She/He/They/Me

by Robyn Ryle

  In a country like the United States, levels of gender inequality aren’t as bad as they could be. You’re much more likely as a girl to receive an education and be paid for your work. Women are doing slightly better than men in the area of education, with 95.4 percent of women achieving at least some secondary education (schooling past the primary or elementary level), compared to 95.1 percent of men. You’ve also achieved high levels of equality in terms of economic status, as 56 percent of women in your country are working for pay, compared to 68 percent of men. But your government still doesn’t come close to equal representation of women, and it can still be dangerous to give birth.

  Gender inequality will be important to your experience of gender. So will gender socialization. Gender socialization is the process of learning how to fit into the particular gender to which you’ve been assigned. Who does that socializing is important, so you need to know who’s going to spend most of her or his time taking care of you. You need to know who your primary caregiver is going to be.

  Your primary caregiver is a woman. GO TO 34.

  Your primary caregiver is a man. GO TO 35.

  Your primary caregiver is a group of people. GO TO 26.

  *This book was written during the 2018 midterm elections, where a record number of women were elected, but some elections were not finalized before the printing of this book. Karma Allen, “More than 100 Women Elected to Congress in Historic Midterms,” ABC News, November 7, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/100-women-elected-us-house-historic-election/story?id=59019553.

  58

  You’re born in Rwanda, a country with low gender inequality. Your country is currently ranked 4 out of 144 countries on the Global Gender Gap Index, with only Iceland, Norway, and Finland ahead of you. Your ranking according to the UN’s most current Gender Inequality Index is worse, at 84 out of 188 countries.

  Based on the UN’s criteria, Rwanda has more gender inequality overall than the United States does. But in certain areas, Rwanda is actually doing better than the United States. The level of women’s political empowerment in your country is pretty impressive. Looking just at the percentage of women in political power, your country ranks number one globally, with more than half (58 percent) of seats in your parliament held by women.

  Your ranking on the UN index probably has to do with your maternal mortality ratio; for every 100,000 live births in Rwanda, 290 women die of pregnancy-related causes. Educational attainment is also very low in Rwanda, for both women and men—just 11 percent of women and 16 percent of men have received some secondary education (schooling past the primary or elementary level).

  Rwanda is a developing country. More than that, it’s a country still recovering from one of the twentieth century’s most devastating genocides. In 1994, Hutu extremists led a mass slaughter resulting in the murder of 800,000 Tutsi adults and children over the course of 100 days. Although both women and men were killed in the genocide, many more men were imprisoned or fled the country, so that after the genocide, Rwanda was left with a population that was 70 percent women. Many of the jobs that had previously been occupied by men now had to be done by women out of necessity. Women in Rwanda have surpassed men in their labor market participation; 86 percent of women in your country are working for pay, compared to 83 percent of men. Women in your country stepped into the gap left by men across a wide range of occupations, not because they necessarily wanted equality for women, but because it was what they had to do in order to save their country.

  In the aftermath of the genocide, women in your country banded together and demanded more power. They changed the Rwandan constitution to require that women hold at least 30 percent of all top political positions in the government. They changed marriage laws, giving women the right to inherit land, share marital assets, and establish credit on their own. Women like you began delaying marriage in order to pursue education and a career.

  These changes to gender inequality in Rwanda happened fast—over the course of about twenty years. So while your country has made big improvements in these large-scale measures of gender equality, other aspects of thinking about gender haven’t quite caught up. Domestic violence is still common in your country and is widely accepted, as is demonstrated by a Rwandan saying, niko zubakwa, or “that’s how marriages are built.” One researcher found that even women who held some of the highest positions of power in the Rwandan government were still subservient to their husbands inside their homes. One of her research subjects, a woman who had been elected to the Rwandan parliament, still polished her husband’s shoes and ironed his clothes. Her husband insisted that these tasks had to be done by his wife, rather than a housekeeper. Women like this, while they advocate for gender equality within their government positions, still feel fairly powerless to demand more equality in their own marriages and households.

  So although your country has achieved incredible progress in regard to gender inequality, the fight is hardly over. Even when women gain power in institutions like the government, the economy, and education, it doesn’t guarantee that areas like marriage and family will follow suit.

  Gender inequality will be important to your experience of gender. So will gender socialization. Gender socialization is the process of learning how to fit into the particular gender to which you’ve been assigned. Who does that socializing is important, so you need to know who’s going to spend most of her or his time taking care of you. You need to know who your primary caregiver is going to be.

  Your primary caregiver is a woman. GO TO 34.

  Your primary caregiver is a man. GO TO 35.

  Your primary caregiver is a group of people. GO TO 26.

  59

  Learning to be a girl is different depending on where and when you are. But when gender socialization works well, it’s easy to forget that the way gender works in your culture isn’t the same as it works everywhere. If you master your own particular version of gender, it can seem as though this must be the right—and only—way for gender to be. The assumptions that people make about gender in other places may seem pretty weird.

  If you’re a little girl growing up in the contemporary United States, the rules for what is and isn’t feminine might be a little looser than if you’re a little boy. You’re definitely expected to be passive and nurturing. So you’re likely to be rewarded for cradling a baby doll or taking care of your younger siblings. The rewards can be obvious, like your parents telling you that you’re a good girl when you play with the baby doll, or less obvious, like your parents simply smiling when you pretend the doll is your baby. When you do things that aren’t considered correct for your gender, you’re likely to be punished, but that punishment can be very subtle. If you get muddy investigating all the interesting things that live under rocks, your parents might scold you for ruining your shoes and your pretty dress. If you run around, can’t sit still, and talk loudly, your parents and others might caution you to act more “ladylike.”

  Being boisterous and active is one example of a gender-typed behavior, or a behavior that will get rewarded or punished depending on the gender of the person who’s engaging in the behavior. Giving other kids orders and taking the lead is another example of what it means to say a behavior is gender-typed. If a little boy orders other kids around, his parents, teachers, and other adults might be more likely to praise him. They might say, “Look at that future leader.” Maybe they imagine him as a powerful politician. When a little girl does the same thing, the people around her respond to the behavior differently, by labeling her bossy. Being “bossy” implies that, as a little girl, you’re taking authority that you don’t really have. So when you get called bossy, you’re learning that little girls aren’t supposed to be confident or authoritative.

  GENDER-TYPED BEHAVIOR

  n. /ˈjen-dər ˈtīpt bi-ˈhā-vyər/

  Behavior that is rewarded or punished depending on the gender of the person engaging in the behavior.

  We know that your parents and other people will
start rewarding and punishing your behavior based on gender very early. Even as a baby, your parents are more likely to comfort you, as their daughter, when you cry than they are to comfort a son. The adults in your life will speak more conversationally to you than they would if you were a boy, to whom they’d be more likely to give instructions. When they tell you family stories, they’ll emphasize emotions, while the stories they tell to boys will emphasize independence. Your parents and others will be less likely to engage in aggressive and challenging styles of play with you. And they’ll give you different household chores compared to boys.

  Just because you were assigned a girl and socialized as a girl doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily end up feeling like a girl on the inside. Gender as a system is set up with the assumption that your gender assignment and your gender identity should match. In other words, your gender identity, or the way you feel about who you are, is supposed to be the same as the gender you were told you are at birth, or your gender assignment. That’s how gender is supposed to work, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the best way or even that it works all the time.

  Your gender assignment and your gender identity match up. GO TO 73.

  Your gender assignment and your gender identity don’t match. GO TO 74.

  60

  You’re African American and your gender identity, gender assignment, and gender expression all line up. That means that you feel like a boy on the inside, you’re labeled a boy, and you act like a boy.

  As an African American boy, your experience of masculinity, even as a child, will be different from how boys of other racial backgrounds experience their gender. Your gender expression will be interpreted differently because of your race. In general, men tend to move through the world in ways that take up more space. “Manspreading,” you might have heard it called. But as an African American man or boy, there might be a real danger in taking up space in the same way that white men and boys do. Research tells us that the deeply gendered logic used to excuse the behavior of white boys probably won’t be applied to you, as an African American boy. Teachers and other authority figures will be less likely to excuse your rambunctious behavior with the expression, “Boys will be boys.” Even from an early age, you’ll be perceived as more sexual and aggressive than boys from other racial backgrounds. And because of all these beliefs about you, you’re much more likely to be punished for a wide range of behaviors that are excused in white boys. At the very worst end of this spectrum of prejudicial treatment, you’re much more likely to become the victim of police violence, as in the cases of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice, eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, fifteen-year-old Jordan Edwards, and so many others.

  As an African American boy, it’ll be more difficult for you to cash in on the patriarchal dividend of your society, or the rewards for being a boy and obeying all the rules for how boys are supposed to act. The truth is that even when you follow those rules, you’re less likely to be rewarded.

  GO TO 40.

  61

  Your gender identity and your gender assignment match up, but your gender expression is different. You’re a boy, but you like pink and purple instead of blue. You don’t like playing sports or crashing into things. You don’t walk with your feet splayed out to the side with lots of space between your legs like the other boys. You don’t spread your arms and legs out to take up as much space as possible. You smile all the time (boys aren’t really supposed to smile) and your voice is high. Just because you get labeled a boy and feel like a boy inside doesn’t mean that you want to do all the things that boys are supposed to want to do.

  Because you don’t follow all the rules laid out for boys, you might be called a sissy or a wimp. If you live in an androcentric society, it’s not okay as a boy to do feminine things. That’s because androcentrism says that men and masculinity are better than women and femininity. If you’re a boy doing feminine things, you’re moving down the ladder instead of up. You’re likely to get made fun of and be left out. Or worse.

  You might be called gay or a fag. In many societies, gender and sexuality are presumed to be tied together. If you act feminine, people might assume that it reveals something about your sexuality—namely, that you’re more likely to be attracted to other boys. Which is all a little weird if you think about it. Even with very young boys, people might assume that a boy who acts feminine—who plays with dolls or paints his nails or wears dresses—is revealing his sexuality. In reality, using nail polish doesn’t have anything to do with who you want to have sex with or get married to, especially not when you’re four years old.

  The penalties for being a boy whose gender expression isn’t masculine enough are generally greater than those for girls who aren’t seen as feminine enough. Maybe that’s because masculinity as a gender identity is more fragile than femininity—masculinity is an identity that has to be proven over and over again over the course of your life. Maybe it’s because, as a boy, you’re at the top of the gender hierarchy, so your behaviors are more tightly patrolled.

  Maybe your gender expression as a boy is just a little bit off. You’re a snazzy dresser and care about your clothes, but the clothes you wear are still easily perceived as “men’s” clothes. But what if you don’t like men’s clothes? What if, all in all, you’d rather wear a skirt or a dress?

  You aren’t interested in women’s clothes. GO TO 40.

  You really like wearing clothes that aren’t seen as appropriate for boys. GO TO 45.

  62

  You tell your parents that your sense of who you are doesn’t match up with what everyone else thinks. “I’m not really a girl, I’m a boy,” you might say to them. Or maybe you feel like you’re a very different kind of girl. Or even something completely different from either boy or girl.

  You tell your parents or other family members, but they refuse to listen to you. Or they tell you that you’re wrong. Maybe they ignore you altogether. They make you feel bad or weird or crazy. Or even worse, they yell at you or hit you. Some families kick their transgender kids out of the house. Why?

  For some people, gender matters a lot. It is a system that they’re deeply invested in, and a set of rules that they believe everyone should follow, including children like you. Among those rules is the idea that you are the gender you’re born and that’s that. You don’t get to change, no matter how bad or wrong it feels to you. They might be scared about what could happen if those rules changed. If you could change your gender, what would that mean for their own sense of who they are?

  Your parents might be afraid of what will happen to you if you go from being a girl to a boy. They might be sad about losing a daughter, even if they’ll be gaining a son. They might feel guilty, as if your gender-expansive or transgender identity is the result of something they did wrong as parents. They might find it hard to deal with the uncertainty of your gender-expansive identity. Maybe you know at once that you are a boy instead of a girl, but there might also be a period when you’re figuring things out. It might be difficult for your parents to live through not knowing what your gender will be.

  As a transgender kid, your power to assert your own identity is limited by the circumstances you find yourself in. If your parents don’t support or even acknowledge your identity, it’s hard to take action. If you find yourself in a family like this, you might struggle in school. Transgender kids who lack support are more likely to engage in self-harming activities and have higher rates of suicide. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll find support in an online community or with a group of friends. You might stay in the closet, hiding your transgender identity until you can find a safer, more supportive environment.

  For now, you conceal your transgender identity and live as a cisgender person. GO TO 39.

  63

  If you’re a boy or a man who discovers that you really like wearing women’s clothes, you might be a cross-dresser. That’s different from being a transgender person. Your gender identity and gender assignment are still masculine. You feel
like a man. You just feel like a man who likes wearing women’s clothes. Maybe you consider it a way to embrace your feminine side. Maybe you only wear women’s clothes in the privacy of your own home. Your cross-dressing might not be anything more elaborate than putting on a pair of women’s underwear or a touch of makeup. Or you might like to go out in public fully dressed as a woman.

  Being a cross-dresser doesn’t imply anything about your sexual identity. You may be straight or gay or bisexual. Your cross-dressing might make you feel sexy, but it isn’t necessarily something you do as part of the sex you have with partners. Your cross-dressing could start at a very early age or much later in life.

  GO TO 40.

  64

  To be a drag queen is about more than just wearing women’s clothes. Drag is a performance, a creative expression. Many drag queens describe it as an art form. It’s a way of turning gender into something exciting and fun.

  As a drag queen, you may or may not be gay. Many, but not all, drag queens are gay men. You might also be transgender, but you don’t have to be in order to engage in drag. You’ll probably have a drag name and persona, in addition to a street name and persona. You might get paid to perform drag, but not all drag queens are paid. The particular version of femininity that you perform might be greatly exaggerated or more low-key. When you’re in drag, you might achieve social femaleness—that is, people might assume that you’re a woman. Or you might not.

  Some people who study drag argue that it exposes the true nature of gender. All of us, to some extent, are performing drag, and this is true regardless of our underlying biology or gender identity. We are all trying to create some coherent image of a certain gender, even though the idea of gender itself is something that we made up.