Back to school...

As a new school term and year looms, we are once again faced with the normal problems that beset every parent. Does the uniform still fit? Have they got all the school equipment they need? Then we all face the trauma; the apprehension as the unknown approaches the child. New teachers, new subjects, new classmates, will friends have changed over this extended holiday?

Like all parents, we have to deal with these problems. Unlike other parents, we have to face another problem and so does our daughter: being a lesbian couple with a daughter. The following article sets out the issues faced by many Back to School in the Gay Household.

We knew that many of these problems would arise, so we met with the headmaster when our daughter started in the school and advised him of the situation but the school were not prepared. I provided some information that was circulated to the teachers so that they knew what the situation was and how best to support our daughter. Since they have never had openly lesbian parents for one of their children, they had never thought about many of the implications.

Now preparing the school and preparing our daughter were critical in making her school life work. She is a very poplar girl, with lots of friends. Children talk about parents and our daughter had the strength and ability to tell her friends that she has two mummies. Some of her friends even think it is really ‘cool’.
Of course, I would be lying if I pretended that there were no problems: getting the school records right took a few attempts, but they got there in the end. We are lucky in the UK in that adoption by the non-biological mother has been allowed for some time and the new law means that both partners in a Civil Partnership can be named as parents on the child’s birth certificate now: it is a pity that option is only recent as it would have saved many heartaches in getting adoptions sorted. It did mean that the school had to acknowledge both of us as parents.

Then there are words: ‘lesbians are disgusting’ was one thing said to our daughter. Another that she hears too frequently are phrases like ‘that is so gay’ or ‘don’t be so gay’. The word ‘gay’ being used as a derogatory word, particularly against boys. Even seeing two of the girls hugging brings shouts of ‘lesbians’.
But the worst problem of all started with a word our daughter used when talking to some of her friends. Another child overheard this word, a word that was so dreadful, so very unacceptable, that the child, at 9 years old, had no idea what this word meant. And the word? The dreaded ‘L’ word. Yes, our daughter caused a storm by referring to her parents as lesbians.

There is much to do. Schools do not have the resources nor the knowledge to address the issues of children from lesbian and gay households, nor from single parent households. In these days of much greater family variance, it is really important that these needs are addressed.

When is equality not equality?

What exactly is equality? I always thought that it meant that everyone should be treated equally. That is, everyone should be treated in exactly the same manner as everyone else. It seems sensible to me, after all, why should a non-white person be treated any differently to a white person? A Christian different to a Jew? A woman different to a man? A gay man or a lesbian different to a straight person?

Why should anyone be treated differently to anyone else?

But they are. Look at the Government statistics for employment rates for disadvantaged groups and see the problem. Of course, I am primarily interested in gender discrimination. Gender discrimination in employment is still very strong. If it wasn’t then the statistics quoted in my post The Gender Pay and Opportunities Gap would not exist.

Forty years of gender equality legislation and it still does not exist in the work place. Of course, the reason for this, or so we are led to believe, is because women do not desire careers, but make other choices in life.

Remembering that legislation is in place, then how can discrimination still exist? How does it happen?

Take a simple example of two people of the same age that leave school, go to university, and then start a job at the same time. Both of these people achieved first class honours from UK universities and found jobs in the same department and office. They both started work in the same week and come from middle class families in Surrey. Two very similar people. Except that I forgot to mention that one of them is female and the other male.

Initially, they go on intensive training at the same time and pass their professional qualifications at the same time through the intensive programme. Then they really settle down into work. They are assigned to the same management group. Work is allocated by the senior manager in the department.

Initially, they are both given similar cases to work on, sometimes even collaborating. The only noticeable difference is that the woman clears her workload and leaves the office at the end of the working day, whereas the man tends to stay longer into the evening, as he has not kept up with the work rate.

More complex cases start to arrive, and a choice has to be made as to who should get these cases. The Senior manager allocating the cases does not intentionally discriminate, but chooses the man to take n the more complex cases. He struggles with the more complex work and extends his working hours to cope. The woman starts to seek additional work as she is completing her less complex cases in a faster time than originally.

Now appraisal time arrives and the man is rated higher than the woman, after all, he is taking on more complex work than the woman. This seems fair, after all, he is doing more complex work. But is it fair? Why is the woman not doing some of the more complex cases? Why is she not being given the same opportunities as the man?

Of course, this means that the man is promoted sooner than the woman and all of a sudden, the differences between their career paths becomes clear. What started as two equals soon changes simply because of the actions of one person.

The senior manager allocating the work did not intentionally discriminate, but chose the man as he happened to be still working outside normal working hours – working late because he was behind. ‘More dedicated’ was one of the comments from the senior manager. ‘Determined to get on’ was another. Never was the ‘struggling to keep up’ ever thought about. Of course, every Friday, the man was down at the bar drinking with the other men, whereas the woman headed home to prepare to go out. After all, work clothes are not party clothes for a young woman.

Equal, but unequal. Equal in terms of ability, but unequal in terms of opportunity.

The Gender Pay and Opportunities Gap

The Equal Pay Act 1970 introduced the requirement for equal pay between men and women where they are employed on equal work. This has been followed by a number of other pieces of legislation requiring equal treatment regardless of gender.

Despite all of this legislation, there remains a significant difference in pay and opportunities for male and female employees. But are these differences due to discrimination or are they due to differences in personal choices? Even if the reasons for these differences are due to differences in personal choices between male and female employees, are these voluntary or enforced choices?

The gender pay gap still exists and, in 2010, the Government is seeking to introduce additional legislation to address this inequality. The 2009 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings(1) revealed a 25% difference in average full time earnings for male and female employees. A carer benchmarking survey in the Accountancy profession published in 2010(3) revealed that males earn 60% more than their female counterparts.

The pay gap is not, however, the full story. A survey for the Guardian Newspaper in August 2009(2) revealed that, while 90% of companies surveyed had an equality policy, only 3% of executive directors are female. This suggests that opportunities for female employees are less than for their male counterparts. The Bow Group produced a report(7) claiming that 36% of boys stay on at school to take GCE/A levels compared with 44% of girls. This difference questions why there are fewer women making it the highest levels of business.

There are claims that the gender pay gap is not the result of discrimination, but due to other factors such as qualifications, work experience, values and preferences. Shackleton states that “Employer discrimination is not a major factor: the size of the pay gap depends on a range of factors, many of which are probably beyond the influence of government as they depend on the values, preferences and choices of individual men and women.”(4). He goes on to say that “When attitudes and preferences, as well as objective characteristics such as work experience and qualifications, are brought into the picture, however, most of the pay gap can be explained without reference to discrimination”(5). The higher number of women that are part time employees may contribute to the apparent reduced opportunities available to them. In the 2009 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings(1), 89% of male employees worked full time compared to 59% of females.

Other research by the Fawcett Society “shows that whilst legislation has eradicated some of the most blatant forms of discrimination, it has not been entirely successful in changing hearts and minds. The widening pay gap, decline in women leaders, and resurgence in workplace ‘sex-object culture’ are all testament to the fact that equal opportunity policies and discrimination legislation alone are ill-equipped to close the gender equality gap”(6).

With a significant amount of legislation already in place, will additional legislation improve reduce the gender pay and opportunity gaps? Is it discrimination or other factors that is responsible for these differences? If it is the latter, is this due to voluntary personal choice, or is it the result of other factors?


(1) http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/ashe1109.pdf
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/23/women-business-harriet-harman-equality
(3) a Career Benchmarking Study released by the ICAEW and recruiters Robert Half. http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/accountancyage/news/2258629/female-accountants-paid-less
http://www.roberthalf.co.uk/portal/site/rh-uk/menuitem.b0a52206b89cee97e7dfed10c3809fa0/?vgnextoid=8a43852d76d17210VgnVCM1000003c08f90aRCRD&vgnextchannel=0198ad657c762110VgnVCM1000000100007fRCRD
(4) J R Shackleton (p104) Should We Mind the Gap? http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-book442pdf?.pdf
(5) J R Shackleton (p12) http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-book442pdf?.pdf
(6) Just Below the Surface: gender stereotyping, the silent barrier to equality in the modern workplace? http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/documents/Just%20Below%20the%20Surface.pdf
(7) Boys: A School Report by Chris Skidmore http://www.bowgroup.org/harriercollectionitems/BoysASchoolReport%5B1%5D.doc

Gender - What is important?

There are three elements to gender: physical gender, gender identity, gender role and presentation.

Gender Identity
This is internal to the individual. It is about how they consider (or do not consider) themselves. It is entirely hidden from the world, as it is completely impossible to see into someone’s head. What a person considers their own gender identity to be is irrelevant.

Why irrelevant? Because you do not interact with the remainder of the world based on your gender identity. In fact, most people do not even give their gender identity a second thought. Certainly it is not a male/female binary; a black or white choice, but is an infinite variety of shades in all directions, not just female and male. I am not, therefore, even interested in what a person’s gender identity is.

Physical Gender
This is just the physical body that you have and how it compares to the biological ‘standard’ of either male or female. Of course, this is assumed to be a binary, but it may actually be something uch more complicated than that. There are far too many intersex conditions that lay waste to the idea of a physical gender binary. There are many conditions which mean that a person’s body may not fit wholly within the binary. We must, therefore, consider physical gender (or sex) to be a large spectrum as opposed to a binary. Most people, however, simplistically see that external male genitals means physical sex is male and lack of external male genitals makes the individual female.

So far, I have concluded that people can think of themselves (gender identity) across a spectrum of identities and they may have a body that could be on a spectrum with female at one end and male at the other. Female and male are just the extremes of the identity. An obvious question is whether or not there is any correlation between physical gender and gender identity, but I suspect that is a question that may prove impossible to fully answer.

Gender role and presentation
This is the way that a person interacts with the world. It is the way they dress and talk. It is about their mannerisms and deportment. This is the element of gender that actually matters. It matters, because it is how we interact with the world and how the world interacts with us.

In a world in which we have divided everything into a simplistic binary of female and male, we also have divided gender roles and presentation into a binary which correlates with a person’s assigned physical sex, based upon their external genitals.

In countries such as the UK, there is an expectation that women will dress in skirts and feminine clothing; that they will be demure and submissive. Men are expected to be dominant and aggressive, to wear more rugged clothing and certainly not skirts. In Scotland, the traditional dress is a kilt. Call it a skirt at your peril: it is a kilt NEVER a skirt. There are many more elements as well, such as makeup, shoes, ways of talking and so on. There are all these different traits and clothing choices, all of which appear to be divided between male and female.

But why are they divided? Why is it wrong for a man to wear a skirt? What is it that means a woman is demure and a man aggressive? Is this something biologically programmed into us before birth, or is it something that is constructed from societal expectations?

Rape - a Man's right?

“If you wouldn't have been running around with those little dresses on it would have never happened.” That is not the response you would expect from your father when you are raped, but that is what is reported in this story.

It is sad that any person would make such a comment, let alone a relative. It does, however, highlight some of the problems still to be resolved.

When a woman is raped it is NEVER her fault: yes means yes and no means no. It is that simple. If a woman does not consent, then it is rape. The person at fault for that rape is her attacker.

I covered my feelings on this fairly recently, following the rapes at the Latitude Festival Why are women blamed for getting themselves raped?, but it just keeps coming up.
I also talked about clothes What is wrong with the clothes I wear? And here we are once again with a story that blames women for putting themselves at risk because of the clothes that they wear.

Of course, we are told that men just cannot help it, after all, it is just their natural reaction to a pretty woman to want to have sex with her. I don’t have personal knowledge of those kind of feelings, so I cannot easily challenge it, but I can challenge the idea that people should act on that feeling.

Let’s be honest, many of us at one time or another have felt jealous of someone else. Perhaps it is the new car, the money, the house or the job. Perhaps it is their partner, or their looks. All sorts of things raise emotions in us that may make us think “why should I not have that as well?” But do we act on it? Laws help, but our moral codes are the ultimate determiner of our actions. Most of us do not succumb to these temptations. Why should rape be any different? Just because it is sex? Because men have an inalienable right to have sex with women, whether or not the women truly wishes to do so

An inalienable right? How can I claim that many men believe that they have this right? Take a recent story Councils pay for disabled to visit prostitutes and lap-dancing clubs from £520m taxpayer fund. The paper is making a point about council’s wasting money, but that is not what I want to focus on. I want to focus upon the idea that this 21 year old man with learning issues had an inalienable right to have sex with women, and because he could not get a woman himself, he should be able to seek sex with a prostitute. Where does this right come from? The paper reports his social worker as stating that “Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights.”

That is deeply worrying: it is a breach of human rights for a man to be denied sex with a woman. Not only is it a woman’s fault for wearing the wrong clothes, but it is also a breach of human rights for a man to be denied sex with a woman. Does that mean that rape must be a woman’s fault? After all, she cannot say no to a man’s inalienable right to have sex with a woman.

Male or female, straight or lesbian?

In view of some things that have happened recently, I needed to share these thoughts. The confusion between sexuality and gender identity can be very dangerous things.

Sexuality and gender identity are very different things. Now I am well aware that many transgendered people report a significant improvement in their life if they transition, however, it is not always the case. I have been surprised at the number of cases where individuals have gone through gender transition only to revert back to their birth gender, or to adopt a role outside the gender binary.

For a majority of people, they have no issue with their gender or their sexuality. For most people, gender is something they rarely even consider. It just is. They adopt a gender role and presentation in accordance with their sex. Further, they adopt the sexuality considered most socially acceptable: heterosexual. The majority of people are highly content with their assignment in the gender binary and with the idea of only having sexual relationships with those of the opposite gender.

But things do not always go right.

What happens when you start finding someone of the same gender attractive? How easy is it to accept that love?

Embracing a sexuality that is considered outside of the normal can be difficult. Society prepares us for the concept of a relationship consisting of a man and a woman. Everywhere you look, this is the pattern. I had to take task with the headmaster at a local school over the lack of single parent knowledge, let alone same sex parenting! From their earliest days, children are taught that normality is a mother, father and generally 2 children. The media streams the concept of heterosexuality continuously. Now, as the majority of people are heterosexual, perhaps there should be more images of heterosexuality, but why not present positive images of loving relationships that are free from gender constraints?

Is it any wonder that we grow up believing that the only acceptable relationships are between one man and one woman?

That leads me to a story of one woman who grew up in a very homophobic family. The story is not pleasant as a lack of acceptance of her sexuality led to permanent damage to her body. As she reached puberty, she began to realise that she had an attraction to women. But her socialisation had taught her that love is between a man and a woman. This cannot be right: one woman loving another? The tension created between her feelings and her socialisation made her acceptance of being lesbian a real issue.

The tension caused massive internal turmoil: “a relationship is between a man and a woman and I love a woman”. Reconciling that problem can prove difficult. Most of us today see the solution as simple: she is lesbian. It seems straight forward enough. However, when you are attracted to women and you are told that a relationship is between a man and a woman, not between two women, then if you cannot reject that view of relationships, then you have the choice of ignoring your true feelings, or questioning your gender.

She did try overcoming her sexuality hang-ups and even entered a full blown relationship with another woman. That relationship proved a disaster and, once again, she ascribed it to her sexuality being wrong. Of course, her subsequent relationship with a man was doomed to failure, despite her trying her hardest to be a “proper wife”.

In total despair, failed relationships with both women and men, knowing her attraction to women and believing that relationships should be between a man and a woman, she started questioning what was wrong with her. She had rejected the traditional female gender role and appearance in her teens. She even took pride in being identified as male on occasion. Mixing in a world with some more unusual people led her to a chance contact with a man, who had transitioned after being assigned female at birth. Finally, an answer. It solved everything. As a man, it was right for her to fancy women. Her appearance needed almost no work to allow her to be accepted as a man.

Now gender reassignment for female to male patients is undoubtedly a little more complex than for male to female patients, although, conversely, the hormone situation is simpler. Getting on a treatment programme was a real issue. Fighting through GPs, psychiatrists and gender specialists. Of course, her appearance, her mannerisms and her intelligence were no match for these specialists, who, to be quite frank, are a little needy in terms of understanding their patients. After 6 months of fighting, the first medical elements of her transition started with testosterone injections. The testosterone had an effect both in terms of changes to her body and to her mind. And it was these changes to her mind that made her realise that it was a mistake and she re-transitioned. From female to male and then back to female.

She had confused her gender identity with her sexuality, simply because of her socialisation and, in the process, did irreparable damage to her body.

She has since rebuilt her life as a woman and has overcome her sexuality issues.

Note, the above is a brief summary. There are other factors which affected her life, but do not add to the account given.

I am a Survivor

Everybody knows what domestic violence (DV) is, don’t they? So why do the victims of DV put up with it? Most people do think they know what DV is but do they really understand it? I suspect that they have little idea. If they did, then they would know the answer to the second question.

I know what DV is. I am a survivor. I have survived for over 20 years now. The actual violence finally gave me the strength to leave, but the DV continued even after I left the ‘family home’. That may surprise many people.

Let’s look a little deeper at what DV really is. Most people I have spoken consider it to be things like violence against the individual. A man hits his wife, that is what DV is. WRONG.

DV is much more complex than that. A definition from “Women’s Aid:
"In Women's Aid's view domestic violence is physical, sexual, psychological or financial violence that takes place within an intimate or family-type relationship and that forms a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. This can include forced marriage and so-called 'honour crimes'. Domestic violence may include a range of abusive behaviours, not all of which are in themselves inherently 'violent'."
The final part of that is important not all of which are in themselves inherently ‘violent’.

Take my situation as an example. I was the primary earner, so should have been able to be independent. In fact, when I finally left, finding somewhere to live was fairly straightforward. In fact, what people would recognise as ‘violence’ only happened over a couple of days; the days immediately leading up to my departure.

My DV lasted just 2 days then? No it did not. It lasted for a significant length of time. In fact, it lasted for several years. We were very young when we first got together. A relationship that was somewhat illicit and exciting. Little did I understand what was happening to me. At first it was little things. I never noticed how my entire wardrobe was changed. I didn’t realise how I had been cut off from friends, or how my hobbies were curtailed. In fact, my only reason for being out of the house was to act as a source of money: money that had to be handed over.

Slowly, I was dying. The real person was being squeezed until my very existence as an independent person was destroyed. No longer could I even make decisions, those were made for me. What I wore, who I spoke to, where I went were all decided for me. My beliefs, my hobbies and my friends were all imposed upon me. It had just happened.

While I was out working all day and then again in the evenings and at weekends, my abuser was enjoying life with her friends: trips to coffee shops and shopping during the day and then night clubs in the evening. When did I get excluded from all these things? Of course, I couldn’t go, because I was working.

At first I fought back. Arguments were intense. Slowly, I learned not to argue. It was my fault anyway, so don’t argue. I was, after all, useless. I failed to earn enough. I never looked good enough. I always said the wrong thing and embarrassed other people. In time, I accepted my place. I stopped fighting, I stopped having an opinion. In fact, I stopped being. DV is like a spiral that you descend as you ‘accept’ your place on one level of DV, so you spiral to the next, until everything has been exhausted. When you are trapped no longer able to function as an individual and no longer with the will to fight back, then what people traditionally understand as violence.

Women’s Aid identified four particular strands: physical, sexual, psychological and financial. Not all of these need to be present. In fact, just one and it is DV. I NEVER was subjected to sexual DV, in this relationship. The financial DV tends to restrict a person’s freedom: no money, then no ability to escape. I was the main earner, yet I was deprived of control over my finances, but primarily it was the psychological DV. This trapped me. A world of self-doubt and self-loathing.

Why didn’t I leave? Abusers know how to hold people to their will. That is the whole point. Each time I accepted one scale of abuse and failed to fight back, then the abuse became more intense.

I would like to get inside the mind of the abuser to understand why, but it is like the more control they have, the more they need. The more they subjugate you, the more they need to subjugate you. The less you fight back, the more they goad you to fight back.

Then the physical violence started. It was not for long. Somehow it broke the ‘spell’ that my abuser had over me. I can, to this day, remember clearly the entire scene. I remember details of the scuffed bright green gloss paint and the woodwork, the Artex flaking from the walls, light green paint for the top part and stripped light green and white paper on the lower half of the walls. Even the crusted stain on the lino on the floor pulls into view as the scene unfolds. Suddenly, a fork flies at me, unable to move as I watch the tragedy unfolding. The prongs heading directly at me surely adequate to pierce the softness of my eye. The trajectory is perfect, spot on target. And a sudden burst of brightness as clarity filled my brain. It was over, but somehow the only thing parted was my hair. It had missed by such a tiny margin, but had broken the spell cast upon me.

I left. It was by mutual agreement apparently. Of course, I left. That was the end, at least, that is what I thought.

But it wasn’t the end, just a new beginning. Out of the family home things were different. The DV was not so intense. As we were no longer a couple and no longer living together, strictly, it is no longer DV. But it persisted. Appeals to do this or to do that. To help out with this and with that. Of course, I was registered on the mortgage, so that was another hold for me. It took several years for the house to be sold. Every day giving more reason for contact.

Healing can never start until the abuser is isolated from their victim. My secretary at work even played a vital part in breaking that contact, by making excuses as to why I could not take telephone calls.

But I did stop it eventually. The main years of abuse are over 20 years ago. I am a survivor. The abuse took me to places I cannot even describe. It has and always will cause me issues.

The pain never goes away. Even time does not seem to dim the pain of what was done to me. Just occasionally, something happens and everything floods back again – and that happened again this week. But I am a survivor. I am a survivor of Domestic Violence. I found the strength to overcome and I went on to find love. True and unconditional love.

I found a woman who lifted me up and gave me unconditional love and support. It is through her that I became a survivor and was no longer a victim.

Pornification of Women

It is a sad world when we see how the sexual gratification of adult males is being pushed onto the rest of society. There is more pornography available than ever before. Search the internet even with a plain word such as “woman” and you will find links to pornography. Search with a word like “sex” and you will find links to pornography – pornography aimed at men. This is the point – aimed at men for men.

Now there is nothing wrong with sex. Really, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with sex. In fact, I have a very healthy sex life. I love sex when I am with the right person, but I am fussy about who that person is. So don’t mistake me for being anti-sex.

But I am anti-porn. Not because I am prudish, but because I have great concerns over the impact of porn. As I showed at the beginning, porn is aimed at men. I know some women state they enjoy porn as well, but they are undoubtedly a smaller group. The pornography, though, has a massive impact on their lives. Research(1) shows that, in the UK, 90% of young people surveyed admitted to viewing pornography and the age at which they first viewed pornography was 11 years old!

Now if we think about the consequences of that by considering a well known celebrity: Tiger Woods. "As soon as I read the Tiger Woods texts I knew this was a guy who liked porn. Acts like DP, ATM and choking are now commonplace, while a decade ago they would have been on the fringes of the porn industry."(2)

A celebrity who has been addicted to pornography admitting how it nearly destroyed his marriage, and impacted the lives of a great many other people. His access to porn normalised acts once frowned upon.

Young people are accessing this kind of material for on average 90 minutes per week. How is that altering their views? How are these pornographic images (and it is pornography, not sex) affecting these children? Is this normalising acts that used to be extreme or taboo?

Pornography is damaging women in particular, objectifying them. It is also affecting men, but the real issue is the “pornification” of women in order that women fit into the pornographic images demanded by men.
(1) http://www.sexualhealthsheffield.nhs.uk/resources/pornographybriefing.pdf
(2) http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/tawdry_tiger_FUez9gMmuPdqrih9ijNf2O/0
(3) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-katz/interview-with-porn-schol_b_530909.html

A transsexual woman, or just another woman?

An earlier post I made upset some transsexuals. It was unintentional. Perhaps a little background to my position may help. When a dear friend announced they were transsexual, I was shocked. Shocked mainly because my views on what gender is questioned the validity of why my friend was transitioning. Many hours of talk and I began to understand. Don’t misunderstand: I supported her, but really did not understand why she felt this compulsion to undergo such a process.

I watched her transition, how her appearance altered. I was surprised that I started thinking of her as a woman. Then she told me, she was not transsexual, but a woman. She rejected the idea of being transsexual - rather explaining that she was merely a woman wrongly assigned at birth.

Looking back, I can identify how she had integrated fully with the women she mixed with. At first, all I could see was a dear friend attempting to adopt a female gender role and that made me sad. Society uses female and male gender roles to oppress women so watching someone I care about reinforcing something I totally reject was somewhat troublesome.

Time has shown that she has fully integrated into life as just another woman, taking some strong positions on women’s issues. In fact, she has debated strongly with me on gender issues. I was surprised by her actual rejection of the socially constructed gender roles. Here is a woman taking a similar view to me, but having taken a different path to get here.

I was in trouble. My previous rejection of transgender people as little more than sexually motivated men was being challenged. Long held beliefs were being challenged. But I was soon to learn that one person is just that: one person...

Brighton Pride!

I spent a wonderful few days in Brighton, giving me a chance to experience the incredible festival that is Brighton Pride. Hotel prices were ridiculous, and we nearly didn’t have a campsite either! Luckily, a group of us managed to get in one tent.

As a group, we were a little varied: lesbian, straight and gay; cis gendered and trans gendered.

This gave me a unique opportunity to study people. In fact, I gave up the opportunity of over indulging so that I could just watch.

Why was I looking? Gender is a social construction, so I was questioning whether such a diverse group was breaking down this construction. And so it appears. It was wonderful: women that looked like men; men that looked like women. In fact, there were one or two people that I remain unsure about.

The most glamorous dress I saw all weekend was a silver evening gown. It was magnificent and flowing over six feet down from the shoulders of a man. It was perhaps one of the more extreme gender expressions, but there were others. I loved the women who had gone for the traditional smart casual male look – straight shirts tucked into belted trousers. Short well kept hair. But that is my type of woman. Then there were those of us who went for leggings and feminine tops, added makeup and styled long hair.

These gender roles set out so clearly how we are supposed to appear based on our genitals. The clothes we should wear and the way in which we should present to the world. Each of us different and by seeing so many of us refusing to accept the gender expression required for our assigned sex or to conforming to any stereotype, we are breaking down those gender boundaries.

Of course, it is not just about clothing, but about all the other aspects of how we are supposed to act as set out by these socially constructed gender roles. Aspects that we could, perhaps, call masculine or feminine. Some aspects were simple to identify, such as masculinity requires aggressiveness and femininity requires passiveness. Even these features were being transgressed. The way people moved and the body language they displayed.

It is important to realise that just because someone took on a masculine appearance, they did not necessarily fully do so, nor did they necessarily adopt other male gender role traits. In fact, more important than anything was the mixing of these traits.

I lost sense of the gender divide. Finally I had seen how it is possible for these gender roles to be deconstructed and reconstructed into personal gender roles: that is a role that suites the individual rather than one that suites society.

What is wrong with the clothes I wear?

I was surprised a while ago to find that, on first meeting me, many people do not take me seriously. Why? It appears it is because of what I wear.

Appearance defines us.

What is wrong with my appearance? I have long dark blond hair, I often wear makeup (although not all the time). Sometimes I wear skirts and dresses and even high heeled shoes. Other times, no make, hair swept back, comfy shoes, jeans and tee shirt. I thought that was pretty ordinary, but a couple of incidents made me question how I have chosen to look.

In a gay pub, holding my partners hand and a man in there insisted that we could not possibly be gay, simply because we do not look like lesbians! What did he expect lesbians to look like exactly? Are we all supposed to look like a stereotype?

Then there was the woman who refused to even acknowledge me at a feminist meeting, sitting in a defensive posture and ignoring my general chatter. Then I started to talk about feminism. I watched the arms unfold and the eyes open. Now she is one of my greatest friends – a friendship nearly denied because of my appearance.
I am, of course, not the only lesbian to notice this problem. I came across a great article and particularly liked: "And you know what? I'm not alone. I know a lot of LBGT people who don't "look" gay or transgendered."

I cannot claim credit for her conclusion, but wish I could: "But now, it's time to take the next step. It's time for everyone—gay and straight—to set stereotypes about sexuality on a high, dusty shelf and forget them. Forever."

Thoughts on Gender Part 2

What is gender?

I wrote some initial thoughts about looking at gender from different ways and this seems to have caused a little bit of a stir. Perhaps some expansion of those ideas is needed.

I mentioned looking at the experiences of transgendered people as a group that have experienced living in different gender roles. This means that they have taken on the presentation associated with different roles and/or sought to be perceived by other people as being of different gender roles. In no way was this meant to demean their personal self-identity. I suspect it is a failing to agree on the meaning of one word: GENDER.

Gender is a socially constructed

Now I came into conflict because of this point. It was perhaps not expressed in this way, but this is what was objected to. My definition of gender is entirely based on the social construct of gender, and not on the physical body or a person’s self identity.

So let us explore why gender is socially constructed.

When a child is born, it is assigned as male or female. This assignment is rarely done on anything more than the length of the phallus. It does not look at many other factors which may affect the biological construction of the body. This is not usually referred to as gender, but as sex. I am not concerned about the physical body. We are all highly conscious that there are physical differences between different people, but this is not gender. The one connection is that a child is defined at that very moment of birth as being expected to comply with the gender role accorded to those who share the same physical sex.

Of course, one criticism thrown at my post Thoughts on Gender Part 1 was that Male to Female have a brain of a woman and the body of a man. Female to male have a brain of a man and the body of a woman. Once again, this is full of disagreement with the term gender. In fact, what they are doing is talking about their personal self-identity. This is not something I particularly wish to get into, other than to say I respect each individual to define as they so wish but this is not gender. It is gender identity, but not gender.

The cause of it is also irrelevant in my consideration of gender. I am highly aware of various studies into pre-natal sex determination. The 2-4 digit studies apparently indicate testosterone exposure in the womb and this has been used to explain brain differentiation development. These may explain drain development, but it is not gender.

I came across an article about the radical feminist definition that gender "is a term which describes the systematic oppression of women, as a subordinate group, for the advantage of the dominant group, men. This is not an abstract concept – it describes the material circumstances of oppression, including institutionalised male power and power within personal relationships – for example, the unequal division of labour, the criminal justice system, motherhood, the family, sexual violence… and so on."

This much more fits with my own view of what gender is, although it is something of a complex description. Breaking it down into slightly different terms, there are expectations placed on what it is to be male or female. These are often in conflict, so it is expected that masculinity includes features such as being hard, strong, the provider, the breadwinner, the protector and so on. Femininity is defined in terms of weaknesses, softness, empathy, caring and nurturing.

Masculinity does not allow skirts or makeup and expects short hair and so forth whereas femininity includes wearing makeup, skirts and is heavily about a certain appearance.

Femininity includes an expectation of skin care and looking radiant and young, whereas masculinity does not.

Feminine traits include being cook, housekeeper, childminder and so forth, but masculinity is the breadwinner, the hunter, the protector.

Those with male physical form are expected to be masculine and those with female physical form are expected to be feminine.

Where do such assumptions come from? Throughout history, what is expected of masculinity or femininity has changed. Across different cultures there are different expectations. If this is the case, then clearly, masculine and feminine are not some magical biological element, leaving only one possibility: gender is socialised.

Of course, there is one point I want to return to:
Male = masculine
Female = feminine

What makes this the case? Why can females not be masculine and men feminine?