The Last Ungendered Day

I started using the self-descriptive term "feminist" about five years ago and although my life's work to create a better world extends much longer than those five years, the lens of feminism - my feminisms, to be precise - has positively enhanced the way I experience and percieve the mystery of socialization and gender.

Tomorrow, I have my 20 week ultrasound. Before pregnancy, I didn't know that 20 weeks is a milestone. Usually with prenatal care, an "anatomical" ultrasound is done, which means Adonis and I get to see the baby growing in my uterus. We see the face, ears, feet, hands...everything...including its genitalia.

Many things have surprised me about pregnancy, but none moreso than the impact of hormones in my body. My memory has been underwater, my moods sometimes swingy, but my emotions have been fairly calm. I've felt peaceful. One of the few pieces of anxiety I've been experiencing relates to gender and finding out the sex of the baby.

I've been pretty open about my feelings concerning my pregnancy through my letters to Veronica, my unborn daughter, which I started a long time ago...well before I was pregnant. And one of my fears is not just having a child, it's about having a son. I think that my fear dwells in my uncertainty if I can teach a child and have a larger impact than the rest of the world. All the lessons this child will learn will have to be undone at some level. It begins tomorrow. It begins the moment the ultrasound technician will say "boy" or "girl."

And the barrage of texts, emails, FB messages, and comments wanting to know will begin. Along with the pink and blue bull that I don't believe in.

Facing the reality that I am carrying life within me has meant coming to the reality that I am deeply responsible for the wonder and destruction this child shall bear on the world once it enters this life and takes its first breath.

I am faced with the reality that the men who rape women once had mothers too and I wonder what they learned (or didn't) about loving and treating women, both in personal relationships and strangers. I think about the way teenage boys careen by the waterfountain at school and mock the budding bodies of womanhood and adolescence out of their own insecurity. I am, essentially, afraid of what boys because, after working with violated women and children, I know what they are capable of.

I don't want to raise a son contributing to another woman's disempowerment.

But feminism has also taught me that not only are men capable, and actually prefer, to be loving, active, energetic leaders for goodness and wholeness, it's also taught me that women are not grouped together in their fight for equality. The bullying, the cut throat competition, the hidden jealousy, the betrayal...raising a daughter now terrifies me just as much as raising a son. After I've work with violated women and children, I'm afraid I'll raise a daughter who doesn't care about her worth and values her sexuality only at the price set by society and media.

Whether son or daughter, I'm afraid she'll give up on herself.
I'm afraid, quite simply, they won't care about the world they way I do and I won't be able to stand their selfishness.
I'm afraid that when they ask me questions about what I've done to make the world better, I'll look in the mirror and only see a half-worn human and full blown coward.

Somehow, in the years I've contemplated and studied gender and advocated that all persons are equal, I'm petrified I'll find that I've only kidding myself because I know the world can and will knock me on my butt with its cruel, streamlined, flick of the wrist power to teach domination, selfishness, individualism, and greed.

Knowing this child's gender makes it all real, too real, because once I know "boy" or "girl," I'll inherit an entire set of specific strategies the world has planned to brainwash my kid. I don't have anything except what I *think* I know, a lot of guessing, intuition, and a loving partner.

I hope those seeds are enough.

Will they know how to love, truly love themselves and another human being?
Do they know the world is not fragmented and we, all of us, are inexplicably connected?
Does having this much fear dictate what kind of mother I will be?
Who will be there to save me when I'm the one in trouble?

In some funny way, I want this child to forever remain as it is right now - perfect, growing, dependant on nothing but amniotic fluid, oxygen, and my voice. Not only do I fear about this child hurting, but I'm afraid of the harm the child will be capable of doing as well.

Tomorrow I will know if I am having a son or daughter.

It's A Boy, It's a Girl

There's no better dumping ground for socialized gender stereotypes than the ears of a pregnant woman. For a womyn like myself, it raises my blood pressure to listen to all the gendered talk and so I see writing about my pregnancy as one of the necessary exercises to stay sane and keep the kid healthy.

Sharing your pregnancy with others is like an invitation for the worst gender assumptions to pass through my ears. There's nothing, I repeat nothing, more annoying to me right now than the comments that sound like misogyny on steroids.

"It's just better to have a boy. You'll worry less."

"I wanted my first born to be a boy. 'Cause after that, you can just relax and not worry about what the others will be."

"Girls just are too much."

"It'll be better if you have a boy. With a girl, it's just, it's so...it's so much more worrying."

What is this equation in birth? Labor + boy = relief
while Labor + girl = stress

Let's go past all the generalizations (all BS in my opinion anyway) about girls spending more money when they grow up, you'll have to deal with more emotional crises, you'll worry more about violence, etc...

I see both boys and girls as precious and vulnerable little things who will look up at me and not know left from right, evil from good, right from wrong...and they'll learn what from me? --> That because she was born female, I will worry more about her being a victim of violence? That the world will treat her less, pay her, view her less because she was born with a vagina? What impact does that have on how she confronts the world? Will she fight it or believe it?

And what will I teach my son? I presumably don't worry about him because he was born with a penis and we all know that the world prizes that much more than if he were born my daughter. Maybe he'll have it tough from time to time, but he'll never worry about his safety or getting raped or drugged because he's a male.

The reality of the world is not hidden from me. I see misogyny, I see the violence, I see who takes the brunt of poverty, brutality, trafficking, and abuse. I understand how the world will treat my child differently based on its genitalia. I get it. But how does knowing how the world mistreats girls and women lead to the thought it's better to parent a boy?


How radical is my mothering if I just walk the stereotyped line and accept the world as it is, not as I want it to be? Am I more of a mother if I protect more, worry more if it's a girl? Or does that make me a coward?

My deepest fear is not in having a girl. I feel like I would know how to raise a girl because I identify womyn. I've never been a boy, I've never been a man. I don't know how to teach masculinity in healthy, loving ways except in what I imagine it SHOULD be. My fear is that I do have a son and he grows up, eating the garbage available from media, peers, and school. And instead of regurgitation, he'll swallow it, whole. And in my naivety of not knowing how to raise a man, he'll grow to eventually be one of those fathers telling a young mother that it's best to first have a son than to ever have a daughter.

That's more terrifying to me than having a daughter.

Written in My Plain Gendered Language

Since my induction to the feminist blogosphere, I've put much time into narrowing my focus. Widespread blogging seems too general, unfocused, and leaves me with little direction. Mostly, I don't feel I learn as much as I want when I blog across the spectrum.

About a year ago, I decided to move forward in specific issues relating to feminism - defining "radical," exploring sexual violence, faith, media, and womyn of color.

Every once in a while though, I wonder if focusing on "feminism" somehow limits my exploration of "gender."

How does that focus change me, my writing, when and if I write: I want to explore feminism vs. I want to explore gender.

Is it the same thing?

Before I would have emphatically stated yes.

Now, I would emphatically distinguish that mainstream feminism and academic courses absolutely ignore the entirety of gender as an issue. Often times, feminism is conflated with the upward political, class, and elitist advancement of White women. Somehow, in some contorted, quiet way, I've often thought that gender has gotten lost in feminism. Sure, it's pointed out when women, particularly women of privilege are abused, oppressed, or violated, but, for the most part, feminism and gender, ironically, are often not paired together in headliners.

I'm thinking, specifically, of the transgendered lives and experiences that I, admittedly, know very little about.

I am not and do not identify transgender and have often felt like my understanding is extremely limited by my slow understanding and deconstruction of socialization when it comes to gender roles. For as much as I analyze the experience of womyn of color, I often fail at pushing myself to explore the experience of transgendered womyn of color. Semantically, it's easy to ask, "What about the transgender folks?" But to truly be an individual open to learning the struggles and causes of the transgendered population, the questions must conquer the fear and confusion.

And so, as someone suggested to write about feminism as it relate[s] to transgender, here's my honest reply:

I don't know. You tell me.

And I write that with as much respect and honesty as a womyn of color who once asked how feminism relates to US-born Filipinas with immigrant parents. I write that as someone who asks how feminism relates to a late-birthed sexual awakening and an even delayed political consciousness. How does feminism relate to transgender lives?

If I do not live a transgendered life, do not know the full extent of the pain and violence and discrimination suffered by transgendered womyn, I will not know how feminism relates to them, or even IF it relates to them.

Despite what is being written in the history of mainstream feminists in the westernized, classist world of iconic femmies with self-serving agendas, the truth is that feminism has the power to transform consciousness and spirit. It has the ability to challenge our very definitions of humanity and rights. I believe, however, that it must arrive in the grain of relationship and a shitload of humility.

Feminism, the study of women's lives, excludes no one...in theory. Yet, we don't live theoretically, do we?

We live individually, often to own detriment. We live so individualistically that we fail to even understand gender within feminsm and we fail ourselves. We fail as writers, activists, listeners...we fail as people, I think, when we forego others. Feminism has long bypassed transgendered womyn. I write that as someone who only sees transgender issues written about when someone has been slain. I write that as someone whose blog only mentions transgender issues a handful of times.

Truthfully, my goal as a writer is to point out the holes. Most people mistake that for seeing the negative, or constantly bitching about what's wrong. But there are enough fans of mainstream feminism and not enough compassionate critics who long to see it do better than what it is currently doing. And the "doing" isn't by feminism itself, but by the students and practitioners who claim to be activists within a "Movement." And if the students and practitioners are happy with feminism, we are in big trouble.

It isn't just about transgendered folks being ignored or how the issues are only mentioned in the blogosphere by way of violence and brutality, it's the complete disregard for any gritty issue of gender when it involves unfamiliar territory. This is true for feminism as it relates to the disability movement, transnational or international womyn, immigration, faith, Katrina...the list goes on.

Feminism does not make itself relevant to folks like you and me. We must make it so.

In other words, your voice, my voice is needed to explain why.

Steinem Calls Gender Over Race

Jenn's got a great post, Pitting Race Against Gender, that gives some thought to Gloria Steinem's article that was featured in the New York Times this morning, "Women are Never Frontrunners."

Steinem basically says that if a womyn had Obama's credentials, she would not be given the same weight due to gender. True dat.

That's not what I have a problem with. "What worries me" is this statement: "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life..." but then asserts, "I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest."

Spoken like a true 2nd wave White mainstream feminist "icon" from the New York Times the morning of the New Hampshire primary.

She argues with the following:

"Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were
allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power,
from the military to the boardroom, before any women..."

Right. Because the right to VOTE being given to black men over a century ago proves that gender overwhelms race. Yes, let's focus on how White women were restricted the right to vote while ALL Black slaves were restricted the right to live. Let's focus on the few men of color who have "ascended into positions of power" and not the holistic picture of how race and gender interface for all communities of color. There may be some gende/race arguments for the political scene, but that is quite different from making a statement that gender is the most restricting force in America.

Look, I'm not going to go head to head with Steinem and argue what is most pressing for womyn in America - race or gender. What I do know is that as a US womyn of color living in this country is that the two are so inexplicably interlaced that I resist ANY individual that pitts once against the other, especially a White mainstream feminist. What I find most often, too, is women like Steinem (White liberal women) call gender over race. Let's rally all the women together once more because we're all being denied the right to vote and the men of color are making it into the boardroom before any of us are.

There's a reason why I use the word gender/ace as one entity. I cannot separate the two. But, I'm a womyn of color, my opinion probably doesn't fare well next to Steinem. Once again, gender is the tool being used as the great equalizer among women.

Let's look past the military and the boardroom, which Steinem quotes as two examples of Black men's ascension into positions of power. Let's look at economics among women. Take a look at the US economic standing between white women and compare to the womyn of color. I think that tells you everything you need to know about the power of race and gender.

When womyn of color are not the suffering majority from poverty, illiteracy, poor health and education; when I witness White womyn truly listen to womyn of color and learn how to be true allies; when feminism and gender is not used as a big umbrella to bypass issues of racism - THEN I will read the New York Time article again and consider her points. Until then, I find it ludacris to make such statements as Steinem. If you wanna talk gender/ace issues, let's talk about it in the real way that real people experience them. But, I guess for this conversation, we're focusing on the privileged - Clinton and Obama - and ignoring the real gender/ace dynamics of the marginalized.

Thanks, Jenn, for the link.