Therapy Tactics on Gender Identity and Gender Roles

Coming out as transgender or genderqueer is similar to Coming Out as I mentioned in last week's post. What's different is that there's a lot more transphobia than homophobia even within the gay community as well as there being a lesser understanding of gender compared to sexuality. Gender is who you are. Sexuality is who you want to fuck.  It's sad that we understand and accept lust more than people. The world today is such a hyper-sexualized place that everyone understands what homosexuality is because we're all horny as fuck and don't know how to keep it in our pants. You don't have to agree with it to understand why someone would want to fuck someone else regardless of gender.



So the problem of non-acceptance of transgender and genderqueer people is rooted in the problem of gender inequality. Masculinity and femininity are so strictly defined in American culture. There are boy toys and there are girl toys. There are sports for guys and there are sports for girls. There are jobs for men and there are chores for women. And there is very little room for anything in between. The genitalia that you're born with defines your entire future of what you can and cannot do. To defy that in any way is seen as a sin against humanity. So if you don't want to do what society says you should or should not do because you do or do not have a penis, then there is something severely wrong with you. Now this hurts everyone except cisgender males who only like to do masculine things. It teaches us all to think that girls can't do things guys can do and guys can't do what girls are allowed to do. Girls can't grow up to be businesswomen, scientists, or athletes. Boys can't grow up to be fashion designers, bakers, or stay at home dads. That's what we've been taught and that's still what is being taught. Modern day feminism is the movement fighting for equality of men and women. Sure, the focus and emphasis is on women because that's who is more publicly being oppressed, but it's also fighting for the oppression of men who also suffer from harmful gender stereotypes and invisibility like men being raped by women. The problem mostly lies with men. If a man wears a dress, who is more likely going to shame and attack him and who is more likely to support him, a man or a woman? Transgender and genderqueer people are the most oppressed by these harmful gender stereotypes because they are the exact opposite of what society says they should be.

Heterosexuals can understand homosexuals because they want the same thing: sex. They just want a different version of it. It's harder for both heterosexuals and homosexuals to understand asexuals because they don't want the same thing. It's not the difference of liking chocolate or vanilla ice cream. It's the difference of liking or not liking ice cream. And it's not like celibacy or abstinence where you still have cravings for ice cream but are lactose-intolerant and you'll feel sick after eating ice cream even if you enjoy the taste. With asexuality, you have the ability to eat the ice cream, and it won't necessarily make you sick, but you don't like the taste of it.

With gender it gets more complicated. It's not about likes and dislikes. It's not about being a gay man or a straight man. It's about what it means to be a man. Men and women don't have a great understanding of each other to begin with because we are so different from each other in almost every way. I think it's why people want to stick so strongly to traditional gender roles. It makes them feel safe and makes the world easier to understand if we can all just stay on our sides of the dance floor. This is what boys do. This is what girls do. Easy peasy, done so neatly. But you can't separate all of humanity into one of two predetermined columns at birth. There's nothing wrong with people following traditional gender roles. The problem is forcing or expecting everyone to follow them. Men and women can have the same likes and dislikes but that also doesn't determine their sexual identity because that's another form of stereotypes. Liking fashion doesn't make a guy gay, only liking guys makes a guy gay. Same goes for softball and lesbians.

Gender identity is what gender you associate with. Often indicated by pronoun preference. It's about being comfortable in your skin and within society. You've probably heard of the physical aspect of that with transexual surgery and the use of hormones, and I think the reasoning for that is pretty straightforward although personally I don't think it is necessary to have your physical body match your gender identity. I'm not transgendered so my opinion on that isn't the opinion that matters the most. I do think that the problem is more social that physical. We all desire community: "to be one of the guys/girls." And that's nearly impossible if with whom you identify won't accept you because of something you have no control over. It's like being a Christian but being excluded from a church because you were born Jewish or into a Muslim family. A common struggle that I've been seeing in the news is the issue of public restrooms. Imagine being forced to use public restrooms of your opposite gender. Do you really want to be a guy in a women's restroom or a girl in men's restroom? If you think about it, a straight trans person is less "invasive" than a gay cis person in your bathroom. If people were free to be as masculine and feminine as they wanted, then I don't think they would feel as much of a desire for their bodies to physically reflect their identity. But I could be completely mistaken. They could be completely separate issues.

Transgender or genderqueer does not determine your gender expression (masculinity/femininity) or your sexual identity. Someone can be born male but identity as a woman and not want to wear dresses or makeup and be attracted to either men or women. We're complicated. There is no one size fits all when it comes to labels for identities. Just look at me. I'm a pan-romantic asexual gender fluid dude, but that doesn't do a good enough job of describing me. It's actually easier if I just said I was gay and celibate, but that's not technically true. I'm physically attracted to guys. Romantically attracted to guys and girls. Sexually attracted to none. And I don't care what your gender identity is. In my case of being gender fluid, most of the time I identity as a man so there isn't much of a problem there other than the gender roles issue. But when I do identify as a woman or something in between, then yeah, sometimes I would feel more comfortable using the women's restroom or wish I felt safer if I went outside wearing makeup and painted nails. But as society is progressing it's getting easier to compensate. It's perfectly fine for strait guys to wear earrings. And I can get away with a lot of girly things since people know that I'm gay, but if I were trans then some of those things somehow have a different cultural bearing. Which is total double standard. Everything seems to be a patriarchal double standard. Girls can be Tomboys and wear boy clothes and that's ok because masculinity should be desired, but boys can't be flamboyant or wear dresses because femininity is looked down upon. And honestly, I think I would have been a lot more feminine have a more balanced gender fluidity if I wasn't so scared of being different than what was expected of me.

But at the end of the day, none of this really matters to you unless you're the one living in the fear of violent and oppressive non-acceptapance. It doesn't really affect you or your family if someone else is gay or trans. Your child isn't going to become gay or transgender because they see it on TV. It's as much a choice as it is for you to be straight or cisgender. And as a Christian, we're suppose to preach love and live love and I don't see enough of that. We've gone from being persecuted for our beliefs to persecuting others for theirs. That's not the "Christianity" that I want to be associated with. And things like transphobia and bi-erasure in the LGBTQIA+ community are just as bad. Human can be horrible creatures. We fear difference when we should celebrate it. When we're attacked, we retaliate with greater violence and hatred. If we forgave and loved and could be civil enough to have peaceful dialogue, the world would be on a much faster pace to a happy and healthier future.