Reconsidering and redefining our ideas about gender

After I finished the last reading of the three required articles for class, I realized the common link between them was their investment in recreating or destroying the socially and culturally created ideas around gender. In the articled titled “The Woman-Identified Woman”, the Radicalesbians discuss the obstacles lesbians face while trying to carve their own space in a society that only values women who do not deviate from socially and culturally imposed standards of womanhood. In fact, the article also suggests that the term “lesbian” was the creation of men “to throw at any woman who dares to be his equal, who dares to challenge his prerogatives (including that of all women as part of the exchange medium among men), who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs” (240). In addition, the article also places the use of the word within the context of a heterosexual society. The word “lesbian” or “homosexual” for that matter, would probably not be necessary in a society with “rigid sex roles.”

The rigid sex and gender roles that have dominated many cultures are now insufficient. The world is no longer entirely heterosexual, in fact it never was. Homosexual, transgender, and transsexual communities are becoming more visible and proper terminology and explanations are inadequate to completely describe and distinguish them. In Judith Halberstam’s article titled, “Transgender Butch: Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Continuum” and a piece from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , both scholars discuss the discrepancies surrounding gender identities. In Halberstam’s piece, she focused more on the transsexual and transgender communities. However I could not really relate. The terms flew over my head and I was having difficulty figuring out the differences between the respective groups myself. But after reading Butler’s piece I felt that I found the common thread amongst all the articles. In her piece she gives numerous definitions of gender including the following: “Gender is… a construction that regularly conceals its genesis… an action of gender re quires performance that is repeated … is also a norm that can never be full internalized (502-503). Many people look at transsexuals, homosexuals, and transgender people as “Other” and we compare them against the heterosexual standard, assuming that it is the original and that transsexuals/transgendered persons are really homosexuals imitating heterosexual relations. But using the example about people who dress in drag really clarifies that idea that our ideas of sex and gender are not as clear and distinct as we like them to be. In the article she introduces a three important terms: anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance. Society expects women to have the anatomical sex of female, gender identity of women, and gender performance of women also. But the example surround drag destabilizes the idea that these terms are coherent and absolute. A male dressed in drag may have the anatomical sex of males, gender identity of men, and the gender performance of females. The confusion this example will present in the mind of many people only further emphasizes the point I am trying to make: gender is not clearly defined, even in our American society that thinks it has clearly defined it.