Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Copyrighted image from Danielle Corsetto. Visit her site for full-size version.

I’ve been really enjoying Danielle Corsetto’s Girls With Slingshots comic strip since being turned on to it by an anonymous commenter on a previous post.

Her portrayal of 10-year-old boys in the strip behind this link is a little off. I mean, yes, yes, I get that the boy saying “Booobies” nicely reverses Hazel’s concern that she wouldn’t be a safe babysitter and her friend’s reassurance that the 10-year-old is “probably much more mature than you think.”

But still, when you say 10-year-olds you’re talking 4th and 5th graders. I’ve been spending… quite a bit of time with about 47 fifth graders lately. And even for the “mature” ones we’re still talking very pubescent children, not college freshmen!

Comics are funny in very large part because they’re precisely not actual real life. If a real-life little kid behaved the way this one does in this comic, the next one (“so how was baby-sitting last night?” “Hormonal, nerdy, perverted, and gross.” And, sardonically, “My, how unlike a 10-year-old-boy!”) and the way he and his on-line friends behave in this one that wouldn’t be “par for the course.” It wouldn’t be “boys will be boys.” It wouldn’t be “what a surprise.” It would be “speak immediately to the parents” and/or “talk to a child psychologist” and/or “contact child-protective services.”

Because, seriously, a 4th or 5th-grader addressing an adult only in terms of sexual body parts (e.g. “boobies!” and “oh, hi tits”) or, as in this strip, is making out aggressively with another child his age is, has been seriously and prematurely sexualized.

Funny in the funnies (no, really, it’s great bleak/dark/edgy humor) but at the same time it’s factually-incorrectly framing the narrative of all men, of all ages including childhood, as obligate, reflex, obsessive sexual beings.

The “no-sex” class paradigm* is a habit of mind, not reality. It’s a habit we want to break in ourselves. It’s a habit we don’t even want to start in children. Let alone encourage by setting expectations.

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Just to be clear I’m really, really not knocking Corsetto. The comic that was current when I first visited her site was also bleak, also a good poke at gender stereotypes, and also pretty funny. Particularly funny when you’re aware that both the gay man and the straight one in the final panel are deluding themselves — a point Corsetto makes clear with, for instance, the perpetually dateless main character Hazel.

* With apologies to Plymouth

Bond of Dear Diaspora, who wrestles productively with questions of gender, has some gender-clarifying questions of her own.

The following questions are intended to help one’s own thinking only — there are no right answers, nor right interpretations of answers. Some of them are questions posed to me by others, some are questions I stumbled across in one or many places, and some are questions I’ve asked myself. I apologize for not being able to cite them all properly — credit is given where possible, but I’ve consumed a huge volume of information on this topic and I can’t trace it all back now.

I’m aware that the way I’m using phrases like “born as” is somewhat problematic. Keep in mind these are questions, not answers, and that responses like “I have no idea” and “neither” are very much allowed.

Bond asked these questions here.

I’ve pulled the answers out of the block quote so I could answer as best I could. I’m assuming they all wish-related questions relate to gender and not general-purpose. So I won’t say “I wish I could fly” in response to “if a genie came to me…” Answering the questions leave me feeling I’m a strongly cis-gendered, sexually male, impatient-with-gender-impositions man. Which might not be a surprise to you, and which surprised me mostly by how strongly born-cis-male (if not born gendered male) I turn out to be.

#1 If a genie came to you and offered you one wish, to change your body in any way you like, what would your wish be? (Thanks to Rebecca for asking me this one some months ago.)

For me it would be mostly about hair, maybe. I had a friend who by about age 15 could grow a full beard and mustache in just a few weeks. With the result that he could fiddle his appearance endlessly — a pencil-thin mustache one week, and nearly a full cossack in a month. I have more of a classic Scottish/Southerner beard that takes forever to grow and leaves bare patches on my cheeks. And unlike the rest of my hair it’s nearly red! On the other hand he now might wish he had my head hair. I also wish I had either less body hair or else softer and less prickly.

Stepping only slightly further away from gender I’d love it if I’d been less ferociously asthmatic as a kid — skinny boys with sunken chests who can neither run nor roughhouse are tailor made for bullying and gendered taunts. But then I might not be as impatient with that as I’ve turned out to be.

#2 If you could either a) be born in the body of the other sex, with your same gender identity, or b) be born in this body, but be someone who never had gender dysphoria, which would you choose? Why?

It’s sort of cheating since I don’t have gender dysphoria, but B. I suspect if I was born in the body of the other sex, with the same gender identity I have now, I’d spend as much time grappling with these issues as Bond does.

#3 If you could either a) change yourself to have the body of the other sex or b) change the world so you’d be accepted unconditionally as your gender without changing your body, which would you choose? Why?

I think this is a $64,000 question. Also a possibly real-world relevant one. I’ve heard from several sources, each with differing degrees of sympathy for trans issues, that cultural climate seems to have a very strong influence on people’s sense of identity and dysphoria, one that ties in quite a lot with corresponding levels of tolerance vs transphobia and homophobia. And so before I’d ask individuals to undergo the (at present) considerable hassle of surgical and medicinal transition I’d want to do what I could to make present society (including the affected individuals themselves) more comfortable with the ambiguity that seems to be part of ordinary human nature. So my strong preference would be B. (Not that my preference counts for a whole lot — I’m not conflicted about my identity. But then for

#4 If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

In the dimension of male gender stereotype I wish my vocal range could be a little deeper. In the dimension of female gender stereotype I wish I was more physically flexible and that I had a better sense of smell. I also dearly wish I could (still) hear higher frequencies — traditionally high-register hearing loss is a masculine trait but in my case I think it has a lot more to do with rock and roll in my youth.

#5 What would your gender identity be if you’d been born as the other sex? How masculine or feminine would you be? (This comes from an old one for when one is questioning her sexual orientation: What would your sexual orientation be if you were the other sex?)

I gotta say if I had been born as the other sex my brain says I’d probably identify as female, assuming I was as cis-bodied then as I am now. My hindbrain says I’d identify as I am now. Which happens to be male. As for how feminine or masculine, I imagine if I was born female I’d still be pretty dour about gender constructions and work towards the middle. As for orientation since I’m straight now I assume I’d be straight then as well. Which is intellectually easy to imagine but conceptually difficult.

#6 When given the opportunity to construct a persona, such as online, in writing, or in video games, what gender do you make yourself, and why?

When I’ve constructed online personalities I’ve always constructed male ones. I think maybe because of my introverted, couldabeen Aspergers-y personality most of my constructed personalities (including attempts at dialogue in ordinary fiction) come out sounding exactly like me.

#7 Jewish tradition teaches that each person has three names: the name she is given at birth, the name she is called, and her real name. What is your real name?

Interesting question. In a lot of ways my real name could almost be figleaf! I spend an awful lot of time in my head and I write best when I’m pouring my thoughts out with as little editing as possible. I vastly prefer to be called David in person, however. :-)

#8 What gender were you in your past life?

What sex is easy: Intuition (the only possible way to answer something like this) says I’ve always been male. What gender? That would depend on the culture and language I was born into.

#9 What questions have helped you understand your gender issues? What questions would you ask someone struggling with hers? Feel free to share answers [with Bond], too.

You know that story that as embryos we all start out as female, with just a couple of genes on the male Y chromosome responsible for modifications that make male embryos develop into actual men?

A classic example might be Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, a genetic condition that prevents or inhibits the expression of male sex hormones in XY-chromosome cells. People with AIS often have externally-indistinguishable female genitals and develop breasts at puberty but have no uterus, fallopian tubes or cervix and may have no upper vagina.

This and other similar intersex syndromes are responsible for the conclusion that genetically and developmentally speaking men are just special-case women.

I’m not sure why that’s supposed to matter but it gets buzzed about a lot.

Turns out that while the basic outline of the story remains approximately correct it’s… more complicated than that.

Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent at The Telegraph

Researchers have found that the body is in a constant fight to remain either female or male and the suppression of just one gene could cause it to “flip” from one to the other.

...

In mammals, males have XY chromosomes and females XX. The new research shows that another gene is responsible for switching women into men.

If the FOXL2 is switched on then the body grows ovaries, switched off and they are replaced by testicles.

But what really surprised the researchers is that the process continues after birth and the body remains in a constant tussle to either switch on or off the gene – even in adulthood.

Read the quote in context here.

Hard core gender essentialists might find this frustrating. Men aren’t just women with an X-degenerate Y chromosome. Women aren’t “pure” humans. On the other hand male embryos don’t actively make ourselves men, nor do female embryos passively default into women. Instead, at the genetic level anyway, we all take active steps to differentiate, switching on some genes and switching off others, in order to become who we are.

(Via Joanna Cake, Violet Blue, and others.)

The author known as James Chartrand of Copyblogger explains why it’s still not a “post-feminist” world.

You know me as James Chartrand of Men with Pens, a regular Copyblogger contributor for just shy of two years.

And yet, I’m a woman.

This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy — I’m literally a woman.

This is my story.

Read the quote in context here.

James was out of work, with two young children, out of savings, out of luck. She began doing freelance copywriting and struggled her ass off. Then something happened.

One day, I tossed out a pen name, because I didn’t want to be associated with my current business, the one that was still struggling to grow. I picked a name that sounded to me like it might convey a good business image. Like it might command respect.
My life changed that day

Instantly, jobs became easier to get.

There was no haggling. There were compliments, there was respect. Clients hired me quickly, and when they received their work, they liked it just as quickly. There were fewer requests for revisions — often none at all.

Customer satisfaction shot through the roof. So did my pay rate.

And I was thankful. I finally stopped worrying about how I would feed my girls. We were warm. Well-fed. Safe. No one at school would ever tease my kids about being poor.

I was still bringing in work with the other business, the one I ran under my real name. I was still marketing it. I was still applying for jobs — sometimes for the same jobs that I applied for using my pen name.

I landed clients and got work under both names. But it was much easier to do when I used my pen name.

Understand, I hadn’t advertised more effectively or used social media — I hadn’t figured that part out yet. I was applying in the same places. I was using the same methods. Even the work was the same.

In fact, everything was the same.

Except for the name.

The blog she started as James, Men with Pens, is a well-respected resource for professional bloggers.

Pretty wild when you think about it. Discouraging too.

She doesn’t mention it but my peripheral experience in the publishing world makes me pretty confident the new work wasn’t all coming in from men who preferred to hire (what they believed to be) male writers.

This isn’t the only time we’ve seen this sort of discrimination based on name only. It’s a fairly common academic and investigative-journalist exercise to pair individuals who are evenly matched except for, say, age, sex, or race, and send them out to apply for work. I’m pretty sure there’s even a study demonstrating that academics are likely to rank submitted papers more favorably when everything else is identical except for a single letter change in the purported author’s first name — e.g. a submission will get a higher rating just by substituting the single letter “a” for “h” in the name “Joan Smith” to make it “John Smith.”

But that’s all fairly academic. James Chartrand’s story is real as houses.

Something to think about next time you imagine there’s nothing left to be done because everything’s already just hunky-dory.

[See also Blue Gal’s take on assumptions about gender and pen names. —fl]