From Cinderella to Spiderman
So many of my friends shared this piece by Jemima Lewis in the Telegraph. (Yes, the Telegraph. Why do you think I mentioned the many friends?)
A primary school in Hartfield, East Sussex, held a “transgender day” recently, to encourage the tots to explore issues of gender-fluidity.
But was it to encourage them to explore? Or to teach them the formulas they’re expected to repeat. The current version of transgender dogma doesn’t welcome exploration, as Lewis points out.
I want my children to be open-minded about gender and sexuality. I want them to have the run of the dressing up box, from Cinderella to Spiderman, for as long as they feel drawn to sparkly nylon. I want the boys to feel able to cry, and their sister to punch them in the head. As far as is possible in a world full of stereotypes, I want them to steer clear of pigeonholes. And right now, gender politics seems to me nothing but floor-to-ceiling pigeonholes.
You can be agender, bi-gender, cisgender, demigender, graygender, intergender, genderless, genderqueer or third gender – but by God, you will accept a label. Go gingerly when applying it in public, though, especially if you are unpractised and over-40: this new language is as orthodox and closely-policed as any medieval catechism.
That doesn’t put it strongly enough. All those labels are for people under-40 (or better yet under-30 or can we say under-25?) who are the first people ever to have realized that men can like skirts and women can like driving fast. Except of course that they’re not, but they think they are, so their views on the subject are not as enlightened or enlightening as they think they are.
The rules of gender-fluidity have been laid down incredibly fast, and have already calcified into a set of unchallengeable truths. You are how you feel. Gender identity is a self-realisable truth. I have no doubt that there are some children – a tiny minority – who suffer from gender dysmorphia right from the off, and will never feel comfortable in the body they were born into. But most children, left to their own devices, can change identities a hundred times a day and move up and down the gender spectrum without ever requiring a change of label.
Trans activists, like old-school misogynists, are forever patrolling the perimeters of male and female behaviour, making sure we all adhere to some kind of type.
And how funny that is, because it’s exactly what feminism was meant to free us all from.
By “funny” of course I mean tragic and disgusting.
Hey,t he under-40s have a word for that kind of funny. lolsob.
Ophelia, you might enjoy the comments on the current J&M, specifically the conversation between Darwin Harmless and Acolyte of Sagan.
And yes, I genuinely mean enjoy.
<- under 40 and just glad that I finished college before things went to shit like this. Now I'm in welding so that's got its own set of issues, but the likelihood of that specific kind of gender policing bullshit is near zero.
Most of my life I felt like some sort of Martian for refusing to conform to either gender stereotype, but instead like some things that were “girly” (sweet wines, for instance, and no sports) and some things that were “manly” (like science, math, and politics).
Guess in the new language, that would make me Martiangenderfluidnonbinary? Or something like that?
‘You are how you feel.’
Honestly, I so much wish that were true. Part of my maturing experience was/is learning how much it isn’t.
Though when I think about it I can’t really blame the generation that’s into this kind of thing for being into it. I could have been this kid:
http://brooklynrobotfoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Vintage-Lego-Ad-e1363902125706.jpg
in the very narrow window when girls, at least, were let off the chain–my experience and others’ writing has led me to believe that was a very narrow window, and both gender policing and misogyny have become much worse since then. So yeah, people who are living that reality are reacting as best they can (possibly with the awareness, if not necessarily stated and conscious, that the previous generation’s solutions didn’t work/didn’t last), and in a sense our generation is ‘to blame’ for not keeping that window open, and opening it up for boys as well.
guest #5 and #6:
You express my thoughts as well. Our ways of reaching such a conclusion might have been different, but the outcome seems pretty similar.
Personally I’m too old to count, so for me it’s mainly about living with a teenage girl who adopted this new language as her own, even though here it doesn’t seem to be “as orthodox and closely-policed as any medieval catechism” – not yet. Still, as I said, the outcome is very similar even if our ways are different.
Jemima Lewis wrote:
I don’t know about most children; it seems though that these labels are important to my daughter. My impression is that it’s mostly about belonging and validation – something like “Ah, so that’s the group I belong to!” and “Ah, so there is nothing wrong with me!”.
I think that Jemima Lewis is quite right about the fluidity – you know, about “changing identities a hundred times a day”. But I notice also something pretty constant: the feeling of insecurity, the nagging doubt that “something may be wrong with me”. The categories are fluid and changeable, yes, absolutely. Still, when she is using them, I read her as saying “see, neither me nor my friends are freaks”. You wrote in #6 that they “react as best they can” and I think it’s a good description. No, I cannot really blame her for this.
I also agree that my generation didn’t offer such kids good methods for dealing with this shit. It’s very cheap and easy to say that we want them “to steer clear of pigeonholes”. The problem is that it’s easier said than done in the world of pigeons. And the thing is that we didn’t offer them anything much better than that.
Interesting article, but this quote made me sad:
No. It would be wrong to say that because you have a certain genital configuration, you are obligated to be attracted to the “opposite” sex, rather than the “same” sex. As wrong as it would be to say that because you have a certain genital configuration, you are obligated to feel you identify with the “same” sex, rather than the “opposite” sex. (Oops, I think I just lapsed into “transgender dogma“. (/sarcasm))