Sex and Gender Fluidity –N. Stevens

I didn’t actually start thinking about gender and sexuality as spectrums, rather than binaries, until earlier this year when I was assigned an excerpt of a Butler work as homework. We use those binaries to categorize and try to understand ourselves and our relationships, so much so that the idea of only male or only female, only heterosexual, is naturalized, “an expectation that ends up producing the very phenomenon that it anticipates” (Butler xiv). A feature in the New York Times published last month chronicles the experiences of parents of gender-queer sons: “It’s hard to put a finger on why gender identity makes such a difference to our sense of who a person is, but it does. As a parent, it’s really destabilizing when that’s pulled out from under you.” (Padawer 2). These parents all chose to support their sons’ decisions to wear dresses in public and play with conventional girls’ toys; however, they still felt they needed to send emails to their childrens’ classmates’ parents before the first day of school, and sometimes even limit the days and times their sons could wear conventional girls’ clothing.

Butler states that “the aim of [her] text was to open up the filed of possibility for gender without dictating which kinds of possibilities ought to be realized” (viiii). The more willing parents are to confirm instead of suppress their children’s early claims of gender identity, the easier it will be for cisgender and heterosexual people to accept gender as “ambiguous without disturbing or reorienting normative sexuality” (Butler xiv).

Padawer, Ruth. “What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?.” New York Times, August 2012.

Butler, Judith. “Gender Trouble.”

(Article linked to picture.)