thinking about the line "now you try on calling me 'baby' like trying on clothes"...

...even if you don't believe this song is about a professional model...

...what man 'tries on clothes' in the way she's implying here, like for fun...

A polite letter to J.K. Rowling By a transgender fan of Harry Potter (TW. Suicide and trauma)

Dear JKR, 

My name is Alex Hernandez, and I have identified as a Harry Potter fan since I was six years old, and a non-binary/ transgender individual since I was sixteen. I recently read your essay concerning your opinions about transgender individuals, and your claim that by providing information you were ‘protecting natal girls and women.’ I was extremely disappointed when I read your piece, both as a queer person and as a Harry Potter fan. The factual information you provided was ill-informed and often taken out of context. The opinions you shared were harmful to many members of the trans community, and perpetuated stereotypes that we have been trying to dismantle for years. 

What stood out to me most in your essay was the insinuation that the only way a person could truly be considered transgender is if they underwent hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation surgery. This is simply incorrect, as there are many people (myself included) who happily identify as trans that have chosen to or cannot undergo those types of treatments. It also completely leaves out the identity of non-binary, a-gender and gender fluid individuals, who do not subscribe to the binary gender identities that accompany these types of treatment. It is also not as simple to gain access to these procedures as you seem suggest, even within your home country of the United Kingdom.

In your writing, you state that “a man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law.” According to the official website for the government of the United Kingdom, a person who wishes to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate must be over the age of 18, have documented proof of a diagnoses of gender dysphoria, have lived as their intended gender for at least two years, and intend to live as this gender for the rest of their life (https://www.gov.uk/apply-gender-recognition-certificate). This clearly shows that a person must provide more than just their word in order to gain legal recognition of their gender by the British government. You are correct that surgery and hormones are not prerequisites for obtaining a GRC, however, medically transitioning is not a prerequisite for being a trans person. 

You also cited a very controversial study performed by Doctor Lisa Littman the supports the theory of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. According to this study, children and young adults are more likely to come out to their parents as transgender after engaging online with other trans individuals. Dr. Littman claims that according to the survey she conducted (which was directed at parents of children who had recently come out as trans), gender dysphoria can just appears out of nowhere during puberty, and that internet forums and peer pressure is a large contributing factor to this. However, there are several things wrong with her writing. To start, the survey she conducted in order to obtain her data was targeted at parents of children who had recently come out as trans and only posted to websites that were about parents questioning their teen’s recent coming out. She asked irrelevant questions about the child’s mental health, including whether or not they had been diagnosed with a mental illness prior to coming out, or if they had experienced trauma at some past point in their life. Although I understand that the article was taken down and re-reviewed, the author did not rescind her findings, and simply used the republication as a way to clarify what she had previously stated.  

The other aspect of your writing that stood out to me as particularly harmful to the trans community and those questioning their gender identity was the supposition that one could just “choose” to be trans because they have experienced trauma. Your experience as a survivor of domestic and sexual assault are real and valid, and your trauma regarding these situations is real and valid. However, this does not give you the right to suggest that you might have chosen to transition during these times in order to escape abuse. Transitioning (in your case) from an Assigned-Female-At-Birth (AFAB) individual to a male identifying individual does not automatically exempt you from abuse and violence typically experienced by cis-gendered women. It is not a choice people make because they have experienced a trauma. It is a recognition of what has always been true to them, that they were previously unable to freely express. 

Here’s where you seem to be missing the point. People who choose to transition from a female to a male are not trying to “escape womanhood.” What they are doing is finding ways to freely express themselves in the most authentic and truest way. For example, say you were born with red hair. But for years and years your family was dying your hair brown because it was more “socially acceptable” to have brown hair. You knew that you had red hair, and that wasn’t something that anyone could take away from you, even if they were trying to cover it up or pretend like it was brown. And one day, you meet a group of people who have naturally red hair, who are flaunting their red hair and making a point of not dying it to fit societal standards. And maybe you don’t agree with what these people are doing, and you continue to dye your hair. Or maybe, you realize that you’ve always preferred having red hair, and now you’ve come across a space where it’s ok to be a red head. These people understand what it’s like to have their hair dyed for years and years, and want to embrace their naturally red hair. That’s how it is for trans people. A trans man was always a man, he was just born into a woman’s body, and socialized as a woman. But once they encounter other trans people, and realize that these people will accept and love him for his true self, then he will “come out” because he realizes that he was always a man and now finally feels comfortable expressing that. 

I also want to take this opportunity to share with you my own personal journey of gender exploration, since the stories of non-binary trans people are often overlooked and rarely heard. I was assigned female at birth. I was given a traditionally female first name, and socialized as a girl for the first sixteen years of my life. However, even as a little kid I had a sense that something wasn’t quite right. When I was younger, I really didn’t like my name, and always wished I could have been called Amber or Ashley. I knew that I was not the person I wanted to be, but I didn’t have the language or understanding to really figure out how I was feeling. As I grew up, I came to embrace my feminine name, and to enjoy traditionally feminine things such as princesses and makeup.

Fast forward to high school, when I was beginning to learn more about the LGBTQ+ community. Before I got to high school, I didn’t know a single queer person my own age. Existing on the internet at the time, I encountered many stories of trans people, but the only ones I ever saw were of binary trans individuals. I knew that I didn’t want to be a man, but I also knew that I didn’t really want to be a woman either. So I cut my hair short and started wearing clothes that showed off less of my figure and that attempted to obscure my female form. When I was fifteen, I was doing a presentation on LGBTQ+ identities for school, and came across the term “non-binary individual.” At the same time, I was taking a class where we were learning about the history of feminism, and how many ancient cultures saw femininity and masculinity less as physical forms and appearances, but rather as energies that a person could embrace. Both of these streams of information collided, and I suddenly realized I had words to describe how I’d been feeling this whole time. I didn’t want to identify as a binary woman, and I didn’t want to identify as a binary male. Instead, I wanted the language that would allow me to feel comfortable traveling between these two energies. 

My personal definition of what it means to be a non-binary individual is a person who embraces both masculine and feminine energies, and can express themselves as one, neither or both. I keep my hair long and have chosen not to go on hormones or have reconstructive surgery partially due to trauma I experienced as a child, but also because I want to keep these aspects of feminine energy close to me. There are days where I feel more masculine, where I wear “mens” clothes and attempt to present as a more masculine individual. There are days where I want to feel more feminine, and I choose to wear skirts and makeup because that is what helps me to embrace my feminine energy. And there are days when I want to combine energies, so I will present myself as some combination of masculine and feminine presentations. 

All of this is just to say that when you, a person who has considerable influence especially on younger children, make these inflammatory statements and harmful claims, you are effectively telling children that this is not a world where they can be as authentic to themselves as possible. You are creating a hostile environment that encourages other people who share your ideas to be more vocal, which honestly does more harm than good. Many of those statistics that you quote about rising rates in teen and transgender suicide are often because people who feel forced to conceal their true identity would rather not exist in a world that won’t allow them to be who they really are. So if you are truly interested in changing public perception of transgender individuals, while continuing to support the education of children and the protection of women, I would suggest reading literature that directly opposes your view points, and having conversations with people (particularly trans people) who have real experiences and are willing to share them with you. 

Sincerely, 

Alex Hernandez (they/them)

Exploring a basic understand of gender’s role within society. This article talks about three components that ultimately define gender expression through an interrelationship:

“– Body: our body, our experience of our own body, how society genders bodies, and how others interact with us based on our body.

– Identity: our deeply held, internal sense of self as male, female, a blend of both, or neither; who we internally know ourselves to be.

– Expression: how we present our gender in the world and how society, culture, community, and family perceive, interact with, and try to shape our gender. Gender expression is also related to gender roles and how society uses those roles to try to enforce conformity to current gender norms.”

(taken from article)

I found the expression section of the article to be somewhat the most relevant in providing my project further context. It focuses on the idea of what we perceive to be gender stereotypical within society. 

(taken from website)

Expression

The third dimension of gender is Gender expression, which is the way we show our gender to the world around us (through such things as clothing, hairstyles, and mannerisms, to name a few). Practically everything is assigned a gender—toys, colors, clothes, and activities are some of the more obvious examples. Given the prevalence of the gender binary, children face great pressure to express their gender within narrow, stereotypical definitions of “boy” or “girl.” Expectations around expression are taught to us from the moment we are born, and communicated through every aspect of our lives, including family, culture, peers, schools, community, media, and religion. Accepted gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way.

Through a combination of social conditioning and personal preference, by age three most children prefer activities and exhibit behaviors typically associated with their sex. For individuals who fit fairly neatly into expected gender roles and expression, there may be little cause to think about, or question, their gender, or how gender is created, communicated, and reinforced in our lives. However, children who express gender in ways that are perceived to be outside of these social norms often have a very different experience. Girls thought to be too masculine (especially as they move into their teens) and boys seen as feminine (at any age) face a variety of challenges. Pressures to conform at home, mistreatment by peers in school, and condemnation by the broader society are just some of the difficulties facing a child whose expression does not fall into line with the binary gender system. For many young people, whether typical in their presentation or not, expression is the most tangible aspect of their gender experience, impacting them in many, if not all, of their interactions with others.

Norms around gender expression change across societies and over time. One need only consider men wearing earrings or women having tattoos to see the flexibility of social expectations about gender. Even the seemingly intractable notion that “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” is relatively new. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, pink was associated with boys’ clothing and blue with girls’ clothing (still due to the gendering of colors, but with a different rationale associating each color with particular gendered characteristics).

Because expectations around gender expression are so rigid, we frequently assume that what someone wears, or how they move, talk, or express themselves, tells us something about their gender identity. But expression is distinct from identity - we can’t assume a person’s gender identity based on their gender expression. For example, a cisgender boy may like to wear skirts or dresses. His choice in clothing doesn’t change his gender identity; it simply means that he prefers (at least some of the time) to wear clothing that society typically associates with girls.

Scrapbook Final

After collecting a few pieces of media content about ideas, bodies, performances, intersections, inequalities, and sexualities I found that the media is both following and challenging the societal norms.  

Ideas

I found two videos of college students and young children attempting to explain the differences between males and females. Both groups found very interesting differences, but found the explanations to be much harder than they originally had planned. When interviewer asks college students what they think if he were to tell them he was a woman and the same question to if he is a seven-year-old. Students in class shared that if it did not affect them it should not matter what he claims. Some shared that they have no place to try to convince him otherwise and others said they may ask questions about why they feel that way. Either way students did not feel that it was their place to reflect negativity on him for what he feels. From a young age many children can spot the differences between boys and girls even if they are not true all the time. Jimmy Kimmel asks children a variety of questions about the difference between boys and girls. Some children point out physical differences and others point out activities or interests. Very simply the children align with what society believes are the differences between male and female, but the video is used as a joke to show that this is what children are socialized to think. Just as children are expected to follow norms of what it means to be their gender it is important to understand that not all children fit the binary.  

Another link that I found was a family having the ability to not have to identify a sex on their child's birth certificate. Doty (parent) felt that Searyl (child) should have the ability to define their own sex as they age. Doty has a clear understanding of how sex and gender do not always align with one another.  Doty challenges societies perception of what a newborn will endure. Searyl will now have the ability to identify as male or female and not have the government contradicting them.  

In the final link the artist captures an image of how clothing is merely clothing and should not be gendered. The genders represented in the photograph are not typical with society. Alex and Reece are connected through a sleeve and that is often what society does not want. There is a huge disconnect between what is expected and how people feel. In class lecture students shared some of the examples about how they would wear a certain outfit and people would judge them for it. In a world where there are so many opportunities our class could not understand why a person clothing should limit them on their experiences. If a female finds a male shirt and wants to wear it there should be no issue. This artist shows that men and women are connected in more ways than one, but clothing should be universal.  

Bodies  

I found a story describing the transgender job program, and one about brain differences in males and females; but, two links that I found to be very interesting was one about international beauty and another about media and women.  

Starting with international beauty a photographer Esther Hoing, created an image that shows the different concepts of beauty across different cultures. The work shows how dynamic beauty is between cultures; however, in each culture the women are to be flawless. Women are often expected to participate in this exaggerated form of femininity to build the desires of men also known as emphasized femininity. When women age their beauty ideal will fade with them leaving women at a disadvantage. Hoing did a wonderful job portraying how women are to be in each culture and how women are expected to follow these regulations no matter what. Women are to participate in this femininity and also empower one another, work hard in society, and in some cultures follow the orders of a man. Women are always expected to do gender and be exactly what men want.  

Next, media and women shows the issues among beauty ideals and age. Somebody's mother is what any woman over the age of 40 typically portrays in mainstream media. Ageism is the preference for the young while placing decreased social value on any signs of aging. In the media women are often judged more harshly for their beauty; whereas men are valued sometimes more as they age. Often women will spend more money on their appearance than their education. The higher class has a more difficult time as they age than the lower class. The media does not value older women and will replace them with someone younger at the drop of a hat. This image states that Actors over the age of 40 have countless opportunities in their career; whereas women only have the role of somebody's mother. The media constantly reinforces this ageist ideal without hesitation.

Performances  

When searching for media content for performances I did not find any difficulty. I found a poem about what it means to be a boy and a girl in a world so separated. I found a video of a young that learns from a young age a passion that they want to continue and develop. It was refreshing to watch a family that is beyond supportive of their child expressing themselves in a way that makes them feel confident and happy. Hopefully, as the society develop as will our willingness to accept people for who they are despite their actions falling out of what is 'expected'. I found children being gender policed telling them they cannot do this or they cannot do that. In the video titled Potty Mouth Princess these young girls are showing some of the issues that women face every day by aggressively pointing them out using some foul language. These girls would be policed by what they were saying and how they were acting by what is known as the gender police. It is sad to see all of the rules and regulations placed on both boys and girls.  

Finally, I found a link about the singer and songwriter P!NK who is the mother of a young daughter that was having a difficult time understanding what it means to be a girl. P!INK encourages her daughter to be the person that she wants to be and not let society tell her how to act. These images share how society impacts young children on this beauty ideal. Children learn the gender strategy and how to 'do' gender from the moment they are born. If parents continue to make their children feel beautiful and good for being themselves our society might push the beauty boundaries and develop into a more inclusive society. People are consistently policed when they do not perform the stereotypical gender norms and this ultimately causes harm to that individual. P!NK in an influential woman for not only her daughter but many other people.  

Intersections

For this section I found a few images that caught my eye. The first one is an image of the Disney character Mulan. She is a strong woman who is breaking the stereotypical norm of how women are expected to act. Mulan shows young children that it is okay to 'do gender' based on what feels right to them and not on what society says is right.  

I then found a video titled The Talk which shares some of the difficulties and inequalities that African American people face day to day despite the fact that the US is to be a place of equality. Colorism is a preference to light colored skin and is relevant to this video. When considering gender and race both are affected in this video. Males and females face different societal expectations; yet when race is added to the equation there are even more inequalities and limitations placed on people.  

The documentary about Daisy and Audrey shows the intersection between gender and violence. A young woman was sexually assaulted and ultimately ends her own life. This young girl was placed into a situation that she could not seem to get herself out of safely and nobody wanted to support or even believe her. The media and the culture we live in is highly a rape culture. It is sad that our society is less concerned with the safety of others. As I was learning about rape culture I came across the term redzone; this is the fact that the first two semesters at university are the highest chance of sexual assault happening to both males and females. This idea broke my heart and I hope with proper education the amount will continue to decrease.  

Inequalities

There are many inequalities that all people face and it is disheartening to know that in 2017 there are still more inequalities than we can count. In a video titled Why are Women Payed Less Kimmel uses a societal issue to create comical content. He asks young children why females make less than men. The children create unique and interesting ideas behind this concept, but in reality, it is simply an inequality that should be nonexistent. Women are also trapped in this idea of a double bind where they cannot win no matter the situation. Women are to be powerful and independent, but also weak and reliant upon a man. When in the business world women are often given unrealistic expectations and not taken as seriously as their male coworkers.  

Women are expected to follow all of these guidelines, but are also expected to fail. In the add that Pantene did about the apologetic norm of women they pointed out many of the expectations women face. In the ad titled Shine Strong there are countless women who are going through their day to day lives apologizing for every interaction they have with others. Then the add switches and the women are confident with themselves and do not apologizing for activities they would usually apologize for. If society started to educated and socialize women the same way that men are the idea of the feminine apologetic would lessen. Women are taught that they are less than men from a young age and are taught to apologize for having an idea, standing somewhere, or any other daily activity. This add brings the inequality into the light and shows some of the issues within society.  

Finally, both Emma Watson and Zeke Thomas describe some of the difficulties that men must face because of the world being a hegemonic masculinity society. Emma verbalizes some of the problems that boys and men both face with not being able to admit when they are hurting. Zeke Thomas is a young man who was sexually assaulted and decided to speak out about the issue. While speaking out Zeke faced a great deal of societal backlash. People began to treat him as less than a man and shared a great deal of hate towards him. The society is focused on the idea of hypermasculinity; being that men need to only be strong and powerful. Zeke shared a moment of weakness and not only had to relive a traumatic event over and over, but also faced society treating him as less than human. Men are allowed to have emotion, they are allowed to feel pain, and men should be encouraged to share their experiences. Society should continue to encourage and support men in the inequalities they face.  

Sexualities

The first of my media links focused around sexualities are about how people are more than just their sexuality. Buzzfeed asked a few men to describe how they are more than the identity of gay. This shows that people are very focused on one thing and cannot get over the fact that someone sexuality is different than their own. People naturally want to place people into unrealistic boxes, but if society begins to expand the boxes and become more accepting to all people there would be a much more inclusive society. The second is an GIF of the actor Ezra Miller sharing that "When I say I’m queer, I’m saying that I think human beings are amazing". By having more celebrities that are encouraging to people being themselves I think that this world would be a much happier one. Miller is sharing the difficulties that many people face daily with being themselves and that people are fragile and we should treat one another with respect. Based on both the book and lecture society places this rule on people that they need to always 'do' the correct gender.  

Conclusion

After concluding this assignment, I feel that I have a much stronger understanding of what gender encompasses. I plan to continue to develop this Tumblr and add more interesting links and content as I find it. The United States has a long way to go with educating the society about how gender and sex are different; but, as I was searching for links I did find a great deal of advocates. I am eager to see society move forward and push for change.

Linking theories with celebrities

The topics which I touched within my project are: Gender and Feminism. I chose these two topics because they are closely related and I believe there are really present nowadays in our lives and you face lots of times during the day some challenge which it requires to place a tag on your gender or sexuality, it can be whilst you’re shopping clothes and it is still a little bit weird to see boys looking in the woman section or girls in the boys section, or children which have it all separated in pink or blue which associates directly hat pink is not a boys colour or blue is the typical colour for boys. Nonetheless, this new non-binary people are starting to be a great part of our modern culture which is much liberal and understanding than others which are close minded and who thought that gender is only classified by the sex you have been born in. Being Non-binary or gender fluid means that you actually feel you are from both sexes, one day they wake up feeling like a man and another day they wake up feeling as a woman, this people are “a minority within a minority” according to The Independent’s article which was shared in class.

According to Butler gender is a performance (Butler, 1990) you act as a girl because you feel or are a girl, this also applies to boys. I personally thought about placing this gender issue into the fashion field because fashion is also a performance, just as the gender fluid change their sex, fashion trends are very dynamic and now with the cruise collections and the winter and summer collections fashion is more ephemerae than ever. Moreover, fashion being a constant performance is one of the key links of the magazine related to both of the main topics, we dress up in a certain way to transmit to people a certain message, as well as the dress codes to certain events or occasions which you will normally don’t get the chance to dress up in a certain way and you feel like a movie star or a James Bond whilst wearing a tuxedo. Fashion is a performing act which mixes a lot of different topic due to the social connotations you give due to the way you are dressed. I found very fascinating how these two cases really look alike and one is fully accepted by society and the other one is not.

Fashion and gender are very linked together because social standard and the idea of how a man looks like and how a woman looks like are implemented in society. As women should look in a certain way, for example, have long hair, go always immaculate to anyplace, wear high heels, wear dresses or skirts, etc. and for men, for example, be manly, be strong, wear trousers, and can’t experiment with clothing because it is very girly or weird that a man can like fashion, etc. typical stereotypes which are nearly never met. Therefore I decided to make it of people who are expected to look in a certain way but still they break the rules and yet don’t look weird or ridiculous by being gender fluid or transsexuals. Just as in the video of The Independent about the couple of non-binary people, Owl and Fox Fisher, which discuss about how they should look, how they should introduce when meeting new people, etc. just little confrontations to boxing themselves and still they are annoying and tedious to being explaining themselves all the time. I chose this topic to create more awareness in society for this minority. (Fenton, 2016)

The second main topic of the magazine, as already mentioned, is feminism. Each of the celebrities that I chose represent in different ways feminism. Jaden Smith represents how women in society are now stronger than they were and are practically equally qualified for any job as men are and this is why he wears skirts, and is not ashamed of it. He is the face for one of the biggest Haut Couture houses, Louis Vuitton, for women’s wear. Nicolas Ghesquière has turned the point of view of last year’s campaign as well as this year’s. The Creative director for LV has placed a man on women’s clothes to show the world that clothes actually don’t have gender but they can be worn by whoever wants to. The son of the actor, Will smith, stated on June in 2016 to be gender fluid “I’m just expressing how I feel inside, which is really no particular way because every day it changes how I feel about the world and myself” (Woolf, 2015). We can see how Jaden belongs to this fourth feminist wave where equality is present.

Hari Nef has a different story; she was born in a male body which she didn’t felt at ease. She changed whilst she was at university and she presented herself to different agencies until IMG chose her due to her personality and magnificent story creating the first transsexual model to sign a contract with IMG models. She represents the power of women; she is clearly the “trans fashion muse of our generation” according to Dazed magazine (So, 2015). She fights for a cause: transsexual people to be seen normal in society and thus, make their sexuality not matter, but what they have to say does as well as encouraging people to explore their gender. Nef is feminine, pretty and a woman who belongs to the fourth wave of feminism, she talks about her sexuality in an open way as she did to Elle magazine “I prefer men who are queer. Not gay men, but queer men – guys with an open mind. Bisexual men, because they're able to understand the different elements of the body without judging that I don't conform to a certain ideal.” (Casparis, 2016). She is concerned about a global issue which is gender, and talk freely about her changing body. She is willing to have a great impact on society and is totally determined to raise her voice.

I chose Erika Linder because of her androgynous style, though she likes being a woman and is comfortable about it, she is more of a tomboy. Furthermore, I picked her due to her fight against being boxed into one sex as there was a time where she only featured in male adverts or campaigns and it was fine for her but she is a woman. Although, she is the type of girl that doesn’t wears much dresses she is still feminine and proud. Nowadays thanks to Louis Vuitton and its creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, she has re-entered the woman section of fashion although she still wants to catwalk for men, as she believes that her male work will stand out more as she is a woman. She, as a female, already represents femininity her way. For me she represents the breaking of the gender box. “Each box has distinctive characteristics that ONLY women or ONLY men should embody.” (Carolina, 2016) This ‘box’ which represents society and social standards and how she defies it by not wanted to be boxed in any way.

I found Pat Dudek researching through the internet looking for different people who could fit into this androgynous alternative look which I wanted and just when I saw him I thought “I found the person who I was looking for”. This student has a lot of potential and is becoming one rising star in this arty/quirky modern culture which people live gender in many different ways and being androgynous is starting not to be a problem but a way to present yourself to society and a way people should accept you. This gender fluid movement which is uprising nowadays, gives more voice to woman as it gives equal possibilities to them as men have by placing them in the same step as men; just as the article I am neither MR, MRS nor MS but MX (Tobia, 2015) which states this “The addition of Mx also represents a significant step forward for the feminist cause. By decentering gender and providing a gender-neutral option to the terms Mrs and Ms, Mx allows women a third option that is not centered around their marital status or patrilineal nomenclature.” By giving woman the chance to choose which gender status they are willing to be referred to as, society is starting to open more boundaries and empower the female figure. Though he is a polish student and hasn’t got any influence yet, he represents fairly well the new artsy modern culture that is approaching and which is more tolerant than the previous generation.

I wanted to focus on the part of my friend Paco, I wanted to show that to be gender fluid you don’t have to be weird looking, but it is more a way you live your life. I wanted to create this section like a statements that anyone can be gender fluid and that is completely normal. That is why I decided to choose the photo which I made of him taking a coffee and place it as the main photograph of his article, just to make him real human being. A person whom you can see perfectly may walk through the street. I try to break that concept of ‘otherness’ (Jensen, 2011), which this topic usually has, as it is a taboo; the stereotype of you must be weird just because you don’t feel part of any gender, the idea of being ‘other’ people the weird ones. I wanted to break all those prejudices and show that they are persons just as you and I which need the same respect as you want for yourself. Therefore this is why the interview I made to him is very significant. I think is very motivating as it is a cheerful story, but it is true that in general it is a topic which is still taboo in our society and even more in the Spanish society which is still influenced by some social standards based in the Catholic Church or Franco, the dictator Spain had until the mid-70’s. I asked him the basic questions that whomever that doesn’t know about the topic would ask, because the magazine can be purchased by whoever wants to, therefore sometimes you have to explain topic since the start. Additionally, it is a way to as already said break the otherness people may have about the topic as with this interview you understand how he lives and what has made him be how he is and probably you can relate to some of the things he might say.

The Problems Within The Lesbian Community in Vietnam

I first awared that I liked girls when I was 11. Unlike most lesbians’ experience when they first found out, I was not confused or felt bad about myself. Instead, I went to find people who were like me, attracted to girls, right away. Internet was my bestfriend. It was something I totally relied on, I trusted people who shared the same experience with me online rather than my own family. Of course I admitted that it was not a wise thing to do for me or any other 11 year old girls who has not yet gone through anything serious in life. But I was like the others, feeling alone and disconnected to “normal” people around us. Internet was a great thing to me, it brought me so much new information and details that I could never find in school or the enviroment that I lived in, especially with the lgbt themed films, writings, and art. I was really into an anime genre called “Yuri”, it focuses on the relationship between 2 females and I got to make new friends in the Yuri’s fandom. As I grew up, I was terrified to think whether my attraction was legitimate or I was just affected by the images I watched from those films. And I concluded I was not misconcepted about myself, but instead those animations helped me realized that my feelings were real, and that those kind of relationships do exist.

My parents eventually found I was active on a anime forum when I was 12. They were mad, they called me names, hit me, and banned me from using computer. I was upset and started to experience depression from then up until now, even I have officially come out to them and been accepted by my parents. But an other part of me felt grateful for what they did and thought they made the right choice to me even it was brutal. Being isolated was terrible, but I was having all the time in the world to reflect and understand myself better. There was nothing to influence me but myself alone. So at 14, I was able to access the internet thanks to my cousin’s Ipod that was given to me. I went back to all the forums that I spent my times on and feeling exciting to finally meet “my people” again. Instead of the joyful reunion that I imagined, I was like a foreigner wandering around the community that I was supposed to feel related the most.

Before the 2000s, there were not much information about the LGBT community in Vietnam. Then the internet happened. LGBT people who lived overseas or able to understand English started to translate any news they came across about the community and uploaded to forums so people could read about it. More people started to understand more about sexualities, new terms were met and applied to people from the community. I came across the terms identifying different types of lesbian when I was 11. Two notable words that are still not frequently used by lesbians are “soft butch” and “femme”. A “soft butch” is a homosexual female who likes to express her appearance more masculine and tend to dress male’s clothes. “Femme” in the other hand is a “normal” feminine girl who just happens to attract to females. Those terms would be fine and only used to describes the appearance of homosexual females if they were not used to determinate the individual’s role in a relationship, and even affacted the value a human being. Now, I have nothing against if a woman feels comfortable being boyish for I used to be one myself, and there is nothing wrong with that in the first place. I believe people should be allowed to dress and express themselves in anyway they want. The root of the problem is the Vietnamese culture and its views on gender identity.

Since Vietnam is heavily influenced by Confucianism, we still view sexes and genders as black and white. If you’re a man or a woman, you must dress in a certain social accepted way, act in certain ways, interest in certain things. If you just show a small sign related to the opposite gender to yours that is not what the society expecting from your gender, you will be view as less of a man or a woman. Vietnamese lesbians are still deeply depended on this cutural participate, therefore when one shows a sign of being more dominate than her significant, she will immediate think is her job to become “the man” in the relationship. She will cut her hair short, dress boyish, and act aggressively. She will also try to show her emotions less since “men should not show their emotions”. Since femmes still fits the idea of a feminine woman, they play the role of the woman in the relationship and they are expected to be submissive to the soft butch or the other more dominating lesbian. This makes women are not only being oppressed by men in Eastern culture, but also by other women. Some can argue that if this way may works for their relationship or just for themselves personally then there is nothing to criticize. Why I agree that I am in no place to tell others what to do with their relationship. But this does not stay in a personal level, this problem has been affecting the whole community for a long time and it has made it way to become what considers the standard of a lesbian relationship. These standards are harmful especially for young lesbians who just start to discover themselves, this makes them instead of trying to understand what they want, they lock themsselves in the stereotype boxes.

When I was just starting to learn more about my community, I knew that I disliked to be told what to do by others and wanted to control my ownself. I also did not feel comfortable wearing dresses and having long hair was annoying. I then assumpted those signs meaned that I was a soft butch and then tried to fit the stereotype of the soft butch image back then. It was until I hit 13, I realized I was too “girly” to be a soft butch, I stopped trying to be one. I still kept my short hair and dressing tomboyish up until 18. The more I grew, the more I felt the comfy from my femininity. But not many lesbians experienced the same way as I did. When I went through some fanpages on Facebook for lesbians recently, I have seen some butch lesbians trying to tell others what is the right way to be “a man”, how to treat your “woman” right. Physical and emotional abuse exists among the lesbian relatioships, soft butches abuse and hit their feminine girlfriends to show their domination. They consider the numbers of the girl they sleep with as their pride. The more girls they have slept with, the more valuable they are. Soft butches criticize other soft butches for being to girly. Femmes laugh at soft butches who are not the dominant one in their relationship. It was and is still a mess. You can easily find these people at shopping mall in district 5 and 3, walking together as groups, and the securities watching them cautionly fearing they might steal something from the stores. I remembered hanging out with my cousin when she was going to study abroad. A shop keeper used a male pronounce to call me, when I told them I am a girl, they were surprised. Vietnamese lesbians also feel that the concept of a “soft butch-soft butch” couple or a “femme-femme” couple are weird, and they came up with ridiculous terms such as “soft butch gay” or “femles” to describe those people. But isn’t lesbian is about a realtionship between 2 homosexual females? Aren’t soft butches and femmes females? Why are we imprisoned ourselves and reinforce the gender role stereotypes instead of trying to break free from it? This misconception is not just within the lesbian community. Society view those “standards” as what a lesbian is supposed to be, other GBT community view those standards as what lesbians are supposed to be. You can easily see those lesbian stereotypes in news about lesbian. Even in literature such as “Bóng”, an biography by Hoang Nguyen, in which he describes a butch lesbian as “a sloppy, dirty, misbehave man in a woman’s body”. Or in a fiction book called “Les-Thế Giới Không Có Đàn Ông”, roughly translated to “Les-A World Without Man” by writer Bùi Anh Tấn, it still portrayed a gender role based lesbian couple. It is like a circle, we keep wandering around and around, and will never find the way out. And it is not just me, many lesbians I know and talked with also find this mindset is problematic.

Moving on to 2011, a new era of lesbianism started with the rise of a new literature genre called Bách Hợp. Bách Hợp means relationship occurs between 2 females who are not necessary lesbians. They can be lesbian, bisexual, or even pansexual as long as they are in a same sex relationship. The upside in this era is femininity started to be more appreaciated. Homosexual women were being encourage to be feminine rather than forcing the image of a man to themselves, and that was the only good thing. Being feminine does not stop the mind set of applying gender role into the relationship. Gender roles are not as visible like in the soft butch-femme era, but it is still heavily influenced. The people who have “Bách Hợp” mindset like to criticize any lesbian that looks to much like a man, they hate the heterosexual pronounce in the romance relationship, but yet they still believe in dominant and submissive roles. New terms were adapted, “Công” is used for someone who is for someone who is more dominate in the relationship, “Thụ” is used for the passive one. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Yes, it is still the same stuffs just with longer hair. “Công” is always preffered by others since they are the active one in bed rather than the one who just lie their on their back and “enjoy” everything. The lesbian’s value is now being measured based on what a person’s position on bed. And like the mainstream lesbian culture, they can never comprehense how can 2 Công or 2 Thụ can be together. There is nothing progressive in this new era nor it contributes anything good to the community.

The mainstream lesbians and Bách Hợp lesbians think they are different, but actually they are the same. They both still views feminity or woman’s role as a sign of weakness, and only with masculinity or man’s trait is considered strong. While I may sound like I’m blaming everything on men, it is not like that. Like I have mentioned about how Vietnamese culture is influenced heavily by Confucianism and gender roles, Vietnamese women or Asian women in general tend to be looked down by society. Lesbians, like any other people, were raised with conservative mindset by our parents. Maculinity was always being held higher by society compares to feminity, and no one likes to be considered weak. This also happens in the gay community as well, where masculine gay men are always get more respected by not just heterosexual people but also the gays themselves. And it is not just gay and lesbian, straight males, straight women are all being affacted. It is not only men’s fault but women’s as well, it is our fault to keep participate to this misogynist culture.

Things got better when organization like ICS or Hanoi Queer appeared. The people who run and work for these organization are well informed by progressive thoughts and mindsets. They are the most active one to raise awareness about sexuality and gender identities to the community, also pointing out the gender stereotypes that exists within the Vietnamese LGBT culture. They held events, talkshow, discussion events. They created other organization such as Rainbow School, focus on creating club and a safe enviroment for LGBT students. For the first time, lesbians have some places to go to meet and exchange opinions to eachother. Of course not all lesbians have the privillege to come to those events, but it is a great start for lesbian community. Liberal lesbians started to be more active and raised their voices about lesbian’s issues. They advocate on breaking stereotypes and gender roles, while still being respectful to other people’s choice of relationship and identity. But as much as I appreciate their work, as I have volunteered to some of their events, I still see some problems in their ideology when it comes to lesbian identity and LGBT community in general. As liberal and pro-choice, they seems to be accepting to every new ideaology just a bit too quick. I got a chat with 20 year old lesbian when she said that “lesbians can still enjoy having sex with men”. Her reason was “All humans l enjoy sex. If you blindfold someone and let a person simulated sexual act on their body without the blindfoled person knowing what gender the other is, that person will get turned on, therefore they enjoy it”. I pointed out to her that of course that person will get turned on, it is like when you get hit and you feel hurt, it is body’s reaction. And when that person was blindfolded, he or she already lost their consciousness about the enviroment about them, they will get turned on if being simulated. But when you take the blindfold away, that person will gain back their awareness. When they see the person who just praticed sex act on them is someone they are not sexually attracted to, they will immidiately feel uncomfortable and violated. That is how sexuality works, it is the awareness of who you find attracted to. And even if that person is someone they are sexually attracted to, they will still feel violated because that person acts without their consent. Her example was awful. As we talked more, she went on and blamed on all the labels and thought they should not be exists. Ironically, she labeled herself as a lesbian. What she did not realize, it was not the labels’ fault but the person who chose to use those labels. There were a lot of conflicts in what she said in her debate, I could write another 3000 words just to analyze them. It would have not been a big problem if she was irrelevant to the LGBT community, but she was an active member and contributor to the Hanoi Queer, the biggest LGBT organization in the North. This frightened me in many levels, I wondered what have they taught to their members and other LGBT people. How many unreliable informations were spread?

But that girl was not the one who made me become skeptic to these organization. ICS was the first thing that made me realized I could not just trust anything that this organization said. But this one is more subjective to my own opinion than the other one and it is sensitive to today’s issues. Beside from not agreeing with them for the not accept but not against incest, I do not believe in transgenderism, and in no way approve that a transwoman who attracted to women should be consider lesbian. But I support that they deserve to have human rights since I can never get what they have gone through. Even I have some transgender friends in real life, but I have to admit it does not make me less of a transphobe. Just when it comes to my own identity, I do not want it to be taken away from me. Liberal lesbians’ arguement was simple, a transwoman is a woman due to her gender identity, therefore when she’s attracted to other women, it makes her a lesbian. Some would go far enough to call any lesbians who refuse to date transwomen even if they look like a real woman a.k.a feminine, “transphobe”. But lesbians are homosexual females, they are romantically and sexually attracted to same sex people. Transwomen’s gender might be women, but their biological sex are not. Feminity does not make a woman, her womanhood and experiences in life is. Using gender expression to determinate someone’s gender identity is nothing but reinforcing gender stereotypes which we are trying to break. Why hijacking lesbian’s identity after we have invented nearly a dozens of sexualilties? The problems with liberal lesbians are the most dangerous to lesbianism even if they have been sugarcoated by what the contributed to the community. They are changing and erasing lesbian’s identity. I would willing to support making a new terms for homosexual females just to stay true to our identity. All the phases and eras we have been through, we are just taking one step foward but two steps back. We have been skipping to many steps instead trying to make things right from the start.

After 3 years exposing to feminism and comprehensing opinions from liberal views when I was 18. At the age of 21, my mindset is set back to when I did not know about feminism. I am now considering myself as a moderate but leaning just a bit to the right. Some of my other liberal queer friends called me “conservative” due to my view on transgenderism. But if being conservative means sticking to my own ideas and still willingly to listen to other ideologies and see if I can shift my view to be more open-minded, then I’m happy to be one. I am not alone, there are actually a lot of lesbians like me out there, but they prefer to stay silence. But as the development of social network, I started to see some of lesbians who have the same mindset as mine started to speak up. The world is still changing and maybe we can find balance for eachother.

What Sarees Can Teach Cis Feminists About Trans* Solidarity

(This article was originally published on Medium on June 11, 2015.)

Stop Saying Caitlyn Jenner Is Doing Femininity Wrong

In the midst of America’s earnest “trans moment”, a strong call for opposition is making itself heard even in progressive — and feminist — media.

It’s coming from inside the house

Trans* acceptance was never going to be a slam dunk, not even with the stupendous combined charm of Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, nor with the help of that old reliable — airbrushed sex appeal — thrust at us from magazine covers to proclaim their inauguration into True American Womanhood™. Nothing about upending gender expectations is ever that easy.

So this is where we are. The more we publicly the celebrate transgender acceptance, the more anti-trans worms continue to crawl out of the patriarchal woodwork. This is no surprise. To do my bit as a cis ally to trans people, I was ready to write to, reason with, and educate the haters. What is surprising is that so many of the haters are fellow feminists.

Meet the TERFs

Like many Tumblr-toting Roxane-Gay-quoting internet feminists, I had been under the impression that the old guard Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists — TERFs — were a dying breed. The internet circles I lurk in are trans-friendly spaces, at least in name. My Twitter feed was full of trans-positive articles even before Laverne Cox hit the front pages of American media. My favorite reddit communities ban on sight anyone who suggests that trans men aren’t really men, or that it would be dangerous to allow trans women into ladies’ toilets.

But about a week ago, I began to see some startlingly transphobic articles being shared on my carefully culled Facebook feed. Several feminists that I admired were openly disparaging the manner and style and details of Caitlyn Jenner’s public transition.

Some of them went the unabashedly bigoted route, linking to articles like Matt Walsh’s screed, “Calling Bruce Jenner A Woman Is An insult To Women”. Such hatefulness and incoherence is easy to refute (though not defeat). It’s difficult for progressives to take a christian conservative cis white man seriously when he says Caitlyn Jenner is “Disgusting, frankly.” Chalk it up to yet another thing Matt Walsh is wrong about today, and move on.

Other feminists have taken the more subtly transphobic path, criticizing Ms Jenner for playing up stereotypes about femininity. Today an NYT op-ed by Elinor Burkett, for example, is outraged at Chelsea Manning for saying she feels more emotionally sensitive since transitioning, and takes Ms Jenner to task for looking forward to wearing nail polish openly in public after her transition. These attacks are so much harder to deal with because they grow from a germ of truth. Most women alive today grew up battling these stereotypical, insulting assumptions about femininity by the world at large: that women are “too emotional”, that women are obsessed with superficialities like make-up and nail polish, that women are biologically hardwired this way and therefore calling women silly or superficial is not sexism!When we see these insults being given new life by the statements of transgender women in the public eye, we wince.

Yes, I admit it. I winced too.

But then I remembered the sarees.

The story of the sarees

This is where I tell you a little about my roots. I am from India. I grew up in Bengaluru in the ‘80s and ‘90s, back when it was still Bangalore and quite a lot more socially conservative than it is today, though much more liberal than many other parts of India. 

One of the fiercest battles I waged then was against the dress code imposed on me: traditionalism first, modesty a close second, to hell with my personal choice, and don’t even dare breathe the word ‘fashion’ for fear of being branded whorish[1]. Even after my family moved overseas, this dress code persisted, made me choke, made me seethe. My parents and I had screaming fights over my tight jeans. My underwear was scrutinized for possible covert sluttiness[2]. I wasn’t allowed to wear spaghetti strap tops even in my 20s.

I became quite the expert in the art of secret outfit changes when away at school and college. I also grew to hate the traditional Indian clothes that were constantly held up to me as markers of good virtue. Enforced modesty taught me to see every saree as a symbol of oppression[3].

Can you imagine my state of mind when I saw my peers both in real life and in the media embrace sarees as liberating fashion statements? I saw many South Asian women ‘reclaiming’ the saree as sensual, religious, feminine, traditional, and kickass all at once (and I doubt they had ever collectively lost their claim to begin with). Many desi girls and women overseas embraced sarees as defiant, joyous expressions of their minority cultural identity. I saw my school friends wear their sarees happily and stylishly, and I got thoroughly pissed off at them.

I thought they were stupid for welcoming their own oppression. I thought they were betraying me, betraying all the battles that I and every other Indian feminist had fought to escape our compulsory-desi-outfit shackles. I raged at them for giving ammunition to all the people who pressured me to dress traditionally: now they were able to point to all these other girls and say, See? See how happy they are in traditional clothes? Why can’t you be like that?

But most diasporan desi girls and women never fought the battles I fought, and don’t have the same associations with sarees that I do. Their life experiences allowed them to take a pleasure in sarees that will probably always be alien to me. For some of them, donning a saree was even something of a defiance. 

I had a dance instructor in junior college who was called to the Bar in London, and at one of the formal ceremonies that followed, instead of wearing the expected black robes, she wore a lace-edged black saree. She said she was telling the British to stuff it. I was stunned. I believe that was the first time I allowed that maybe, just maybe, sarees are not oppression for everyone all the time.

Not just sarees

No doubt other ethnic and religious groups have experienced a similar dissnoance. I have an Iranian friend who chafes under the laws that impose headscarves on her whenever she goes back home, and her journey has been toward understanding why American hijabis exist: to understand that for some American muslimahs, wearing the hijab is as radical an act as it is for my Iranian friend to take hers off.[4]

The moral of the story

What the saree can teach cis feminists is this: context matters. Our life experiences matter. The symbols and methods we choose for self-expression have particular meanings for ourselves, and we should not insist that our meaning is THE universal meaning.

For some women, nail polish is a symbol of all the dreary, expensive, time-consuming hoops women are expected to jump through to adequately perform our femininity. For other women, especially those who have spent their entire lives longing for and being forcibly denied any expression of femininity, nail polish may be a powerful and triumphant symbol of self expression.

How can the former among us take offence at the latter? It is well within our rights to interrogate the patriarchal rules surrounding nail polish from a critical perspective, but how can we justify interrogating trans women like that?

Can we even imagine how it must feel to be ‘officially’ allowed to wear nail polish after 65 years of being denied it? I want to throw Caitlyn Jenner the glitteriest mani-pedi party when I think about it, and I’m the kind of person that’s owned exactly four bottles of nail polish ever in all my life. (So… I guess we will be hiring professional manicurists for the party because I would paint her knuckles as likely as nails.)

Beyond the cis perspective

So far I’ve only considered trans women’s choices from a resolutely cis lens. But what if we tried looking at the performance of femininity from the perspective of trans women themselves? Would we see merely choice and triumph? Or would we see something more nuanced, and decidedly darker?

Consider: violence against transgender women is an epidemic. Even though trans women are only 10% of all LGBTQ people who report incidents of hate directed at them, they are 45% of murder victims in the same group. Passing as female can be a matter of life or death for trans women. In light of this, is there any way to see cis feminists’ criticism of trans women for “trying to hard” to be feminine as anything other than terrifying, hateful, or at least deeply misguided? I don’t think so.

Consider: trans people are more deeply and thoroughly scrutinized for their performance of gender than cis people like myself can ever fathom. The pressure on trans people to surgically feminize their appearance in order to “pass”, or in order to be more acceptable as romantic partners, is extremely strong even when they personally would rather not get surgery. (Yes, that’s right, not all trans people want surgery.) This pressure and scrutiny has extremely damaging effects on trans people — for example, over 40% of transgender people attempt suicide, compared to 4.6% in the general population and around 15% among LGB people. Should cis feminists really be piling on trans people for supposedly “over”performing gender, thus adding to the toxic culture of overscrutinizing trans people? I definitely don’t think so.

A better way to fight

Here’s what I think cis feminists should be doing instead:

#1 (for the Meets Minimum Standards of Human Decency badge) Unequivocally support and encourage trans people’s chosen manner of gender expression. It’s a battle they have fought long and hard for, and feminists of all people should not be in the business of yelling them for somehow “doing it wrong”. They are doing it right, because they get to decide what’s right for them. Period.

#2 (for the Feminist 101 badge) Support the efforts of trans activists who want to build a safer and more equal world for transgender people. This means reading trans feminist writing (good places to start include Laverne Cox, Zinnia Jones, Model View Culture, and if you’re feeling academic, Radical TransFeminist). This means educating ourselves on the specific obstacles to equality faced by the trans community: safety, access to healthcare, equal opportunity in employment, equal access to public toilets, etc.

#3 (for the Intersectional Feminist badge) Recognize that if there is a reason why media portrayals of famous trans people is problematic, it is because of the way this affects THE TRANS COMMUNITY, not cis women! The inimitable Laverne Cox says:

A year ago when my Time magazine cover came out I saw posts from many trans folks saying that I am “drop dead gorgeous” and that that doesn’t represent most trans people. (It was news to be that I am drop dead gorgeous but I’ll certainly take it). But what I think they meant is that in certain lighting, at certain angles I am able to embody certain cisnormative beauty standards. Now, there are many trans folks because of genetics and/or lack of material access who will never be able to embody these standards. More importantly many trans folks don’t want to embody them and we shouldn’t have to to be seen as ourselves and respected as ourselves . It is important to note that these standards are also infomed by race, class and ability among other intersections.

In the spirit of #3, I highly recommend browsing the amazing Twitter hashtag, #MyVanityFairCover, where ordinary non-celebrity transgender people are creating their own “Call Me Caitlyn” style cover shots.

And finally, every time we feel anger or outrage stirring in response to something a trans woman says or does about her femininity, we need to remember the story of the sarees.

[1] & [2]: These were the terms used at me, and yes, they are extremely disparaging to sex workers.

[3]: Make no mistake: for hundreds of thousands of Indian girls and women, these clothes are indeed an oppression. Traditional dress codes are commonly imposed on Indian women to this day. I personally know far too many married women living in urban, upper class, highly educated joint families who do not have ‘permission’ from their in-laws to wear jeans.

[4]: Note that I am not suggesting that any choice whatsoever is feminist/radical just because it is a choice. Choice feminism is deeply flawed. What I am saying is, any symbol or act can be radical or oppressive depending upon personal and social context.