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Feminism and the Rejection of Masculine Identities
by Alex Kimball

In my "Introduction to Women’s Studies" class during my second semester of college, I was in a small honors section of the class with approximately thirteen young women, one of whom was my lifelong friend and godsister, another of which lived on my floor. I was easily the butchest person in the class. My professor, a wonderful teacher and hardcore feminist, was easily classifiable as a feminine woman. My classmates were all female, all feminine to some extent or another in their gender presentation, and all apparently rather liberal-minded (or at least open-minded), and all, by what they said over the course of the semester, rather feminist in their thinking. Where did I fit in this world of femininely-gendered womyn-powered feminism? How could I honestly call myself a feminist when I was sitting there with short-cropped hair, clothes almost all out of the men’s department, and the only dyke to boot? Hadn’t I co-opted a masculine identity as a way of rejecting my womanhood and embracing the role of "the oppressor" as a way of coping with my lesbian identity?

Bullshit. It was the way I often felt, surrounded by middle class white feminists (our professor was the only woman of color in the room). The feminists I have known throughout my life have been middle class white women in skirts and dresses. I was taught early on by my feminine yet frumpy mother about Seneca Falls and the early heroines of the women’s movement. It was only until I began my own investigation of history that I learned about the many passing and masculine female-bodied people that have dotted the history of feminism and, indeed, society itself.

So why is that when in supposedly feminist circles I feel like an outsider? As my professor spoke of buying shoes and makeup, and talked about how being feminine didn’t mean one couldn’t be a feminist - that in implication you didn’t have to be butch or androgynous to believe in women’s equality - I felt outside the women’s community that formed every time I set foot into a class I dearly loved. I felt like the outsider, not only for my sexuality, but for my gender presentation. As my classmates arrived in tight-fitting shirts from the Gap and stylish flare-legged jeans over their Nikes, I was in loose fitting cargo pants, a wifebeater, tee-shirt, and hiking boots. The powerlessness I felt made me quiet every time the class discussion turned to lesbianism. I only offered perhaps one or two comments in the area of class I had a bit of outside knowledge in and which most often turned into the spouting of liberal ideals rather than a real discussion.

As a child, I had this image of feminists being one of two things - nineteenth century women at Seneca Falls chatting with Frederick Douglass in their petticoats and bonnets and on the other hand the bra-burning extremists of the 1960s. My mother taught me that girls could do anything boys could do, and that women were equal with men. She was a feminist and instilled in me the ideals of the second wave of feminism. I think my tomboyishness as a child was, to my parents’ interpretation, my way of embracing the ideals they had taught me regarding women’s equality, and also who their daughter happened to be.

When I came out to my parents as a trans person, a genderqueer, my mother asked me sadly, "Didn’t I teach you that women can do anything men can?" as if my genderqueerness and transgenderism were results of a failing of hers to teach me that women are equal to men. I know that women and men are equal, that they can do the same things equally well, and I believe that fact as well. My gender has nothing to do with that. I am a feminist in all senses of the word. But the problem is, those who have masculine genders yet are born female-bodied are interpreted to often have taken on a mannish demeanor because of the oppression of women. Women who passed in history as men are seen to be escaping the oppression of women by adopting a male identity. What explanation can one offer then for the male-bodied people who passed as women and the current male-to-female transgendered and transsexual people? Do they want to co-opt women’s oppression? Why give up male privilege to be oppressed doubly as women and trans people? By adopting the name Alex and presenting my gender as a trannyboy, I am seen as rejecting my feminism, and my femininity. I am interpreted to be ashamed of my female body and socialization.

Newsflash, I’m a feminist. I never was feminine unless it was forced upon me, for instance by the uniforms of my Catholic elementary school. I am not ashamed of my female body and life, rather, I feel that it isn’t the whole of me, and some days I feel uncomfortable in my female body only because it forces the world to perceive me as feminine when I feel masculine or androgynous or non-gendered. I’m a flamey guy anyway - when I try to pass as a man, I usually am interpreted as extremely feminine, and, most likely, as a gay male. In the no-man’s land between man and woman, I’m too butch to be a "real" woman and too femme to be a "real" man, and that’s okay with me, because I don’t feel like either anyway. However, because of my masculinity in a female body, somehow this calls into question my feminist ideals. Somehow, today rejecting femininity is seen as rejecting feminism, when twenty years ago those who wore makeup and high heels were seen as bowing to the "male ideal" of the female body. I’m a boy with a female body, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a feminist.

...finis...

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