A Paradigm Shift
As I pulled off my sneakers and packed them in my gym bag under the fluorescent lights, I chit chatted with an intimidatingly fit gym-classmate. She played hockey and always asked me about the roller derby team. Although she was married to a successful male dentist, wore pony tails and cute, girly outfits, her build, height, deep voice, and activities gave her somewhat of a butch vibe, which I might not have emphasize were I not writing a post about queerness! As I shared about the roller derby team, from behind me, a “new girl” spoke up, asking about the team as well. It turns out “she” moved here temporarily to study and “she” also played roller derby.
At some point in our interactions, this person who I fully and unquestioningly assumed was a “girl” expressed a desire to be addressed as they/them/theirs and to be called by a gender non-binary name. They proceeded to open my eyes and the eyes of my league to the oft-unnamed concept of gender fluidity/gender non binaries/ and straight up queerness. It also turns out that they could skate like a boss and took our team to second place in the finals.
But HOW Subversive Do We Really Want to Be?
As women, we played rough, hit one another, got bruises, and, what’s more, were super athletic. Outside of the sport, many of us similarly held “masculine” positions of power. We had a school principal, a school dean, a CEO of a local consulting company, college professors, and more. Around the middle of the 20th century, (and in some places this is still the case) “girls didn’t grow up to go into politics, practice medicine, work construction jobs, become soldiers, or play rock ‘n roll. Nor did they jog, play basketball, or (gasp!) pump iron” (Wilchins, 2004, p. 10). So, while we opened our ears and our hearts to inclusion, I was curious and a bit confused with how queerness made so many league members uncomfortable and reluctant.
Discomfort with the New/Unknown
When we met as a group to discuss alterations to our logo, the discomfort pulsated through our meeting. Steeped in the privilege of being cisgendered, so many of us completely missed the fact that our logo featured a very busty female and, what’s more, she had culturally appropriated feather earrings. Even my best friends, who I thought would be inclusive, came with their chests puffed and with many arguments against changing the logo. They needed reassurance that the process would not be too costly (Who would pay for new jerseys/posters/merch?! What would we do with all of the old stuff?!), that all of their hard work to get the original logo was not appreciated, and that the pride of working so hard for women to be held on equal grounds as men in sports would be diminished. I couldn’t believe what I heard that night. My friend was in tears talking about how she’s worked so hard for women’s rights (which is BS) and that she would be making a sacrifice by pulling a logo that represented femininity. Only in writing this do I see the connections with the denial of feminists to side with trans folx (Wilchins, 2004). During the fight for feminism, women worked to distance their work from transsexuals and transgendered people. I saw the same thing happen in that meeting. My board and I fought hard to support a nonbinary logo and successfully made the transition, but it wasn’t before some difficult, albeit necessary, conversations and finally doing our homework.
Double Standards
In this instance, I saw firsthand that some women who claim to be queer or subversive, women with tattooed arms, brightly colored hair, who may be comfortable with sexual deviance, and who pride themselves on excelling as athletes, may not hesitate to hold themselves as better and see more subversive folx as deficit, without seeing the hypocrisy. According to Wilchins (2004) “lesbian/feminism has sometimes seemed to adopt the worst separatism: a reflexive antagonism toward anything male, and a tendency to ground womanhood in the most rudimentary biological determinism” (p. 15). Did league members (my friends) see this nonbinary person as having given up “against patriarchy and join(ing) the other side?” (Wilchins, 2004, p. 34). Were their administrative questions a form of resistance against something unfamiliar, new, confusing, and possibly offensive (to them)? Whatever it was, I am grateful for our new league member for a) being so badass and good at roller derby that they taught me to be a much better player and helped us squash competition and b) (more importantly) for opening my eyes (and the eyes of some league members) to a queer world that we had been previously oblivious to. Luckily, my successor as president pushed an inclusive agenda and resisted letting that chapter in the league come to a screaming halt when our most queer member left for bigger and better things.
Reference:
Wilchins, R. (2004). Queer theory gender theory: An instant primer. Bronx, NY: Magnus Books.
