An abundance of studies prove that gender and sexuality exist on a spectrum and the male and female binary we were taught in school is a social construct. But the insidiousness of cisgender heteronormative conditioning is the belief that people in the queer community should prove the legitimacy of their existence. We’ve developed a culture that forces them to provide evidence to the rest of us that they are somehow more than figments of their own imagination.
I read a comment online recently that said, “Now all of a sudden people are trans.” Not only is this transphobic, but it’s ahistorical; there are societies thousands of years old that speak to the existence of transgender people. For example, in ancient Greece some priests identified as women and wore what was considered feminine attire; they are widely considered early transgender figures. In African history over twenty tribes have gender transformation beliefs rooted in spirituality and have praised intersexed deities. These are just two examples of how existence outside a binary gender framework isn’t a modern construct at all. The modern construct is the expectation that people must conform to a binary.
This fixation on binary has led to the normalization of abuse against the queer community. It exists on many fronts, from legislation such as the trans military ban under the Trump administration to medical discrimination and lack of employ- ment opportunities to targeted online and real-life harassment and attacks. This constant abuse is a major reason for numbers such as these:
- 40% of LGBTQ respondents to a survey by the Trevor Project had seriously considered attempting suicide in the past twelve months, with more than half of trans- gender and nonbinary youth having seriously considered suicide
- 68% of LGBTQ youth reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder in the past two weeks, including more than three in four transgender and nonbinary youth
It is sad that these disheartening numbers reflect that most people uphold and perpetuate homophobia and transphobia in some way.
Internalized homophobia and transphobia often result in externalized attacks, such as slurs, threats, and violence. Much of that internalization is rooted in gender biases and stereo- types. This exists in some of society’s most common practices, such as the gender-reveal parties that I refuse to attend and inter-sex mutilation. If you’re unfamiliar with inter-sex mutilation, that is likely because this issue is not often discussed in many spaces, even though roughly 1.7 percent of people are born intersex.
A person who is born intersex has reproductive anatomy and sex traits that don’t conform to the socially traditional female or male body. In many cases, doctors and parents decide to “fix” intersex children by operating on them so their bodies conform to more traditional binary standards.
This approach is deeply problematic for a myriad of reasons. Not only do these surgeries carry a great deal of risk, but they are done in an effort to reaffirm the false notion of gender and sex binaries when the existence of a person born intersex inherently disproves this concept. Last, these decisions erase all autonomy, denying that these children deserve to decide one day what is best for themselves and their bodies.
This sort of polarizing of gender through a cisgender heteronormative lens has implications for all of us.
When we preconceive gender identity and sexuality for young people, we ultimately develop toxic constraints for them. This forced alignment with gender and sexuality standards is what teaches women and girls that their duty is to be caretakers and men and boys that their duty is to provide. What encourages boys to venture out and girls to stay close by. Why men are stereotyped as replacing emotions such as sadness or caring with anger and determination, versus women who instead of being cunning and ambitious, are meant to be caring and docile. We steal our children’s ability to embody a full range of emotions by gendering emotional expression. Each one of us is angry, sad, anxious, happy, afraid, excited, embarrassed, determined, weary, and so much more.
If a boy is taught at home or in society that boys don’t cry, he will become a man who may not believe in empathy or compassion, maybe even see them as weaknesses. Those weaknesses will be replaced by something deemed more appropriate and aligned, such as anger. Girls on the other hand are taught that anger is a less acceptable emotion; therefore they may replace anger with sadness, as a woman’s tears are more palatable than a woman’s fire. In both cases, children are being hindered.
There are no such things as “masculine” or “feminine” traits; the belief that there is conditioning in patriarchal ideology has stifled generations of people from expressing and embodying their spectrum of emotions. Which has had a catastrophic impact on the world around us. And all these beliefs have created untrue binaries and polarizing cisgender heteronormative character stereotypes that don’t allow for individuality. We are limiting who and what our society is or may become.
Sadly, I’ve lived this binary firsthand. One of the earliest things I can remember being taught by those around me was that boys don’t cry. This idea lived in me and grew, or rather festered like a sore. I learned to travel through life without expressing certain emotions, which was supposed to make me a strong and dependable man. But all it did was make me physically, emotionally, and mentally incomplete.
A boy who is taught not to cry is not a better man, he is an emotionally unavailable man, and at worst an apathetic, which is a very dangerous, man.
There are tears that belong to my trauma, my pain, and my loss that never had a chance to flow but instead were dried to the point that healing has often felt like a mirage. A friend of mine was murdered while I was in college, and when I found out I punched at least five holes in a wall near me. Yes, I was angry that I had lost my friend, but I also didn’t have access to any other emotion. When his friends and family gathered at his mother’s home after his funeral, I stood in a corner balling my fists and thinking about how much I wanted to hurt the people who had taken him from us.
I’d known his mother since we were children, and when she saw me in the corner, she walked over, looked at me for a moment, and said, “You haven’t cried once for my son.” I simply said, “I’m going to get them back for this.” The words left my mouth not just as a statement, but as a promise. I had every intention to harm the people who had murdered him.
She looked me in the eyes, then hugged me tight and said, “A bunch of angry boys who don’t know how to cry are the reason my son is dead. More anger and violence won’t bring him back. Cry for my son, you both deserve it. Let it out.”
The tears that flowed from me then began to change my life. I cried for my friend, I cried over the father who didn’t want me, I cried over how hard it was to cry. That was the day I started to truly become a man.
We steal so much from the girl who deserves to be angry, the boy who deserves to be sweet, and the child who wants to be all of it and none of it. The gender reveals and false binary ideals erase not only our possibilities, but our realities. In both, you and I live masculine traits and feminine traits, which are all just human traits. There’s no reason for us to be diluting and stifling who we are because others have socialized us into their beliefs about gender identities and sexuality.
Unless we see the world outside a binary lens, we will be breaking the chains of patriarchy only to find ourselves still locked in a cell.
Patriarchy Blues. Copyright © 2022 by Frederick Joseph
Reprinted here with permission from Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood is available from Amazon.