This post was submitted by corey

Start your week with sex… or lack thereof. Delve into the jungle of the newly out and single every Monday morning in Sexual Disorientation.

Queer people often seem to approach gender in one of two ways: as a fight to show the world that they maintain their given gender despite being gay, or as a fight to shed the gender norms that have been placed upon them. My own journey started out in the former category – seeking to be a “man,” even if I was a gay one – to the latter category – embracing the notion of being genderqueer and no longer feeling connected to the idea of being “male.”

Just before I left the District in May, I was asked by a skeptical friend at a party what exactly made me genderqueer. I didn’t have a great answer, in part because of the amount of gin I had recently consumed, but also because for me the genderqueer concept isn’t about forging a new label. It’s about dumping a label you don’t feel applies to you, namely male or female. Instead I answered, “I don’t know, but I just am. Doesn’t that count for anything?” And he seemed satisfied with the response.

But lately I have felt myself wondering more and more about it, especially given my move to Denver. My new job has required the filling out of dozens of forms, only one of which allowed me to check off an option other than “male” or “female.” It has meant living in conference housing with three heterosexual men, a position that I haven’t found myself in for a while and which has made me altogether uncomfortable. And it has involved the search for permanent housing and therefore roommates, where again the question of gender has come into play. (For the record, I decided to live with the only person in Denver who could put up with me: myself.)

Throughout my journey westward I have questioned what it means to be genderqueer, or queer at all for that matter. Can I hold onto my independent control of labels and be what I want to be? Or is my being a “man” too manifest to not be destiny?

My Life with the Gorillas

Sub-zero air-conditioned temperatures. Beer bottles and junk food everywhere. The bouncing of basketballs in a messy living room. These are the things that come with living amongst heterosexual men.

When I moved into my assigned housing four weeks ago, a required endeavor while I undergo training for my new job, I of course knew that I would be living with men. I had to fill out dozens of forms leading up to that point in which I was asked for my gender of sex. Having little other option, I had selected “male” each time.

But while I had considered that it might be slightly uncomfortable to not fit in or to be met with some hostility based on my orientation, I had not considered how awkward I would feel simply to be considered male and put with others of my “type.”

I was given my own bedroom, as were we all, so things were not nearly as bad as they might have been. But I have been consistent in my avoidance of shared spaces or interaction with my apartmentmates. Moments in the early morning or late at night, at which I might find someone going to or from the shower, were particularly awkward for me; I couldn’t help but feel like a teenage girl who had accidentally ended up in the boy’s locker room.

Once I came home to find a group of men I didn’t know, dressed for the gym, pounding on my front door. “No one else is home,” I said with more than a little disdain before brushing past them and closing the door behind me. On one evening a group of them were blasting music in the living room, talking about “eating pussy” and making some vaguely homophobic remark. I stayed in my room and put on my headphones.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with these men, or that I am by any means a perfect person myself. It’s just that living here has been hard and isolating, not just because I’m gay but because of my gender identity as well. I have only three things in common with the people with whom I’ve been placed, and they all hang between my legs. And for that, my new employer – which prides itself on being a “great” organization for queer people – has earned a touch of my resentment.

Cheap Labels

After some thought, I concluded that the problem is largely one of labels. I can accept the fact that I have a certain sex, but do not want the label of a gender, with all of the associations that comes with it. It’s not something that I feel is part of my identity.

This doesn’t mean avoiding the fact that I was born with a degree of male privilege; this would be the equivalent of being a rich white person, calling myself “color-blind,” and complaining that supporters of affirmative action are the real racists. In order to recognize and fight sexism in our society, I can’t just pretend that gender doesn’t exist as a conception and a force. But I can choose to not identify with it myself.

However, the resentment that I’ve felt lately towards (especially heterosexual) men has also not been fair. Just as I have a right to not accept a gender label, others have a right to accept it if they choose and to live their lives in a way that works for them.

This issue plays a certain role in the realm of dating, as well. Some homosexual men who really want to emphasize their masculinity call themselves “straight-acting,” but there is nothing straight about one man having sex with another. What they really mean is that they identify strongly with the male gender, and are looking for partners who do the same – not ones who act “feminine” and thus earn the wrath of the macho gays.

And with queer women there are sometimes similar tensions between those with a more “butch” look and those sometimes deridingly called “lipstick lesbians.” I’ve seen people on both sides of the perceived fence look at the other as being illegitimate, not helpful towards the gay rights movement, or at least not worthy of association.

If our society is currently in a phase of gay liberation, I hope that the time will soon come for gender liberation, as well. One reason that the LGBT population often forgets its last letter, the trans community, is that our fight is too often one about who we sleep with and get to marry and too seldom about something deeper: our ability to identify as we choose and to strip away the old concepts of Man, Woman, and the relationship between them.

As I’ve fallen head-first into the Real World over the past several weeks, I’ve felt at times out of place, excited, nervous, optimistic, pessimistic, and just plain exhausted. But through it all I’ve felt like myself, and that’s one label – for all its faults and complexities – that I’m willing to wear.

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