i dont know why

so theres this transdude acquaintance who goes to my school who pisses me off more than other SLC students, which is kind of hard to do at this point in my slc jadedness. but its not only him, its a lot of others around my age who have, or feign to have, a deep understanding of identity politics/gender and sexuality issues, and in attending sarah lawrence, have been granted privileged and exclusive access to the terminology of queer/gender scholars, i.e. "genderqueer-identified," constructed distinctions between presentation, identity and etc., and in general, the existence of rhetorical identifiers that exist beyond the heteronormative paradigm. when they use these terms, it erks me. in this entry, im trying to explore why this is so.

first off, lets establish a name for these users:
People who use terms such as "queer" and "genderfucked" and "GNC" = QUEEFS

off the bat, its important to state that i am not exempt from this privileged demographic. i was raised comfortably middle-class, attend the same elite university, and have taken queer and gender studies courses. i acknowledge my access to such studies and rhetorical devices. its just that, for some reason, whenever i hear these terms, i.e. "genderfuck" and even "queer" used, whether it be in the hallways, or formal classroom settings, etc., i cannot help but equate such utterances with two things:

1. a sense that QUEEFS may be establishing territory by tapping into this inaccessible vocabulary (HIPSTERS)
2. a sense that QUEEFS are trying to cultivate a sense of self-value that is legitimized by the use and possession of such precious and exclusive terms (HIPSTERS)

perhaps it is because most people i've met who use these terms are hip, but according to my subjective experience, most QUEEFS i meet are HIPSTERS.

i have an example that equates the behavior of QUEEFS with that of the HIPSTER-
so i was having a beer in a lower west side gay bar. i was sitting next to these three guys, two of which were involved in some contrived meta-conversation about queerness. they looked about my age, and from one of the guy's sweatshirts, i assumed he went to NYU. so then, the other guy, who had been staying more or less quiet throughout the conversation, bust in to ask, "what is genderqueer?" and instead of offering a definition, both of the guys stopped and said, "you don't know?"

this reminds me of gunnar myrdal's the american dilemma. myrdal talks about the blatant discrepancies between founding american civic ideals and the reality of america, which, at the time, had clearly not even come close to realizing these upheld creedences (im going to omit the fact that despite traditional historical depictions of myrdal, he was a total bigot who didn't directly address blacks in this particular work because thats a whole different can of worms).

similarly, it is my understanding that the term "queer" itself, and all the respective pronouns that follow it, were necessitated and thus created because heteronormative terminology was thought to be insufficient in "covering" all identities that may exist across the wide spectrum of human gender and sexuality. therefore, it was thought to actually expand, instead of stagnate or shrink collective understandings of gender and sexuality.

even though this is only one situation, why the fuck wouldn't someone just tell the dude what genderqueer means? this is the territorial aspect i'd touched on earlier- what the fuck is everyone's problem with relaying this information? isnt that part of the pioneering vision for creating the vocabulary in the first place? expansion? i dunno. ill continue this later, im feeling kinda sick.



oh but before i leave, there was another thing that bothered me, but also, i was bothered by the fact that i was even bothered about it (is that coherent?)- it also has to do with limited accessibility to such vocabulary. going back to the transdude at SLC, i remember there was a time when he got pissed at this girl he had just met for calling him a "her." i understand that this can be a legal issue. i understand that in NY if you persistently call someone the wrong pronoun, or ask them to use the wrong bathroom, you can be sued. which rules. and i also understand- or sympathize, as much as i can at least, that it must be annoying to keep having to tell people over and over again what you are. i have some semblance of an idea from people asking me over and over "where are you REALLY from," because i am Chinese.

then again, one cannot deny the fact that this is a privileged vocabulary. this reminds me of something my professor, komozi woodard said, which is, that for ethnic minority communities in america, even upward mobility comes with a cost: through affirmative action, a black student from an impoverished background may have the opportunity to attend a university, but when he returns, it may be the case that he is unable to relay what he has learned to his family or community members, because of the inaccessibility of the new university rhetoric he's adopted. according to komozi, when he came back from UPENN to his family in New Ark, NJ, they didn't know what he was talking about.

if we apply this idea to QUEEF rhetoric, i sincerely doubt that a member of an impoverished community would be picky with his/her use of pronouns. if there were a transsexual man/woman who was a part of a racial minority community as well, (which im sure there is), he/she may be more preoccupied with homophobia within their community- for some reason, maybe its because i haven't yet met someone like this, i cannot imagine that they would throw a hissy fit over someone calling them a woman if they were a man, and telling the....

you know what? never mind. i CAN imagine that. that was a fucked up point.

what i think i was trying to get at, is that QUEEF terminology is a privilege. it annoys me that someone like this transdude at my school can be reputed on campus as the resident politically-correct radical queer, when there are others, others even who may be the ones mistakenly calling him a her, that do not possess the privilege of that terminology. these others may not even have the privilege of understanding how they could potentially be upset at such a political/taxonomical issue because they might not have the tools to reach these understandings/conclusions. thus to me, whenever i hear QUEEF talk, i can't help but think how selfish it is. how it is like neo-hipsterdom, image-oriented to a fault, and in many cases may be more about taking hip polaroids with others who have access to QUEEF rhetoric and look hip, and getting pissed and slapping a political stamp on it to ward the quietly confused off, rather than helping others gain access, or taking this understanding and expressing it internally.

QUEEF is about the other person, which is weird. shouldn't it be about you? maybe im separating what can't be separated. but getting mad about other people calling you a HER when you're a HE, is more about them isn't it? not what you know you are.