Anyone into Queer Theory- Explain this, I'm confused

Thanks both, will have a look. I agree with moon about that quotation, that is offensive IMO, but I need to see the context.

Here it is, LRD (issue with the square brackets I think).

itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/03/the-genderbread-person-v2-0/

I have a problem with this:

'I identify as a man, but I identify with a lot of what it means to be a woman. I?m sensitive, kind, familial'

because it seems ridiculous to me that being sensitive/kind/familial can be seen an intrinsic part of women's identities. I don't understand why these attributes are sexed at all (well, I do - it's patriarchy innit. But I hate it).

Yes, I appear not to have put enough space in it or something:

itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/03/the-genderbread-person-v2-0/

Thanks for the link, but for me it's broken?

a good Queer Theory breakdown if the different areas itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/03/the-genderbread-person-v2-0/.

It isn't that there isn't distinctions or can't be mentioned. Discussing how people were assigned at birth can be very important part of Queer and Trans discussions. We often discuss ourselves as being FAAB (female as assigned at birth) or MAAB and how it affects us. The idea it cannot be discussed has never come up in my circle, we discuss my trans man friend's triggering issues with his periods and as a genderfluid person, I often discuss my female body and how I'm expressing gender.

The issue comes from how often the assigned at birth sex identity as the main identity, as it is for most people, is used to threaten. People refusing to use a person's preferred pronouns either at all or say they'll reserve them for when they do [random achievement] or call them by their preferred name or going on about their "real name". There should be no distinction made in how a ciswoman and a transwoman would be regarded in conversation regardless of their assigned sex at birth. Obviously it would be best to hold off until a person brings it up (much like we don't discuss a stranger ciswoman's body or other such things).

I think as well as people who fancy their own sex being seen as somehow members of the opposite sex (in a twisted patriarchial world), there's the fact that if you construct a very rigid binary in society, transgression of that binary is going to be seen as sexually exciting for some people, because taboos are related to what's sexually exciting. So I think there are two very different kinds of behaviour (sexual attraction to the same sex and sexual excitment at cross-dressing) that kind of get melded together in people's minds, maybe?

It doesn't explain why we still push these things together, though, except that they conveniently maintain the hierarchy that puts straight men at the top.

There's a long historical association between the two, isn't there kim - e.g. gay men being described as 'mollies', and a lot of cross-dressing in gay brothels. And 1920s out lesbians (like Radclyffe Hall etc) wearing male clothing. And Catholic seminaries where the ordinands called each other by girls' names.

I think it comes down to the gender binary again - people who fancy the same sex were seen as not proper members of their own sex. So they were seen as being in some sense members of the other sex, and often they took on this role for themselves.

Is it not historical? I know both Soho in London and Harlem in NY, in the early bit of the twentieth century, were places you could go to be 'deviant' and back then that meant anything that wasn't being straight and dressing according to your gender.

Indeed.

Or like the woman who posted an AIBU earlier saying her PIL reckon that her DH should get the mothering sunday presents because he is the SAHP (god, could I get more MN acronyms into that sentence?!). People conflate all sorts of things, and that's why I think 'performing' gender is never going to be enough to change the underlying power structure.

Oh yes, or my lesbian friends getting asked which of them is the man in the relationship

Yes, I agree kim. And I think drag queens are interesting because I think often that is a way of doing a giant 'fuck you' to society's expectations, and it can be genuinely very subversive. But it's also problematic if, like my mate, you're a gay man who isn't remotely 'feminine', because you get people assuming that if you fancy men, you must in some sort of way be part of the 'feminine' group of people. That's reinforcing the gender binary in a way that is putting both women and a lot of gay men into a box they don't feel comfortable in, even while it's allowing other gay men a lot of freedom. Obviously I am waaaay outside of all of this so it's not my business to comment really. It just seems so sad that the patriarchy has twisted everything up like this.

Thanks LRD, that is helpful. Totally agree that cross-dressing per se doesn't change the hierarchy of power - indeed, it reinforces rather than breaks down gender divisions. If we all dressed in jeans and T-shirts cross-dressing would be impossible.

Oops, sorry, that was to Julia.

moon - I don't think cross-dressing is inherently problematic, in that in a feminist utopia, it wouldn't matter what we wore. In our distinctly non-utopian society, I think cross-dressing gives us just one more variation on the usual ways we can tell who has the power and who doesn't. Lesbians who dress in traditional male clothing can still get a heck of a lot of flack. In fact, it's quite hard to know how women should dress - we're teetering on a tiny wedge, IMO. OTOH it is actually pretty much completely acceptable for a straight man to cross dress, so long as he does so in such a way as to make clear he's parodying women and putting them down.

I'm sure your party was fine!

I'm not being 'down' on cross dressing, I just think that it's not an activity that magically makes the hierarchy of power disappear. It's simply one more activity that happens within that hierarchy. It might also be fun or sexy or whatever you like, so by all means, go for it! Just don't tell me men cross dressing are necessarily breaking down gender binaries.

(I am wondering if there's a difference between 'cross dressing' - which I think has to have some reference to the 'proper' clothes each gender wears - and simply wearing clothes you choose. I think there maybe is.)

But we do choose to perform gender to an extent, Julia, don't we - e.g. when I shave my armpits and put make-up on I am performing femininity. I don't have to do those things (although of course women in some jobs don't have much choice).

I thought that things like that were about gender (masculine/feminine) while the oppression issue is about sex (male/female) which is not easily (or at all, depending on your view of the trans issue) changeable.

If we lived in an ungendered world we'd still have male and female, but not masculine/feminine.

I agree.

I think the people who have the illusion that gender is a performance we choose, are the people who are already near the top of that hierarchy. But I can't think of many examples of gender 'performance' that people at the top of the hierarchy perform, that don't very rapidly become part of the sanctioned hierarchy anyway. If women want to 'perform' as men, they're kicked down. But if men want to cross dress on a stag party - fine.

If I were being polemical, I'd say - look at the hassle women have been getting for centuries for wanting to 'perform' as men, to get into male-dominated job fields. Then look at how fast the law has changed to allow MtoF (and, yes, the smaller and less visible numbers of FtoM) transsexuals to perform their designated gender.

I'm not trying to judge which (if either) type of performance is the more desperate or painful, but it is really telling which has been most quickly accepted and given legal protection within the hierarchy.

Good idea for a thread.

Do you think cross-dressing is inherently problematic, LRD, or is it just the 'tee hee, let's pretend to have tits' thing you dislike? What about lesbians who wear traditional male clothing? I find it quite hard to unpick all these issues (and am now paranoid that my cross-dressing murder mystery party was a crime against feminism).

Gender isn't a performance we choose - it's a heirarchy of oppression - sexual/domestic violence, low pay, political power, unequal access to leisure, etc

I am a woman, not a person performing femininity.

Yes, I know of the same fashion, or a version of it anyway. When I was an undergrad I was very lucky, because I had a mate who was pretty patient about these things and who took the time to explain some of how he felt to me, and it stayed with me. He's gay, but he's also (as he put it), an Irish boy who likes football and pints. He found it quite alienating that there was such a big trend towards people who weren't gay telling him that they really sympathized with his 'lifestyle' ... and he'd be saying, erm, yes, but my 'lifestyle' is that I like doing what plenty of straight blokes like doing, it's just I also happen to be attracted to men.

I don't think it's mean-spirited to wonder about the implications of a stereotyped version of something becoming trendy.

Something I have a really big problem with - which isn't entirely Butler's fault, I guess, but which her theories seem to be used to back up quite a lot - is the way that the idea of performing gender leads to a kind of tourism within the oppressed class.

What I mean is, you get (for example) straight men who cross-dress for stag parties set out as an example of men performing a subversive (and therefore anti-establishment) kind of gender role. It's men dressing up as women and pretending this makes them daringly similar to an oppressed class of people. But, in order to get away with cross-dressing, they have to be incredibly privileged already, and they have to be part of a social convention that upholds privilege. Cross-dressing for a stag party is socially sanctioned, it's not something that is likely to get the rugby boys beating you up in a dark alley, because if you're cross-dressing on a stag night, chances are you are the rugby boys. It's not the same as if you were a man who cross-dresses in his daily life, who does run a risk of being beaten up. And it's not the same as being an actual woman, it fact it makes comedy out of women (look, how funny, boobs!).

I have enough of an issue about this kind of scenario (straight men getting comedy value out of pretending to be women), but when someone comes along and adds a 'theory' to the mix, and says this is subversive, that gives it a kind of pseudo-academic importance. It lets people wank on about how cutting-edge they're being and it makes it that much harder for women to stand up and say 'um, actually, I find it quite offensive that it's my body that they're parodying here'. So the end result is actually to reinforce the same old gender binaries and the same old power structure, while pretending to be all subversive. I really dislike it.

Thanks, flora.

Hmm. That is really telling and a bit shit that they said they wouldn't, dash!

I like the 'only' for the purposes of talking about oppression of women .... not exactly an 'only' subject IMO!

The heart attack thing is a good example, isn't it? Because women die as a result of people not knowing that the symtoms are different, don't they? And I'm sure there must be examples the other way around, too.

I do find Queer Theory really interesting and often useful, but I think some versions of it have a really difficult conflict with radical feminism that seems to be getting more and more fraught.

dash I think that's a good illustration of why it's a massive pile of tosh. I agree with LRD's post.