by Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano
I’m supposed to be writing a paper for the class I’m taking: Leadership & Team Development. But, well I feel procrastination is the best form of preparation. Besides, talking about my leadership assumptions isn’t as exciting at the moment as this thought I’ve been pondering for quite some time…
Now, I like to think that I’ve come a loooooooong way when it comes to my awareness around gender identity and expression, as well as challenging the idea that gender is biological. I’ll admit, it hasn’t been an easy road. After all, if there’s one thing I was raised to believe in almost as staunchly as Jesus, is the idea that “men” are to conduct themselves a certain way, and “women,” ahem, “ladies” are to conduct themselves in their particular way.
Turns out these “ways” of conducting oneself were once written on someone’s ass cheeks and it is my family’s divinely granted (or imposed) burden to carry. Although I know other families carry the same burden, Herrera’s like to think of themselves as the messiah’s of gender conformity. Even if they don’t talk about it in these terms, the message is certainly conveyed rather effectively.
As a lil’ kid I was taught to act like a “man,” although my father still found it in his heart to buy me Barbies and every possible accessory (van, horse, dog, shoes, jeep, beach house, etc), he made sure to balance it out with Ken and Ken-sized vintage GI Joe’s (surely you can imagine what Ken and GI Joe would do when the lights were out). But, Barbies aside, I still knew that “men” had a certain code of conduct that needed to be followed because this, of course, was how we defended our heavenly created penis and testicles. And, although I continue to think of penis and testicles as heavenly, I no longer believe that my body parts and being a “man” are one and the same, biologically tied or sometimes even that related.
There’s a reason why my “Pastor” warned me from taking Feminism courses, because the day I finally took an 80’s Feminist-inspired Race, Class and Gender course in grad school I came to the realization that gender and biology are two completely different things, and rarely even related. I had thought that the idea of a “man” being defined any particular way was absurd, and that a person had the right to decide what gender worked best for them, but deep down I know that I still somehow believed that my penis and my role as a “man” were somehow related. However fucked up, perverse, violent, ignorant, vile, stupid and ridiculous as the idea was.
So, fast forward a few years and I’m sitting with the idea that maybe I haven’t done all my work when it comes to figuring out gender identity/expression and my role as an ally to trans / gender-non-conforming communities. I begin to think about what it means for me to identify as a “man” and to have been born with a penis and a set of testicles. To be frank, the match kinda works for me. And, to be even more sincere, the match in other people is something I find rather attractive. Um, maybe that’s where the gay identity comes in play.
But, getting to the point where I’m comfortable with conforming with the imposed idea that my gender identity (and sometimes expression) is male, is not what stumped me. Where I got stuck was when I began relating these ideas to the theory of sexual orientation as a biological phenomena. For quite some time I stopped thinking about me being gay as a biological fact. The idea that I was “born this way” became an obsolete concept for me a few years go, but, mainly for political reasons.
I wasn’t interested in working toward expanding my rights as a gay man because of an inevitable biological occurrence, I wanted to expand my rights (and continue to do so) because I am human. By working to expand my rights as a human, I was able to make more sense of the idea that I could become a better ally to other people’s efforts to expand their rights if I saw human rights as just that, human rights. But, this blog entry isn’t about identity politics, so please forgive the tangent.
To get back to the idea of my sexuality being biological, again, I refused to think of it as so due to ideological principals more than the idea that it was not possible. I figured, toying with the idea that maybe there was/is some element of choice in me desiring men was a far more radical and revolutionary act. Even if I kept my thinking somewhat in the closet out of fear of becoming even more of an outcast of a broader gay movement, it was a nice idea to hold onto, even if in relative privacy.
BUT, it was when I continued to work through this idea of gender being a social construction, and therefore making more sense of trans and gender-non-conforming issues, that something snapped. It was the proverbial “Oprah AJÁ Moment” when I realized… if gender is a social construction, a figment of our collective or isolated imagination(s), something that is not tied to our body(ies) and/or body part(s)… then, maybe there was more to my idea that sexual orientation is also not biological.
Maybe I’m being simple-minded and not getting something, but the more I think about it… for sexual orientation to be biological, I would have had to be born with the predisposition to desire someone of the same gender. Well, if gender is a social construction, how can I be born biologically predisposed to desire something that doesn’t really exist? Even if sexual orientation were not about desiring the same gender, but the same sex instead.. what of the idea that sex in itself is a social construction?
Could it be that the idea of sexual orientation as biological and Feminist thought are perpetually at odds, and therefore one is right, the other is not? Is it that for sexual orientation to be defined, gender identity/expression cannot? Or is it that sexual orientation, too, is a social construction and maybe, just maybe, there’s more to it than “I was born this way”?
Eh... what do I know, I'm just a man.
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