The more things change..

After a nice work out at my gym, I went to get changed and go for a swim.  Hearing the call of a small child hailing my entry with 'THERE'S A BOY IN HERE' didn't totally ruin my day, but it did make me change REALLY. FAST.

It's winter.  I wear more clothes.  I forget, the beginning of each winter there's a sharp raise 'mis-gendering' and it always takes me by surprise.  I'd spent the day shopping for shoes, and three different sales assistants referred to me as 'buddy' and 'mate' - no woman here gets called that.  However, even by the end of the day, when I was literally taking my clothes off and being called 'A BOY' I was ok.  I guess I had other things on my mind.  And by the time I have my as butch-as-possible bathers on my clearly female body, things got easier.  Well, except for the swimming when it's raining and 13C.

It still surprises me how some days it cuts more than others.  I've had a busy six months, and I've felt at home in queer community, and visible in all the right ways.  As soon as I move out of that space, I am read as more male.  I think I have more confidence, maybe more swagger.  I've been identifying more as butch, which means being seen as male.

There's more on that.  Maybe I'll even write it.

Young queers

I hung out with some young queers over the weekend, and a few things stuck me.  Firstly, I am defiantly not in my 20s.  But more importantly I looked at the way they labelled gender.  Not necessarily how they performed it, but how they labelled it.  They adopted a range of pronouns, some transitioned medically, some not.  They chose their pronouns and thier names.

And that's where I felt really old.  I don't feel particularly female, but of the binary world in which we live, I guess that holds the most accuracy for my body.  And yet in just over 10 years, the undergrad queers have moved from wearing what they wanted and looking androgynous to calling themselves 'they' and rejecting gender.

It's brave and it rejects a lot of bullshit. Here's the rub though.  When I'm not with people who will let me chose my pronoun, am I setting myself up for conflict and disappointment?  Or this how the revolution starts? A few of the women I used to know have transitioned or now ID as gender-queer.   Most recently I used an incorrect (old) name for someone, who I see every few years round the traps.  S/he (we didn't get to pronouns) was a bit annoyed.  It probably happens a lot with people you don't see a lot of.  Does s/he feel more authentic fighting for a change in pronoun round those who they see regularly? How does the day to day in the world existence feel compared to that?

It's ironic for me to comment on this, as many people could say to me: 'grow your hair, wear women's clothes and people won't keep asking your gender'.  And yet I draw the line at wearing what I want, but being more 'conservitive' in my pronoun choice.  In some ways I identify as gender-queer, but my day to day doesn't ask how I identify like it did when I was at university and establishing my identity. And then we didn't have words like gender queer and cis-gender.

So, back to the young queers. .  I have no clear answers to all this, but it was interesting to witness a version of myself in a different time.  Perhaps it's arrogant of me, but I would suggest we probably feel the same sense of self, but time has changed how that manifests and how it's integrated into our identity.  Just like there are only seven narratives that all stories centre round, gender has multiple expressions, but perhaps they are not infinite.  What is infinite is the language around it.

Books

I scored a book voucher to the local queer book store, and as per usual bought up big.  I read a lot and generally widely, but I only buy queer books because I can get most other texts from the library.  This time's selection is:

S/he by Minnie Bruce Pratt 

I'm liking it so far, it's pretty poetic and I generally prefer a more direct style.  But her voice is so clear and her experiences so vivid, and so rarely written.  It makes me want to read more of Leslie Feinberg as well.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I LOVED this.  As soon as Donna Tratt endorsed it, I had to get it.  Ancient Greek gay love story?  I'm in.

And Genedr Outlaws by Kate Bornstein.

Haven't started it yet, but am really looking forward to it.

It's a blazing summer here, 40C (109F?) so the best option really is sweating quietly and reading.

Butch boundaries

After being heckled by a 14 year old ("It's a hermaphrodite", which I surprisingly have not heard before), I thought I'd just feel lonesome and a bit disempowered.  But there has been a surge of 'butch' media in lesbian cyber space, and the feeling was a little different.  In the past week, Autostraddle ran this:

http://www.autostraddle.com/butch-please-butch-buys-a-drink-149798/

Which I quite empathised with, and then there was this too:

http://www.afterellen.com/content/2012/11/casey-legler-our-new-favorite-woman-working-male-model

As well as another one about African American butches in another online publications (ok, I lost that link).

And I know like it's not just me out there fucking with gender, so I didn't feel lonely like I usually do.  But that's a double edged sword too, because in this regional high school four hours from my cosmopolitan lifestyle, my edgy butches comrades seemed as far away from me as .  But I still had the knowledge that they might feel the things I do and, perhaps, they elicit the same reactions from people that I have.  Sure, they do it elsewhere (on another continent, actually).  But just like I was alone in the school that day, there is a butch somewhere bracing herself to go to a public bathroom.  Or considering her clothing choice for that day and what that will mean for how her friends/strangers/colleagues will read her. Or some baby butch buying clothes from the menswear section for the first time.

So as I moved past lonesomeness I found a surprising roaring fire of rage. I was really pissed at this kid (and the one day before, and the one on the weekend), and pissed for other women in my shoes.  The OUTRAGE was kind of liberating.  And even if we're separated by distance and politeness (I wasn't going to start chatting to the cop in the street), we have a common bond.  And just knowing that, not even acting on it, well, that's pretty powerful.

No To Homophobia

I'm pretty impressed with my home town, today.  Some pretty solid community groups, with government support, launched a national TV campaign against homophobia yesterday. I really like the ads - they are ultimately targeted at non queer folk and their complicity in homophobia, which is a necessary shift, I think.  There is an argument that these ads promote the GLBT community as 'victims', but homophobia is not a victimless crime.  

I also like that it's not trying to say lesbians and gay men blend in and you might not know someone is gay.  The dykes in the ad look like dykes and they're treated badly because of it.  I, of course, love that they have a woman being singled out for bring butch.  It's actually validating to see it on TV, even though it's a 'negative' ad.

I have no doubt it will polarise some, but you can make up your own mind:

Hiatus

Work.  I have limited excuses beyond working as to my silence.

And in that work, I again find myself confusing teenagers and now even my boss.  Well, he knows I'm female (and a dyke), but I ended up in a class with him where kids were asking if I was a boy or a girl.  I handled it with my usual smooth skills (hold your breath for that post) but it was interesting thinking about it later.  My boss is a nice guy, no dramas there.  But normally, if a conflict like that arose about anything else, he'd want to talk about it.

Not this.  How would he raise it?

'Do you know the students thought you were a man?' or perhaps

'How do you think your haircut affects your work?'  (not a good idea, HR doesn't like that kinda talk)

'How do you feel about your gender presentation at work?'.  Nope.

Even the most politically correct boss isn't going to find a good way to mention gender presentation with 'clients', even if it's just to see how you feel about it.  Of course, I could have raised it, but I have no clear answers to give and he's not going to someone who will have them.  So it would have been me exposing my lack of clarity and him feeling like he should help but being a bit out of his depth.

We've never spoken of it.  And of all the dilemmas for a butch looking dyke in education, this is a pretty mild problem.  Just not one with an answer.

Winter

I know, everyone in the northern hemisphere is all sweating and summery.  Well, except for the British, but I don't think they have summer.

But here, it's cold.  Icy in the morning, grey during the day, miserable at night kind of cold.  There are some perks though.  The fashion, for one.  What's not to love about a good coat?  Or a cosy jumper (sweater for the Americans). Wandering the streets it's all black and slate grey with the occasional dapper looking scarf.  I can't help but feel people look classier in winter.  Maybe I feel too much flesh looks trashy, but sometimes it does.  Not such worry in winter -all those layers and even skinny jeans get covered in a coat and a good pair of boots.

And while these wonderful bundles of fabric keep me warm, there is an unintended side affect.  I inadvertently pass a lot more in winter.  No tell tale curves, lots of dark colours, limited gender cues and I think I just speak less in the cold.   And in the back of a classroom, when I'm all rugged up and trying to stealthily observe someone else teach, all the kids can see is a big coat and short hair and they wonder who that guy is in the back row.  Public toilets become more of a battleground and I find myself paying in cash, to avoid pulling out a credit card and having to manage the confusion of having SUCH A GIRLY NAME (thanks mum).

Welcome to winter.

Travel

There has been a break in blogging due to travel.  Admittedly, I went to the USA where they have the internet, but I was also working so didn't get a chance to come back to this corner of the web.

I was a little tentative about my journey, mainly due to both US and Australian security who generally make getting onto a plane more stressful that it already is (21 hours in transit is no picnic).  However, I got off lightly.  Only once was I frisked and even though a few people got pronouns confused, it didn't cause me to be scrutinised and analysed and generally held up.  Even those creepy scanners were fine, as was the retina and fingerprinting at US customs (really, you need all that?).

Suffice to say I arrived in all destinations safe and sound and even in travelling round, gender was not a big deal. Sure, I was in a major US city, but I still thought there might be tangles.  However, the less I freaked out, the less others did.   But when I was called sir I went with it, and if/when they corrected themselves I brushed it off.  It's easier to be self contained away from home, and much easier to be carefree with others perceptions of you. Here I am with friends/colleagues/etc when gender confusion strikes, so I need to take other people into account, and what they think and feel.  Maybe I'm saying travel can allow you to be selfish?  Or maybe it's just about the ability to reinvent yourself.

Day to day

I wonder if I didn’t take into account how I looked at all, how the world would be towards me. If I wasn’t worried about having to fend off other people’s gender confusion, would that make things easier or harder?  I wonder if it’s on me, that I worry and bring that with me?

Meanwhile the kids are still as perplexed and perplexing as ever.  “Isn’t it a dude” was a titbit last week, as well as kids genuinely asking for help calling me ‘sir’.

I have this one school and class that I go to every couple of weeks. There is this girl, she’s 13 or 14 and gets in my face every time and I really have no idea why.  She comes up to me, quite aggressively really and says “Hi Miss!’ several times. She’ll stare at me during class and sometimes point and whisper. She tracks me wherever I go and when I look up, she’s glaring at me. 

But she’s 13 or 14 and I struggle to find it threatening, even though I think that’s what she’s going for.  I am reminded how glad I am, for all the difficulty one faces, that I can move through the world this way.  That I am an adult and the challenges of being a teenager are behind me.  And when I think about it like that, things aren’t so bad.

Youth of today

Today I was up the back of a year 9 class in a school I’m not too familiar with.  About five minutes in, the kids started asked questions of their teacher:

“Miss, who’s that?”

“What’s that?”

“Miss, there’s someone at the back of the class” (today’s youth.  So observant)

And there were a few others I didn’t hear.  Their tone was not polite.  The teacher quietened them down and said:

“Some of you have asked who’s up the back.  This is Ms______ and she’s from ______”

Well.  If the emphasis on the Ms didn’t give away that the kids were asking pronoun related questions, the “WOAH” when she said it sure did.

Awkward.

And a little unpleasant.

I’m temporary amusement and the kids were soon distracted away from me.  While I felt pretty crap about the whole thing, it’s not so uncommon for me to get this reaction when I’m in new schools.  What was even worse was what happened later in the class. 

When talking politics, they thought Bin Laden was from Iraq.  Turns out their education is not only deficient when it comes the breaking down the gender binary.

Public places

A new school year here, and a chance for me to get back into other people’s classrooms and see a bunch of new teachers and new kids.  I work in high schools because that’s where I was trained, but it’s what I prefer.

Primary kids scare me.  They’re little and the world is so black and white and gender is a perfect example.  Short hair you’re a boy, long hair you’re a girl.  And while I don’t work in primary schools, I managed to run into enough kids to make me (and their parents) feel uncomfortable.  Mainly in shopping centres. And then mainly in shopping centre toilets.

Seriously, what are your options when a kid screams ‘ what he doing in the women’s toilets mummy?!?!’  

Answer - not many. I have found the last thing a mother wants is the man/butch lesbian/strange person in the toilets to talk to their kid.  They’re either embarrassed or they’re scared.  Neither ends well.  The mother generally mumbles something to their child and I beat a hasty exit.  But you carry you things with you, more than they do. 

I know it’s about me, so I have a place in it.  But I feel the damage is done when people feel under threat, and the least confrontational thing to do is back away.  Slowly.

Others

So, I ran my anti-homophobia session.  It went fine.What was strange was how one queer understood it.  I spoke to a woman about it, and she basically said she was sick of being the only queer in the room.  She’s seen as a lesbian, but she doesn’t identify as one, and all this talk of gay stuff is somewhat irritating to her.

Really?

Yep.  She, on a personal level, is sick of hearing about it and isn’t worried about being a queer teacher.What I got from this was interesting.  I ran the session for all teachers, of course.  But I did consider the gay/lesbian teachers and their 'situation'.  And I wanted to reach out to them.  I love finding community in odd places and banding together. I get a kick out of seeing other queer teachers in schools, and know that we represent in the oddest corners of the straightest places. And I guess I assumed they all felt this way.  That even without acknowledging it, we understood each other. Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I’m the only one who seeks out my brethren in this way. Perhaps I focus too much on it, perhaps it’s too important to me.  But I really like that idea. Almost like there is a secret treasure in every new place, a sibling you have yet to find. Sometimes they’re hidden and others times they’re visible across a football field.  As one of the latter, I look for support/safety and comradeship where ever I end up.

Musings from the back row

I was in a science class the other day, and the kids were in various stages of an experiment.  Some of the boys were lounging, waiting for their thingy to boil (note: I am not a science teacher).  The girls were chatting too.  All very lovely.

Now in Australia, most students wear uniforms.  No big deal.  Girls have a dress in summer and shirt and skirt in winter.  Boys have long or short sleeve shirt (sometimes a t-shirt) and pants. Most schools give girls the option of pants, but less than 1% take up the offer.  It’s just not done.*

So looking round I saw these boys in shorts and a t-shirt, and the girls in dresses, and I got mad all over again. Of course I wore the same in high school and while I hated it, it was just what you do**.  But I can see teenagers already so well versed in the way they hold themselves so differently and have such different concepts of personal space.  Even in the supremely awkward stages of adolescence, they have their gender performance down pat.  The boys are slouching and taking up space and the girls are perching and limiting themselves.  Even the weird, shy kids (I say this with love as one of them) perform the gender stuff unthinkingly, because they’re so well trained.  Some are less trained in personal hygiene or fashion, but they know what their gender should and shouldn’t do.

And they knew that WAY better than they knew the science-y thingy they were supposed to be learning.

*A quick fashion segue – the pants are often just the boys’ pants, or the most ugly cut of pants possible.  Sure, the summer dress is just a cotton sack, but at least all shapes and stages of development can pull it off.  The pants they offer girls would make Cindy Crawford look lumpy and Marilyn Monroe look dumpy.  Even a butch would look girly in them.  I don’t know how they do it, but they make every clothing option for girls truly awful.

**Until you leave high school and swear never to wear a dress again and burn all your school uniforms on the last day, cackling and realising it is about to get sooo much better.  Or something like that.

Teachable moments

I think, perhaps, I’m getting immune to it all.  The other day I was in a class, helping out and a student asked ‘what’s he doing here’.  It wasn’t calculated, it was just a suburban kid making assumptions.  Perhaps for this reason, I didn’t flinch, I just ignored the pronoun and explained what I was doing.  Thankfully the teacher also took it in her stride.  I don’t know if the boy worked it out or not.  We just got on with the class. I could have missed a teachable moment.  But the most important thing for me was that I missed an awkward moment. 

Jewish butches

It was Jewish New Year the other week, so I did the right thing and went to synagogue.  I ended up going with some Jewish dykes I know.  We made a day of it, as much as you can. 

Despite not being particularly connected to the community, I still knew a few people.  Most don’t recognise me.  Or perhaps I don’t recognise them. An awkward nod seems enough, anyway.  I dressed in work clothes – nice pants, nice shirt, pretty straight forward.  I got introduced to a few people by my friends, one being 80. We had a nice chat about the service, the rabbi and the weather. No confusion on her face, no drama, just an opportunity to have a nice chat. The reason there was no confusion, as it turns out, is because she thought I was a lovely young man. 

At least I have manners, no matter the gender.

Airports

Beyond my gender struggles in schools, I also have a problem with airports.  I like them – all full of possibility and potential.  They don’t like me so much, or at least the security team doesn’t.  I get stopped every single time.  I made a mini bet on my last overseas trip that I would be stopped at every one of the ten or so airports we’d be passing though…and I missed it by one. And that was only because the woman in front of me was arrested for drug trafficking and was being cuffed, so they didn’t look too closely at me.

Why?  I really don’t know.  As mentioned, I’m not the most feminine of women.  Do I look like a ‘terrorist’?  I really don’t know what that means anyway, but I don’t think I fit the profile.  Regardless, I have better conspiracy theory.

In August of 2001 I went on my big, post uni round the world trip, and found myself in Canada on September 11.  Ten days later, as scheduled prior to world events, I was due to fly to New York City.  Air space was reopened in time, and off I went.  Well, by then security had changed and was in a scramble to change even more. Everyone was getting looked at twice, and people were pretty jumpy.  I went to check in Vancouver in their special Canada to USA section and handed my ticket to the woman, then my passport.

It took one glance at the ticket, before the passport.  The ticket had my (quite girly) name.  The woman glanced at my not so girly 21 year old butch/ teenage boy traveller look, and the oh so close to the surface alarm bells went nuts.  She grabbed my passport, she double checked me, she got my hat and shoes off in a heart beat (for those of you who remember, this was unheard of pre-2001) and then got security and went through my gear etc etc.

Where is the conspiracy?  I’m convinced they tagged my passport from that in some way.  It was brand new, so for the following ten years of my intrepid 20’s, I was frisked, patted down, glared at, stared at and generally given a hard time in every airport I set foot in.

Then again, it happens here domestically, where I don’t need my passport, so perhaps I am being a little paranoid.  Then again, perhaps I just inspire paranoia in those who work in airport security.

Passing acquaintances

Despite the challenges, I love my job.  And when something gets difficult, or doesn’t go right, I have some good people inside and outside work that I can talk to.  However, when I tell people I have trouble with kids reading my gender, they don’t get it.  Everyone I know (and most of them are queer) know me as female and can not fathom that other people struggle with it.

They have the best of intentions – they see me as someone they care about who has a rough time over something they can’t see.  So they dismiss it, tell me I look feminine (not really the answer I’m after) or laugh it off (sometimes it’s a good laugh, I’ll admit).  Anyway, without a queer/butch/etc community in a similar context, it’s hard to find solace.  I don’t know many gender non-conformists, and the ones I do are transmen, who pass, or it is their intention. 

I don’t really want to pass.  I want to be read as female, just not the female you think.  The initial confusion, the embarrassment that leads to them or me feeling humiliated…it’s boring and frustrating.  It’s like coming out ALL the time, even when you don't actually have anything to do with the person you’re ‘coming out to’.

Travel

I had the awesome opportunity to go to India for a work event.  I know, totally awesome. After being accosted in the women’s toilets for the third time, it was less awesome.

We all had to wear pants and shirts, so it wasn’t the clothes that gave me away (a slightly different cut here or there, but really. Linen pants and light shirts really are much of a muchness, and it’s hot over there, so light linen. I don’t bind, so should be pretty readable). They take gender very seriously over there.  I knew this, so I tried my scarf trick, and draped it gently over my head, like I am super modest.  It didn’t work, because there were enough western men buying pashminas and wearing them with such abandon that most Indians probably just think foreigners are weird.

It might have been the hair.  It’s not a short back and sides…but it’s pretty short. But even with the scarf, and lose clothes… they just knew.  I don’t walk like a girl, I don’t defer like a girl.  I don’t…something in the right way. So even though my usual butch markers were all out of whack, they still knew.  Which makes me think me feel better about myself, I think.  When I get frustrated and think it’s my own fault because I don’t look right, I realise it’s not that.  I look how I feel I am, and that feeling, that’s what doesn’t fit.  Somehow it being innate makes it feel more authentic and less like I am to blame.  In fact, it makes me feel like I am the most honest person out there.

A history of teaching

Before I began classroom teaching, I was a diversity educator.  I went into schools and talked about not being straight. Even then, I was worried that looking too dykey would work against me, because not all dykes are so readable. I could talk about discrimination, visibility and the importance of inclusivity.  My personal experience was central and kids love a different teacher, a different topic, especially when it’s a bit taboo.

Fast forward to teaching my own kids. In many ways it was better.  My own class, my own school.  After about six months the kids forgot I didn’t really look like a girl and they knew me as their teacher.  My gender was not confounding, but to me, my silence around it was.  They knew, I knew.  It was not spoken of.  To them, I had a partner, but beyond that the silence was deafening.  A lie of omission.  This is nothing new – the coming out, the not coming out.  I was out to staff and some students.  It’s a glass closet, and what is also visible is your shame.  I look butch, but I’m not willing to speak it.

So I left full time teaching and now I teach teachers.  As with my old students, the teachers I work with know me as a professional and we work well together.  The fodder for this blog is their students.  They see me on random occasions, and they have no idea who I am or what I am doing there.  So they take me on face value.  

Options

I thought about growing my hair.  And then I thought about wearing pastels.  I tried scarves, because they’re kind of girly.  But I felt ridiculous and the metrosexuals keep ruining good unisex clothes through appropriation.  I keep going, as I am, waiting for the inevitable.

Why go back to school at all, especially when you fit in even less the second time around?  I like it, I’m good at it.  But it’s like the outside world.  Not my world – I’ve managed to cloister myself, and am surrounded by queers and leftys and live in a place where I look mainstream in comparison to others.  But that’s not where I work.  I work in the mainstream.  In the suburbs.  In tough schools where gender and nationality are the defining features.  There’s no time for mamby pambey gender analysis.  This is survival, and that is done through extreme performance of all that is expected.  And part of that performance is weeding out those who don’t fit in.  I’m a visitor, and I’m suspect looking.  And that’s worth throwing down a challenge to.