How Americans view sex
and gender has never been more relevant. We had a former First Lady and
Secretary of State with an unparallelled executive resume on paper. However by
gendered perception, the female candidate was doomed to second place. If
authoritative and assertive, she was regarded as bitchy and bossy. Photos of
her with her new grandchild could have softened the portrait and then she was
accused of lacking “stamina”. Her opponent was filmed crowing about his
voyeuristic ability to dominate the naked women competing in his beauty pageants,
and it was dismissed as men’s locker room talk.
To top it off on Election Day, one woman was interviewed as saying she
voted for Trump because “a woman should not be President”. This persisting gendering of women contributed
to an unexpected Republican victory.
Culture
Creates Concepts of Sex and Gender
Susan M. Shaw and Janet
Lee, in Women’s Voices and Feminist
Visions, note, “…gender is constructed through intersection with other
differences among women such as race, ethnicity, and class…related to other
systems of inequality and privilege (116)”.
Gender assignment, identity and expression contribute to notions of sex
and gender in ways peculiar to the United States. Sex is decided at birth, according
to obvious genitalia, and subsequent growth and behavior is channeled into
expected patterns according to this binary. If a person’s internal sense of
identity does not fit expected gender patterns, sexual labels go beyond binary
choices. Subsequent gender expression, which does not follow the binary view,
shapes social interactions which can unsettle one’s sense of self. (119) Countries beyond America do not challenge transgendered
identity in the same way which results in varying degrees of tolerance.
Evelyn Blackwood
discusses the many kinds of masculine expression among females in West Sumatra
and Indonesia. Since gender is defined
by intersections with other identities, each with their own perspectives and
agendas, it follows that some combinations will occur as exceptions to the
norm.
Transgender
may be applied to identities or practices that intersect queer socially
constructed binaries based on the usual male/female expectations. Female-bodied
persons may identify and live in ways which are casually stereotyped as male
gendered. Sometimes this takes the form
of transgendered females who “appropriate and manipulate cultural stereotypes
of ….a hybrid form of masculinity…as possessing a male soul in a female body
(150)”.
One of these identities in Indonesia is that
of “tomboi”. To deal with describing the
gender-fluid woman Dedi, instead of using “him” or “her”, Blackwood creates an
unusual form, “ h/er”. She says, “Dedi
was dressed in h/er typical man’s attire and appeared to be quite comfortable
around h/er family (151)”. This tomboi
enjoys moving about freely and sleeping wherever she wishes. She is not
concerned about sexual violence because her manner is masculine and tough.
Women are closely
watched so freedom is encoded as masculine privilege. The pressure for the female-bodied butch
tomboi to marry, presents difficulties. Blackwood says, “Marriage is the most
troubling challenge to their positionality as men (152)”. If married, would be
forced to live in the constant role of female. This is uncomfortable so many
transgendered put off the issue as long as possible. Dedi has compromised by
following female gendered expectations when at her mother’s house, as long as
it does not challenge her assumed masculinity. She will do repairs around the
house but will not cook. She is not viewed as a sexual rival by other men, but
rather as a woman with special insights. The text says, “…Dedi recalls h/er female
body as part of h/erself, giving voice to a cultural expectation that female
bodies produce female ways of knowing (154)”.
This shows that she has incorporated her body as part of her total
identity, not merely a phase or convenient pose.
As the article h/er
creates a space for Dedi in the discussion, Indonesia terms of address are much
more complicated. She notes, “People tend to employ gender-marked kin terms
when addressing acquaintances or close friends… (154)”. This results in tomboi identity being
expressed in public as a shield for moving freely, but gender-marked terms are
dropped when she is more secure at home and her defenses are down. The
transgender aspects of Didi’s persona also do not disrupt her culture because
family practices still read them as female. Blackwood says, “Social relations
of kinship and family connected tombois with discourses of femininity…and
offered the efficacy that tombois attained as intelligibly gendered beings…that
create space for themselves and their partners (155)”.
Seniors Rock!
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