Julia Serano

Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender, or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality onto other people, and police their behaviors accordingly; it occurs when we reduce another person to their sex, gender, or sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, legitimate person. That is sexism. And a person is a legitimate feminist when they have made a commitment to challenging sexist double standards wherever and whenever they arise. An individual's personal style, mannerisms, identity, consensual sexual partners, and live choices simply shouldn't factor into it.

If one more person tells me that __ll gender is performance,_ I think I am going to strangle them. Perhaps most annoying about that sound-bite is the somewhat snooty __-took-a-gender-studies-class-and-youdidn___ sort of way in which it is most often recited, a magnificent irony given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification, as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization. In reality, gender is all of these things and more. In fact, if there__ one thing that all of us should be able to agree on, it__ that gender is a confusing and complicated mess. It__ like a junior high school mixer, where our bodies and our internal desires awkwardly dance with one another, and with all the external expectations that other people place on us.Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. But_performance_doesn__ explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesn__ capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen._Performance_doesn__ even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same, wore the same T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers that I always had, yet once other people started reading me as female, they began treating me very differently. When we talk about my gender as though it were a performance, we let the audience__ith all their expectations, prejudices, and presumptions__ompletely off the hook.

The idea that "femininity is artificial" is also blatantly misogynistic. Just as woman is man's "other", so too is femininity masculinity's "other". Under such circumstances, negative connotations like "artificial", "contrived", and "frivolous" become built into our understanding of femininity - indeed, this is precisely what allows masculinity to always come off as "natural", "practical" and "uncomplicated".

In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes fro unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world.

Consider that people will talk about the fact that I now "pass" as a woman, but nobody ever asks about how difficult it must have been for me to "pass" as a man before.

The most radical thing that any of us can do is to stop projecting our beliefs about gender onto other people's behaviors and bodies

Once I accepted my own transexuality, then it became obvious to me that the question "Why do transsexuals exist?" is not a matter of pure curiosity, but rather an act of nonacceptance, as it invariably occurs in the absence of asking the reciprocal question: "Why do cissexuals exist?" The unceasing search to uncover the cause of transexuality is designed to keep transsexual gender identities in a perpetually questionable state, thereby ensuring that cissexual gender identities continue to be unquestionable.

The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity

And in most queer communities, regardless of one's sex or identity, people who are more masculine in gender expression are almost always viewed as more valid and attractive than their feminine counterparts.

We make assumptions every day about other people's genders without ever seeing their birth certificates, their chromosomes, their genitals, their reproductive systems, their childhood socialization, or their legal sex. There is no such thing as a "real" gender - there is only the gender we experience ourselves as and the gender we perceive other to be.

Gender isn__ simply some faucet that we can turn on and off in order to appease other people, whether they be heterosexist bigots or queerer-than-thou hipsters. How about this: Let__ stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient._Instead of trying to fictionalize gender, let__ talk about the moments in life when gender feels all too real. Because gender doesn__ feel like drag when you__e a young trans child begging your parents not to cut your hair or not to force you to wear that dress. And gender doesn__ feel like a performance when, for the first time in your life, you feel safe and empowered enough to express yourself in ways that resonate with you, rather than remaining closeted for the benefit of others. And gender doesn__ feel like a construct when you finally find that special person whose body, personality, identity, and energy feels like a perfect fit with yours. Let__ stop trying to deconstruct gender into nonexistence, and instead start celebrating it as inexplicable, varied, profound, and intricate.

Whenever I hear someone who has not had a transsexual experience say that gender is just a construct or merely a performance, it always reminds me of that Stephen Colbert gag where he insists that he doesn__ see race. It__ easy to fictionalize an issue when you__e not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it.

When the Majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on "men wearing dresses" or "men who want their penises cut off" that is not transphobia- it is trans-misogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults omitted against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia- it is trans-misogyny.

I am rather disturbed by the fact that so many people__ho are neither medical professionals nor trans themselves__ould want to hear all of the gory details regarding transsexual physical transformations, or would feel that they have any right to ask us about the state of our genitals.

It is offensive that so many people feel that it is okay to publicly refer to transsexuals as being __re-op_ or __ost-op_ when it would so clearly be degrading and demeaning to regularly describe all boys and men as being either __ircumcised_ or __ncircumcised.