Gender Evolution

[Gender Evolution] • This is the first post in a series on changing perspectives on gender, and the steps many people take to subvert gender roles entirely. Interviews, personal essays, and articles on gender-playful art and activities will be included in the series. Please share your own experiences with subverting gender in the comments.

"This is Kal," my friends introduced me when I was a kid. "She doesn't wear dresses."

At the time, I assumed I was a tomboy. The majority of my friends were boys, and I enjoyed camping and playing outdoors for hours on end. At fifteen, I cut my hair short and continued my trend of boyish clothing. Sometimes, in the winter when a bulky coat obscured my curves, I was mistaken for a boy – something I found oddly thrilling.

Gender reassignment surgery didn't appeal to me because of the poor success rates, but if I could have snapped my fingers and become male, I would have. But I liked being female, too. After puberty, I reversed the gender quotient among my friends, and I found I preferred to deal with women in business transactions (a bit of gender bias that troubled me, then and now). I enjoyed dressing up from time to time, as long as I didn't aim for some sort of feminine extreme. In makeup too thick or heels too high, I did feel as if I were in drag (and not very convincing drag at that), but still, being in a female body appealed to me on several levels.

All of this left me even more confused: was I, or was I not, male on the inside? I enjoyed writing gay male erotica and found myself incapable of writing erotica with female characters; there were no good literary words for the female anatomy, and my attempts seemed doomed to either read like Hustler or Harlequin, with nothing in between. I didn't hate my body, but sometimes wished I were a little more androgynous so I could better pass as male when I felt like doing so.

Then I entered the world of sexual partners, and my confusion was compounded. My first relationship was with a woman, and we often pretended we were both male. This did not bother us, and switching back and forth seemed natural. When that relationship ended, I found myself searching for a new partner but clueless as to how to attract the kind of people I was looking for. Binary orientations have established patterns of behavior and presentation that simplify identifying others: a lesbian with short hair who wears pants is likely to be recognized as lesbian by potential partners. What's the social behavior that signifies: "I don't care what gender you are, as long as you'll pretend I'm a boy every now and then?"

Along with my first lover, I had discovered the world of "slash" – stories written about established fictional male characters having relationships with one another. (Star Trek was the first series in which slash took hold; "slashers" imagined what a relationship between Kirk and Spock would look like.) Around 98% of those who write or read slash are women, and come from all points on the orientation spectrum. I have read beautiful tales of hot man-on-man action written by lesbians and been warmed by stories of romantic love between men penned by happily-married heterosexual women with kids. As I came to realize just how big this community is, I understood that a surprisingly large segment of the population subverted gender roles one way or another. (Female authors of gay erotic fiction have been abundant and successful for decades, although gender roles have only recently become relaxed enough for some to publish under names that are not male pseudonyms.)

As I gathered more information about those on the cutting edge of gender-smashing, I began to question the term "bisexual" and its implicit nod to a binary gender system. "Bisexual" self-limits to two genders, and in its very construction seems to imply "attracted to men and also to women," rather than "attracted to people regardless of gender." I questioned terms like "monogamous" and "polyamorous" as well – if I did not prefer having one partner at a time, nor having multiple partners at the same time, but instead wished to enjoy relationships in whatever form and number made sense in that particular situation, what was the word for that?

The term "omnisexual" is gaining popularity thanks to an unexpected source: the Dr. Who spinoff Torchwood, whose main character is an immortal, highly-sexed time traveler. "We like to call him omnisexual," says actor John Barrowman. "In our day and age we know 'bisexual' as one or the other," he notes, but as the series addresses multiple sentient species, the limitation of the terminology is evident: "In the fifty-first century, where [he] is from, you can do it with anybody and you can have that intimacy and personal [connection] whether it's male or female or alien, it doesn't really matter."

The show's subversive streak isn't only on-screen; the current Dr. Who revival is helmed by openly gay television producer/writer Russell T. Davies, best known for the series Queer As Folk. Davies' desire to make the Torchwood spinoff more adult in nature was championed by the BBC, as was his choice of John Barrowman, an openly gay actor, for the lead role. It seems unlikely that such liberal staffing would be conferred in the U.S. for such high-level projects, and yet the first episode shown on BBC America was the highest-rated program in the network's history. Perhaps this indicates that the U.S. is moving toward less rigid reinforcement of gender and orientation roles.

As we explore the linguistic straitjackets surrounding orientation and unpack the meanings we have forced upon ourselves as a culture, we open up new ways of understanding ourselves independent of the baggage language carries for us individually. After several months of describing myself as having "gender issues," a friend of mine told me she thought "gender playful" was more accurate: "You don't have issues. You're perfectly happy with where you are." After some thought, I decided she was right. My own attachment to labels that had identified me in the past blinded me to the fact that I had moved beyond them.

Do you consider yourself outside the "norm" of the traditionally binary gender system? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Creative Commons-licensed photo by Transguyjay.