qcgencommfinal

[qcgencommfinal]

Removing Consent from Sex Education: Macro-level of Educational communication about gender

Macro-level reform requires extensive social conversations concerning gender roles and binaries, as well as the passage of legislation to govern their indoctrination. This artifact is a snippet of a hearing on  Sen. Gary Byrne's Bill 442 Concerning Human Sexuality, which mandates school board approval of all sex-ed instruction, and initially contained clear guidelines for consent education. Byrne removed the section requiring consent education (to so much pushback that he reinstated it), citing it as an individual issue for "local control" or parents to discuss with their children.

How does removing consent from sex education impact girls?

Girls don't learn they have the power to say no; by teen-age boys have already learned they may use their tools of physical power, dominance, and intimidation to get what they want. 1 in 4 teen girls IN INDIANA experiences sexual assault before they leave high school. Clearly, removing consent education is the opposite of solving this problem.

Marital rape: If girls are not taught about consent, in combination with abstinence-only curriculum, they grow up assuming that once they marry, they cannot refuse sexual intimacy.

These female Senators rightfully point out that he has no experience in human sexuality studies, nor did he consult with anyone who does, before removing this crucial part of the bill. So why did he do it? Republican Senators are issuing sweeping regulations that aim to dominate, control, and establish a new social order that holds the cishet white man on top as an infallible source of wisdom, wealth, and power. Removing consent from the curriculum ensures that the next generation of white men is free from the 'pressure' of women's sexual autonomy, and entrenches their place in society, next to the man (or birthed from his rib).

[qcgencommfinal]

The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life

Understanding the Politics of shame helped me examine my own relationship with shame! Because of the sexless, identity-focused queerness that my generation was sold, I grew up knowing I was queer without understanding what it meant to be queer. I grew up knowing I was trans, knowing that discrimination is a part of life when transitioning, not understanding the root cause of sexual shame. "Now younger queers are told all too often that a principled defense of nonnormative sex is just a relic of bygone "liberationism"... increasingly, the answer is that to have dignity gay people, gay people must be seen as normal." (Warner, p. 52) The shift toward identity politics, (as evidenced by gay marriage normalizing non-sexual gay identity), has harmed queer people's ability to politically mobilize against the politics of shame. This is because efforts to "normalize" queer behavior separate the queer community into those sex-private gay people who conform and assimilate, and those sex-discussing deviants who ought to be hidden, expelled, or legislated out of public life. (Giuliani's policies restricting "adult" stores pushed New York's queer community into unsafe public spaces.) "When you begin interacting with people in queer culture... you learn that everyone deviates from the norm in some context or other, and that the statistical norm has no moral value." (Warner, p. 70)

In the mid 80s, queer people participated in massive collective action campaigns necessitated by the AIDS epidemic (and lack of social/societal support for queer people). This encouraged an inclusive, supportive group identity to combat the weaponized politics of shame attacking queerness. During this time, queer peoples' identity was highly connected to the overlapping nature of diverse sexual, romantic, and platonic relationships, which made for a more robust, connected community. "A public could be mobilized for electioneering, for partying, for developing a wide-ranging response to a health crisis." (Warner, p. 63) Warner would likely argue that a public cannot be stirred in such a was partially because of the fragmented way queer people live their lives now, and partly because there has become a separation of "pragmatic homsosexuals" and radical/sex-positive/non-monogynous queer rebels.

This book talks about the politics of sexual shame in terms of very tangible phenomena; from Clinton's impeachment to George Michael's arrest, Warner lays out how/why sexual autonomy is limited and for whom. And while his references are dated, the message remains: universal bodily autonomy and radical queer acceptance are integral roles of a just democracy.

I would like to note that after the OF Panel class, one of our guest students approached me and asked me about kinks/kink culture. Thus, the identity conflation of sex and queerness is proven (though I will admit I may have fanned those flames because I wanted to share my newfound knowledge). I did feel more confident in my speaking during said panel because of this book; I was able to share a nuanced perspective on sex, politics, social responsibility, and the role of normativity in sexual spaces.

[qcgencommfinal]

UK Supreme Court & Sexual Licensing

The question before the congregation here is whether the 2010 Equality Act, the term women definitionally includes trans women. We can use Michael Warner's orange highlighted framework to analyze this piece. Through this analysis, we find that the more one builds on existing legislation by defining terms based on sexual licensing, the more trans people are defined out of human rights.

This man immediately presents women as half of the country, who fought hard for the specific rights they have won. The "woman 'is diametrically opposed to the "trans woman" who he acknowledges face discrimination as they "seek to live their lives with dignity" (seek to integrate into the hegemonic view of gender). He then references that lesbians "have entered the debate"- I did a little searching and found this article from the BBC. It starts with a British lesbian saying she has faced death threats and harassment "because she doesn't want to have sex with trans women", and doesn't get much better in the way of performative victimhood and calling trans women "biologically male". That gives a better picture of the mainstream anti-trans anti-intellectual TERF rhetoric this man is likely referring to.

To the meat of the issue: the Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). If you want your acquired gender to be legally recognized in the UK, you must obtain a GRC. Included in this post is a highlighted section of the Trouble with Normal, which discusses the concept of "sex licensing," which, as an abstract concept, Sexual License is everything the state deems itself able to punish or regulate, which the UK has apparently taken very literally. In this ruling, the court refers to those with "certificated sex" as those whose public gender identity is contingent on possessing a GRC. In this ruling, we see how the possession of a GRC, or what Warner would call a "sexual license", not only affords the state a direct avenue for discrimination based on the amorphous "biological sex", but creates a social system of permission and restriction under which every trans person must live.

Ultimately, the court rules that trans women are excluded from the definition of women in this act, and thus excluded from the civil rights protections that the law would otherwise afford them. He's right- this is not a triumph of one or more groups in society over another; it is a triumph of the cisnomative system, which the British Supreme Court was hired to protect and perpetuate, over the sexual other.

[qcgencommfinal]

Chappell Roan, Judith Butler and Drag as subversion:

Signed to a label at age 17, Chappell Roan rocketed to stardom following the September 2023 release of her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. During this time, she was opening for Olivia Rodrigo, making TikToks regularly, and playing at Coachella. Roan exemplifies how the algorithm, pop music, personal branding, and knowing the right people can create a career in the 2020s.

Roan grew up in the Midwest with dreams of leaving Tennessee for California, and relied on 'Drag looks', and broadly applicable relationship songs to get her there. *Chappell recently came out as a lesbian, though she sings about both gay and heterosexual relationships. So, what is the nature of Chappell Roan's Drag performance? Does her fast track to stardom necessitate a disingenuous (non-subversive) subversion of gender norms?

In Gender Trouble Butler describes the subversive power of Drag:

"If one thinks that one sees a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man, then one takes the first term of each of those perceptions as the “reality” of gender: the gender that is introduced through the simile lacks “reality,” and is taken to constitute an illusory appearance.... When categories come into question, the reality of gender is also put into crisis: it becomes unclear how to distinguish the real from the unreal. And this is the occasion in which we come to understand that what we take to be “real,” what we invoke as the naturalized knowledge of gender is, in fact, a changeable and revisable reality." (Butler, 1999)

So does Chappell call gendered realities into question? Chappell is a female performing an exaggerated femininity. What then makes her different from Olivia Rodrigo or Sabrina Carpenter, who display their female identity as a feature of their act?

Roan labels her style as drag, (above is one of her more draggy looks) and thus calls into question QUEER people's notion of who can and cant subvert gender norms, what gender norms look like, and whether gatekeeping gender subversion is productive. In this way, Roan is a product of the kind of queerness our generation has been sold, and is thus an icon who many queer midwestern young-adults look up to.

Chappell leads us to ask questions like: Wherein lies the distinction between the commodification of drag and presenting drag as an art form which reflects queer self-expression? Is it right to make the prescription of who can perform drag to preserve the statement drag intends to make about gender norms? Should that statement evolve? I infer that Butler would ultimately argue that prescriptions of what drag ought to be are always harmful, but asking these questions is important critical inquiry into subversion of gender norms as resistance to hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity.

Ultimately, Chappell Roan's drag certainly has merit, because it brings to light the question of norms WITHIN queer culture. That's what I find most fascinating about Chappell Roan.

[qcgencommfinal]

"Of the 669 grants that the National Institutes of Health had canceled in whole or in part as of early May, at least 323 — nearly half of them — related to L.G.B.T.Q. health..." (Mueller, 2025)

"In termination letters over the last two months, the N.I.H. justified the cuts by telling scientists that their L.G.B.T.Q. work “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” In some cases, the agency said canceled research had been “based on gender identity,” which gave rise to “unscientific” results that ignored “biological realities.” overall, this funding was pulled because the Trump administration viewed this research as “based primarily on artificial and nonscientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives." (Mueller, 2025)

This phenomenon mirrors the governmental disdain (whatever, go ahead, die attitude) towards LGBTQ people during the AIDS crisis. However, this modern push to ignore queer genocide is notably nuanced, including the question of "gender ideology" analysis. This has broadened support for anti-LGBTQ initiatives, even swooping up transphobic gays, in the fight specifically against a group. It is no longer god's punishment for gays, and we let him do his thing. It is Trump's punishment for trannies, and we either support it because we do not care about the rights and wellbeing of those 'indoctrinated by ideology', or we don't support it and condone a specific worldview contrary to everything taught from elementary to high school. You cannot be against funding cuts because scientific research is important, or because you think all people should have access to healthcare, you must be for or against 'gender ideology'. Thus the inseparability of queer bodies from politics is perpetuated, in a new, more complex way.

This may not only spell doom for LGBTQ health resources, but queer collective action as a whole. In the article, The Times reports that these funding cuts 'may be illegal', and ends with 'even if you don't think it will, it WILL end up impacting everyone, including you'. I think that, regardless of its general applicability, research into LGBTQ people is integral, but this is not a common belief. Why? We are at the point in the fight for LGBTQ rights where we are told we must continue to push more towards the center/broad applicability to achieve substantive reform. All of the queer books I've been reading from post-AIDS era forecasted this, and went on to say that this push only stands to further isolate queer people, exclude them from public life, & hinder their political activism.

Lastly, cutting grant-funded programs for LGBTQ health leads to a hierarchy of medical services. "Scientists said canceling research on such a broad range of illnesses related to sexual and gender minority groups effectively created a hierarchy of patients, some more worthy than others." (Mueller, 2025) By issuing orders to cut funding, the administration not only endorses a proper mode of being, but also limits medical access for a minority group, establishing a medical hierarchy. Full stop. All of Trump's policies are straight out of the authoritarian playbook and serve the expressed purpose of reifying hierarchies, establishing social order, and instilling general fear into the opposition. Just like any good Nazi, he starts with eliminating queer research. Don't believe me? Google the Institute of Sexology. Or consult the strongman playbook from class 5/6/25.

[qcgencommfinal]

Charity Water: Clean water transforms girls' and women's' potential

I was recently introduced to the term: sexual division of labor (thank you Judith Butler interview). The sexual division of labor refers to how work is divided along gender lines, with men and women performing different types of work based on their gender. The sexual division of labor is entrenched in the social and cultural norms of many countries, with varying impacts on women.

In places like Sudan, women often carry the social and quite literal burden of bringing water to their families. When women and girls spend the majority of their time on the long walk to water, their potential is limited- they have limited schooling opportunities, and face immense physical exhaustion. When communities are provided access to clean, reliable water sources, the women are free of this labor. (This specific task at least). This has a huge impact on women and girls' ability to explore their potential.

As the Ad states, access to water also reverses social stigma surrounding periods. In places where routine access to clean water is limited, having a period can be viewed as unhygienic, shameful, and embarrassing. Let's be honest, when you're freebleeding for days and have no way of properly cleaning your underwear or have no shower, it smells. This alone can be an isolating and uncomfortable experience for girls and women. Access to clean water means women's lives don't have to be halted monthly by their periods. It means girls don't have to spend 5 days a month home from school to avoid shame and embarrassment. Men and boys are less likely to ostracize women about their periods, and biology can no longer be proof of inferiority.

Overall, I was shocked by how much I didn't know about the variety of struggles women face due to sex-based division of labor. Yes, Americans tend to subscribe to the idea that a mother raises the kids, but agrarian women's labor divisions are highly complex and more socially ingrained. This also underscores the need for global feminism, and adopting that framework in our charity work. Go, Charity Water!

[qcgencommfinal]

"Ulta Girls", A Continued Discussion:

In class, we discussed at length how young girls are now encouraged to perform a specific type of "adult" femininity at a young age. I think this prompts a very timely discussion about the intersection of consumerism, femininity, and digital ecology.

This artifact shows the difference between the expected gender performance of 12-year-old girls in 2025 v. 2014. The former we see getting ready with a full face of makeup, slick (model-looking) bun, blouse, and jeans. Her vanity is scattered with beauty products- liquid blush, concealer, lip gloss, perfume. There are large multi-tiered organizers of serums, creams, and lotions as well, suggesting that this 12-year-old has an extensive beauty routine (with a lot of products), and she likely spends a lot of time preoccupied with looking beautiful. Clearly, this child has bought a gendered narrative, delivered by TikTok, which has the ultimate goal of profiting from girls' insecurity. The trauma these girls incur at the hands of manufactured expectations may be irreparable. They seem to be encouraged to strive for physical beauty and, by extension, a place in the gender marketplace at a young age.

Conversely, the now 22-year-old's young portrait looks highly different. She is in a casual outfit, appearing happier, she's not preoccupied with fixing her lipstick, and she certainly appears less bothered by others' expectations in public.

I checked the comments section, and the above comment appears to be written by a younger person in response to a "what happened?" type of comment. The person cites "overconsumption and the influence of the internet" as the driving factors of this phenomenon- a consensus I think Bailey also helped our class come to. Why are kids not allowed to be kids anymore? This Short, in conjunction with our class discussion, prove that "Ulta Girls" are a social phenomenon who answer the question with a resounding "GENDERED CAPITALISM!". This phenomenon reflects feminine beauty standards we ingrain into our daughters, the overconsumption in late-stage capitalism, and the way social media compounds social pressure for young girls.

[qcgencommfinal]

Blue Origin, & Performative Feminism

Blue Origin, Bezos' private, for-profit space exploration endeavor, sent its first all-women crew to space. (un)Shockingly, they were not scientists/astronauts/engineers, but female celebrities in skimpy space suits. The flight leader was an emmy-winning journalist and SHOCKER Jeff Bezos' fiancée. Only two of the crewmembers had any Engineering or flight experience- Amanda Nguyễn, and Aisha Bowe. These tweets sum up pretty well what I'm hinting at here.

In her comment, Lori Winkles correctly points out the dissonance we feel watching. Watching female celebrities realize that Earth is big, and we are all in this together, while NASA is experiencing budget cuts, women's rights are being stripped away, and trust in science-based government institutions is being eroded, hits like a dystopian novel. Especially when you consider that this mission is privately funded by a man who is worth 1.2 billion times the average American. Don't forget that he is preparing to receive massive tax breaks directly after DOGE slashed NASA's budget. But here, look at these beautiful women being so empowered!

I do agree with capitalstichco. This is the male-glaziest space mission; entirely for show, to parade around the "ideal woman". These women all embody that woman: She who rises to fame by marrying rich, she who fights her way to the top of the media circus tooth-and-nail by performing femininity best, she who dabbles in queer culture in the most socially palatable way, and the qualified minority women whose handwork and dedication will be sacrificed on the altar of celebrity scandal.

While I certainly don't think that these women's space experiences should be discounted, I conclude that this performative, privately owned feminism is one we should approach critically.

Performative feminism is a most annoying aspect of our times.

[qcgencommfinal]

The Feminine Urge: Common Experiences in Femininity

Setting: Taking dance classes is a common experience for AFAB people (including myself). Thus, the ballet imagery hits hard on the nostalgic, painful experiences of girlhood, and what the song describes as the "Feminine Urge" to rage it all out. The various scenes lead one to note that early experiences with things like dance class, etiquette courses, and dress codes teach AFAB people how to perform gender early on. The song suggests that these expectations, created through common experiences, persist into adulthood and only become more sexually complex.

Content: The song explores manufactured dependency on male validation in lyrics like "I'm only here for your entertainment."

It addresses the expectation that women must fix men "I am a dark red liver... all the poison I convert it an convert it to love") The demand that women shoulder others' burdens. "Oh ballerina, bend under the weight of it all. Ain't it fun to hold the world in your hands?"

Despite these huge expectations, the song suggests that women are expected to stay silent and under the thumb of their partners "Do you feel like a man when I can't talk back? Do you want me, or do you want control?"

The song also laments relationships ending when one fails to commit to "the role" of a woman: "failure to admit to the role, I'll admit was a failure you achieved on your own." and uses the typical male perspective to draw attention to the double standards when relationships end: men are expected to move on quickly, and women are expected to beg for men to stay. "Do you want me to care when you just disappear? I can't win them all."

Ultimately, the song settles on the assertion that these "feminine" burdens are a social reality that persist for generations, and with them so does the "feminine urge" get passed on. "Here comes the feminine urge, I know it so well, to nurture the wounds my mother held."

This perspective stands in stark contrast to I’m Every Woman’s empowering embrace of the burdens of femininity. Both are valuable perspectives, true in themselves, and unique to each artist’s experiences embracing or rejecting femininity and accompanying stereotypical expectations.

[qcgencommfinal]

#dadlife: Normalizing Male Incompetence

This came up on my YouTube recommendations (I don't have Instagram or TikTok, so you get YouTube Shorts). This video basically reinforces the stereotype that only women are capable of responsibly caring for children. Still, it is framed as an absent-minded, innocent, and expected mistake. What, then, are the broader implications of this mistake? Let's take a look.

Setting: First, let's discuss how the format is intended to permeate everyone's algorithm: The black background shows that it is taken from another source, and the caption at the top of the video is either AI or a non-native English speaker (either way, it's quickly generated). "This is what happens when a father is rarely involved in his children's lives 🥲😂" with simple hashtags #dadjokes #dad #family and the title "Follow for more inspirations☺️" this is a prime content-farm produced meme. With 13M views, it successfully worked itself onto my feed, to speak to its reach.

Content: In the video, the mother records her 3 sons' outfits, with the youngest in his older brothers' clothes, which are far too big for him, and the two older each wearing one of the youngest's pieces of clothing. The mother states, "This is what happens when I go in the shower, and Scott gets you ready." This is normalized male incompetence, on a small scale, with the mother essentially saying: this is just what happens when you leave it to the man. And on a large scale, with the appeal to the algorithm and the caption/emojis playing off the incident as a funny occurrence. I saw a comment that said the Dad didn't get them dressed; he told them to "get dressed". I find this to be insightful. It leads one to question the societally expected level of involvement/care for fathers who delegate child-rearing to their wives. These men are expected to tell their kids what to do, not to help them figure out how to do things on their own (involved parenting). Of course, it is important to note how/why this has 13M views. The idea that dad told the kids "get dressed", when mom typically facilitates "getting dressed" says a lot about parenting and the diverging, gendered expectations of motherhood and fatherhood.

[qcgencommfinal]

Can you pass the Butt Suds Test?: Men’s 4-in-one deodorant Ad

Performances of gender are guided by the social expectations of dominant groups- this is reflected in hygiene practices, as we discussed in our "Bodies" Unit. This is a notable artifact because of its gendered language as an appeal to men's ego, essentially shaming them into proper hygiene through the "Butt Suds Test". It is also notable that despite encouraging proper hygiene, the goal of the ad is to sell a 4-in-one product that touts "scientific" proof as a selling point. Let it be known that I looked up the science behind a "healthy acid mantle pH," and this research was paid for by specific manufacturers with no peer reviews. Let's dig in a little deeper, shall we?

Setting: The reflection of the glass door is an AI-generated image. It depicts huge products superimposed over huge mansions. Clearly the intention is to establish a subliminal link between the product and perceived status.

Character: Older white woman, blonde hair, blue eyes, red toenails (MILF stereotype?).

Content: This clip appears to be a snippet of an interview-style testimonial. The ad abruptly begins: “Go between your buttcheeks, down between your schnitzel sack, and just sniff the suds. And you go “okay!” that’s what she’s talking about.” First, I want to note the ambiguous pronoun she. This language implies that the woman is explaining why a woman in the consumer's life is telling him he smells bad. These people have identified a market- men who have lower hygiene standards and are told by women in their life that they smell, and use the mechanism of that shame to sell their product. Also, note how she avoids using the term scrotum. When women are sold vagisil, advertisers don't say "helps keep your roast beef lips clean" they say this is a "pH balanced vaginal cleanser" Why then do we avoid direct discussion of "male" genitalia, but not "female" genitalia? How does this contribute to people's perceived authority over women's bodies v. men's bodies? The actress then goes into this pseudo-scientific, intentionally obtuse explanation about skin pH before casually dropping the 4-in-one bomb. More men are coming to know 4-in-one is not effective, but still desire to use it for convenience, and thus this designation is withheld until the very end of the commercial. This is an interesting artifact, which says a lot about men's hygiene standards, societal expectations, and how modern commercials appeal to men.

[qcgencommfinal]

Art House: Carving out Queer/Artistic Discursive Spaces

In class, we discuss the rhetoric of difference as creating a separate space of discursive belonging.

My favorite Google review for The Church/Art House cites one's experience as: “an adjustment for your spiritual spine.” I found this interesting and congruent with my own experience watching live music there. I think a lot of queer, alternative people often feel uncomfortable in churches, but it was not so in this environment. As opposed to the congregation being united by the wrath of a god, we were united by a love of the arts; each uniquely valuable in the eyes of our patron saint. People of all genders and creeds were experiencing the same music, sharing the same love, and supporting the same mission. Artists were doodling in the pews, photographers were kneeling in the pit, and everyone was feeling the spirit of camaraderie, connected by our mutual need for a safe haven. ON the Church steps, people were discussing the commodification of the artist in the modern music industry, in the rectory, queer couples were discussing how they are coping with the current political climate.

At some point during the concert, I went down to the rectory to use the restroom. The sign has a picture of a unicorn, a zombie, a man, a sasquatch, an alien, a mermaid, and says "RESTROOM... Whatever just wash your hands. I found this to be an interesting sign- as it represents the traditionally "man bathroom figure" man as "human". This simultaneously falls into and out of the gendered symbolism. I think of it as the visual representation of the gendered word "mankind". Either way, my experience here was transformative and beautiful.

[qcgencommfinal]

Rebel with A Cause: Sincerely Yours, Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray’s legacy (and partially lack thereof) is a testament to how societal expectations of gender, sexuality, and race intersect to suppress the accomplishments of black queer people. Writer, Lawyer, Professor, Activist, Saint, Priest- all titles that Murray accrued over her dynamic life, accomplished by the year 1973. Her essay was used to advocate for Brown v. Board, and she was close friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, yet we hear nothing about her. In fact, the very month that RCMC's program was created, Rev. Pauli Murray's page was taken from the National Parks website. So, let's talk about them. *Pauli identified as a female but repeatedly requested gender affirming care and dressed as a man, thus, I will use varying pronouns dependent on context.

Pauli overcame countless structural barriers, not to mention their own struggle with gender dysphoria and a lack of gender-affirming care. Pauli was denied entrance to law school based on her sex, institutionalized for her dysphoria and depression (it’s giving “hysteria”), thrown in jail for improper bus behavior far before Rosa Parks, and was the first black woman to achieve reverendship. Pauli's essays describe the role of Jane Crow, which gives a name to the specific oppression black women face at the intersection of womanhood and blackness. Pauli is thus considered one of the first scholars to introduce Intersectionality into communicative analysis and they translated it beautifully into activism.

River City Mixed Chorus was able to breathe new life into Pauli’s story by working directly with her niece and great-niece, who compiled personal writings, photographs, and notes. The show well-encompassed her individual struggle with gender, mental health, and intimate relationships, as well as her experience navigating both academic life and the fight for Civil Rights as a black woman.

[qcgencommfinal]

Trump "What is a woman?": Your State Sanctioned Gender Identity

Also in this clip, we see a reporter directly asking the president: "What is a woman?" Butler would assert that the asking of this direct question harbors a whole litany of assumptions, which, when asked in the context of a Whitehouse press briefing, reaffirm normative notions of acceptable behaviors of queer people, and towards queer people. This is evidenced by Butler's assertion that "The question, however, of what qualifies as 'gender' is itself already a question that attests to a pervasively normative operation of power, a fugitive operation of 'what will be the case' under the rubric of 'what is the case.'” (Butler, 1999) However, the double-barreled question is not just concerned with answering the question of what gender is or what a woman is; it is also concerned with establishing new norms regarding what gender ought to be under a new regime and presenting women and trans people as diametrically opposed, adversarial forces.

According to Butler "...a descriptive account of gender includes considerations of what makes gender intelligible, an inquiry into its conditions of possibility, whereas a normative account seeks to answer the question of which expressions of gender are acceptable, and which are not, supplying persuasive reasons to distinguish between such expressions in this way." (Butler, 1999) This reporter, as evidenced by his congratulatory remarks about Trump's new "Women's Day", is clearly here to lob the president a softball question to unite people under normative assumptions of what gender ought to be. We can see that this question is designed to bring about questions of normativity (and to scholars, questions of power) because the reporter asks, "And why is it important to understand the difference between men and women?" Obviously, this was meant to segway the president into a an assertion of heteronormativity under the guise of "family values" or "protecting children" or any other anti-queer dogwhistle. He still was able to clunkily pull the subject back to anti-trans ideology, of course, but was unable to map out the relationship between concepts like gender, sex, procreation, and morality. (shocker)

That's barely dipping into an analysis of Trump's 78-year-old answer. I thought it interesting that Trump was able to acknowledge that women have faced systemic hardship in this country and then immediately returned to the threat that trans people pose to women, as opposed to saying anything of substance. He's 2 degrees of separation away from actually recognizing and developing solutions to the problem, and I fear he is getting more brainworms. Brainworms that tell him to get rid of any industry that is not for profit, and to blame every bad thing on trans people.

[qcgencommfinal]

The Intersection of Gender, Discipline, and the American One-Room School House: Perpetuating the True "Gender Ideology"

I work part-time as an educational facilitator at Durham. During spring we have a lot more tours, and more classes requiring the one-room schoolhouse experience, in which students are invited to roleplay elementary students in 1880s Nebraska. I dislike this tour not just because it's an excuse for our old docents to relive the glory days of corporal punishment and chalkboards. I dislike it primarily because the first thing we are told to do is to form two lines of boys and girls, let the girls in first, and have them sit on opposite sides of the classroom. A few docents also teach the girls how to curtsy (very important). Bottom line, had this gender binary been imposed on me, even at a young age, I would've felt immediately uncomfortable.

Through this roleplay activity we teach these kids how to obey gender roles, and how to conform to gender norms. The docent today talked about how the McGuffey readers were great because they also taught moral lessons (today it was don't keep a lost pocketbook for yourself, and boys take care of your mothers and sisters by shining shoes.) These lessons, codify a simplistic understanding of gender and most importantly age-old behavioral expectations tied into it.

I understand that this is not an isolated thing, and that "women's jobs" and "men's jobs" are often discussed by certain docents in every program (especially Native American Life... interesting). I think that one-room schoolhouses stand at an interesting intersection of gender and discipline, which is reflected even in our programming. I did some more digging and found this interesting paper which discusses how "Americans cling to the metaphoric walls of these schoolhouses as a reminder of a seemingly wholesome past." (Berg, 2022) A past that heavily involves ingraining gender roles in children. “Girls were socialized into their subordinate roles as women, and boys were coached to be dependent upon their fathers for their very identity” (Berg, 2022) "Despite a lack of resources and money, schools that could afford it built two entrances into the schoolhouse. “In most cases, it will be observed that separate entrances for boys and girls have been provided, this arrangement is regarded as highly important, it prevents improprieties between the sexes.” (James Johonnot, Our School House)" (Berg, 2022) So now, each time that I participate in this tour, I feel a bit guilty about actively enshrining gendered education in children with an 1800s roleplay. Still, my hope is that some of the older kids think about how the segregation of genders, or hell even the act of roleplaying the segregation stands to benefit.

There's my mental gymnastics. Let me know if you have any suggestions on getting through to my supervisor about this.

[qcgencommfinal]

Who's the Man One?: A Lesson on Gender Presentation (brought to you by Netflix)

This comedian breaks down gender presentation in a very comedic way, saying "I think we need to deconstruct these things to reconstruct them." Throughout this skit she adopts her conservative father's narrow view of gender roles, and proclaims herself "the man one" (the more masculine presenting partner in a queer relationship). She makes the point that gender presentation is a good indicator of which one is the "man one", as typically the one who dresses more feminine wishes to be viewed as the feminine one. She then goes into how she uses this idea of being "the man one" to explain her masculine tendencies, and to chastise her girlfriend. The clip ends with the ironic comment that there "has to be one man one and one woman one like in the bible" to ensure the "balance of energy".

I suppose this clip uses irony as it's primary method of critique, but the joke ends up feeling hollow, as the comedian is still working under the framework of her conservative father by the end of the bit. I thought that this clip may have been a wind-up for some profound statement on gender, as the end of this clip left no closure. So, like the thorough scholar I am, I looked up the whole special, and this really is the end of "the man one" bit. This was disappointing to me when analyzing the clip from a queer theory lens, as it only stands to validate existing gender binaries, and perpetuates notions of what a "proper/common sense" queer relationship looks like. This idea is strongly upheld by Emma saying "You women ones you just talk, you don't listen" and moving onto a joke about how she is offended at the notion of being with another "man one". I understand that it is ironic that Emma ultimately holds similar beliefs to her dad regarding gender, but it doesn't then challenge those beliefs.

I realized I could also analyze it through a feminist lens, and the comedy becomes a bit more accessible. Here the comedy lies in the idea that Emma's father asks about the "man one" while assuming that that person is the more respectable of the two. Then when Emma goes into the list about killing bugs, taking out the trash, and other manly activities/qualities, she adds avoiding conflict to illustrate that manly qualities aren't necessarily desirable.

Still, considering the setup of the scenario has to do with analyzing queer relationships through gender presentation, I hoped it might be a more nuanced critique.

[qcgencommfinal]

Fuck Linguistic Purity: How Language Shapes Gender

I love this meme. It shows the role of a scholar within the framework of communication as a means of constructing reality. In class, we discussed how gendered language shapes our views of reality and terministic screens. I propose that many peoples' terministic screens are guided by their native linguistic conventions. We can use the empirical evidence of some folks' response to they/them pronouns being "that's not grammatically correct". We can even extend this to how even more people reject neopronouns as a valid form of identification.

Applying this to the scholar's ability to define terms, I am immediately reminded of the Latine/x debate. This X is a reason why language ought not to be defined by scholars. Scholars will always work within their own terminist screens/the bounds of their own language. We got the gender-neutral term Latinx from English-speaking gender scholars, which ended up hurting the ethos of the linguistic change. Because X has little place in Spanish, the term feels clunky and is not only rejected by those who are against gender inclusivity but also by those against linguistic colonization (and prefer Latine). This is why language, according to myself and this meme, should be defined by its users. Had Latine scholar's voices been allowed to speak for themselves, we likely wouldn't have the e/x divide in usage we have now, and this gender-neutral term may even be more widely accepted by those whose terministic screens are guided by linguistic conventions.