Enforcing The Gender Binary Is Killing Our Kids, Too

In 2010 when I wrote this post about the murder of 3 year old Ronnie Paris by his father because he in his words 'didn't want his son to grow up as a sissy or soft'., I said at the time it was hypermasculinity that was killing our kids. 

Looks like I'm going to have to expand my thinking about that point in the wake of the murder of Britney Cosby and her partner allegedly by her own father.

Enforcing the gender binary is killing our kids.  

Whether it was Larry Cosby's disapproval of his daughter's relationship that drove him to murder her and her partner, or Jessica Dotro getting 25 years to life for killing her 4 year old son because she thought he would be gay, it's happening far too often.  

If they are not being killed by their misguided parents, they are taking their lives by their own hands as they try to navigate a world hostile to them.   Sometimes those kids get so disheartened by the attempt to do so they feel they have no other option than to end their lives.

And that needs to end as well.  .  

So yes, it's past time to have a serious discussion about the gender binary and the deleterious effects of it on  our kids.  

BET Apologizes To B. Scott For Awards Show Drama

Diamond has commented on it in her latest video blog along with other people in the blogosphere and outraged fans of multimedia personality B. Scott

The openly gay Scott sports an androgynous look and was hired by BET to be the host of the red carpet pre-show broadcast before Sunday's 2013 edition of the BET Awards.  

But just before Scott went on camera, drama ensued as BET producers demanded he tone down his makeup, pull his hair back, wear masculine clothing and not wear heels.

The producers also attempted to replace him with Adrienne Bailon before pressure from show sponsor Procter & Gamble forced them to drop that idea and got him back on the telecast.

Scott was not a happy camper about the behind the scenes homophobic drama, and it was noticeable during his first on camera interview.  He later took to Twitter to discuss his feelings about it and dished about what happened to a fellow blogger and BET took a public relations beating over it.

“It’s not just about the fact that BET forced me to pull my hair back, asked me to take off my makeup, made me changed my clothes and prevented me from wearing a heel,” Scott wrote. “It’s more so that from the mentality and environment created by BET made me feel less than and that something was wrong with who I am as a person.”

BET tried to ride out the controversy with silence as outraged fans of B. Scott vented on Black Twitter and elsewhere but as the firestorm of criticism continued and BET continued to take a public relations black eye over this they finally issued an apology to the multimedia maven.  

“BET Networks embraces global diversity in all its forms and seeks to maintain an inclusive workforce and a culture that values all perspectives and backgrounds,” the statement read. “The incident with B. Scott was a singular one with a series of unfortunate miscommunications from both parties. We regret any unintentional offense to B. Scott and anyone within the LGBT community and we seek to continue embracing all gender expressions.”

Yeah, right. You sure didn't demonstrate that 'embracing of global diversity' and 'valuing all perspectives and backgrounds culture' Sunday night with B. Scott and you are deservedly getting excoriated for it.

2012 Olympics Watch-Semenya To 800m Finals

I've been keeping up with the saga of Caster Semenya of South Africa over the years, and hoped that all the gender drama they took her through after her surprise world championship in 2009 would be avenged by an Olympic gold medal in London.

She's on the verge of making that happen.   She won her 800m semifinal heat in a time of 1:57:67 to put her in Saturday's final that will include defending Beijing gold medalist Pamela Jelimo of Kenya, who won her semifinal as well.
.

"I'm very happy to get through to the finals," Semenya said. "It was very hard, but I tried my best. I just have to go to my bed."

It was wonderful to see her carry the South African flag during the opening ceremonies.  I hope she gets to top that honor by standing on the top step of the victory platform receiving a gold medal tomorrow.

Good luck Caster!

Who Is Woman Enough to Participate in the Olympics?

Guest post from Renee of Womanist Musings

We have all become accustomed to the drug testing athletes must undergo to ensure that their performance has not been enhanced. Female athletes however are subjected to a new form of gender based policing based in the idea that someone have a natural biological advantage because of things like hormonal imbalances. 

There are some who believe that this amounts to an unfair advantage ever as it encourages gender policing that is harmful emotionally to girls and women.

Caster Semenya, the South African runner who was so fast and muscular that many suspected she was a man, exploded onto the front pages three years ago. She was considered an outlier, a one-time anomaly.

But similar cases are emerging all over the world, and Semenya, who was banned from competition for 11 months while authorities investigated her sex, is back, vying for gold.

Semenya and other women like her face a complex question: Does a female athlete whose body naturally produces unusually high levels of male hormones, allowing them to put on more muscle mass and recover faster, have an “unfair” advantage?

In a move critics call “policing femininity,” recent rule changes by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, state that for a woman to compete, her testosterone must not exceed the male threshold.

If it does, she must have surgery or receive hormone therapy prescribed by an expert IAAF medical panel and submit to regular monitoring. So far, at least a handful of athletes — the figure is confidential — have been prescribed treatment, but their numbers could increase. Last month, the International Olympic Committee began the approval process to adopt similar rules for the Games. [source]

Essentially, these tests and probes are meant to define what constitutes woman.  Even if a woman has always identified as female and lived her life as a woman,  simply a complaint to the IAAF is enough to force her to endure a battery of tests and treatment that she may not want or need, to be deemed suitably female enough to be able to compete.  This is beyond intrusive and amounts to cissexist gender policing.


The moment we begin to define gender strictly through biology, we limit the definition of what it is to be 'woman'.  It has also not escaped my notice that this is something that is only happening to female athletes.  No one is looking at men for supposed feminine characteristics largely because anything considered female is not socially understood to benefit men.  We know for instance that women have a lower center of gravity and this could come in handy in sports like gymnastics or even diving, but no one is on a mission to ensure that men are suitably masculine enough to perform.

This policy comes down to policing gender and more importantly, policing womanhood. This standard that has been created will effect all women.  We already live in an extremely cissexist world and trans women are subjected to all manner of abuse daily.  Subjecting female athletes to this test suggests that there is only one true standard for womanhood and failing to meet that marks one as "other."  It encourages people to question someone's gender even when they are clearly identified as female and will give rise to more cissexism.

Woman is a broad category and any attempt to narrow it is an assault on all women.  No one should have to be subjected to invasive testing and medication that they don't need for their bodies to function naturally to run in a race, dive or participate in any sport.  This testing is divisive and any athlete who agrees with this testing to me is only worried about taking home a medal at any cost.

Stop Misgendering Brittney Griner

You longtime TransGriot readers know how much I love basketball, especially the women's game since they don't get as much love as the guys do.  You know I'll be parked in front of the television tonight awaiting the start of the NCAA women's title game between the unbeaten Baylor Lady Bears and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

I have also been keeping up with the rise of my Houston homegirl Brittney Griner ever since I first heard about her slam dunking her way through local girls high school competition as she led her Aldine Nimitz high school team to the state 5A basketball championship game.  I've also railed about the derogatory and misgendering comments that have been hurled at her by the gender ignorant because Brittney because she's not only 6'8" but also has a deep voice.

As I said in a previous post, who died and made y'all the Femininity Police?

This post was inspired by me being more than a little pissed by the crack made by J. Anthony Brown during yesterday's broadcast of the Tom Joyner Morning Show about Brittney's voice and the ensuing ignorance of people texting the show in response to it..

Bottom line is I'm tired of the gender ignorance coming from elements of you directed at Brittney and women ballers in general.  There's more than one way to present and be a woman and as my gender therapist Dr. Collier Cole once told me, women come in all shapes and sizes.

So yeah, chill with the misgendering comments aimed at Ms Griner.

A Shade Of Gray In The 'A Drag Queen Is NOT A Transsexual' Debate

RuPaul's jacked up comments injected new life to this debate that has been ongoing in the over 15 years I've been part of the trans community about drag queens and the trans umbrella.

I am well aware of the fact that some major leaders and iconic ones in this community, some activism, historical events and legislative successes were jumped off by people who back in the day were labeled as drag queens or female impersonators and jumpstarted their feminine transitions by that route.

Far too many cis people confuse drag queens with actual transsexuals and the worst offenders of that are the GL peeps in our rainbow community. 

Yeah, that pisses transsexuals off at times, but then again it's also a fact there are some transsexuals in our community historically and in our era who started off as drag performers before they had their gender epiphany and transitioned.
 
I wrote this comment in a June 2010 post in an attempt to clarify what the difference was:  

Drag queen, unless said drag queen is living 24/7/365 (366 in a leap year) as a woman, DOES NOT equal trans.

And I caught some flak for saying it, too.  But to me, that's the major determinant and a straightforward measuring stick. 

Does the drag queen in question want to live their life as a woman forever?  Is that drag queen taking the steps necessary to live your feminine life away from the rainbow nightclub?.

If you are, welcome to the trans sisterhood.

I have always believed and have seen with my own eyes people sliding along the gender line segment in a masculine or feminine direction.  That movement is true in the drag, CD and ballroom communities as well..  

If you give today's crossdresser, drag queen or ballroom femme realness queen some time to figure where they stand in their personal gender evolution, you may find out when you talk to them a few years later they have begun a full time gender transition or just came back from undergoing SRS.

Many drag queens only wear feminine attire when they perform on stage at a club and when the show is over they're back to being men like RuPaul Andre Charles.  They have no intention of swallowing estrogen or living their lives as women because they love their male lives.  

But I'm aware of people who aren't happy being male and used the drag, pageant and ballroom world experiences as a means to jump start their transitions, earn money at the same time to finance them, morph their bodies and hone their feminine personas. 

Using drag in that way also got their families used to seeing them as female when they may have had much more resistance to a regular gender transition.  

As they perfected their femininity under the guise of 'it's my job' and swallowed hormones or underwent procedures to do precisely that, deep down they knew they were trans women. 

Some were even thinking ahead and prepping themselves for life when they retired from the stage, pageant or ballroom circuit. 

I know pageant girls who hold advanced college degrees or who are studying for post circuit careers in diverse fields.

So for me, if you ask me the question about whether a drag queen is a transsexual or not,  to that one I'm answering NO because there are major differences between a transwoman and a drag queen and consistent gender presentation and commitment to living in a feminine gender role is a major defining factor in being a  transwoman.    

But if you ask me whether they belong under the trans umbrella for political reasons,  I'll say yes they do because they earned that spot for their previous and ongoing work on behalf of trans human rights along with us transwomen.

We also have to take into account people do evolve and change and it is possible for a transwoman to be a drag queen or start out as one and become a finer specimen of womanhood as well.