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Speaker crosses gender lines
By Regina Eckes
Published:
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Media Credit: Ryan Henry
Beth Zemsky, director of the GLBT programs office at the University of Minnesota, speaks Wednesday afternoon at the continuing Women on Wednesday series presented by the SCSU Women�s Center. Zemsky is also currently a member of the board of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
This week's Women on Wednesday noon hour lecture focused on the issue of gender. The featured speaker for the presentation was Beth Zemsky, the director of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender programs office and the supervisor of the Diversity Institute at the University of Minnesota.
Zemsky, who has been working with GLBT for 30 years and has been a feminist since the age of 16, spoke about gender issues and what it means to be male or female in a culture that often does not recognize transgender people.
Because of her experience as an educator, psychotherapist and activist, Zemsky has done her presentation on gender questioning many times and continues to be asked to share her thoughts on the subject.
By talking about gay, lesbian and transgender people, Zemsky provided a fresh way of looking at what causes people to consider themselves one gender or the other.
Determining gender begins with stereotypes: men are supposed to be masculine and powerful and women should be feminine and weaker than men. When people do not fit into these cultural norms, mainstream society becomes afraid and rebels against them. Fear, Zemsky said, is the root of problems such as homophobia.
Stereotypes put a limit on people's perspectives on life and how they view gender. According to Zemsky, the American culture has a problem accepting the fact that gender is not "fixed" on male and female.
Zemsky challenged the audience to question their own genders.
"What does it really mean to be a man or a woman? How do you determine somebody's gender and your own as well?" she asked.
The definitions people have for gender revolve around social behavioral roles. The fact that a person can bear children, for example, must mean this person is a woman. Appearance, like stereotypes, also plays a significant part in gender determination. Within the first 30 seconds of meeting someone, we want to be able to say for sure what gender someone is, Zemsky said.
She went on to say that it is important for humans to make categories to put people in to calm the chaos that goes with human interaction. Therefore, if one sees a beard on someone's face one can generally assume they are male.
As Zemsky points out, all of the criteria society uses to determine if someone is male or female can be altered.
"How do you know whether or not a woman takes testosterone supplements to enhance her masculinity and grow more facial hair?" she asked.
Likewise, men can take estrogen to prohibit the growth of hair. If they really want to, women and men can take lessons to talk differently and physically move like the opposite sex. Therefore, Zemsky said, judging gender on appearances alone can be misleading.
An argument commonly made against questioning gender is the testing of chromosomes. Most people believe that XX and XY are the only combinations of chromosomes, therefore there defining only two genders. But there are so many different possible combinations that some argue there should be more categories to place them in.
"What gender is someone who has the chromosomes XXY? And how do you know what chromosomes you really have?" Zemsky said.
Certainly not everyone in society has had his or her blood checked to find out. People go by what they are told from the moment they are born to determine whether they are a boy or girl. Someone could live and feel like a woman, only to have a chromosome test reveal a male chromosome combination.
When asked how people know what gender they are, Zemsky said she gets two responses the most.
One common response is: "That is what I've been told." Parents take what the doctor tells them and raise their child according to the boundaries of their child's specified gender.
The other response is "gut." It is just an internal gut feeling; it is not something one can explain or expect people to understand.
This is where Zemsky's presentation focused on transgender people the most. Transgender people know they are one gender but are told they are another because of biology. Zemsky used a particular analogy to help explain what a transgender person might feel like when determining what gender he or she really is.
Looking in the mirror, people sometimes get a sense they are not even looking at their own reflection. They may not feel as pretty or as smart as they really are, but they want society to see them how they see themselves. A transgendered person looks in the mirror and might see what appears to be a woman, but really the individual does not feel that way inside.
One student found this to be one of the more interesting parts of the presentation.
"I liked her analogy of looking in the mirror and not seeing the gender you feel you are," said student Shireen Ghorbani
Zemsky also pointed out that some people do not find it necessary to be just male or female.
Why can't there be another category for people who are both, Zemsky wondered. Different cultures accept and celebrate more than two gender types.
Certain American Indian tribes believe someone is "two-spirited" if he or she is a transgender person. They celebrate the person's "two spirits" and regard them as a blessing.
"GLBT is in the process of reclaiming idea of being two-spirited," Zemsky said.
Like so many issues, the answers to gender questions are not just black and white, or male and female. There is a gray area that is looked down upon and avoided by some cultures because of fear.
"I think gender is way more complicated than people think," Zemsky said.
According to Ghorbani, the main way to reach a better understanding of gender is through dialogue.
"The more we discuss gender identity and gender roles the less secretive it becomes and the more accepting and understanding we all can be," Ghorbani said.
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