If you’re not watching the US election primaries, you might have missed the latest ad from Rick Perry, a Republican candidate for the 2012 nomination. In the video, entitled “Strong,” (I’m not going to link to it, just search on YouTube if you want to watch) Perry attacks gay and lesbian members of the US military. He suggests that the real victims of oppression in the US are the poor, poor christian school children who are supposedly barred from praying and celebrating Christmas in schools.
There has already been substantial backlash against Perry, and rightly so. He is a disgusting human being, a bigot, and given his candidacy, unfortunately representative of a significant number of Americans. Volumes could be written about all the things that are wrong with this ad and the man who approved its message.
The firestorm is underway and I don’t have much to say politically that hasn’t already been said by a great many bloggers and journalists. But since this topic is getting significant attention at the moment, I’d like to take the opportunity to throw a less political opinion into the ring. It’s easy to forget amidst the highly charged debates that a major obstacle to resolving questions over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights is the language that frames the debate, and the inherent conflicts and false dichotomies that arise from the terms themselves.
If you’re reading this, it’s probable that you were brought up in a home (and a culture at large) where you were taught from birth that sex and gender were inexorably linked, that there were clear divisions between men and women, and by extension, clear margins between sexual preferences. This teaching makes any individual who doesn’t fit in a well-defined sex/gender box an other, an outsider, and it is dehumanizing. It’s important here to emphasize that cultural impressions of sex and gender are not universally recognized facts or absolute truths, even though they’re presented that way and taken for granted as such.
A glance through an anthropology or sociology textbook will bring up numerous examples of cultures - both past and present day - in which there are several genders recognized depending on but not limited to the sex, age, and personal desires of the individual. I’m not an anthropologist, so if you’d like to learn more on the specifics, do a quick Google search for “the third gender” and have a browse through some of the articles. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
There are millions of people who live in gender roles that are not clearly defined by man/woman/gay/straight dichotomies. It’s unfortunate that the spectrum of gender and sexuality has been turned into a political battleground. It turns an issue that ought to exist within the domain of the individual and their private relationships into a divisive piece of political and cultural theater. Parties on both sides put up walls and sling stones and arrows at each other. Meeting at some common ground between the battalions is rarely the objective; it’s all about enforcing the “correct” view on the Other. And it’s upsetting that the language being used to frame the debate victimizes people by planting them in a camp that’s alienated by its very definition.
Now this is obviously an oversimplification of an extremely complex issue, but I only have 1,000 words to get through it, so if you would, please bear with me as I put on my hippie hat for a moment and dream of a better world.
I like the scene at the beginning Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.” A birth has taken place and when the mother (Terry Jones in a wig) asks about the sex of the baby, Graham Chapman replies “...I think it’s a bit early to be imposing roles on it, don’t you?” It’s purely for comedic effect, but if you’re so inclined, you can read some pretty interesting questions in to that statement. What if we didn’t tell everybody right from the get go that they were a boy and therefore ought to like girls, or visa versa?
Before I go too far down the queer rabbit hole, of course it’s true that we have an instinctive, biological imperative to pass on our genes and keep the species going. Evolution and such. Obviously the male/female sexual relationship (in the absence of reproduction science, an issue for some future essay) is necessary to keep our species alive. Does this, however, mean that we are obligated to conform to gender roles that put us into the sorts of culturally sanctioned relationships that produce these “legitimate” children (monogamous, heterosexual marriages/partnerships?) My answer is a resolute no.
I believe that it’s worth asking yourself how many of your ideas about your sexuality and your role as a man or woman are your own and how many have been placed there by cultural influence. It’s kind of like the baby nature vs. nurture question for sexual identity and gender. It’s an extremely difficult question to answer, and I can’t say with any certainty that I’ve sorted it out either. Regardless, I think that the act of contemplating and challenging our cultural teachings is a very important step in breaking the false dichotomies that are implicit in the words gay, straight, and other definitions that compartmentalize our bodies, our identities and our sexuality.
It’s been said but it bears repeating - if we have love to give and there are people deserving of it, why should physiology matter? The root of this entire conflict and the problem with horrible people like Rick Perry who perpetuate it is based in a falsehood - the notion that we must choose a gender and a sexual preference and conform to its ideals. Before they reach sexual maturity, it’s totally unnecessary to disclose the sex of a child. The consequences of telling people extend about as far as the colour of the clothes and type of toys that they’ll be getting for their birthday. Why is it that once we cross the threshold of sexual awakening that it immediately becomes necessary to compartmentalize ourselves into a pattern of thought and behaviour that’s associated with strict, defining characteristics of sex and gender? Maybe some day, we could agree to let people love who they want to, how they want to, when and where they want to, without requiring them to pick a team.
There has already been substantial backlash against Perry, and rightly so. He is a disgusting human being, a bigot, and given his candidacy, unfortunately representative of a significant number of Americans. Volumes could be written about all the things that are wrong with this ad and the man who approved its message.
The firestorm is underway and I don’t have much to say politically that hasn’t already been said by a great many bloggers and journalists. But since this topic is getting significant attention at the moment, I’d like to take the opportunity to throw a less political opinion into the ring. It’s easy to forget amidst the highly charged debates that a major obstacle to resolving questions over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights is the language that frames the debate, and the inherent conflicts and false dichotomies that arise from the terms themselves.
If you’re reading this, it’s probable that you were brought up in a home (and a culture at large) where you were taught from birth that sex and gender were inexorably linked, that there were clear divisions between men and women, and by extension, clear margins between sexual preferences. This teaching makes any individual who doesn’t fit in a well-defined sex/gender box an other, an outsider, and it is dehumanizing. It’s important here to emphasize that cultural impressions of sex and gender are not universally recognized facts or absolute truths, even though they’re presented that way and taken for granted as such.
A glance through an anthropology or sociology textbook will bring up numerous examples of cultures - both past and present day - in which there are several genders recognized depending on but not limited to the sex, age, and personal desires of the individual. I’m not an anthropologist, so if you’d like to learn more on the specifics, do a quick Google search for “the third gender” and have a browse through some of the articles. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
There are millions of people who live in gender roles that are not clearly defined by man/woman/gay/straight dichotomies. It’s unfortunate that the spectrum of gender and sexuality has been turned into a political battleground. It turns an issue that ought to exist within the domain of the individual and their private relationships into a divisive piece of political and cultural theater. Parties on both sides put up walls and sling stones and arrows at each other. Meeting at some common ground between the battalions is rarely the objective; it’s all about enforcing the “correct” view on the Other. And it’s upsetting that the language being used to frame the debate victimizes people by planting them in a camp that’s alienated by its very definition.
Now this is obviously an oversimplification of an extremely complex issue, but I only have 1,000 words to get through it, so if you would, please bear with me as I put on my hippie hat for a moment and dream of a better world.
I like the scene at the beginning Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.” A birth has taken place and when the mother (Terry Jones in a wig) asks about the sex of the baby, Graham Chapman replies “...I think it’s a bit early to be imposing roles on it, don’t you?” It’s purely for comedic effect, but if you’re so inclined, you can read some pretty interesting questions in to that statement. What if we didn’t tell everybody right from the get go that they were a boy and therefore ought to like girls, or visa versa?
Before I go too far down the queer rabbit hole, of course it’s true that we have an instinctive, biological imperative to pass on our genes and keep the species going. Evolution and such. Obviously the male/female sexual relationship (in the absence of reproduction science, an issue for some future essay) is necessary to keep our species alive. Does this, however, mean that we are obligated to conform to gender roles that put us into the sorts of culturally sanctioned relationships that produce these “legitimate” children (monogamous, heterosexual marriages/partnerships?) My answer is a resolute no.
I believe that it’s worth asking yourself how many of your ideas about your sexuality and your role as a man or woman are your own and how many have been placed there by cultural influence. It’s kind of like the baby nature vs. nurture question for sexual identity and gender. It’s an extremely difficult question to answer, and I can’t say with any certainty that I’ve sorted it out either. Regardless, I think that the act of contemplating and challenging our cultural teachings is a very important step in breaking the false dichotomies that are implicit in the words gay, straight, and other definitions that compartmentalize our bodies, our identities and our sexuality.
It’s been said but it bears repeating - if we have love to give and there are people deserving of it, why should physiology matter? The root of this entire conflict and the problem with horrible people like Rick Perry who perpetuate it is based in a falsehood - the notion that we must choose a gender and a sexual preference and conform to its ideals. Before they reach sexual maturity, it’s totally unnecessary to disclose the sex of a child. The consequences of telling people extend about as far as the colour of the clothes and type of toys that they’ll be getting for their birthday. Why is it that once we cross the threshold of sexual awakening that it immediately becomes necessary to compartmentalize ourselves into a pattern of thought and behaviour that’s associated with strict, defining characteristics of sex and gender? Maybe some day, we could agree to let people love who they want to, how they want to, when and where they want to, without requiring them to pick a team.
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