Gay to Trans and the Queering in Between
Em Williams
The following essay details my thinking about my gender identity and what impact it has on how I name my sexual identity. Both have shifted enormously. When I was 16 I referred to myself as gay, at 17 I was a lesbian. At 18/19 (when I was reading Audre Lorde) I was a woman-loving woman and by the time I was 20 I was a dyke. In my mid 20s others assumed me to be bisexual when I felt it was important not to dismiss my then boyfriend simply because of his gender. I am now 30 and am seen by the outside world as having a lesbian relationship with my girlfriend. It is also a 'lesbian" relationship that in many ways might be seen to "ape" many heterosexual relationships, not least because we have had a child, O, together. However, I see both my gender identity and my sexual identity as (gender)queer/trans.
"Lesbians don't like penetrative sex. They think that's too much like copying heterosexual sex." My mother uttered these words nonchalantly one day in the car as we were driving home from school when I was about 13. I can't remember why or how we got onto this subject in any way but the words have always stuck with me, years after I came out to her as lesbian, and years after I stopped identifying as lesbian and failed to come out to her as genderqueer, or, if really pushed into a corner, trans. She still thinks I'm a lesbian. Her friends now think I'm a lesbian and I'm not about to let that one go as it took her a very long time, not to mention moving house, to get there. It also took me a long time to realise what the hell does my mum know about lesbian sex, and a good few more to get my first cock.
As a lesbian I read about women giving silicon cocks blowjobs and really didn't get it. In any way. It's not attached. How can that be sexy? I even started a whole big project on trying to understand why some lesbians seemed so interested in copying gay men and emulating gay male culture, bemoaning the loss of sisterhood and the denigration of the female body. Then I started to really think about gender and what might happen if the binary gender system could really be screwed with and messed around, if not actually removed completely. And it slowly dawned on me that these "lesbians" weren't emulating men or wanting to transition because being a butch woman just isn't cool or somehow enough these days. It dawned on me that maybe they weren't lesbians at all. I had just assumed them to be, in much the same way that people assume I am a lesbian because I look like a woman and have a girlfriend. Just because I was assigned the gender of female at birth and raised as a girl does not mean that I am. It dawned on me that what they were doing was deeply radical as they were refusing to consent to any easy relationship between "biological" sex, gender and desire that so often positions everyone as a) heterosexual and b) exclusively, and unproblematically, male or female. This doesn't work for everyone and some people don't want to, or can't, buy into it—something Judith Butler (1990) calls refusing the heterosexual matrix. Her ideas on this have some similarities with Adrienne Rich's idea of a lesbian continuum (1983), only Butler interrogates the gender part a whole lot more. After all, you can't have lesbians, or heterosexuals, if you subvert what it means to be a man or a woman, can you? That got me really thinking about whether I actually was a woman.
According to Anne Fausto-Sterling (a biologist who I think rocks) there are numerous biological markers of sex – chromosomal, genetic, endocrinological, gonadal, anatomical, legal, social and psychological. That is why I put biological sex in inverted commas earlier. I have no genuine idea what my sex I would be for four of those as I don't have access to an MRI scanner, a microscope or medical training. So that leaves me knowing I have an F on my birth certificate, but is that really that important? As a teenager I tippexed out my date of birth and shifted it back a few years so that I could get into clubs (the fools). How useful, reliable or credible does that make that bit of paper and when was the last time anyone actually asked to looked at it? Which leaves me with anatomical, social and psychological. Last time I looked that flesh between my legs looked pretty much like a cunt and clitoris but I'm open to that not being set in stone. I have friends who call themselves, see themselves as, and to all intents are men, who have stuff that looks like that going on too, and others who tell me they are women who currently, or once, had a penis. Social sex then - how others see me: woman, girl, lady, chick, bird. God forbid anyone think any of the last three, and actually whenever anyone does call me a woman/girl/lady (or holds a door open for me or motions for me to go first) I find myself increasingly uncomfortable. I do not want preferential treatment on the basis of some outdated ideas of chivalry. That is not equality. Maybe what other people see me as is not so very important to me as how I see myself. But that's where it all falls down a bit and that's why I have yet to correct my mum's belief that I'm a dyke.
I'm not a woman. But I'm not a man. I'm queer, but I'm not queer in the way people use queer to just mean gay. I'm not queer in the way that some people use it as a moniker for a certain type of young urban thing that shags around a lot and possibly lives in a squat – not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm genderqueer because I don't know what a woman is and I don't know what a man is. I'm queer because I think our cultural insistence and valorisation of a binary gender system is deeply problematic for almost everyone and I want to distance myself from it. I'm queer because I personally have a problem with binary ideas of gender. They make me feel stifled. I'm queer because it opens up possibilities for me and helps me see the world in a less black and white way. I'm queer because fundamentally, if I'm not a woman, how can I be a lesbian?
There is so much disagreement over what it means to be or identify as queer that it is perhaps impossible to ever pin it down. When I first started reading about queer theory a few years ago this intangibility drove me mad. I was desperate for someone to just explain what being queer meant. Surely it couldn't be that hard? In writing this article I have realised how hard it really is and I feel differently about this slipperiness. I am glad that what being queer means to me is different to what being queer means to my friend L or my friend M, and I'd hazard a guess we all differ in our takes on it from my friend F. But what we all have in common is the way in which we each question, both generally, and on a personal level, what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman and have reassessed, and continue to reassess, with differing outcomes, where we each position ourselves.
When you tell someone you are lesbian, or they assume you are a lesbian, they assume they know what that means and many stereotypes play into those assumptions. Admittedly some people assume they know what I mean when I say I am queer but more often they don't. Sometimes it leaves people puzzled and I like that. No one ever asked me what type of a lesbian I was or what being a lesbian meant to me but I have had lots of conversations about what being queer means to me.
This isn't just a theoretical thing though. It's not just about finding a space for myself discursively, although that is important. It's about finding a space for myself physically, in the real world, where I feel comfortable within my own body and where I can gain the affirmation of others recognising me for who I am. Identifying as genderqueer helps me do all of those things to varying degrees within my life in a way that lesbian just does not. It's a personal thing and in this instance the personal is very much political.
Queerness has given me a space where I can feel more comfortable with my own body, and it has also allowed me the space to re-imagine it, which opens up whole new fields of potential (including in the sack). If I feel like playing with gender codes maybe I'll bind my breasts or get my girlfriend to suck my cock. I can't do any of those things as a lesbian feminist as they are all anathema and "proof" of collusion with the patriarchy. Maybe I'll turn up in drag to my cousin's wedding and wear a skirt and make-up for a few hours, or I'll paint my toenails and wear a dress, visibly leaving my hairy legs for all to see and scornfully ignore the sniggering that I get from teenage girls. Queer gives me the attitude to question, undermine, challenge and resist any assumptions that people might have about me and a great many that I have about myself.
I don't shave my bodily hair. This disgusts, and that is not too strong a word, a great many people in my life. My mum thinks I am now fulfilling the majority of her fears about lesbians, since I also refuse to wear make up, will sit with my legs splayed should I feel like it, and will fix my child's cot when it breaks rather than calling out a man (any man, really). My leg hair, or maybe it's more my underarm hair, embarrass her because it's just a little bit too rampant, raging feminist for her liking. I'm a feminist, absolutely, but I'm not a lesbian. For me, it's about saying this is my body, unadulterated. This is what it looks like (plus I have better things to do with my time). That might be the motivation for a great many lesbians and/or feminists too, but I know a whole load of both who will contemplate that idea theoretically but not physically embrace it. However, this may be an age thing since most of the lesbians/feminists I know are generally under the age of 35. One of the few over-50-year-old lesbian feminists that I know goes around talking about goddesses and herstory. Joking aside, I know she and I are not that different in a great many respects and we have productively worked together for a number of years. However, our intrinsic ideologies could not be further removed. (She still shaves her legs though, butch as she is).
She is proud to be called a woman and I am not. I am not because I have tangled myself up in too many knots and am confused about what it might mean. I like to believe in ideas before I adopt them and I have too many questions about gender to allow me to say I am a woman because as a way of naming identity the term is meaningless to me personally. That is not to say that I do not respect my friend for identifying as a woman. I do. She feels it's important to be proud of being a (butch) woman because pride gives you strength and a place from which to answer back. She sees herself as a lesbian as she is not in servitude to men. I don't want to define myself against servitude to men. I would rather define myself against servitude to a binary gender system because I think it oppresses men too and is at the heart of misogyny, biphobia, homophobia and transphobia. It's the binary gender system which I want to explode when I call myself genderqueer.
Of course the binary gender system still strangles me. Given that my child, O, is only 16 months old and parenting is still quite new for me it is here that gender seems particularly fraught. Lots of people assume I am O's mother when they see us together. When they see us both, plus my partner - especially if she is breastfeeding - it is apparent she's "mummy." This confusion I can deal with. I don't expect people to "get it" without me telling them. I am all too aware that I pass as female and I can see that it is an easy assumption to make. What presses my buttons is when I explain, as patiently as I can, to each new person who matters in some way to me, why I am not O's mum and they then turn round and either call me his mum again or say that's not my decision to make. Um, excuse me? I think it is. If you have a child, who decided it would call you mummy/mama/mother? Was it not you, your partner/family/friends (delete as applicable) constantly referring to you in that way from the moment the child was born? I am doing exactly the same when I say I am O's parent or that I should be referred to simply as Em. The difference is that not all of my friends, and certainly not all of my family, back me up on this and frankly it is placing a strain on my relationships with them. It might seem small to you but it really matters to me.
Very few people can countenance the idea that I might not identify as a mum or that I might hate being seen in this capacity. Lesbians perhaps most of all – after all, isn't motherhood one of the most powerful things a woman can do? Or so one strain of thought has it. I categorically do not identify as a mother and that has nothing to do with the fact that I did not give birth. It is because I am not a woman. Queerness is surely about personal comfort levels. I know a trans man who gave birth to his child nine years ago and is now in the process of transitioning. He doesn't mind being called mummy, but he minded his body the way it was and did something about it. I don't mind my body too much but I mind being mistaken for a woman. This is me doing something about it.
As a queer person I feel better equipped to articulate to others why I don't want to be named and positioned in certain ways than I ever did as a lesbian. That is not to say however that it is easy. On the nights when O has woken me a lot (or been raring to go since 5am), I will confess I do go along with the label of lesbian because it is easier. People get it. So, while this "lesbian" isn't quite an extinct species, s/he/ze lies dormant, pretty much in a coma, ready to surface only when I'm really tired or when I'm forced to interact with a certain type of person who I know really won't get it. I'm privileged to be able to pick and choose when I want to be a cardcarrying queer and I know I've got lesbians (amongst others) to thank for that. I salute you.
References
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York, Routledge.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000) Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York, Basic Books.
Rich, A. (1983) Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. London, Only Women Press.
About the Author
Emily is due to submit her PhD in October 2009: "Can queer theory be used to further the understanding of (trans)genders and sexualities for English secondary school students." (S)he is the author of an online student toolkit aimed at LGBTQ young people and their heterosexual friends (www.schools-out.org.uk/STK). (S)he has had an article published in Gender and Education (16(3) 2008) and is on the editorial board for The Journal of Gender Studies. Emily has given papers at the Place-Based Sex/Sexualities and Relationship Education conference (University of London, 2007), Becoming or Unbecoming: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Research in the 21st Century (Northumbria University, 2008) and is due to present a paper at the Brighton and Sussex Sexualities Conference in September 2009. Emily is on the committee for Schools OUT and LGBT History Month and teaches at the University of the West of England and the University of Gloucestershire. As an undergraduate (s)he studied Drawing and Applied Art and drew her dissertation entitled "Queer Theory and Lesbian Appropriation of Homomasculine Signifiers." (S)he is desperate to leave Bristol and wants to move into an intentional community near Cheltenham to live the good life.
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