Like any proper girl, I loved unicorns (like that gender stereotype? Yeah, me neither). I had a giant stuffed unicorn and dreamed of unicorns until my nightmares would transform my pink water into a red river as a Jaws-like great white shark would come through and rip the head off of my innocent unicorn. In retrospect, I think it was foreshadowing my struggle with gender-identity.
When introduced to the Gender Unicorn by Landyn Pan and Anna Moore, I was fascinated and, naturally, shared it with every person I knew -aka I shared it on Facebook. It spoke to a lot of my friends and we all loved the ability to relate to the graphic. I shared it with one friend who related it to the genderbread man and when I told her that the Gender Unicorn was more appropriate and correct, she became short-tempered with me and questioned, “But does it matter if the information is still getting out? It’s not about credit, it’s about learning.”
Her words struck me because they were reminiscent of how I felt only a year ago. Credit shouldn’t matter as long as everyone is learning, except that it does matter and we should care about it. It’s good that people are learning, but that is the argument that is generated from a patriarchal white society. There is a long history of people taking credit and claiming to understand concepts that they didn’t really understand. Akin to women being diagnosed with hysteria simply because they were women, but we don’t question it because the male doctor clearly knows best. There just seems to be an issue with this line of thinking?
It’s similar to arguing that gender is a performative concept. When scholars try to dissect and analyze gender to the point that it loses it’s human aspect, suddenly it becomes a lot easier to criticize the people whose reality is determined by their gender identity. A year ago, I would have sided with Judith Butler when she claimed that gender is performative, but now I see the world differently. When we make such claims, we deny the struggle of thousands of peers in the trans community. They struggle internally with their gender identity and they feel attached to that identity. Who are we to determine if that struggle is real in the sense that it comes from them and is not solely a byproduct of our society?
Furthermore, I found it interesting that Cal, an intersex man, saw himself as a minotaur child in the book, Middlesex. From class, I remember we discussed that disfigured babies of monstrous form were often the result of interracial or incest-breeding, in literature at least. In Cal’s case, his intersex body is a result of incest, so his ability to relate to the minotaur makes sense, but does that not speak to some deeper truth? What makes us feel so relatable to monsters and why do we relate such human interactions to having monstrous outcomes when in reality they are very human outcomes?
Monsters in literature in regards to sex and gender are negative, but in contemporary culture, I feel as though this is changing. Whether it be to unicorns or minotaurs, I’m not sure I can say.
I really admire your ability to acknowledge your stunted understanding of gender and sexual identities in the past as being part of the learning process. I feel like we (myself included) often dismiss those who don't "get it" right away. We grow inpatient with their inability to see past their limitations in order to achieve a more well rounded understanding of themselves and more importantly, others. I feel like we draw connections between nonhuman beings and ourselves because it gives us greater insight into our individuality? Like I would pick being compared to a hedgehog over a manic pixie dream girl ten times out of ten, because comparing myself to other humans is a slippery slope into low self-esteem 900% of the time. No one I know knows any hedgehogs personally, but they can all name five manic pixie dream girls off the top of their heads.
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