{"id":5906,"date":"2009-01-30T02:00:38","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=5906"},"modified":"2010-12-10T03:59:54","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T08:59:54","slug":"on-being-genderqueer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/01\/30\/on-being-genderqueer\/","title":{"rendered":"On Being GenderQueer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Francisco<\/a> pointed us to a spoken word poem by Andrea Gibson in which she talks about what it’s like to be ambiguously gendered:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Transcript (borrowed from Francisco):<\/p>\n

So, I teach in a preschool. Hehe\u2026 I make a goddamn difference, now what about you. That\u2019s one point I had to make before I read this poem. The second point is, I usually have hair that is much much shorter than this. That\u2019s all you need to know.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you a boy or a girl?\u201d he asks, staring up at me in all three feet of his pudding face grandeur, and I say \u201cDylan, you\u2019ve been in this class for three years and you still don\u2019t know if I\u2019m a boy or a girl?\u201d And he says \u201cUh-uh.\u201d And I say \u201cWell, at this point, I don\u2019t really think it matters, do you?\u201d And he says \u201cUhhhm, no. Can I have a push on the swing?\u201d And this happens every day. It\u2019s a tidal wave of kindergarten curiosity rushing straight for the rocks of me, whatever I am.<\/p>\n

And the class, when we discuss the Milky Way galaxy, the orbit of the Sun around the Earth\u2026 or whatever. Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and kids, do you know that some of the stars we see when we look up in the sky are so far away, they\u2019ve already burned out? What do you think of that? Timmy? \u201cUmm\u2026 my mom says that even though you got hairs that grow from your legs, and the hairs on your head grow short and poky, and that you smell really bad, like my dad, that you\u2019re a girl.\u201d \u201cThank you, Timmy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so it goes. On the playground, she peers up at me from behind her pink power puff sunglasses and then asks, \u201cDo you have a boyfriend?\u201d And I say no, and she says \u201cOh, do you have a girlfriend?\u201d And I say \u201cNo, but if by some miracle, twenty years from now, I ever finally do, then I\u2019ll definitely bring her by to meet you. How\u2019s that?\u201d \u201cOkay. Can I have a push on the swing?\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the thing. They don\u2019t care. They don\u2019t care. Us, on the other hand\u2026 My father sitting across the table at Christmas dinner, gritting his teeth over his still-full plate, his appetite raped away by the intrusion of my haircut, \u201cWhat were you thinking? You used to be such a pretty girl!\u201d Frat boys, drunken, screaming, leaning out of the windows of their daddys\u2019 SUVs, \u201cHey! Are you a faggot or a dyke?\u201d And I wonder what would happen if I met up with them in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

Then of course there\u2019s always the somehow not-quite-bright enough fluorescent light of the public restroom, \u201cSir! Sir, do you realize this is the ladies\u2019 room?\u201d \u201cYes, ma\u2019am, I do, it\u2019s just that I didn\u2019t feel comfortable sticking this tampon up my penis in the men\u2019s room.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the best, the best is always the mother at the market, sticking up her nose while pushing aside her daughter\u2019s wide eyes, whispering \u201cDon\u2019t stare, it\u2019s rude.\u201d And I want to say, \u201cListen, lady, the only rude thing I see is your paranoid parental hand pushing aside the best education on self that little girl\u2019s ever gonna get, living with your Maybelline lipstick after hips and pedi kiwi, vanilla-smelling beauty; so why don\u2019t you take your pinks and blues, your boy-girl rules and shove them in that car with your fucking issue of Cosmo, because tomorrow, I stop my day with twenty-eight miles and I know a hell of a lot more than you. And if I show up in a pink frilly dress, those kids won\u2019t love me any more, or less.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, are you a boy or a \u2014 never mind, can I have a push on the swing?\u201d And some day, y\u2019all, when we grow up, it\u2019s all gonna be that simple.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Francisco pointed us to a spoken word poem by Andrea Gibson in which she talks about what it’s like to be ambiguously gendered: Transcript (borrowed from Francisco): So, I teach in a preschool. Hehe\u2026 I make a goddamn difference, now what about you. That\u2019s one point I had to make before I read this poem. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,55,2099,2106,54],"class_list":["post-5906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-gender","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-transgenderintersex","tag-sexual-orientation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5906"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30482,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions\/30482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}