Sometime ago, I met a woman who introduced herself as a “transgender m-to-f lesbian living in a butch-femme relationship and identifying as a proud member of the buch-femme community.”

Being  naturally curious, I asked, “What does that mean?”

I received a (no doubt) learned disquisition into the subject of butch-femme relationships which concluded with a rather stupendous declaration that by living as a butch-femme couple my new friend and her partner were deliberately undermining, subverting and deconstructing gender roles and identities.  By adopting “stereotypical male dress and behavior” my new friend was showing the folly of such socially constructed things as gender roles; her partner’s choice to live as a femme and to adopt stereotyped, even antiquated, female behaviors and dress were equally powerful in undermining societal constructs such as “women’s roles.”;  the very act of living as a butch-femme couple was a powerful commentary which was undoing the patriarchal system which oppresses women, genderqueer and third gender persons, transgender people, and gays and lesbians.  Simply adopting and refusing to apologize for her identity as a “transgender m-to-f lesbian living in a butch-femme relationship and identifying as a proud member of the buch-femme community” was a revolutionary act which was transforming society.

God help me, but I unleashed my inner condescending cynic and actually said, “You need to get over your bad self.”  I regret that.

Not because my new friend wasn’t being pompous, not that her whole argument about the power of being a transgender butch-femme wasn’t a lot sound and fury signifying little, but because at some point, each person has to find a way to make to make sense of our lives and for people who easily fit into society – people who are straight, whose gender identity is congruent, who really don’t stand out – that is hard enough.  For someone who is transgender, who has literally had to construct not only her gender identity and examine every aspect of her life and her relationship with the world, that is even more difficult.

When we talk about gender and gender roles, we’re in some very difficult territory.  How we as individuals and as a society talk about, understand, construct and live out what it means to be “male” or “female” can be incredibly constraining or liberating.  For people living in more traditional communities, embracing their gender roles can liberate them – it offers a path to personal fulfillment and meaning that can be and often is extraordinarily rewarding. 

Think of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Protestant parish or congregation.  Within that role, women were granted tremendous personal and institutional authority.  The church ran (or didn’t) according to the ladies of the auxiliary.  The auxiliary provided an arena within which women were not only permitted but expected to excel – to develop and use their gifts.  The auxiliary wasn’t just a place you stuffed the ladies to keep them quiet – it was integral to the community.

I think of the Mormon priesthood as a cogent example of the male space.  Within the confines of the priesthood, males are granted not only specific personal and institutional authority, they are groomed to wield that authority.  They are invited to develop and use their skills.  Where the authority of the ladies auxiliary was largely informal, the authority of the priesthood is formal (and formalized – it makes deliberate use of hierarchical structure, ritual and titles). 

The paradox of these socially approved roles is simple – while they work for a great many people, they do not work for just as many.  For every woman who felt liberated by her success in the ladies auxiliary there was another who felt oppressed.  For every man who can easily embrace the priesthood role as potential community and real family patriarch and leader, there is a man who is not only terrified of it, but who is oppressed by it.  The weakness of such public gender roles rests in the flawed assumption behind them – that particular skills and areas of life must of necessity accrue according to gender. 

Maleness and masculinity, femaleness and femininity are complicated things. 

What makes a man a man?  I think of the huge number of men in their early twenties I see who are proudly sporting beards and facial hair – such things are signifiers of not only maleness but of masculinity.  But by themselves are they sufficient?  In many ways, we as a culture are still figuring out what we mean by masculinity.  Some years ago, I read an article that asserted that many teachers treat as pathological normal behavior among boys.  I’m not sure I go that far, but you can see differences between males and females all around you all the time; men and women behave differently.  That many of those differences are socially constructed rather intrinsic is worth exploring (to say it another way, I believe women can be every bit as competitive, aggressive, and physical as men and men can be every bit as nurturing, caring, and kind as women).

Hugo had a post recently that caught my attention talking about a conflict a young lesbian woman is feeling:

Louisa has taken my gay and lesbian studies class. She has read her Adrienne Rich; she knows about the reality (not just the theory) of growing up in a culture of “compulsory heterosexuality.” And she knows very well that if she were with a man, she might feel far less psychological pressure to experiment with a woman. “We don’t make straight women prove their straightness by having sex with girls”, Louisa said, “so why do I feel so compelled to ‘prove’ I’m lesbian by trying something with a guy? It’s like I feel I have to earn my queer credentials.”

Old saws about exceptions and rules spring to mind.  At some level we define maleness and femaless according to the person with whom someone has sex – men have sex with women, women have sex with men.  Louisa is finding herself living in a territory where sex is being defined in relation to the presence or absence of a man.  To put it more bluntly, a lesbian friend of mine was once told by a Mormon bishop that what two women do together could not possibly be sex since since was by definition penis entering vagina; the sex act between two men is deeply suspect in this understanding of sex for reasons I don’t care to explore more deeply.

Back to my transgender m-to-f lesbian living in a butch-femme relationship and identifying as a proud member of the buch-femme community friend, her entire life has been entirely about the failure of our understanding of gender and gender roles to apply to her situation.  In making an intentional set of choices to live with integrity as a transgender woman and a lesbian, she was finding herself in the modern equivalent of the Medieval forest – the no-man’s land without rules.  To construct her identity, she has had to string together this long sentence – first off her gender identity is as a transgender male to female – she is a woman but her femaleness has required construction, she didn’t grow up into it, she didn’t acquire it the standard way and she didn’t learn it the normal way.  Identifying as a lesbian is also important.  If you take a look at, for example, at the debate in lesbian community over the place of transgender women you see a profound and sometimes vicious divide.  The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival , as for example, has a longstanding official policy of “womyn born womyn” – i.e. no transgender women permitted.  For my friend, being a transgender lesbian is as difficult as being transgender.  For many women, their identity as lesbians is inseparable from their identity as women; a transgender lesbian demonstrates the difference between sexual orientation, gender and gender identity.  Can you truly be a lesbian if you were born male?  When we think about sexual orientation, we think about the persons to whom you are attracted.  It’s not about your gender per se as their gender – right?

But the question posed by the reality of transgender persons lives is “What do you know about your gender?”  How do I know I am male?  How do you know you are female?  What is it actually that makes you male or female a man or woman?  At the end of the day, the question of identity is multi-layered.  Once we move past the world of the Ladies Auxiliary and the Priesthood Meeting, once we move away from those clearly and neatly defined gender roles, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.  What it means to be male or female, how we live that out, becomes badly defined. 

The neat and tidy world of the “separate spheres” and “women’s place is in the home” and the “men’s place is in the world of business and politics”  was as much a construct as anything else.  We have moved past it but we haven’t figured out what takes its place.  It was in its own way an easier world to live in; we might struggle against the boundaries it placed on us, but it was clearer.  What it means to live in a world without those gender roles becomes the question we have to answer.  If my identity is no longer simly defined in relationship to my gender role, then I have to answer for myself “Who am I?” and it complicates the world.  It is both liberating and constrainining – the lack of defined roles can be as difficult to live with as living within those constraints placed on me.  My friend found a way to define herself that gave her meaning and boundaries.  It’s a struggle that each of us must confront at some point and saying “no” to the struggle is as much an answer as any other.

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