Gender Muggle Privilege

[bcholmes]

Do you ever feel like you have, or do you reflect on having, "normal gender" privilege?

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

a fair bit of the time, actually. Somewhere around here I have a button I had made up at a con that reads "Just because I'm monogamous... and involved with a man... doesn't mean I'm straight." I run up against it a lot in the Toronto bi-community, enough that I stopped hanging out there much - it was like I had to prove my street cred somehow, but 15 years of active bisexuality, activism in bi, SM and poly communities and all that crap means nothing here because *here*, I'm involved with a straight, vanilla, white male. I drifted back into poly for a bit, but it really wasn't suiting my primary relationship with Chris and I won't do it again.

End result; I get treated like I'm a poseur or something here in Toronto (which has the worst queer community I've lived in for this sort of assumption), while drag kings in Atlanta hit me up for web dev on queer activism sites, and the Bi-Resource Center in Boston has been contacting me about designing the new resource guide (woot! design with an ISBN on Amazon!). Here, though, I'm somehow not 'queer' enough. This has made me think, a lot, about the fact that I do probably look straight to anyone who doesn't want to look any closer; they're going to assume that I'm running the default OS in here. And while that's likely to my advantage, I don't particularly want the 'privilege' (I don't *not* want it; I actually just want it not to be there at all).

*nods*

[tormenta.livejournal.com]

I admit to being young, white - for that matter, tall, leggy, and blondish, and femmy too, for all that it matters. The dual advantages of being conventionally pretty attractive and being femmy mean that I can do anything Nicole Kidman can do.

Of course, getting respect from anyone for having brains takes a little more effort. And, on the other side of the coin, it's harder to break into the communities that I would like to be in: because obviously young leggy blonds shouldn't have a thought in their heads or capabilities beyond "looking good."

Gender priveledge for women is a hard thing: On the one hand, transgressive gender is hard: on the other hand, the experience of male priveledge at any point in your life, or the ability to present as, if not male, then at least as "not your average woman" lend advantages to gender-queers that I really envy.

It also makes breaking into queer communities hard. There's enourmous temptation to date men more often, hang in het S/M communities, and restrict my bi interations to folk I know, just because they are 'easier' social situations for me. Not that I know what that means.

Re: *nods*

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

on the other hand, the experience of male priveledge at any point in your life, or the ability to present as, if not male, then at least as "not your average woman" lend advantages to gender-queers that I really envy.

That's a really interesting point, and well said.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sometimes. More when I'm in some kind of situation where I confront an authority figure and get treated with kid gloves. Sometimes when I get positive sexual attention from folks and realize I don't have to worry about what happens when I'm "off" or not quite what they expect. Often when I go into public restrooms, oddly enough. I have the privelege of not getting yelled at for using the men's room if I really really have to, frex, and of not being looked at sideways in the women's room (which is also a privilege of not being the mother of a little boy, I think).

I...don't really think of these as privileges, so much as things everyone should and could have if things were right (except the authority thing), but I'm sort of skritchily aware that other people's [rights] aren't as readily observed. (I tend to think of privileges as a zero-sum thing. They aren't privileges if everyone can have them without anyone losing something. How do you think of them?)

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

There's a theory of privilege and social rank that asserts that if a person can do something or be in a situation -- use a men's room, say -- without thinking about whether or not you can, then this is a privilege for them. I can use a men's room without hesitation. Other people can't. That's a privilege of mine. I can walk from the BART station to my house after dark without fear. Other people don't. That's a privilege of mine. I can walk up the stairs to my front door. Other people don't. That's a privilege of mine.

To answer BC's question, Do you ever feel like you have, or do you reflect on having, "normal gender" privilege? I would have to answer "only occasionally; nowhere near enough."

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I guess I've been thinking a few things about the privilege. First is related to a link about white privilege that firecat posted in her journal a while back. Jensen speaks of "the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means."

There's also a passage from one of my favourite films of all time, Sans Soleil. There's a sequence in which the director, Chris Marker, has filmed a shot of volcanic ash in Iceland, and wonders how he might use it:

I saw it immediately as a setting for science fiction: the landscape of another planet. Or rather no, let it be the landscape of our own planet for someone who comes from elsewhere, from very far away. I imagine him moving slowly, heavily, about the volcanic soil that sticks to the soles. All of a sudden he stumbles, and the next step it's a year later. He's walking on a small path near the Dutch border along a sea bird sanctuary.

That's for a start. Now why this cut in time, this connection of memories? That's just it, he can't understand. He hasn't come from another planet he comes from our future, four thousand and one: the time when the human brain has reached the era of full employment. Everything works to perfection, all that we allow to slumber, including memory. Logical consequence: total recall is memory anesthetized. After so many stories of men who had lost their memory, here is the story of one who has lost forgetting, and who—through some peculiarity of his nature—instead of drawing pride from the fact and scorning mankind of the past and its shadows, turned to it first with curiosity and then with compassion. In the world he comes from, to call forth a vision, to be moved by a portrait, to tremble at the sound of music, can only be signs of a long and painful pre-history. He wants to understand. He feels these infirmities of time like an injustice, and he reacts to that injustice like Ché Guevara, like the youth of the sixties, with indignation. He is a Third Worlder of time. The idea that unhappiness had existed in his planet's past is as unbearable to him as to them the existence of poverty in their present.

Naturally he'll fail. The unhappiness he discovers is as inaccessible to him as the poverty of a poor country is unimaginable to the children of a rich one. He has chosen to give up his privileges, but he can do nothing about the privilege that has allowed him to choose.

For me, privilege usually describes something that is a safe enough distance to be able to ignore it. You have privilege when you choose whether or not you want to consider the implications.

If I can channel Kate Bornstein for a moment: privilege is when you can decide to transgress gender, and lack of priviledge is when gender transgresses all over you.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Sure. I feel kind of guilty about it, but I don't know how to shed it...

[deepforestowl.livejournal.com]

yes I do, but it is more often than not situational. I notice it far more here in Japan where women are more oppressed than back home in the states. I totally recognize that I get away with a lot of things because I am a foreigner whereas if I was a Japanese woman I would never get away with the things that I have gotten away with.

I have felt the same way in America but only slightly. Though things are by no means equal there, the balance I think is far better. Normally I just see myself as a person rather than a gender.

[rosefox]

Oh yes, often. It's frustrating. I both want to be seen for whoever/whatever I am in the moment and appreciate the safety of passing.

[skylark-10.livejournal.com]

certainly. i'm still actually surprised every time i receive evidence of my own passing, because my own assumptions (and values) are that "everyone knows". and every time it's demonstrated, i am aware of just where i sit in the social order, and reflect on which limitations or expansions of my privilege are a consequence of my passing - or of my *not* passing.

i'm well aware, you see, that i live in something of a bubble. i pass enough not to be taken as a sideshow freak on my daily travel into and out of the city, but i also know that the "leakage" that are an inevitable consequence of my features, stature and manner may in some way play into the retention of a kind of social privilege.

the normal gender privilege means that i don't have to worry about my safety or my job, as much as someone who might not have so much. it means i can "get away" with some things i might not otherwise. but i'm also pretty certain that my *class* confers or modulates some of these effects, loosening the constraints on my gender performance a little.

[littlesir.livejournal.com]

It seems I do. People rarely question my gender these days. (I've finally stopped looking so androgynous!) People assume that I'm male. Although, I really have to question the 'male privilege' concept I have been raised with. From where I'm sitting, the only 'privilege' is that people expect me to be going into a male-dominated career field, rather than praising me for being 'brave' enough to pursue it.

[linkey.livejournal.com]

There is still people who do question your gender very much, it is those that you run from who question you very muchly. People rarely question my gender these days - is not correct at all.

You say you people watch well people watch you too and see a different person all the time, and growing up to be someone is being a decoy of what you really are.

[littlesir.livejournal.com]

"People rarely question my gender these days - is not correct at all."

Okay, well shall we replace 'people' with 'random strangers I deal with on a day-to-day basis', which is what I originally intended when writing the above comment. I apologise for not making my point clear enough for you.

[linkey.livejournal.com]

you critise others but not yourself don't you. random strangers that you deal with on a day to day basis are you talking about your work only there! Cause that is where you are only just passable not from my view but from others that I hear from.

The question is why would I accept your "apologise for not making my point clear enough for you</i" speech. You are sommeone who I cared about alot and what the hell is happening to that?

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Take your fight to another journal, please.

The issue is over.

[linkey.livejournal.com]

Sorry for that but the other lj user made a comment that wasn't right in the first place as I had known them. But as my title says the issue of it is over between us. Sorry for this to happen on your lj post.

S.J.B-D.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I don't really think a whole lot about gender priviledge, which may in fact be just a way of saying that I do enjoy "normal gender" priviledge. I'm male-identifying and male-chromosomal and male-equipped, so I would imagine so.

However, I'm also weird about the ideas of "priviledge" in some senses. I grew up half-Pakistani in very, very caucasian circles. I never felt descriminated against, so maybe I just wasn't. However, I didn't even realize that I was part of a visible minority until my late teens when I was confronted with an, "Are you a member of a visible minority?" checkbox on a job application form. It was literally not something that I'd ever thought of before. It blew my mind. It altered my reality perception in some ways. I still don't think I suffer any racial discrimination at all, or ever have, but I wonder if, growing up, part of my perception thereof was because it never occurred to me that it was something I *could* be discriminated against for. When it's not one of the available mental slots, of course actions and behaviours never get filed there.

My experiences with weight sometimes make me also wonder how much my lack of perception of an issue there caused there to *be* no issue there. I only get teased or catcalled or mocked or discriminated against due to my weight when I'm feeling vulnerable about it to begin with. While I'm not saying that discrimination and persecution aren't real -- they're very real -- I think that there's a class of "casual discriminator" that's perhaps more common where the people are just ordinary bullies who are looking for any opening or chink in the armour to sieze upon.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

These days, I'm more likely than I used to be to use being female to my advantage. Being 5'2", I'm very glad that I'm okay with being female, because I'd really hate to be male at this height. I don't know how I'd feel about my gender if I were taller.

[jeliza]

Yes, quite a lot lately. In most of my life, my gender presentation has been ambiguous, even when I didn't want it to be. I was perceived as at least a dyke (which isn't a problem) when I wasn't mistaken for a boy (which wasn't a problem when it was intentional, but when I'd put a lot of effort into attempting to be feminine...) But in the last few years, probably as a side effect of aging, I've started to look ... normal. Soccer Mom-ish, even. And to some extent, conventionally pretty. And it has really changed the way the way strangers react to me. Frankly, it often pisses me off how much more pleasant people can be now that I'm no longer a challenge to their worldviews.

[starstraf.livejournal.com]

yes but probally only because I have a trans partner. I never have to worry what the bathroom situation is like, or if there is a long slow line. I can throw on whatever clothes strike my fancy and not worry if they are gender role enough for the current sitution. And I never have to worry about having to present as the gender i'm not feeling.

[linkey.livejournal.com]

I have questions on what other people think of which gender I am, even tho most of the times I am referred as being female in which I am. The only problem is that when I have to grow my facial hair to have treatment on it some people do raise questions. I know from one case that alot of people that littlesir will not accept, that they have had questions about him either being male of female and some thought female, until they came and asked me about him.

I don't need to fit into the "normal gender" at all, as I know who I am and everyone who knows me who I am, but I don't need to be forced to do a gender role such as forced work. But it has been amazing to see that we are starting to have gender neutral jobs that everyone can acheive.