Disciplining Gender and the Trans Experience

 Sloop starts the work talking about how in the 90s people were redefining gender, poking and prodding and repoking and reprodding what sexual and gender norms were and the underlying "morals" of these norms. However, Sloop clarifies that during this time there was still reinforcing bi-gender normativity, not even touching on the concept of non-binary identities or transgender individuals, what they called at the time "transvestites" or "transsexuals." These are not the terms used today, but at the time period were the way that people addressed transgender individuals. Gender is a spectrum just like sexuality and enforcing this "pick one of these two options" concept can be damaging to people who do not feel that the terms "girl" or "boy," "female" or "male" can adequately express their gender identity.

Brandan Teena was a trans man living in Falls City, Nebraska. The publications at the time would call him a "young woman who was living as a man." This language already dismisses Brandan's identity and calling his time presenting as a man and more masculine as a phase. Brandon was arrested for check fraud and identified as a woman by the police. Once Brandon was outted. I am not going into detail what happened to Brandon because it can be triggering for some people, but eventually he and two of his housemates were murdered. This brought about a conversation about the "disciplinary power of rhetoric and gender norms."

This is not the only example of this gender discipline in the article. Country singer K.D. Lang came out as a lesbian in the mid to late 1980s. Subsequently, the way that she and her music was marketed changed and the discourse around the way she presented herself, more masculine, changed. It was no longer weird for her to dress more masculine because she was a lesbian, because apparently it is not ok for women to just want to dress masculine. Janet Reto's sexuality and masculine appearance was a topic of discussion while she was the attorney general of the United States. She never expressed her sexual or gender identity but she was either made to be a dyke behind the scenes or frigid and asexual. This is another example of how "gender trouble" and sexuality being up for public debate. Private Barry Winchell was murdered in 1999 at Fort Campbell in Tennessee because two of his fellow soldiers thought he was gay. Winchell was also dating who they called "female impersonator" Calpernia Addams, a transgender woman who said she had not transitioned yet. This couple was either simplified and called a heterosexual couple or both of them were gay men. Coverage of this case focused on "overt gender behavior and the supposed internal motivations of both victims and perpetrators of the crime."

Judith Butler wrote in Gender Trouble that gender is performative, something we do rather than what we are. Individuals perform gender without thinking because it has been ingrained in our heads since we were infants. I think back to toddler clothes with boys' onesies saying "chick magnet" or "i like trucks." I think of parents who admonish their kids for going to the wrong area of the toy aisle, or that the aisle is divided into "boy" and "girl" toys. Society has a certain way that you are allowed gender based on your sex at birth and assign you "proper" gender behaviors. This serves as a problem for children who are born intersex, or with both female and male sex organs. Parents are pressured into choosing a sex for their child, effectly choosing what gender they want their child to perform. This can cause a lot of problems for children who have had surgery to choose one sex over the other. Children whose parents did not choose a sex often grow up with some anxieties and insecurities, but they still grow up healthy and figure out their gender identity on their own. What we call being a "real woman" is just "cultural fiction" according to Sloop. 

Society tells you what gender you are based on your sex organs, on your body, and tells you how you should act based on that identification. It can be so unconsciously performed and ingrained in our brain we do not even know we are doing it. When people "step out of line," like transgender folks or people who fall outside of the binary, we discipline them socially, and sometimes physically.