reaction was to try and puzzle out how this guy had both a partner and a wife, I knew I had to check my assumptions. Learning to listen for the pronouns (and practicing framing sentences where I don’t quite know the right pronouns yet) has saved me tons of embarrassment.

How might these three observations interact in the request, “Please stop calling people you don’t know ‘ladies'”? I think the standards of politeness have shifted towards indicating that we see humans as gendered beings. I’ve observed more than one situation where a group of women harangued a person for addressing the group as guys: the women asked, “Do you see any guys in this group?” in a way that deeply shamed the person who had unwittingly failed the gendered aspects of politeness. However, I also think that the request is fundamentally raising awareness that our standards of politeness ought to be inclusive of transgender, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming individuals. The word ladies is a profoundly gendered word. Ladies suggests not only that a person is female, but also that she has developed a particular kind of decorum appropriate for the upper class. It’s often conveyed either as a compliment (a girl is so grown up that she’s become a real lady) or as a disciplinary measure (adults working with a group of girls running amok yelling “LADIES!” to get their attention). But it’s often hard to read the true subtext.

It can be okay, and even linguistically survivable, to hold off on gendering someone you’ve just met. One potential default greeting for a business could sound like, “Hello! We’re so glad you’ve chosen to visit us today. How can I help you?” Many groups of 3 or more have an organic way of using pronouns to refer to other members in the group. I’ve had a lot of fun talking about people in a way that does not automatically assign gender. One of my personal favorites is, “I’m so excited that two of my friends recently had a baby. Both parents and the child are doing well, but they’re still adjusting to life together.” With some people, I’ve observed palpable discomfort when they figure out I haven’t given them any clues as to whether the child is a boy or a girl. These people frequently follow up with “Is it a boy or a girl?” as an immediate question. With other people, I can tell they are perfectly comfortable speaking of a human as a human first rather than as a gendered being.

As I’ve been interviewing, I have been incredibly guarded about how I disclose my relationship with Sarah. I keep my antenna sky high as to whether I should be discreet (using words like family) or if I can actively test the waters by using the word partner. I can’t help but feel extremely relieved when someone has noticed I haven’t assigned a gender to my partner. Some people ask questions right away to get an appropriate pronoun. Other people follow my lead of sticking with the word partner. Either strategy indicates to me that there’s enough cultural competence around LGBT issues that I’m more likely to be safer in that workplace. To be sure, people are actively gendering me, but I like to think the more culturally competent have at least consulted the gender marker I’ve put on the application. And I look forward to the day when one does not need to disclose one’s gender at the beginning of the job hunting process.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Speaking of Gender

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A reflection by Lindsey

In many conversations about faith and sexuality, people frequently emphasize one’s sexual orientation over one’s gender identity. Those attempting to talk about LGBT issues often overlook the last letter of the acronym. Questions about gender and gender identity get shifted into the background, pushed behind the stage, and were rarely welcomed into the conversation in the first place. Sometimes, concerns for fundamental equality between men and women can obscure why gender identity might matter.

I’ll be the first to admit that I feel out of my league when I try to speak of gender. I grew up thinking that gender was little more than a biological tag that indicated what restroom you used in public areas. I never had my gender flouted in front of my face to tell me that I couldn’t do x, y, or z. In many ways, I consider myself fortunate that I never encountered gender as an obstacle that blocked opportunities or prevented me from deciding how I wanted to express myself.

That doesn’t mean gender is easy.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to see how gender saturates the world around us. I’ve been lucky enough because I have never been able to be bothered with the “right” way of expressing myself. If you look at photos of me beginning at the age of 5 and continuing to present day, you’ll see that my self-presentation has been more or less constant for 25 years. Sure, there was a blip on the radar in 7th grade when I was experimenting with what it might look like to have long hair, but we all know that junior high students try on a range of self-presentations. In many ways, I feel safer because 5-year-old me knew how to be Lindsey no matter what other people might think. That’s one part of my 5-year-old self that I’m glad to still be holding onto to this day.

Yet, I wonder if we’re starting to see a shift in how we talk about gender. I’ve become increasingly aware that it’s possible to label another person’s self-presentation as “gender non-conforming.” In some ways, I wonder if conversations around gender identity are starting to diversify in a way akin to the many different conversations about sexual orientation. When people began discussing sexual orientation, the dominant word used to describe the minority sexual orientation was “gay.” For a good bit now, the dominant word used to describe the minority gender identity was “transgender.” I find myself welcoming the broadening of the discussions as people with degrees of gender variation begin to experiment with ideas like genderqueer, bigender, and agender even as these terms have exceptionally fluid definitions.

For my part, I’ll admit to being somewhat lost in the shuffle about what all of these terms mean. None of these terms seem especially comfortable for describing my own situation, but I’ve been on this journey long enough to know it’s okay that I’m not ready to go out and buy assorted buttons to broadcast my preferred vocabulary to the universe. I’m profoundly grateful that so many people over the years have related to me simply as Lindsey without asserting the various rules of gender identity, performance, and expression to control my activity. Since having my own awakening as to how gender manifests itself in our world, I’ve experienced some rather jarring discomfort when I notice people actively enforcing gendered boundaries. I joke that there’s sort of a gender scale that stretches from 1 (gender is not noticeably present in any constraining way) to 10 (gender organizes just about every expectation and interaction), where I’m particularly apt to label my experiences of profound discomfort as Gender 11 moments. I’ve also noticed that when I have my choice of where to be, I’d rather be in environments much lower on the gender scale.

Talking about this topic is hard, partly because I think we’ve gotten so used to the conversation being about sexual orientation that we overlook how people navigate questions about gender. I didn’t even realize that gender might be an important part of how I experience these conversations until just a few years ago. But I wanted to take some time today to open a conversation about gender here on the blog. The door is open, the kettle is on, and I’d love to talk with you more in the comments.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.