Ok, my blog isn’t meant to be about gender identity, but it’s an issue that I’m very interested in (and it often strikes a nerve with me), so I’m writing on it again. Plus, this article I came across today reminded me of this recent incident:

(Setting: the security check-through at Bradley Airport)

TSA man: laptops in a separate bin.
Woman in front me: I don’t have a laptop.
TSA man: (referring to me) no, but this guy does…
Me: this guy? Well, maybe he’s using it in the nongendered sense…*pulls laptop out of bag*
TSA man: …look, he’s pulling it out right now.
Me: he?

Now, I didn’t exactly look ultra feminine that day. I had on a rather androgynous outfit: black v-neck t-shirt, blue-gray zip-up hoodie, and khaki pants, though they were all from the women’s section of mainstream stores like the Gap. I also have short hair, and I’ve kind of stopped wearing make-up on a regular basis awhile ago (and I certainly wasn’t wearing any on that day after not enough sleep and frantic packing). But, despite all this, I didn’t think I looked so masculine as to be confused for the wrong gender. At the same time, what did it matter? It made me uneasy, but I wasn’t sure if it should have.

Indeed, the fact that it bothered me probably bothered me more than the actual incident itself. So our culture is very gendered. So what? I already knew that. But why do I care? Why did some part of me feel like I must have done something wrong for that man to confuse my gender? (Hell, I probably did something right!) If he had confused my ethnicity or something, I would have just chalked it up to his ignorance and moved on rather then thinking that the incident reflected anything about myself. I mean, I know the standard response: it’s a result of all my societal conditioning and what not, but as someone who tries to be an ardent feminist, it bothers me that I still react this way sometimes.

This also reminds me of a conversation I overheard on campus some weeks ago. This girl is reading the section of Gender Trouble which features overheard sexist comments on campus. In particular, she is reading the selection which (I don’t have a copy of GT with me right now, so this will be paraphrased) a guy comments on how some girl “looks like a man.” The girl reading the magazine comments to her guy friend that she feels bad, to which the friend responds, “Why?”

“Well, because I feel like we say stuff like this, and we shouldn’t,” the girl replies.
The guy shrugs, “I don’t think you should feel bad.”
“Why not? It’s not good.”
“I don’t like it when people purposely do things that they know other people think is weird and then they complain about it when other people think it’s weird.”

Except that I wasn’t trying to “be weird” (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I was just trying to be comfortable for moving out of my room and for sitting on an airplane (one of my least favorite activities) for four hours. And what’s to say that other women who are tagged as looking too masculine aren’t doing the same?

The TSA man’s assumption bothered me in two ways: first, it implied that dressing comfortably and perhaps a bit drably is only something males do; in order to look like an authentic woman, you must look like you put much effort into your outfit. Why is comfort and practicality a male domain? Don’t women have the right to dress that way as well? It also bothered me because my own reaction to it shows that the pressure to conform to gender roles still has enormous influence, both socially and personally.

As for the ignorant Amherst College student up there, well, that’s a whole ‘nother set of annoyances. For a group of supposedly bright critical thinkers, we sure have some rather conventional and conformists individuals. Shouldn’t the goal of Amherst students be to push and challenge the norms, rather than enforcing them?

Anyway, this rant is over.