What if no one is watching me???
The title is perfect:
How Do I Define My Gender if No One Is Watching Me?
How indeed? But we mustn’t point out that the whole idea of “defining” one’s “gender” is entirely about who is watching the Precious Self.
By Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Mx. Marzano-Lesnevich writes extensively on transgender issues and is working on a memoir about nonbinary identities.
In other words Mx. Marzano-Lesnevich has nothing in her his their head other than this fiction of trans and non-binary idennninies.
When the lockdown started he she they thought it would be a nice rest from taking the idenniny out on parade.
Alone in my apartment, I imagined that all my difficulties in being seen and recognized as transgender-nonbinary would evaporate. No one would gender me except myself; my pronouns would be right there in the text box on my Zoom screen.
So I was surprised by how much my gender instead seemed to almost evaporate. No longer on the alert for how to signal a restaurant’s waitstaff that neither “he” nor “she” applied to me, or for whether colleagues and neighbors would use the right language — devoid of anyone to signal my gender to — I felt, suddenly, amorphous and undefined.
Lordy. They she he don’t seem to realize how much she he they is revealing.
What if – just spitballing here – what if this whole gender thing is all about signalling one’s magic gender to other people? What if it’s just a novel way to demand extra attention? What if there’s really no more to it than that? What if Mx’s artless confessions are spilling the beans on the pathetic truth?
Where did my own gender reside, then, if not in sending signals of difference? My friends and I had long joked, “Gender is a social construct!” every time one of us needed shoring up after a messy encounter with the expectations of the gender-conforming heterosexual world. But without that world, we now added a rueful punchline: “Too bad there’s no more ‘social’!”
No more social and no more Mean Mommy and Daddy in the shape of the gender-conforming heterosexual world (which of course includes all those evil radical feminists, who are not “gender-conforming” at all but don’t let that slow you down). With no Cis Enemy what is even the point of being gnc?
With the gender binary all but gone, what did it mean to be nonbinary? How do I define my gender when I — accustomed to how visible my gender usually makes me — am no longer being watched?
I know this one. You grow up, that’s what. You realize that nobody actually cares, because people are interested in other things, things that aren’t you. You realize you’re not that special. You realize that thinking of yourself as that special is kind of adolescent and embarrassing, so you stop doing it.
Of course that’s not the lesson Mx Mx learned.
It’s like exhibitionism for paranoids. Or a some strange combination of a zen koan and Schrodinger’s cat: If nobody’s looking at you, does your gender cease to exist? What happens to the superposition of gender possibilities if nobody gives enough of a fuck to open the box?
How exactly does anyone “present” as non-binary? Wear clothing not usually worn by either gender? In what department would one find that? Or a bit of both at the same time? I imagine tt can be kind of tricky, though; too much in one direction and you’re suddenly accidentally passing as one end or other of the binary that you’re so bravely trying to eschew or destroy.
And what about everyone else? How is the innocent bystander trying to play their assigned part in this epic psychodrama of yours supposed to distinguish your fierce enbeeness from a neutrois demi-femme skinny latte? Are there codes for whatever colour of green, purple or blue hair that we’re supposed to keep straight?
Now I’m seeing non-binary as one of those puzzles for kids – how many animals can you find hiding in this picture type of thing. You plant CLUES to your non-binary-tude all over yourself and people have to spend whole minutes trying to find and decipher them. No prizes offered.
But there are harsh penalties for failure, which might include being beat up by a “woman” the size of a semi, or losing your job because you are labeled a “transphobe”.
Strange, I have had it yelled at me many times that gender identity has nothing to do with anything as simple as matching or mismatching societal expectations – which would imply that without such expectations, gender idenniny would evaporate – no, I was instructed to believe that gender idenini was definitely a wholly internal thing knowable to that person independently of external reference. Weird how, in the real world, it all seems to evaporate without that societal aspect. I am sure we will be yelled at with a new rationalisation which we are demanded to believe any second now.
I think this is relevant: https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/gender-identity-isnt-a-box-its-a-yardstick/
I’ve never been to a “Gender Reveal” party, but I find the idea a bit distasteful. I think there was something healthy in not knowing a baby’s sex till it was born because it forced people into not caring. The nursery was painted white and yellow, and people gave you gifts of green onesies and rubber blocks and books with thick pages about cows that go moo. Yes, afterwards people would ask and you’d tell them and then you’d buy a frilly bonnet or a pint-sized football jersey, but it was layered on top of a nice, neutral sanity.
Transgenderism strikes me as a Gender Reveal party that never ends. Whether IT’S A BOY!!!!! or IT’S A GIRL!!!! is so HORRIBLY GHASTLY IMPORTANT THAT WE MUST MAKE SPECIAL CAKES AND SHOOT OFF FIREWORKS AND SET OFF A FOREST FIRE as everyone practically dies from the suspense and subsequent excitement because this information is so, so critical. It means the baby can be real. It gets a name. It’s now become a genuine person. And then everything that no longer generic “Baby” owns has a gender. Everything.
Revealing one’s pronouns reminds me of sending either pink or blue balloons into the air for the benefit of an audience that is assumed to be looking up and presumed to care. It must be extra hard having to do that by yourself.
@Holms:
I think gender identity’s lack of connection to socially-constructed gender becomes clearer when we realize they’re not really talking about a “gender identity” — they mean a “sex identity.” Somehow the knowledge of our reproductive system is mapped onto the brain and sometimes this mapping gets crossed. Or it’s not there. Nothing to do with matching or no matching social expectations. And it’s uncomfortable.
What it wouldn’t be, however, is excruciating. Or “the deepest, most vital part of who we are.” That part drags gender back into it, kicking and screaming.
How often does one need to signal one’s pronouns to a restaurant’s wait staff? I suppose that once in a blue moon a waitron may ask, “and what is the gentleman/lady having” or “would you like me to bring your salad at the same time as his entree,” but generally speaking, only first and second-person pronouns get used.
Unless, of course, you’re looking for excuses to perform.
Or pretexts for drawing Special Attention to yourself.
If a gender identity is expressed in a wood, and no one is there to see or hear it, is it still valid?
I think the fundamental issue here is that social constructs depend on people believing in them (and outwardly acknowledging such beliefs), while biological sex is untroubled by people’s belief or disbelief.
I think it’s extremely revealing that so much focus and angst centres around affirming trans identities, and of the refusal of many of us to comply.
At its core, I think trans is only a word to describe a socially constructed phenomenon. If we didn’t have gender, we wouldn’t have trans either. The word trans could disappear and we could still describe the phenomenon accurately (and there’s nothing that distinguishes trans meaningfully from gender non conforming). On the other hand, if the words sex, female, male, woman, man etc disappeared or were rendered meaningless, we would need to invent new ones because matters concerning those realities wouldn’t disappear.
Without the words, without the affirmation, they’re forced to ponder what’s left, since they have tied their sense of self so strongly to concepts that rely on others to be delivered. And ironically, this is from people who swear this is an internal sense that no one can shift.
Arcadia, that is why I struggle to understand people who are so rational in other areas falling for this irrational fool’s mission. I could rewrite your second sentence as:
I think the fundamental issue here is that religions depend on people believing in them (and outwardly acknowledging such beliefs), while the Universe is untroubled by people’s belief or disbelief.
and the TRAs would all agree,
Self-incrimination. That such a large part of that person’s life turns out to be so unimportant.
Those who perform for a living – actors, musicians, comedians – have had a difficult time in lockdown because they lost their usual audience, though some did what they could with social media gigs, reading out poetry and the like. However they don’t seem to have lost their identities as actors, musicians and comedians, they are just unemployed ones. That is, even these audience-hungry show-offs are not so perturbed at having no audience as the Transgenderists. It’s really odd – heterosexuals don’t stop being heterosexuals when they’re celibate. Women don’t stop being women because they are at home in trackies instead of skirts and tights. A strange sense of self that must have an audience to exist.
This is exactly what I’ve been trying to formulate for a long time. Thanks; that makes it so succinct and so precise at the same time.
The real secret to being a woman is that we do not need anyone to affirm or validate; we just are. And that is why the trans hate us so much. We are women even if no one sees us, hears us, or thinks about us. That’s true even of androgynous women, who realize they are women even if they look sort of…well, boyish for want of a word, though I don’t love that one.
Arcadia:
Quantum trans theory?
@ Acolyte, if you accept the theory found at my first comment (I think this is relevant: https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/gender-identity-isnt-a-box-its-a-yardstick/), then people have “gender identities” (adequately described as personalities until recently), but it is the prevailing culture of the place and time that gives your personality its name/meaning, by providing the yardstick. No yardstick, no “profound and true” meaning to your personality.
I think this is the only basis by which claims by TRAs that “terfs are killing trans” can be sustained – by not meaning it as the death of a physical body, but of their theory of existence, since “trans” doesn’t exist as a material fact, but as an ontological claim. Rad fems wish to end the measuring by yardsticks, and they demand those yardsticks to exist *as trans*. Without the yardsticks they still exist, but are no longer trans since trans describes a relationship to a concept that would no longer exist.
As to whether or not that’s “quantum”, I don’t know. I’d need to know more about quantum theory to comment.
Oh, and the comments on the original NYT opinion piece by Mx Alex give me hope. The reader and NYT picks are overwhelmingly sensible, and I wonder if it signals a turn of the tide.
rcadia, the part of quantum theory I was thinking of is the idea that nothing exists until it is observed by a conscious being, or that the existence of anything is only potential existence until observation turns potential into reality.
The precious Mx. M-L in the OP seems to suggest that existing as trans requires their being observed, and unless they are observed as trans, the trans part of them is only a potential.
Ah, well, in that sense, it’s true. Without a society, or at least one other to decide whether or not you’re “doing you” correctly or not, I guess then you wouldn’t possibly be doing it wrong or right.
Judgment on one’s personality is an odd thing to outsource to others, though, isn’t it?