Cora Rodriguez
Critical Theory
Project Two
I Have No Good Title For This Essay On Gender
When I was in high school, one of my friends referred to me using she/her pronouns, which I had used for my entire life. So naturally I was surprised when I discovered that those pronouns no longer described me, leaving a heavy feeling in my chest. A few months later, I came out to my parents and sister. After years of unintentionally keeping myself in the shadows, I’m finally basking in the sunlight.
Gender has always been a funny thing for me. Usually, I just say that I’m nonbinary, because I am. But I’m also transgender. When I was younger, I was female, but it’s hard to tell when I stopped being female and mentally transitioned to the lack of gender I have today. Nonbinary is also an umbrella term, holding any other gender that isn’t male or female. There are other terms for a lack of gender, but I use nonbinary because that’s what feels right to me.
“People bring gender into being through gender acts. Such acts are not necessarily deliberate or consciously chosen, but are the repetitive practices that perpetually reproduce gender- for example, wearing make-up, trousers or skirts, or calling people ‘he’ or ‘she’.” (ALiGN) I find that this quote explains a lot of things about gender. Some people don’t understand this concept of gender (also known as homophobes and people who refuse to understand). One of their main arguments is that your gender is what you were born as, male or female. Firstly, that completely ignores the people who were born as intersex, and secondly, that argument isn’t as sound as they may think.
Throughout history, there has been evidence across multiple cultures that identities and genders outside of female and male exist. Over 150 Native American tribes recognized a third gender called two-spirit. In some tribes, two-spirited people held unique roles, but most of those practices were lost due to colonization. In Mesopotamian myths, there are many references to people of a third gender, such as the goddess Inanna. It was believed that Inanna had the power to change someone’s gender, with most of her priests being known for androgyny.
This isn’t anything new. It’s not hard to have common respect for people, even if they don’t identify the same way you do. “Some people haven’t heard a lot about nonbinary genders or have trouble understanding them, and that’s okay. Identities that some people don’t understand still deserve respect.” (Transequality) Another excuse I’ve heard is that ‘other pronouns are too hard to remember’, or that ‘they/them pronouns are grammatically incorrect’. If you can remember what your cousin’s friend’s sister’s dog’s cat did that one time, I think you can remember how someone prefers to be called. As for the pronouns, how many times have you said or heard someone say something along the lines of: “Oh, someone forgot their bag.” That statement is both grammatically correct and you used they/them pronouns for a singular person.
As we have read all these essays and works on queer theory for class, I find myself wondering why gender is scarcely mentioned. I find that it is either briefly mentioned, mentioned with sexuality as a two-for-one deal, or mentioned within the context of separatism in feminist works. “The gender-separatism of lesbian work, reflecting predominant lesbian social experience at the time, was more politicized and strongly linked to feminism; bonding with women was seen as a source of power.” (Queer Theory: Whose Theory? page four)
I find that only talking about gender in those contexts as odd. Perhaps it is just because I live my life constantly aware of gender and my lack of it. According to the Williams Institute in a study published in 2021, “1.2M LGBTQ people in the US identify as nonbinary” which is clarified to be “11% of LGBTQ adults”. (UCLA) According to a survey done by statista.com in 2023 and participated in by thirty countries, three percent of the world’s population (or at least, in those thirty countries) is made up of third-gender individuals. That’s about 200 and something million people. I’m not good at math so don’t yell at me if that number isn’t right. Regardless, it’s a lot of people.
So why doesn’t queer theory mention gender past those extents? The LGBTQIA+ has its problems with exclusion, something I almost wrote this essay about. I’ve found in the limited amount of LGBTQIA+ spaces I have been in, gender was always brought up one way or another, either because someone was complaining about their parents not using their preferred pronouns, or because someone wanted to hear someone else’s experience with gender to see how it paired up with theirs, to see if someone could help them with questions they had. I can’t help but wonder if it’s because the things I’m reading aren’t written by members of the LGBTQIA+, or if it’s because they can’t relate to these gender issues.
“By taking for granted such linear connection between the individual sex, gender and sexual orientation, biodeterminism provided the legitimization of an hegemonic discourse that comprehended a limited spectrum of possible identities- heterosexual men and heterosexual women. This conceptualization not only considers heterosexuality as the ‘normal’ sexual orientation, but also promotes the reproduction of fixed gender roles that maintain the patriarchal matrixes of society in place.” (How Has Queer Theory Influenced the Ways We Think about Gender?, page six) Gender roles can be very harmful. From one point of view, it may keep people from truly being themselves. From another, “gender stereotypes can affect every part of life, contributing towards poor mental health in young people, higher male suicide rates, low self-esteem in girls and issues with body image (1 in 5 14 year olds self-harm), furthermore allowing a culture of toxic masculinity and violence against women to go unchecked.” (BCU)
Maybe that’s why people are homophobic. Society presses these gender roles onto children far too early, and it takes a very long time to shake these roles placed on you. When I was five, I chose to paint my room an incredibly bright pink. When I came out as nonbinary, I started hating those walls on the principle that I wasn’t a girl. I only really stopped hating them after we had already moved out of that house. Now, I know there are very beautiful shades of pink, and while those walls weren’t one of them, I shouldn’t have hated them just because I was no longer a female.
Almost all these sources I’ve looked at mention Judith Butler, who speculated on gender. “Judith Butler (1990) is the first gender theorist that completely disentangles the link between gender, sex and sexuality and, through the formulation of the concept of ‘gender performativity’, she contributes to give a brand-new understanding of the gender identity.” (How Has Queer Theory Influenced the Ways We Think about Gender?, page six) While she is of the opinion that gender is incredibly flexible, she is also only really talking about gender through the lens of sexuality and societal roles.
“The contribution of queer theory in redefining gender identity by complicating its previous understanding provided by gender theory is undeniable. Queer theory defeats the binarism between men and women categories and consequently between male and female biological sex and hetero/homosexuality and the automatic link between these notions.” (How Has Queer Theory Influenced the Ways We Think about Gender?, page ten) Does it though? I feel as if nobody is talking about gender in the way I think people should be talking about gender, which is just talking about gender. That’s also critical of me, as I am talking about gender in relation to something (queer theory).
To conclude, I think that gender isn’t talked about enough on its own in this way of critical theory. It’s kind of a matter of representation, but also a matter of things being discussed, like queer theory, while not having all of the “facts”. It’s like making a recipe and forgetting an ingredient. I feel that if one is discussing the LGBTQIA+ community through queer theory, one should discuss all parts of it at least once. While I think this is something that should be discussed, I don’t think I am and also don’t want to be the person who discusses it.
“Understanding Nonbinary People: How to Be Respectful and Supportive.” National Center for Transgender Equality, 12 Jan. 2023, transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-nonbinary-people-how-to-be-respectful-and-supportive. Accessed 8 May 2024.
“A Brief History of Nonbinary Gender: From Ancient Times to the Early Modern Period.” Clouddancers.org, 2021, clouddancers.org/a-brief-history-of-nonbinary-gender-from-ancient-times-to-the-early-modern-period/. Accessed 8 May 2024.
“View of How Has Queer Theory Influenced the Ways We Think about Gender?” Pagepress.org, 2024, http://www.pagepress.org/journals/wpph/article/view/6948/6560. Accessed 8 May 2024.
“2. Queer Theory and Gender Norms.” Align Platform, 2017, http://www.alignplatform.org/2-queer-theory-and-gender-norms. Accessed 8 May 2024.
“Review: Queer Theory: Whose Theory? On JSTOR.” Plymouth.edu, 2024, www-jstor-org.libproxy.plymouth.edu/stable/3346735?seq=8. Accessed 8 May 2024.
thisisloyal.com, Loyal. “Nonbinary LGBTQ Adults in the United States.” Williams Institute, June 2022, williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/nonbinary-lgbtq-adults-us/. Accessed 9 May 2024.
“Gender Identity Worldwide by Country 2023 | Statista.” Statista, Statista, 2023, http://www.statista.com/statistics/1269778/gender-identity-worldwide-country/. Accessed 9 May 2024.
“Gender Stereotypes in Childhood: What’s the Harm?” Birmingham City University, Birmingham City University, 2024, http://www.bcu.ac.uk/education-and-social-work/research/cspace-blog/gender-stereotypes-in-childhood-whats-the-harm. Accessed 9 May 2024.
Sprockets and Springes 