PART 1: What are we really saying to our children? – Language Acquisition & Gender

5 Ways to Be More Inclusive

Pronouns are one of the first ways that small children are taught to gender themselves and others.

As a child grows within the womb, they are introduced to our language and how we communicate in our world, including how they are spoken about. At first glance this can seem simple and straightforward. But if we want to understand what we’re actually teaching our kids, we have to take a closer look at our language.

Language is a cultural carrier. It evolves through multiple layers of our larger history, and ultimately speaks for those who control that history.

Sometimes what language conveys culturally is explicit, sometimes it’s more subtle. But generally it conveys in one way or another, what the dominant culture values and wants the common populous to believe.

Here are two examples from our culture. The first is the use of he and man for third person neutral, especially in academic and professional writing. Although this has fallen out of favor in the last two decades, it is still considered correct.

A more subtle and common example is the standard use of the phrase boys and girls, when referring to all children.

What values are embedded in these examples?

In the first one, it is obvious that we live in a patriarchy. Everything is seen and defined through the lens of man. This serves to center, focus and prioritize everything male. Simultaneously, this serves to erase, devalue, even make subservient anything that is not man or man-related.

An important step toward equity for all people has been seeing through this particular legacy of language control.

huMAN – woMAN – huMANity – perSON – HIStory

Connected to this, but more subtle is the second example. It basically conveys that small children are required to align and define themselves with one of two genders assigned to them at birth. This erases the reality that there are more than two kinds of bodies, and that there is more than one way to feel and behave within those bodies.

Sometimes these kinds of value judgments can be hard to see until someone points them out. But they have very real intentions and effects.

We have only to look to the long struggle of women coming out of the shadow of MAN, in relation to education, voting, health care, economic opportunity, physical security, political presence and so on. Although there is still far to go, our language reflects this ongoing evolution of independence with the shifting use of Miss and Mrs. to Ms. and the fact that he and man are no longer favored for 3^rd person.

With this in mind, a closer look at language acquisition can show what we may be unconsciously passing on to our kids, especially about gender.

Here are some of the general trends in learning environments.

For kids, parents and family who can’t perform in accordance with cultural stereotypes, there are literally no words. In terms of standard language use, they do not exist. It should come as no surprise that these are the kids and adults who are the most marginalized and outright bullied in a patriarchal culture. This is profoundly compounded by racism.

It does more than use language to erase people, it conveys on a deep cultural level a complete lack of value. And herein lies the rub. Everything we say to, or in front of our children is teaching them not only about who they can be, but what we value about who they can be.

Language is power. It can be used to define, affirm, even create, or erase value.

What do we want to pass on to our kids? How can we use our language in a way that values and includes everyone?

The more we become aware of the words that have been put into our mouths and what they’re really saying, the more we can consciously create change from our own hearts and minds. This assures that the power of our voice is ours and serves us, and our kids.

Here are 5 important things you can do with your voice right now:

1. No more “boys and girls” – Preempt Exclusion
- Many don’t intend to be unwelcoming. It’s more often than not an unexamined habit. Take a moment to consider how often you use phrases like: boys and girls, moms and dads, men and women, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, etc… Consider what other words are possible that include everyone. Kids, parents, people, siblings, etc… committing to a seemingly small shift like this is BIG. You’re making room for all bodies while countering homophobic, transphobic and cissexist judgment built into our language. You’re also supporting more ways to be ourselves in the world and building respect for those who are undeniably their selves.
2. There’s always been more than he and she – Pronoun Expansion
- Become aware of more pronouns, even more than he, she, they.
- In the last 150 years there have been over 100 words created to express a gender neutral third person. Thon (short for ‘that one’) was even in the dictionary from 1934-1961. With so much effort, it’s interesting to note that none of these words came into common use. There may be a two part reason for that. One, a word like that already existed. And two, timing is everything.
- Currently, the ongoing need for a nonbinary personal pronoun has brought the singular pronoun they into standard use. (THEY, 2016 word of the year) The gender neutral singular they is not new. It became part of our language in the 1300’s. It is considered grammatically correct as a gender neutral personal and third person pronoun, in addition to being used as a plural pronoun.
3. If you don’t know, don’t guess – Inclusive Practices
- There’s no need to make assumptions based on stereotypes when we have both gender-neutral words and pronouns at our disposal. We can use language to lay a foundation in our culture of respect and inclusion of all people.
- Not making assumptions means making room for everybody all the time. To create a welcoming environment, use words like people, parents, kids, friends, family and so on.
- If you don’t personally know someone’s pronoun, don’t make assumptions. If you find you need to use a pronoun, you could use they as an inclusive pronoun until you hear from that person what pronoun or pronouns they use.
- Some people like to be asked their pronoun. Some don’t. Unless you’re asking everybody’s pronouns all the time, only asking when you can’t assume based on stereotypes can feel like “othering” to folks and even “outing” to some.
- Offering your own pronoun first can seem like an opening, but for some folks it can also feel like an obligation to respond in kind. Depending on a million factors, this may or may not feel safe. Pay attention to see if it’s absolutely necessary for you to know somebody’s pronoun.
- Leaving space for freedom and the unknown can be a positive thing, especially in relation to something as rigid as gender in our current culture.
- Take a moment to pay attention to how your own pronoun/s impact your life. Is this something you have to think about all the time? Never?
- Times are changing! Now there’s a name prefix that is inclusive. Mx!
4. Making visible what has been erased – A Shift Toward Equity
- Changing the words that we use personally is HUGE! But there’s more! Everything that’s been written can also be updated to be inclusive, making visible all who were once erased. Playing with pronouns in books is a great way to talk to kids about language and why it’s important to make changes to be inclusive.
- Here are two ways to do it. Both are valuable for different reasons.
- First, change pronouns in books to they. This one takes practice because there is a cascading effect you have to keep track of. It slows me down sometimes and takes some creativity, but I’ve done it so much now, I’m nearly seamless. (I read A LOT of books to our young one)
- This interrupts the girl/boy assumption and makes room for not knowing a person’s gender, which interrupts stereotypes. But just using they, even consistently, isn’t enough. This makes more room for gender, but stereotypes are by nature rigid and superficial. If we don’t actually challenge them in some way, they remain intact, just renamed. In order to call in and acknowledge a more nuanced and truthful perspective of gender, we need to include another step.
- Second, change a character’s pronouns from she to he, or from he to she. Reading-wise, this is easier to do. This interrupts the rigidity of stereotypes and uses beloved characters (with stories that center them) as vehicles to learn more about inclusion.
- Reframing like this explicitly expands ideas about who people can be, and provides a counter narrative to the dominant culture.
- Currently racism and sexism are more and more unacceptable in children’s media, but cissexism remains rampant. Particularly in children’s movies where gender nonconformity is often specifically set up, so it can be ridiculed.
- When kids witness and practice respect for all bodies and ways of being in the world, this form of bullying is easier to see and interrupt.
- Here’s a short video modeling how to play with pronouns in picture books and you can download this handout for ways to keep the persepctives alive:
5. Making space – New Ideas, New Words, New Connections
- Old ideas and beliefs that support oppression are coming apart more and more. Even language is changing to reflect that. But in order for this good work to be rooted in true respect and systemic change, we must acknowledge the community who paved the way. We must call in, lift up, listen to and support all the gorgeous, courageous LGBTQI2S+ people who changed the world by being their true self… and often without meaning to, making room for us to be here, now. We are living in the light they cast. It’s time for LGBTQI2S+ voices and faces, history and wisdom to be familiar to our kids. This is a powerful step toward completing one circle of cultural healing. #FirstVoice #OwnVoice

READ PART TWO for ways to instill skills to help kids negotiate oppressive systems and learn about The Gender Wheel Curricululm.

About Maya:

Maya Gonzalez is a Chicanx, queer femme artist, progressive educator and award-winning children’s book illustrator and author. Her work addresses systemic inequity in relation to race/ethnicity, sexism and cissexism using children’s books as radical agents of change and healing, both personally and culturally. With her partner Matthew, she co-founded Reflection Press, a POC, queer and trans owned independent publishing house that uses holistic, nature-based, and anti-oppression frameworks in their books and materials for kids and grown-ups. She is also the creator of the Gender Wheel, a tool to express the dynamic, infinite and inclusive reality of gender, and provides lectures and workshops to educators, parents and caregivers. www.mayagonzalez.com | www.genderwheel.com | www.reflectionpress.com

PART 2: What are we really saying to our children? – Language Acquisition & Gender

Instilling Skills to Help our Kids Negotiate Oppressive Systems

maya May 14, 2019 May 14, 2019 +lgbtqi2s+ / activism / children's books / Language Acquisition & Gender Series / reflection press2 Comments

In PART 1 OF THIS SERIES, I explored how pronouns are one of the first ways children gender themselves and others.

From an early age, many LGBTQI2S+ people understand the power of language and the impact it can have.

This is why in my gender work, the Pronoun Circle is at the center of the Gender Wheel, and why addressing language acquisition is Level One of the Curriculum.

In order to continue fully addressing gender in our current culture, we must establish more and more respectful and inclusive ways of speaking to one another. This means more than saying “the right thing.” It means becoming critically aware of the messages inside of what we’re saying.

Using language as a tool to control behavior cannot be underestimated, as I pointed out in Part 1 of this series.

Language is power. Fundamental change is key.

Without change here, well-intentioned people unconsciously contribute to the very oppression they’re often trying to dismantle. Lifting out of this cultural fog means taking the time to do some structural work.

This includes looking at the big picture and seeing what’s been erased by patriarchal culture through language. For example, many indigenous tribes of the Americas had words for LGBTQI2S+ people and their roles. There were also myths and origin stories, songs and art. Instead of retaining or translating anything, they were intentionally erased and/or replaced with derogatory terms.

What preferences and value judgments were maintained by this erasure. Who did it benefit? Who does it limit and/or control? And most importantly, how does this continue to influence our current culture?

Being able to see like this usually requires stepping outside of the dominant culture and language, and engaging with perspectives and histories that are nonWestern, nonwhite, and/or LGBTQI2S+.

What does all this have to do with our kids?

Changing how we speak to each other and how we engage with media is an important step to support our kids. We can create a more welcoming, inclusive environment and communicate volumes about power and our kids’ ability to speak for themselves.

But if we want to instill the skills our kids need to negotiate an oppressive system, we must also tell them WHY we’re changing the way we speak and changing the words in their books.

For example,

“Our country has a history of bullying. It includes bullying black and brown people. Bullying girls, women and femmes and disabled people. And bullying LGBTQI2S+ people. This bullying pretends some people are better than others, even pretends there is a right or wrong way to be who you are. That’s wrong. Everybody belongs and we want everybody to feel welcome. So we’re changing how we talk, even how we read. Everybody needs to feel free to grow into exactly who they are, like a tree. I want this for you. I want it for all kids!”

Talking like this demonstrates to kids how to continue dismantling the many areas that support gender-based bullying dynamics in our culture.

Children’s books are one of the first places that kids come into contact with the dominant culture, making them a perfect place to seed change and support.

These three books rise from the foundations of the Gender Wheel. There’s no room for assumptions and stereotypes in the imagery or the language because The Gender Wheel Curriculum is rooted in a nature-based, holistic frame.

Nature, history and indigenous cultures show the indomitable presence and value, even the need for inclusion of LGBTQI2S+ people.

Reestablishing that gender diversity is a necessary and intrinsic part of nature is the heart of the matter. This provides an immediate foundation of truth and support, allowing the true self to relax, step forward and feel welcomed.

Everyone wants that. To feel free. To just be.

This is what I want for all children, but particularly for our most marginalized, LGBTQI2S+/IPOC kids. By addressing change here, we impact everybody else.

To understand more about the fundamentals behind these books and how to keep building on them, I’ve begun providing trainings in the SF Bay Area. The first one, Teaching for Gender Inclusivity: Reorienting toward a Holistic Nature-Based Perspective on Gender looks at the basic building blocks of the curriculum, and includes guided hands-on exploration of educational materials, along with reading practice and lots of resources. This helps reorient, inspire and provide initial tools to create inclusive gender practices across multiple disciplines.

I gave a version of this introduction lecture at the NCTE Conference (National Council of Teachers of English) in the Fall of 2018. I was beyond pleased when participants told me their minds were quite literally blown (in a good way!), and one participant told me that it was the most informative session they’d been to in 10 years of conferences. This blew me away! Change is in the air.

The next training on Language Acquisition and Inclusive Practices dives more into Level One of the Curriculum and should be available locally in Fall 2019. This training will focus on a deeper understanding of language and greater proficiency in inclusive practices, and includes longer engagement with hands-on, interactive materials, and exercises for participants to personalize and embody, as well as practice. The materials and focus are on the first 10 years of language acquisition, but the materials are relevant to all ages.

In every gender lecture and workshop I say, “this is not a small thing.” There are small changes that we can make, like pronoun expansion and gender-neutral language. But the truth is, what we’re talking about here, “…is a very large thing.”

Gender oppression is the foundation of the patriarchy. It effects everybody as it stretches across race, ethnicity, even class. Everything is built on it. Science, economics, healthcare, education, and so on.

That’s why it’s so revolutionary to begin by changing the way that we communicate with each other and express who we are in the world. This opens doors of respect within ourselves and between each other that have been aggressively and intentionally sealed shut. This opens up the possibility of creating greater and greater unity among the marginalized.

Children’s books supply a doable step in a long dance of change, especially when it comes to inclusive language.

As a parent, I know we need tools that we can lean on. Not having to change pronouns and chase verbs when I read books to my kid, is a much appreciated break! I am so grateful for all the books we’ve used with our kid that our friends and community have created. They make all the difference in the world.

But of course we need MORE! And we need to continue learning more about what we’re really saying to our kids.

IN PART THREE, I give a real-life example of why it’s so important to pay attention to language in children’s books.

(Missed the first part? View the full 3 part series here)

About Maya:

PART 3: What are we really saying to our children? – Language Acquisition & Gender

Unconsciously Passing on Gender Oppression and a Lack of Consent

maya May 14, 2019 May 14, 2019 +lgbtqi2s+ / activism / children's books / gender / Gender Now Plagiarism / Language Acquisition & Gender SeriesOne Comment

An example of why it’s so important to understand the power of language and how we use it, especially in books for children.

For context, see the previous two posts, Part 1 and Part 2.

Prior to this blog series on language acquisition and gender, I haven’t written a blog for a whole year. The last one was titled My Gender Work Was Stolen in the Children’s Book Industry. In it I primarily focused on the facts related to two books: one was a workbook that consciously lifted my gender work, and another was a children’s book that co-opted and distorted my Gender Wheel.

Matthew and I recently saw that the name of the co-opted wheel has been changed to the Interactive Wheel as the publisher said it would be. But it is still the same shape. It also has the same language that we told both the author and her press was problematic, and why. We were ignored.

I’m glad this book and its language are no longer directly connected to The Gender Wheel, but it’s message continues to haunt me.

Especially, since this book is sometimes paired with our pronoun book and it’s been on lists in the children’s book industry, validating and uplifting its message.

I generally don’t speak to the problematic content in the workbook that columbused my work, but because I work in the children’s book industry, I have referenced issues in the children’s book in my gender presentations (usually without title).

But in February of this year I did something I hadn’t done before. I shared a brief post on a public media platform about what I consider to be one of the most damaging messages in Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity.

Sadly it’s on the co—opted Wheel in the back of the book. Far more than the plagiarism, this is what broke me and Matthew’s hearts and enraged us. It can still be emotional to talk about, but I was told the information was helpful so I’m providing it for easier reference.

Matthew and I did a full documentation of the cissexism embedded in the language of both books. This gave us a greater understanding of what was going on and the ability to speak about it. It’s been a lot to digest, but I want to take a moment to make something clear.

This is not about books having to be perfect. Everyone is learning all the time. I know I am. And it’s not about just this book, or the two of them. It’s much, much bigger than that. Certainly bigger than me and my feelings.

This is about patterns and dynamics of power embedded in everything, particularly how we speak, the actions we take and how this contributes to maintaining oppressive systems.

I’m only going to address the pull out ‘Interactive Wheel’ in the back of

Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity,

and only one sentence on one of the three concentric circles.

This problematic sentence is reflective of the rest of the book. The center circle that is referring to the body says, “I have…” with three choices, “a body that made adults guess ‘girl’ ; “a body that made adults guess ‘boy’ ; or “a body that made adults say ‘not sure.'”

Since we’ve explored the importance of language in the last 2 posts, I want to slow this down to really look at what is being communicated.

“I have a body that made adults…” Here a child claims for their self that their body made adults act, taking all the responsibility and placing it on their body for action upon it.

From a child’s perspective, there’s a tone of compassion for parents (or other adults) doing the best they can, my body made them do it. But this comes at the expense of the child.

The sole responsibility for action on their body is their body. This leaves no option to question or consent to action on their body, especially in relation to someone with greater power, like an adult.

This dynamic is impacted by the fact that gender assignments are attached to sex assignments. There is now a message that says everything happening to them is their own fault, because of their body. This is how oppression becomes internalized.

This is a common set up for women, femmes, trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, and queer people to be harmed. “You’re body made me do it.” This is profoundly compounded by racism.

The other part of the phrase,

“guess ‘boy’ or ‘girl'” This can further isolate and disorient the child by removing responsibility or context of the oppressive system and the reality of how sex and gender are assigned, not assumed, in our current culture.

A guess or an assumption is very different than an assignment. Using the word guess erases the reality of how bodies are currently assigned the labels of “male” or “female” at birth and the rigid gender requirements attached to those labels. It also erases responsibility from the system that enforces these sex and gender requirements.

By extension, it erases the history of gender oppression and the colonization of the indigenous Americas and Two Spirit people.

So with this one sentence that a child is encouraged to say, “I have a body that made adults guess…”, all responsiblity is placed on their body and any other responsibility and context is removed. This effectively puts the full onus on the child for their own oppression.

Internalized oppression like body shame and blame must be negotiated by many adults from LBTQI2S+ communities, privately and out in the world, especially for those who are Indigenous or POC. That’s why our annual celebrations are called PRIDE! It takes a simple word to cut through a dense, oppressive cultural fog.

Even for those of us who are a part of the community, it can be challenging to understand the extent by which the dominant systems oppress us, especially with something as common and necessary as language. It takes work to say what you mean with a language shaped by the oppression of women, femmes and LGBTQI2S+ people.

I find it difficult to understand what the author of Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity was consciously trying to teach with her Interactive Wheel and children’s book when these messages are embedded in her work.

For me, my experience with this book has stressed the power of language, the importance of lived experience and why it’s where we must begin to create real change and equity.

This is our opportunity to finally take the onus off our kids & the larger LGBTQI2S+ community and put in on the system where it belongs.

Language is where we can create real change and equity.

There’s no time to waste.

We must heal the song we sing to our children.

(Missed the first two parts? View the full 3 part series here)

About Maya:

My Gender Work was Stolen in the Children’s Book Industry

#Columbused #GenderWheel #GenderNow #DiverseBooks #StolenWork

maya May 31, 2018 February 7, 2020 +lgbtqi2s+ / activism / children's books / gender / Gender Now Plagiarism / reflection press5 Comments

Context is Everything

I was plagiarized twice in the same year by the same community. It was hard to wrap my brain around at first. After all, this is a community I felt some connection to. These were people I imagine to be well-intentioned parents and professionals. But now there are two kid’s books that have stolen and misused my work without credit or attribution.

After more than a year of dealing with the consequences I felt it was time to speak up.

Nearly all of the main concepts of my Gender Now Coloring and Activity Books were lifted, somewhat modified and put in The Gender Identity Workbook for Kids (Kelly Storck, New Harbinger Publications) and both the author and the editor were aware of it. Kelly Storck accidentally shared emails with me between her and her editor that outlined what was going on and what they were doing including the style in which the author should contact me.

It was through reading these emails that I began to understand another related experience of plagiarism that happened earlier in the year. In this case, the children’s book Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity (Brook Pessin-Whedbee, Jessica Kingsley Publishers) plagiarized the name and concentric circle concept of The Gender Wheel from my Gender Now books.

In my nearly 25 years in the children’s book industry, I have never experienced anything like this. I’m a queer, Chicanx author/illustrator and I’m also a parent and educator/activist. I’ve authored and/or illustrated over 20 multicultural children’s books with publishers that include Children’s Book Press, Lee & Low, Barefoot Books and more. 9 years ago, I also co-founded my own small Indie press, Reflection Press, with my partner Matthew where we first published Gender Now.

Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity(Brook Pessin-Whedbee, Jessica Kingsley Publishers) and The Gender Identity Workbook for Kids(Kelly Storck, New Harbinger Publications) are connected in multiple ways, but I only recently found that the first testimonial in Kelly Stork’s book is by Brook Pessin-Whedbee. Although I don’t completely know what all of these connections mean, I do know that context means everything, so they’re noteworthy.

Both books are authored by straight, white, cisgender women who are parents and work with gender professionally.
Both authors are tied to the Gender Spectrum conference/community in the SF Bay Area during the same time period that I was presenting my Gender Now curriculum.
Both plagiarized my Gender Now work.
Neither author nor publisher properly cites, credits, or acknowledges the source work from which their books are drawn.

My Gender Work and Presentations/More Context

My gender work for kids began with my Gender Now Coloring Book (2010) and School Edition Activity Book (2011) both published by Reflection Press. In them I gathered queer and indigenous scholarship from multiple disciplines —nature, global cultures and history with lots of games and coloring— all in support of The Gender Wheel, a holistic tool to understand gender for kids. The main premise of my Gender Now curriculum is “play to learn.”

In 2017 I further developed my gender work with the picture books, They, She, He, Me: Free to Be coauthored with Matthew and The Gender Wheel: a Story about Bodies and Gender for Every Body.

My work rises from an inclusive perspective and provides tools to understand gender rooted in nature outside of a Western cultural framework. This is important to me as a queer Chicanx. You can see the breadth and depth of this work and its connection to both me and The Gender Wheel in my Gender Blog Series.

I have always taught this three tiered, nested perspective of Nature, Global Cultures and History when presenting my work. You can see my slideshow and view my notes from my Gender Spectrum presentations on Reflection Press’ Gender Now Teacher Resources page.
I presented my Gender Now curriculum at Gender Spectrum’s Family Conference from 2010-12, and at their professional symposium from 2015-16 using my children’s book Call Me Tree and my Gender Now curriculum. Matthew and I also worked with Gender Spectrum on their school curriculum from 2011-2012 which included activities from Gender Now. We came to understand that we had different philosophical perspectives and teaching styles around gender, however we were appreciative of the work Gender Spectrum was doing to support parents and schools.

Plagiarism, Distortion, and Erasure

The plagiarism is unacceptable. But after having a chance to look through these books Matthew and I discovered that it wasn’t just a matter of plagiarism. In the case of Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity (Brook Pessin-Whedbee, Jessica Kingsley Publishers), the text on and describing The Gender Wheel is written in a particularly white and Western way. As Chicanx drawing from my experience and studies outside of a Western frame, this not only distorts and damages The Gender Wheel’s origins and core meaning, it fully erases me as the creator.

In the case of The Gender Identity Workbook for Kids (Kelly Storck, New Harbinger Publications), the bulk of my Gender Now curriculum was taken and embedded in another book and distorted through a white and Western lens. All of my work and existence again erased.

The plagiarism and erasure have been disorienting and sobering about power dynamics in social justice work and the children’s book industry; and the distortion now associated with The Gender Wheel has simply broken my heart and taken up more time and energy than I thought possible.

If you want to learn more about the details of plagiarism in both of these books, you can go here.

The Authors and Their Publishers

Our experience was not limited to the books alone. Matthew and I engaged both authors and their publishers with hopes of resolution.

After a disheartening and difficult interaction with Brook Pessin-Whedbee and her press (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) in London, an editor accidentally sent us this email:

“Simon
They obviously enjoy this how can we put a stop to it.
Thanks Frank.”

The idea that we were enjoying any part of this theft, or the exhausting process of trying to get the author and publisher to take responsibility for their actions, was as eye-opening as it was frustrating.

After much back and forth and confronting Brook in person, they acquiesced to change the name to “The Interactive Wheel” at their next reprinting. They maintain they did nothing wrong and would not take action to address the plagiarism or the damage done. It seems beyond them to simply acknowledge that a person of color created The Gender Wheel that they have now distorted and are promoting and profiting from.

Instant Help Books/imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc. By their own admission, a significant portion of Kelly Storck’s book was not original work that just happened to be similar. Despite what the press would like to imagine, it cannot be treated the same as original work. The fundamental frame and format was consciously plagiarized. The most disconcerting piece is that it was not in part, but all of the fundamentals of my gender work while never offering to acknowledge or uplift Gender Now as the source in any way.

The only acknowledgement is to Diane Ehrensaft who wrote the introduction, and is given credit for her “Apples and Oranges” Exercise.

The Impact

Being ‘columbused’ hurts. More than I thought it would. It ricochets and vibrates through my system and experience and speaks through my ancestors. My body, my work, my schedule, my family, my friends, my attitude, have all been impacted. It’s changed me. It is only after walking through and around this wicked little time and hearing from nearly every corner other experiences of plagiarism, especially for Indigenous, POC and Queer/Trans people, that I see how this fits into my larger body of work. And why it’s important to come forward with clarity.

It takes conscious, active awareness to not participate in privilege and power-over, but instead create real and effective change and equity for our children, our society and each other. We know this to be true with regards to racism in a country built on colonization and white supremacy. The same criteria must be applied to gender and sexuality for the same reasons.

I’ll be honest, it’s hard that these books are still

on the market,

in libraries (San Francisco Public Library alone has 29 copies of Who Are You?),

getting on the same book lists as my books in the industry (Bank Street) and in the LGBTQ community. (Bank Street has been made aware of the situation, but without public pressure has currently chosen not to take action)

These books are still supporting the authors and their presses as they erase me and my work.

A friend asked what I wanted as restitution. I laughed. I knew when I began this journey, but I’ve lost track of it through having to stay keenly focused on the truth and keeping my head above water. I find myself more concerned with the big picture and the big conversations. Is it a survival response knowing that any immediate restitution for myself is highly unlikely in a situation like this? Absolutely.

I have to keep moving forward. I have to find what motivates me. Community and a vision of a more equitable, humane world are my drive.

I’m sharing so others like me can prepare for plagiarism and intellectual theft. It’s that common. And if we can get out in front of this kind of thing as a community hopefully more of us can retain ownership of our work.

A Call to Action

This is about a shift in thinking and doing. LGBTQI+ children’s books have the most severe power imbalance for first/own voice, and lack a clear social justice frame as criteria. This is historically and socially relevant and impacts what is considered respectable/acceptable, and profitable in the industry and society.

It is the same song I’ve been singing for 25 years in the industry about race and ethnicity, which after countless voices in the field for decades upon decades, is finally finding more traction. But add to that song LGBTQI+ and I find there are fewer and fewer voices willing to come forward and sing OUT.

So it is that right now, I’m asking everyone within the range of my voice to share this. We can do better. We must do better.

Now is the time to make deep change.

Who’s writing our stories and how?

Are equitable numbers of Indigenous and POC queer/trans/intersex first voices included in the social justice conversation in children’s books?

Are queer/trans/intersex kids able to see genuine reflection, experience, culture and wisdom in their books?

What stories are most prevalent?

What stories are most rare?

Are Indigenous and POC queer/trans/intersex children’s book authors, stories and perspectives being uplifted and receiving love and respect?

These are the questions we must ask over and over and over again until change is real.

And if you’d like to make your voice heard in relation to these two books,

You can contact the publishers: New Harbinger Publications and Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Or download bookmarks to slip between the pages of either book at the public library, bookstores, conferences, schools, etc.

You can also contact Bank Street about including plagiarized work on their book list.

Maya Gonzalez created The Gender Wheel and brought a holistic, nature-based vision of gender to kids. That is the truth.

We must always remember we are QueerEternal/GenderNow!

Forever darling,

Our VOICE is a REVOLUTION!

We cannot be silenced.

Power OUT,

xomaya

More Resources:

The Gender Wheel website
Read more about the Problematic Language in Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity – Unconsciously Passing on Gender Oppression and a Lack of Consent
The Gender Bread Plagiarist: Plagiarism of our Community Is Nothing New, Business as Usual
- Note: The Storify website, where the detailed research was posted about this plagiarist, recently closed. This is a PDF of what was still accessible from that website. Hopefully it will be recreated on another website in the future.
- Further discussion on the plagiarism and distortion of the GenderBread person can also be found here.
“Vetting LGBTQI Children’s Books with Love” Worksheet

About Maya:

Maya Gonzalez is a Chicanx, queer femme artist, progressive educator and award-winning children’s book illustrator and author. Her work focuses on art and story as powerful tools of reclamation and transformation both personally and culturally. Her primary tool of activism is creating and publishing radical children’s books that tell the truth of who we are and what we can be. She has been a close ally of the trans community for over 30 years and her partner is trans. Together they co-founded their own indie press in 2009, Reflection Press. The Gender Now Coloring Book was one of the first books they published.

My Story, Your Story, Their Story, Who Gets to Tell It?

First Voice/Own Voice and Indigenous, POC, LGBTQI Children’s Books

maya April 27, 2018 April 27, 2018 +lgbtqi2s+ / activism / children's books / gender / life as arte / reflection press / school of the free mind / teachingLeave a comment

My Story

I have been involved in the children’s book industry for over 20 years. I joke that they accidentally let me in. Indeed, something must have been going on…stars momentarily aligned, portals briefly opened… because not only did I get “in,” but my first book, Prietita and the Ghost Woman was written, translated and illustrated by all queer Chicanx people. Gloria Anzaldúa, Francisco Alarcón and myself.

AND not just that, it’s a decolonized retelling of a traditional folktale, La Llorona; AND Prietita, the main character is a young genderqueer person; AND they’re apprenticing with a curendera. I mean, oh my gawd, what?! This is amazing! Truly.

I was ushered in on the wings of a multicolored Alebrije singing the song of Xochipilli and Xochiquetzal on the wind, right? YES!

And, not so much.

It was 1996. None of us were closeted, but I know for myself, queerness was not what I talked about when I went on school visits. And on the rare occasion I presented with Francisco I never heard him broach the subject either, with anybody, not once.

Back in the day it was radical enough to be in a school talking about race and ethnicity, belonging and reflection, even equity with kids of color.

Back in the day it was radical enough to be in a school talking about race and ethnicity, belonging and reflection, even equity with kids of color. So the character Prietita and I, put one foot in the proverbial closet. I stayed silent about their gender queerness to the kids, and when asked if I was married I never denied that I was partnered, but if possible I avoided talking about the truth of who my partner was.

A sage queer, I knew how to measure and sense; sidestep, to keep myself safe and solid. I usually had a day’s work to get through and I needed to keep things moving.

Incidental homophobia would slow me down.

I’m tattooed, pierced, my hair is dyed and I dress fabulously! To the kids I was an edgy oddity that wanted to PLAY! But at every turn, I could see how my queerness might erase the work I was doing, work that I loved and was committed to. I had a part of myself that would go on autopilot with the kids, the teachers and principals. I was aware of what I was doing, but it was beyond my control.

I was teaching about First Voice and equitable reflection, but honestly, I only felt safe with a part of myself being heard and seen. I was protecting my heart, my livelihood and my life’s work.

I was teaching about First Voice and equitable reflection, but honestly, I only felt safe with a part of myself being heard and seen. I was protecting my heart, my livelihood and my life’s work. Gentle avoidance and partial acknowledgments became a part of the game. It helped soften the edges as I skittered through situations that would clearly have been inaccessible to me or greatly altered as the BIG QUEER that I actually am.

I comforted myself with the fact that queerness was deeply embedded, coded, into the understory of all my books, whether illustrated or both illustrated and written by me. I knew as queers, we always search for ourselves and each other, between the lines.

First Voice, is the idea that a community should speak for itself.

Working with Children’s Book Press changed me. I used the opportunities provided by the press to heal myself, and my own silence and invisibility and still do. Simultaneously, it was CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center) that provided a sane-making, touchstone along the way to reference with their statistics on children’s books by and about People of Color and First/Native Nations. I have been sharing them for as long as I’ve been making books.
The journey has been long. Children’s Book Press began moving toward First Voice in 1975. It would be another ten years until CCBC would begin keeping stats for books by and about African American authors, and another 9 years before Native Americans, Latino and Asian Pacific Americans were included. Now another 24 years later, LGBTQ Americans are included in the numbers. 43 years.

Likewise, with 20 years of social justice work in the industry, it wasn’t until 2015 after 31 years as an OUT QUEER, that I “formally came out” as an LGBTQI children’s book author and artist.

Healing takes time that’s why I always call out the heart and the bones of it. We get sick, have kids, dear ones pass. Presidents, politics, social movements. We have to bring our bodies and spirits and emotions through. We must negotiate safety and fury and find peace. It takes time for a paradigm to shift. It has to happen inside and outside. But it is occurring.

I have learned. Voice is a revolution.

The Background Story

VOICE: within a patriarchal, Western society those who can be heard is based on how close one adheres to social standards either by birth or behavior. As a consequence, many queer/trans/intersex authors and artists who create children’s books remain silent about their private lives, especially if they’re Indigenous or POC.

Across communities, the LGBTQI community has been severely marginalized through deep judgment about who we are. Historically, this has been used to create separation between queer/trans/intersex people and kids in society, even our own. Despite recent progress in marriage, parenthood, adoption, civil rights, social justice, California education initiatives and more, judgment and aggression still happen in both big and small ways. It can be social, political, legal, personal, professional, even physical and can weigh heavily on queer/trans/intersex people, often adding to the silence already experienced as Indigenous or POC.

There is a growing trend. Just like with Indigenous and POC communities, many of the people writing about the LGBTQI community are not from the community.

As a result there is a growing trend. Just like with Indigenous and POC communities, many of the people writing about the LGBTQI community are not from the community, and consequently do not have to negotiate the same kind of structural and personal silence. Instead they are parents of queer/trans/intersex kids, as well as related professionals. They lack lived experience and often any connection to the actual LGBTQI community.

However well-intentioned, their work tends to perpetuate implicit bias and power structures that contribute to the very oppression they hope to mediate. (speaking specifically to children’s books)

Not only do those writing from outside the community generally perpetuate the binary and erase its historical context;

– they often prioritize and give greater value to all things cisgender and heterosexual;
– fix emotions and related gender and queer experience as complicated, sad, scary and overwhelming;
– affirm frames that require queer/trans/intersex children to be exceptional, saviors or self-sacrificing;
– focus nearly exclusively on males, especially ones wearing dresses;
– and consistently include bullying narratives.

They also tend to be almost exclusively white.

When we look at the newly documented LGBTQI statistics, we can clearly see that the vast majority of children’s books are by non-community members. And while authors could stay in First Voice or #ownVoice as parents and professionals, they rarely do. Instead they step in and speak as authorities and/or use their voice as the voice of the LGBTQI community.

It only makes sense that the same Social Justice frameworks developing for equity in children’s books regarding race and ethnicity include the LGBTQI community.

This is problematic on numerous levels. And with great thanks to CCBC for providing yet another touchstone to move forward, the time to heal this must be now. It only makes sense that the same Social Justice frameworks developing for equity in children’s books regarding race and ethnicity include the LGBTQI community, especially since queer/trans/intersex people are a part of every indigenous and community of color. It’s time to bring this next level of the conversation forward and unite Indigenous, POC and LGBTQI equity in children’s books. And beyond. These oppressions are intimately tied together.

Within a social justice frame it must also be noted that the next to be heard in LGBTQI children’s books are almost exclusively white, cisgender voices of gay or lesbian people. While necessary and important, they tend to perpetuate uneven power dynamics, including implicit bias around race, ethnicity and sometimes gender. It goes without saying that when white voices are the only ones heard, it gives the impression that only white people are queer and trans.

Who’s Controlling the Narrative

It’s fascinating to look at the CCBC stats and literally see who’s telling stories. Except for the Native American community (which I believe is in large part due to the amazing work of Debbie Reese) ALL MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES have the majority of their stories told by authors OUTSIDE OF THEIR COMMUNITIES.

There are countless, amazing stories about Indigenous and POC and queer/trans/intersex people that ALL NEED TO BE TOLD, but it matters who is telling them. Not just because there will be greater meaning and veracity for a first voice/own voice author, but because our presence is needed.

There are countless, amazing stories about Indigenous and POC and queer/trans/intersex people that ALL NEED TO BE TOLD, but it matters who is telling them. Not just because there will be greater meaning and veracity for a first voice/own voice author, but because our presence is needed. This is not a trend. This is not about ‘diversity sells.’ This is about real people and communities. The heart and the bones of it. We are here and we need to have our actual body, spirit and heart included for the change to be both real within and without, and final.

We speak differently, see differently, even feel and think differently and we can and should affect the world. This is our gift and power. Our stories and ideas cannot be co-opted then sifted through white, cis, straight authors and publishers and remain real. Beyond actual plagiarism, the very act of others telling our stories takes our power away, contributing to both real and systemic silence.

These stories about us are not actually about us. Ultimately, they can only ever be frames that show how white, cis, straight authors and society feel about, and see us. Even if they value us, it is still ultimately about them.

What does this communicate and at what level? That our lives are a publishing trend? That we are not adequate to tell our own stories? Or simply that our lives continue to be a source of income for the dominant culture, but not for ourselves?

I have heard amazing tales of workshops at large conferences specifically designed to teach white authors how to write stories about POC. Is that why in the last 3 years stories about and not by have dramatically jumped for communities of color? What does this communicate and at what level–to Indigenous, POC, LGBTQI people? And what about to white, cis, straight authors and artists? That our lives are a publishing trend? That we are not adequate to tell our own stories? We cannot be trusted to speak our own truth? Or simply that our lives continue to be a source of income for the dominant culture, but not for ourselves?

Sitting at a table of librarians recently, I asked if they thought it was better to have a book that was deeply flawed, or not have a book at all. I thought we might have a lively discussion, and being librarians I thought they’d go for the books, but everyone agreed. It is better to have no books at all than books that are fundamentally flawed. A book out in the world stands as an independent authority. It generally doesn’t come with an informed librarian, parent or teacher to point out where to apply critical thinking to see beyond the limitations of the author or how that author fits into a larger dynamic in society. It is what it is.

Books are power.

Children’s books are raw power.

First Voice/Own Voice and Healing

I’m haunted by my first book. In my imagination, the spirits of Gloria and Francisco have entered the pages and are walking down the road with Prietita. A self-described dyke, a gay man and a genderqueer youth. Prietita is holding a drawing of Ruda. This is the herb that the curendera needs to help heal their mother. They’re committed to finding it even though they must cross into forbidden territory to do so.

Published over 20 years ago, the queerness of this book has become more and more obvious to me recently. It was always there. But healing takes time.

First voice/own voice is an essential turn toward equity. Just like Indigenous and Children of Color, LGBTQIA2S+ kids should have access to stories by and about authors and artists just like them and not have to read between the lines. This open reflection, relevance and empathy contribute to a sense of well being, value and belonging in the world, making it doubly essential for queer/trans/intersex kids from those same communities. The ongoing stigma that separates and silences our community in relation to kids and family is changing, but MUCH more change is necessary.

Has that time come? Now that we’re included in the count?

I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m finally ready.

QueerEternal/GenderNow

OUR VOICE is a REVOLUTION.

xomaya

GENDER MONTH–Week FIVE (Part Two)–THE HOLISTIC SELF & THE GENDER WHEEL

5 weeks of expanding the mind and beautifying the world with Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness!

maya March 31, 2018 March 7, 2019 +lgbtqi2s+ / 5 Part Gender Series / activism / children's books / gender / life as arte / reflection press / teaching3 Comments

**NOTE: I turned this blog series into a FREE Online Course available through The Gender Wheel website. View the course>>>

The final post in my blog series was done in two sections, if you missed the first part on THE BINARY & THE HOLISTIC SELF, find that here. And, if you missed any of the last four weeks on NATURE, MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS, INDIGENOUS HISTORY, & EARLY US HISTORY check those posts out here.

WELCOME TO the second part for this WEEK – THE HOLISTIC SELF & THE GENDER WHEEL!

As we close this gender series with the second section of PART FIVE, we open our eyes to a whole new way. Firmly embedded in the truth that queer/trans/intersex people and experience are everywhere throughout nature, we move into new, truthfull ways of perceiving ourselves and the world around us. Using holistic thinking to keep the truth alive, we turn now toward the holistic self and gender, and ultimately land on The Gender Wheel.

With The Gender Wheel as a resource to navigate the world, more truth and ways to include every body open up! A tool to find yourself and understand our community in holistic ways.

As parents, educators and activists we have the power to expand beyond the gender binary, learn about and use more gender neutral pronouns and create lasting change. Now is the time for a whole, true world for us and our kids!

Step into the circle, where we ALL belong!

In the first section we explored the holistic self including exercises to call in more of your own holistic self. Now we continue on.

Here is a reminder of what the holistic self includes, as well as an image of those elements in concentric circles. Both images are the holistic self.

The HOLISTIC SELF includes: BODY, SPIRIT, MIND, HEART and the UNKNOWN.

THE HOLISTIC SELF AND GENDER

Just like a holistic perspective of gender can be seen in the world by including the truth about nature, global cultural awareness, indigenous North America and early US history;

a holistic perspective of gender can be seen by including the truth of the WHOLE SELF.

BODY: the body you have – intersex, trans, cis and more

SPIRIT: that inside sense of who you are of which gender is a part

MIND: how you interpret your sense of self to the world, pronouns are a way to communicate who you are within the current culture or reality

HEART: your self in relationship, including partner, family, friends and community

UNKNOWN: all that is yet to be discovered about yourself

Body: Intersex/Trans/Cis.

By truthfully including all of the kinds of bodies present, you can take a significant step away from the false binary. In the most basic sense there are at least 3 kinds of bodies: Intersex, Transgender and Cisgender. In order to create familiar landmarks, and because they are still so widely used, I add the markers of boy and girl to these three. This expands people to a minimum of 6 kinds of body: intersex girl/boy, transgender girl/boy, cisgender girl/boy. Within these 6 body types, there are countless variations, some of which reach far beyond these limited words. Body variation is a fact in all species. It’s prevalence in relation to sexual organs, inside and outside, marks it as an important and necessary trait of biodiversity within a species.

Truth clears the path of false debris. There were never only two kinds of bodies.

Spirit: Life Force, Personality, including Gender.

In the last 120 years there have been numerous attempts at trying to locate, define, explain gender. But a full understanding of gender remains elusive in Western culture. Considering the binary and the systems of oppression, is there room for gender to be fully understood in this context? Or is that the point? Erasure.

Here are two points of reference. One is from 154 years ago, another from 29 years ago, both are moments of naming self in relation to queer/trans identity in relation to Western culture.

“Male Body with a Female Spirit”

The first person within Western culture to publicly define and defend what would later be called homosexuality was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.

“Already in 1864 and 1865 Ulrichs had published a series of five booklets presenting a new scientific theory of homosexuality, the so-called third sex theory, which, by asserting that the condition is inborn and natural, formed a basis for his demand that the contemporary antihomosexual laws be abolished.” “The essential point in his theory of homosexuality is the doctrine that the male homosexual has a female psyche…” Psyche is defined as human soul, mind or spirit.

“… to the point of his theory, he recalled that as a child of three and four years he wore girls’ clothes and found it painful when he first had to put on boys’ clothes. He protested, “No, I want to be a girl.”

– Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement, Peremptory Publications

Note: This was the same time that Darwin began publishing his theories about nature in 1859 through 1881.

“Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders” Indigenous North America

“At the point of contact, all Native American societies acknowledged three to five gender roles: Female, male, Two Spirit female, Two Spirit male and transgendered. LGBT Native Americans wanting to be identified within their respective tribes and not grouped with other races officially adopted the term “Two Spirit” from the Ojibwe language in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1989. Each tribe has their own specific term, but there was a need for a universal term that the general population could understand.”

– Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders, Indian Country Today

The term Two Spirit cannot be directly translated into LGBTQI definitions. As Will Roscoe notes, it includes specialized roles, gender variation, spiritual sanction as well as same-sex love. It is rooted in tribal tradition and is unavailable to people without tribal affiliations.

How do we understand gender? Instead ask, how do we understand the full breadth of nature and its mystery?

Despite the fact that these are two very different times and experiences, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in Germany and the Two Spirit people of North America, both used spirit and included more than 2 genders to express who they are.

Some people in Western culture ask if gender is necessary and can it be eliminated? But what we call gender is part of nature. Elimination rings of erasure. Nature is a vast dance that holds grand diversity, meaning and mystery beyond human comprehension.

How do we understand gender? Instead ask, how do we understand the full breadth of nature and its mystery?

Nature holds the energy that infuses matter with life. It is the power of growth and healing. It bursts forth and rises up and never ends. It is the mystery of death, birth and eternity, even infinity. Poetry, song and art have been the traditional tools to express the power of nature for time immemorial. It holds the mystery of love, attraction, family, community.

Only so much can be contained, dissected, examined before even nature flattens out and perishes under Western culture’s restrictive systems and binary gaze. Nature cannot ultimately be controlled, much like love. It is larger than us. We are a part of its great and powerful dance and what we call gender is integral.

What I know from my own experience is that gender is how spirit moves through matter, much like the life force or how a person’s unique personality animates their form. Gender enlivens the body, the same way spirit brings the body to life. It is as unique as someone’s personality, it is the dance of nature, it is mystery and love. Gender is not isolated. It is an expression that permeates every aspect of self, BODY, MIND, SPIRIT, HEART. Gender is self as spirit alive and part of the natural world. It moves through the whole self animating, dancing, reaching out to connect.

Mind: Pronouns – They, She, He, Me, We, Ze, Free.

Within the context of patriarchal oppression it is challenging to think or speak of gender without flattening it out, stripping the spirit, the mystery and profundity of the deeper value. Ideas of gender expand and deepen when seen within the context of the whole self. The real truth of gender is meant to begin within, where you can just BE, without the need to define and box yourself in. Alone, in your own mind, gender can be pronoun-free and perfectly nonbinary as “I, me, myself.”

Pronouns then become the way of extending your gender out into the world, beyond yourself. Again, the power is yours, sourced within your own knowing, your own BEing. Your knowing includes yourself and the world you’re navigating because pronouns can be used to bring your true self into greater focus, or maintain fluidity. They can also be used to maintain safety and privacy.

Pronouns are power.

Heart: Relationship – Partner, Family, Community/Queer, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Heterosexual, Pansexual, Asexual.

Love is one of the foundations of life. It is vital. And in most ways, it is a mystery much like gender, best navigated by poetry, song and art. Expressions of mystery, emotion and depth.

Love is necessary and valuable. Can you explain why you love who you love? More importantly, why should you have to? Who can separate their heart, their love from their true self? In fact, who we love often makes sense out of who we are and vice versa.

Here again, LGBTQI2S+ people are so prevalent in nature, that our numbers signify we are not random aberrations, but instead our presence serves an important and necessary purpose within our species.

Unknown: room to expand and grow into our larger SELF.

It is nearly impossible to know what we don’t know or have forgotten, but leaving room to grow is a way to invite those parts of our self back into awareness.

But in order to fully understand queer/trans/intersex experience and presence, it is necessary to step outside of Western culture to explore systems and perspectives that center nature, indigenous thought, our whole selves, and our whole lives.

The separations that have developed between identities and experience of LGBTQIA+ people in Western culture over the last 120 years have been useful in acknowledging difference, unique contribution and the vast diversity in our community.

But in order to fully understand queer/trans/intersex experience and presence, it is necessary to step outside of Western culture to explore systems and perspectives that center nature, indigenous thought, our whole selves, and our whole lives. Doing this often shows more connections and interweaving between us as queer/trans/intersex people than Western culture has room for. More often than not, it is in having this larger perspective including knowing the past that we can more fully know ourselves in the present.

Look again at this image to see gender in relation to the Holistic Self.

Ironically, although I knew it was there, I only recently drew the singular Self in relation to gender. I did it in response to a parent activist I met whose work I wanted to support with an image. It wasn’t until I did this that I understood that my notions of gender have always been in relation to my whole community, every body together, connected, similar to a communal system. Perhaps because I am a queer femme or because I am Xicanx that I’ve always focused on the dance. It was through the dance of gender between people that I better understood my own gender and those fabulous queer/trans/intersex people in my community with whom I wanted to dance.

In my world, gender is rooted in love, community, connection, relationship. It is when we see ourselves together that we understand ourselves and each other more.

THE GENDER WHEEL

These four aspects of the self, BODY, GENDER, RELATIONSHIP and PRONOUN aren’t necessarily fixed. For many they are fluid, either all the time or for periods of time. In order to accommodate the holistic self and the infinite possible bodies, hearts, minds and spirits in combination and potentially in motion, I needed a symbol that was natural, dynamic, infinite and inclusive to portray gender in truth.

One organically rose from my heart.

I began developing The Gender Wheel and published its original incarnation in 2010 in The Gender Now Coloring Book, one of the first books to address transgender and intersex topics with kids. It conveyed how I saw the world around me and was rooted in my personal experience as a queer, femme, Xicanx artist/activist/parent having healed from the effects of profound homophobia in my family of origin. I initially created it for my then 5 year old child, Zai to share about the people in our community. I was committed to passing on a queer/trans/intersex-centric perspective in my family rooted in mamiearth.

The Gender Wheel rose from:

Cultural significance – infinity, eternity, calendars – Mayan and Aztec
Nature – shapes and patterns of growth, my Mexican American father conveyed a deep love of nature and respect for the cycles of life and death
Circles/Concentric/Movement/inclusive, nonlinear – holds infinite positions around its circumference and moves forward and backward

The Gender Wheel includes 4 concentric circles:

- The first 3 circles are the SELF: Body, Inside or Gender, Pronouns
- and the 4^th circle is the SELF in Relationship

In the beginning, The Wheel had 3 circles and primarily focused on Body and Inside or Gender. When first published in The Gender Now Coloring/Activity Books, my intention was to exponentially expand ideas about bodies and gender and begin blowing the binary apart. For reference and confirmation, The Wheel is then seen in context with nature, global cultures and history to see how it rolls and understand its reach.

The center circle meant to designate self later became the Pronoun Circle.

The 4^th circle, Relationship, is COMING OUT this year along with The Rainbow Alphabet, a book for young ones about LGBTQIA2S+.

All circles hold infinite potential. Familiar markers are placed around each circle to show connection and flow, but words are in constant flux and the truth is WE NEED A LOT MORE WORDS to truthfully express who we are. Because the binary is so deeply embedded and because I’m focused on kids, I use the dominant boy and girl in our culture and try to play, rearrange, reconnect, expand and steadily dismantle them to support new ways of thinking about old patterns. Beyond 2 boxes or a spectrum with two ends, The Wheel is a place to find yourself, see your community and know you belong in the circle.

Body circle includes familiar markers of: intersex girl, cisgender girl, transgender boy, intersex boy, cisgender boy, transgender girl with infinite room in between for more!

Inside circle includes many identities and inside feelings: kid, androgynous, agender, femme boy, femme girl, butch boy, part time boy/part time girl, gender fluid and more and more…

Pronoun circle includes familiar ones and space for more to grow into: They, She, He, Me, Ze, and Tree.

Tree is to affirm that we need more words that reflect the deeper meaning of who we are as queer/trans/intersex people! Especially ones connected to nature. Language is OURS! We must move beyond the binary in how we speak.

Relationship circle (the 4th outer circle currently shown faded) will be explored more with The Rainbow Alphabet and will include familiar markers: Queer, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Asexual, Heterosexual and more…

All of the circles turn forward and backward opening up infinite possibilities along their curve and between the circles making room for every body to be exactly who they are.

Download and make your own wheel!

Again, for the Holistic Self to be complete, it must also be placed in CONTEXT. In this case, that would be the Holistic perspective of gender including nature, global cultural awareness, indigenous history and the history of your country, along with family, community, society, history and ancestry.

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

Take the time to try this on. Imagine for a moment, not a new world, because this has always been our world, but a true world! Imagine shamelessly prancing or rolling through a world that truthfully adores you. Imagine a place where you don’t have to say anything about the fabulousness of queer/trans/intersex people. It is what it is. Known by all. Taught to the small. Permeating every teeny tiny facet of society and culture.

The Gender Wheel turns for EVERY BODY and EVERY BODY belongs!

Movies, school, books, art, conversations, fashion, healing practices, medical care, travel, documentation, history, every single thing imaginable would change to respectfully, even joyously include queer/trans/intersex people and experience. Imagine that!

Don’t stop. Keep imagining. A true world.

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

In line with patriarchal Western thinking, people are generally taught and believe that there are two kinds of bodies, male and female.

A male body is a man’s body and is romantically attracted to females,

And a female body is a woman’s body and is romantically attracted to males.

Historically, anything outside of these parameters do not meet Western standards of gender and sexuality and have been considered aberrant, illegal and pathological at different times. Numerous methods have been used to control this aspect of people including aversion therapy.

Over the last 120 years, Western culture developed more and more stark divisions within the self and between people, often rooted in controlling different aspects of society considered undesirable. These perspectives expose the racism, anti-Semitism, homo/transphobia, disability discrimination and misogyny at work in areas considered ‘science’. One example of how this plays out is when the mind is perceived as separate from the body, action can be taken to ‘cure’ the mind if a person fails the M-F test and return them to a healthy functioning member of society.

“Lewis Terman was a leading figure in the California eugenics movement who invented and popularized the Stanford-Binet intelligence test, a tool used to assess “feeblemindedness” and identify young people for forced sterilization. Terman also developed the “M-F” test, which was used – and to some extent is still used – to predict homosexuality and gender diversity in youth and young adults, and to channel them into so-called reparative therapies to prevent the further development of diverse genders and sexualities. Here, we can see that the impulse to draw clear lines around racial groupings is intimately linked to the desire to have clear lines between male/female, even as standards for men and woman are often in flux, changing across time and place. Many advocates for transgender youth – including transgender adults – feel pressure to justify challenging and controversial decisions, often relying on research that reproduces a certain logic known to harm the very interests of people they seek to support.”

– Mauro Sifuentes, Genetics, Gender Identity, and Youth Transitions

“Although recognition and classification of gender nonconformity appeared in Western medicine in the 1920s, gender identity disorder (GID) first appeared as a distinct diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980 and remained a category until the newest edition of the DSM (the DSM-5). Over the past few decades, after professional as well as public debates, the APA has moved toward differentiating gender nonconformity from mental illness. On December 1, 2012, the board of the APA approved changing the diagnosis of GID to that of gender dysphoria in the DSM-5, a significant move toward depathologizing gender variance. Psychiatrists increasingly agree that being transgender is not an illness to be cured or overcome (nor, for that matter, a state that can be altered).””

– Daphna Stroumsa, MD, MPH, The State of Transgender Health Care: Policy, Law, and Medical Frameworks

Change continues.

“The United Nations Human Rights Council, in a defining vote, adopted a resolution on June 30, 2016, on “Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation, and gender identity,” to mandate the appointment of an independent expert on the subject. It is a historic victory for the human rights of anyone at risk of discrimination and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, a coalition of human rights groups said today. This resolution builds upon two previous resolutions, adopted by the Council in 2011 and 2014.”

– UN Makes History on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity

Voting in favor of the resolution
Albania, Belgium, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Macedonia, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Panama, Paraguay, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Venezuela, Vietnam

Voting against the resolution
Algeria, Bangladesh, Burundi, China, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Morocco, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Togo, United Arab Emirates

Abstaining on the resolution
Botswana, Ghana, India, Namibia, Philippines, South Africa

Context:
Change is occurring, but deep cultural and societal shifts like this tend to take time to reach everyone. It is profoundly challenging to see through and step away from Western perspectives. They are large and all pervasive at this time. They can even seem invisible. But the truth is the false gender binary, oppositional thinking, suppressed history and scholarship, integral homo/transphobia and racism, all contribute to cultural and societal pressure on everyone all the time to conform, judge, internalize and survive. We end up policing ourselves, and each other. We create multiple layers of interlocking survival behaviors between us, instead of everyone just being exactly who they are.

Bullying queer/trans/intersex kids is about scapegoating rooted in deep, historical, cultural shifts in society.

Bullying queer/trans/intersex kids is about scapegoating rooted in deep, historical, cultural shifts in society. But it can also include unconsciously trying to get others to snap back into ‘right behavior’ out of concern for safety. I imagine my mother and her unbalanced response to hearing that I was a lesbian, (how I identified at the time). Riddled with horrible memories of what it meant to be a lesbian from her childhood, she screamed at me for an entire year about how horrible all this and I was and how everyone was going to suffer for it, before stopping talking to me altogether for many years. It was more than she could bear. There was nothing I could do. I could not stop being myself.

What can erase a heart like that? What can cause that much confusion and pain? It’s more than ignorance. It’s a deep, deep judgment. It smacks of survival.

Impact:

Conformity is highly prized in our culture. Sacrifice. Repression. Doing the ‘right thing’ even when it’s not who you really are. Remember back to Colonel Manly from the first American written play we learned about from the early US History part? There was a need to create specific stereotypes in the face of colonization, slavery and war.

Not surprisingly, today, many, many decades later, there are many stories, an obsession perhaps with media that portrays the hero who goes against social convention and wins big for following their own heart. But it’s mostly just a story. Like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. In real life, this kind of thinking can serve as a mirage for marginalized communities. Competitive. Dog eat dog. Individualistic. Power over. At any cost. These are valued and seen as part of what it takes to succeed in Western society.

On LGBTQI2S+ Community:

The tools and degree of scapegoating of our community shift and adjust with the times, but essentially anything and everything is used to judge, erase and or police all genders and sexuality that fall outside of patriarchal parameters, which for the LGBTQI2S+ community is ALL OF US. Many queer/trans/intersex people visibly and or socially pass as straight and cisgender to varying degrees at different times, sometimes for safety and survival reasons. But that means anyone who is visibly queer/trans/intersex in appearance or behavior is at greater risk for being singled out.

Policing gender happens in the LGBTQI2S+ community. Safety can be a visceral, unconscious response for many of us if violence has occurred socially or in the home, especially around gender and sexuality. This can severely alter self and expression from the inside out.

In 2005 a group of 4 people created a graphic that eventually morphed into the Gender Bread Person. In order to break down stereotypes and help understand sex assigned at birth, behavior, sexual orientation and gender identity, they used visuals and familiar concepts that separate parts of the self.

In 2011, a straight, white cisman plagiarized the Gender Bread model and claimed ownership.

It was later translated into the Gender Unicorn by a group of trans activists. This model made some basic changes, but kept the overall format: sex assigned at birth, gender expression, gender identity, and physically/emotionally attracted to. These models isolate areas in order to see them independently. Unhinging them from one another helps to dismantle assumptions that bind stereotypes together.

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

Every step counts. The more we hear from queer/trans/intersex people and experience, the more we embrace our unique power and wisdom, the better!

This was an enormous journey. As BIG and GORGEOUS as all of nature and all of the world! As GORGEOUS as all of us! Queer/trans/intersex!

Coming back to the Gender Wheel, what do we know?

There is a long, significant history as to why there is gender oppression related to the development of the patriarchy. It is not just the way things are. It was created and is maintained on purpose, often unexamined and unconscious, contributing to a deep implicit bias in Western culture.

We know there is a long, significant history as to why there is gender oppression related to the development of the patriarchy. It is not just the way things are. It was created and is maintained on purpose, often unexamined and unconscious, contributing to a deep implicit bias in Western culture that marginalizes our community alongside indigenous and communities of color.

We know there are a minimum of 6 kinds of bodies and that queer/trans/intersex people and experience are everywhere all the time. We also know a little bit about binary thinking and why it developed, and are beginning to understand that noticing compulsory polarized thinking like girl and boy, even black and white are important steps. We’re coming into more holistic thinking as one way to include us and break down ways of thinking, speaking and being that are binary. We’re coming back into the circle.

Some more truth: the majority of children are naturally gender fluid until 4-5 years old; gender is natural and cannot be eliminated; the kind of body a person has does not determine their gender; gender does not determine a person’s sexual orientation; communicating about one’s gender is a social construct—gender is not; gender is as unique as personality.

Use the Gender Wheel and play with the first 3 circles: take the time to download the Wheel and explore the breadth of nature and reality. Find yourself, find your friends and family, but go beyond your own life. Feel the extent of your community throughout time, across the globe! See if you can find people in movies and books, people from history. Where does Publick Universal Friend land on the Wheel? Or Albert Cashier? What about We’ Wha? What about Two Spirit people? Every body can be understood more fully through seeing the Self in Context, but some people can only be understood in context. Two Spirit, Hijra, Muxe to name a few, who else?
Experiment with how much you can know and find on the Wheel. There are no limits to infinity.
The fourth circle will be coming this year for even more play!

So much wisdom, so much truth lies within our queer/trans/intersex community, within our bodies, within our hearts and minds. So much wisdom lies within our spirits! Scholars, activists, educators, parents, midwives and doulas, health practioners, healers, therapists, counselors, librarians, artists, philosophers, politicians, journalists, authors, linguists, film makers, illustrators and more…all sharing, creating, transforming our world through who we are.

The Wheel turns.

QueerEternal/GenderNow

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action:

- 1. Think differently. Queer/trans/intersex oppression is directly connected to race and ethnic oppression. Both are rooted in the development and perpetuation of Western culture’s patriarchy. Within a system like this, to do wholly effective work to erase homo/transphobia it must be rooted in anti-racist work and coalition building with IPOC communities, as well as stepping away from Western ways of thinking about gender, sexuality and nature. This is a different legacy we want to pass on–to each other, our kids and families and the next generations. Truth. Equity. Belonging. It already exists. We are waking up to the truth of it and making it known.
  - That’s why the cover of The Gender Wheel is similar to my other book, When a Bully Is President. They’re connected. Race and ethnicity, and queer/trans/intersex people are all oppressed in the similar ways for the similar reasons.
  - I created When a Bully Is President: Truth and Creativity for Oppressive Times the day after the 2016 election in response to the stories I was hearing from teachers across the country about how stressed out kids were. We had it published and in-hand by Feb 2017. I never mention #45 in the book because it’s not about him. It’s about the larger system and what stories aren’t being told and how it’s all contributing to what communities are being bullied, specifically related to race and ethnicity, but including people with disabilities, women and girls, the LGBTQIA2S+ community and more. I’ll be honest, I was deeply concerned that kids were internalizing the horrible propaganda I was hearing targeted at our IPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ communities and wanted to step in with some context. The Gender Wheel came out the same year.
  - Free Resources: When a Bully is President Reading Guide & Worksheets
- 2. Speak truth. Break down the binary. Every single step to include a minimum of 6 body types and expand pronouns to include more than two is fabulously valuable. These are two areas where you can literally change yourself and change the world.
  - If you want to create change, then it’s all about consistency, especially if you have kids or work with kids. Because the truth is, if every single minute of every single day you spoke inclusively about genders and pronouns to your kid, you would still only be a small dent in the barrage of messages they were receiving.
  - Even kids who can be considered cisgender are jammed up by gender messages. Any serious, and playful acknowledgment of gender diversity provides a rest from the constant need to perform as a boy or a girl for all kids.
    - - Here are two resources. The worksheet includes tools that I use every day and developed from being a parent. Also, having visual reference up like a poster helps keep the conversation open, can help kids understand on multiple levels, and shows that this is not something to be hidden.
        
        Worksheet: Keeping the Perspectives Alive
        
        Poster: They, She, He, Me, Pronoun Poster (8.5×11 download)
- 3. Interrupt falsehoods. SCHOOLS and LIBRARIES. There are four major areas where change can begin. Choosing any one of them and taking any action would make a profound difference and because they are all connected, ultimately lead to all the other areas. My tactic in my activism and education is to focus on truth and that which cannot be denied.
  - - - Multidisciplinary UPDATE for educational materials to include queer/trans/intersex people and experience-Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Health and more
        
        Curriculum Development Worksheet: 2 page worksheet to assist in developing lesson plans that are gender inclusive. The goal here is not to teach about gender but instead to bring gender expansive awareness into everyday lessons. Examples of a potential lesson ideas are provided on worksheet
      - Develop Critical and Holistic Thinking and Limit Oppositional Thinking-for example for young ones, don’t accentuate learning opposites, explore more circular ways of learning
      - Suppressed History-it is possible and valuable to include queer/trans/intersex people at every step of history in every direction
      - Implicit Bias-Western culture and the patriarchy are deep-being aware of heterosexual, cisgender and white bias help bring more subtle, but deeply effective forms of oppression into awareness
  - 4. Educate toward truth/children’s books and adult resources.
    - - The Gender Wheel: a story about bodies and gender for every body
        
        View the website for the book, and Make the Gender Wheel
        
        They She He Me: Free to Be!
        
        Gender Now Coloring Book
        
        When a Bully is President: Truth and Creativity for Oppressive Times
        
        What Makes A Baby and Sex is a Funny Word
        
        They Call Me Mix (coming 2018)
        
        Is That for a Boy or a Girl?
      - Worksheet: Vetting LGBTQI Children’s Books with Love (4 pages, 580KB)
        
        *an important tool to begin looking at children’s books, (especially nonfiction gender books & workbooks for the young), that support LGBTQI2S+ kids, families, educators and librarians in choosing books that support our community from the inside OUT, taking into consideration truth, power dynamics, suppressed history and first or own voice
        
        Trans Allyship Workbook: Building Skills to Support Trans People in our Lives
        
        also Davey Shalsko’s article, “How using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun can change the world”
        
        My New Gender Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace Through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity
        
        The Resilience Anthology
        
        Societies of Peace: Matriarchies past, present and future
        
        Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

CLOSING PRAYER

Thank you for everything and anything you do and are in support of gender expansion. Blessings OUT to all my queer/trans/intersex family and friends. We are the revolution. We are the magic. We are the truth that will never stop rising up and OUT! May we dance and dance and never stop!
Now we close this circle to dance another day.
Join me in prayer.

I call my power in from the East and the West
I call my power in from the North and the South
I send my love up into the Sky
And I send my love down into Mamiearth
I am here in this perfect center
In this perfect moment
Where I belong
a part of the circle
I am Love
Now

Maya Gonzalez is a ferociously quirky queer femme with a deep love for daily drag and dress up. She’s also an artist, progressive educator and award-winning children’s book illustrator and author. She has been a close ally of the trans community for over 30 years and her partner is trans. Her work focuses on art and story as powerful tools of reclamation and transformation both personally and culturally. Currently her primary tool of activism is creating and publishing radical children’s books that tell the truth of who we are and what we can be. She invites grown-ups and kids alike to do the same through her online school and free kids program that teach a holistic approach to creating and publishing children’s books.

GENDER MONTH–Week FIVE (Part One)–THE BINARY & THE HOLISTIC SELF

5 weeks of expanding the mind and beautifying the world with Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness!

maya March 30, 2018 March 7, 2019 +lgbtqi2s+ / 5 Part Gender Series / activism / children's books / gender / life as arte / reflection press / teaching2 Comments

**NOTE: I turned this blog series into a FREE Online Course available through The Gender Wheel website. View the course>>>

ON TO THE FIFTH & FINAL WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

Each week of this month I’m focusing on a different theme in relation to Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness. If you missed any of the last four weeks on NATURE, MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS, INDIGENOUS HISTORY, & EARLY US HISTORY check those posts out here.

This final week will be done in two sections allowing a pause in the middle to call in your full holistic self.

WELCOME TO the first part for this WEEK – THE BINARY & THE HOLISTIC SELF!

In the first section of PART FIVE of the gender series we open our eyes to the bigger reasons why. Why is the truth of queer/trans/intersex people and experience suppressed in so many areas? Nature? Across global cultures? Indigenous North America? Early US history, and so much more? Digging deep to understand the core development of Western culture helps us see how all of these areas are connected.

We begin by reviewing the cultural shift from matrifocal to patrilineal and how this has profoundly affected our current culture and created a false binary. We then look at how calling in our full holistic selves is a powerful antidote to the binary and the patriarchy and its effects. All this prepares us for the second section where we begin shifting our current perspectives to create a new, true world that includes queer/trans/intersex fabulousness, embrace holistic perspectives of gender and learn about The Gender Wheel.

WHY A WORLD OF FALSEHOODS?

As we review the last 4 posts from this series, a new world begins to form in our imaginations: a queer/trans/intersex INCLUSIVE world reflected in nature, global cultures, indigenous America, even early US history. This includes 3, 4 and more genders with multiple sexual identities and family formations. Perspectives that are fluid and inclusive to accommodate the breadth of nature have always existed, throughout the world, including North America. Perspectives like these are often associated with matrilineal or matrifocal, communal or nature/land based communities, common among many indigenous cultures. These communities once existed across the entire world. They certainly existed in large parts of Europe and the Americas pre-colonization.

In fact, today the patriarchy can seem so firmly embedded in reality that it appears as TRUTH, as if it is THE WAY THINGS ARE, even if it means that upon closer examination, there is a universal lie going on.

All this changed with the introduction of patrilineal and patriarchal systems. The shift toward patriarchy began a very long time ago and evolved as it spread over time. Although some matrifocal societies still exist today, the patriarchy of Western culture continues to dominate experience and thinking throughout the majority of the world and public sphere. In fact, today the patriarchy can seem so firmly embedded in reality that it appears as TRUTH, as if it is THE WAY THINGS ARE, even if it means that upon closer examination, there is a universal lie going on.

Why would a shift away from a matrilineal, communal, nature/land based perspective entail such a drastic measure as to recreate reality into a false one? One that denies the reality of what is and always has been?

Power and economics.

It took a very long time for the patriarchy to develop and there were numerous contributing factors along the way, but many significant philosophers and researchers believe it was rooted in war, violence, conquest and the domination of land and women as property. Like queer scholarship, study focusing on women in more and more truthfull ways is growing exponentially and providing greater understanding to our current culture. Here is a significant example of the shifting landscape long ago.

“As class divisions deepened in ancient Roman society, the sexes were assigned an increasingly unequal status. Once property-owning males ascended to a superior social position, those categories could not be bridged or blurred without threatening those who owned and controlled the new wealth. Ownership of property and its inheritance, paternity, legitimacy, and titles became vital legal questions for the new ruling elite. The heterosexual family, headed by the father, became a state dictate because it was the economic vehicle that ensured wealth would be passed on to sons.
Everyone who was not born a male heir to property bore the wrath of the new social system. Just as the status of women was degraded, so was everything that was ‘not male’—transgender, gender-bending, sex-change, and intersexuality. A woman could not become a man, any more than a slave could become a ruling patrician. Males who were viewed as ‘womanly’ were an affront to the men in power.”

– Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors

This system evolved and firmed itself over centuries as it spread far and wide.

“The very fact that… rulers were still trying to ban any form of trans expression demonstrates deep beliefs still persisted from communalism. But the repressive laws aimed at further oppressing trans people, gay and lesbian love, and women formed part of the Corpus juris civilis—Roman body of law that was later used as the foundation for religious and secular law in Europe, England, and the United States.”

– Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors

Indigenous European culture was decimated by the Romans and later by their law. Eventually, colonized Europeans went on to spread patriarchy across the globe through colonizing other indigenous communities. In order to maintain power and control, they used the same systems that had been effective in controlling them by manipulating ideas about women, nature, gender, sexuality and indigeneity.

Looking at the indigenous Americas and the European colonizers’ actions within this context makes it clear why our community was specifically targeted. It is documented that queer/trans/intersex people often held positions of more power on multiple levels in their communities, had greater resources, be it economic, spiritual, social, healing, etc… Third and fourth gender people, or what is currently called Two Spirit by indigenous, Native American people were consulted and valued. They greatly impacted their communities. Targeting queer/trans/intersex people is integral to patriarchy, to Western culture and to colonizing.

You can learn more about the patriarchy’s early development here.

Still queer/trans/intersex people persisted.

MAKING SENSE OUT OF MADNESS

With many centuries in the making, combined with system upon system created to firm and confirm Westernization across the globe, it can be challenging to step away from Western thinking and its patriarchal perspectives. That’s why uncovering and calling OUT the truth is so important. It has a way of clearing the path of false debris and clearing the mind and heart to feel more free.

Remember the queer/trans/intersex truth about nature—documented in over 1500+ animals so far

and global, multicultural awareness—to varying degrees, legal third gender already in Austria, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Germany, India, Malta, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States-Oregon, California, DC

and indigenous history in North America—2 Spirits documented in over 150 tribes in United States

and early US history—countless records of queer/trans/intersex ancestors including the possible queering of 3 US presidents.

This larger, more complete perspective of reality brings into view the truth. Queer/trans/intersex people and experience are everywhere, all the time because we are a part of nature. It is toward this direction that we now turn.

Through the series we’ve looked at the world from:

the most basic: nature,

to the next biggest: global cultures,

then closer to home: indigenous North America,

and focusing in: early US history.

We are already beginning to create a holistic perspective of gender.

Each area of learning nested within the last. It goes without saying that each area is a brief introduction meant to hint at larger realities that warrant further study. This establishes a pattern of learning and awareness that is expansive and connected. Learning like this and drawing our awareness to it are ways that we can begin understanding how Western thinking has affected us and how we can gain perspective on it.

The patriarchy is by its very nature and necessity, predicated on division and not just any kind of division, but binary division in particular.

“Binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. It is the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms, such as on and off, up and down, left and right. Binary opposition is an important concept of structuralism, which sees such distinctions as fundamental to all language and thought. In structuralism, a binary opposition is seen as a fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture, and language.”
“Typically, one of the two opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other. The categorization of binary oppositions is “often value-laden and ethnocentric”, with an illusory order and superficial meaning. Furthermore, Pieter Fourie discovered that binary oppositions have a deeper or second level of binaries that help to reinforce meaning. As an example, the concepts hero and villain involve secondary binaries: good/bad, handsome/ugly, liked/disliked, and so on.”

– Wikipedia

When we place the cultural shift into perspective

From matrilineal to patrilineal,

From communal to individualistic,

From indigenous to Western,

we can see a pattern of power-over and can imagine the imperative for binary thinking to develop and become firmed. Eventually this extends into every area of experience, through its relation to gender and sexuality, as well as race and ethnicity. This is the foundation of Western thinking. Individualistic. Patrilineal. Eurocentric. Dominating. And it’s deep.

Being able to see through Western culture and fully see through patriarchy must by necessity happen in steps. It is an evolving process or maybe an un-processing, as we become raw and natural again, healed from the effects of a system designed specifically to oppress queer/trans/intersex people, nature, indigenous people and women. It may be for sanity’s sake that it comes in steps. As one belief falls, it makes room for another to fall and another. Once the large lies are exposed, all the small lies unravel leaving everything exposed for what it is.

It’s not about one huge change, but a series of steps, a daily practice even, because what we need to change is quite literally how we think, because now, the patriarchy lives within.

Once the larger truths are told, all the small ones fall into place and reorganize. Everything. Truth this extensive and far reaching instigates a progressive and profound shift, but how do we begin and where?

Every step counts in a dance like this. It’s not about one huge change, but a series of steps, a daily practice even, because what we need to change is quite literally how we think, because now, the patriarchy lives within.

What helps with something like this? What makes sense out of madness? One of the most powerful antidotes to Western culture and the patriarchy and the impact it’s had on our thinking is a holistic perspective. This begins to change everything. Fundamentally. While giving you something to hold onto. Truth. Nature. Your whole self.

TOWARD A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF

How do you come to know your whole self when judgment, conformity and performance are culturally embedded and valued? How do you find truth about yourself when rational, empirical, logical thinking are your primary options for thought within a Western frame of reference? How can you understand your own unique dance when linear, rigid, externally approved formation is generally required for physical survival?

We live in a box within a box within a box.

Now imagine,

what can you hold onto as you learn your way through Western thinking back to your fully fabulous queer/trans/intersex self?

I’ve learned that honing a holistic perspective means beginning as large as possible, with the intent of full inclusion. And then slowly and thoughtfully, you create the path inward, imagining as whole of a perspective at each step as possible.

To this end, I teach what I’ve learned about myself.

The HOLISTIC SELF includes: BODY, SPIRIT, MIND, HEART and the UNKNOWN.

CALLING IN the WHOLE self helps make sense out of our experiences. Many of us have had to separate or silence parts of our true self because of Western, patriarchal thought and society. In fact, a split between body and spirit, body and mind, even body and heart are as imperative as a split between humans and nature, males and females, queer/trans/intersex people and cis, straight people.

To become more aware of what the whole self is consider the following questions and perspectives. The more whole, the more present and embodied queer/trans/intersex people are in the world, the more true our world will be.

How to make it real? You can gauge the personal impact our Western culture has had on you by asking how free do you feel to be your true self? In your heart of hearts, are there places that you suppress and silence yourself to feel/be safe and supported in the world? Never judge. Just see. And feel.

Body: the physical body.

How comfortable are you with your body in public? In private? Is your comfort level related to safety? In what way?
Do you judge your body and by what standards? Do you judge other people’s bodies?
Have you experienced trauma? Health issues? How has it impacted your body?
When do you feel your most strong? Your most gorgeous? Your most free and like yourself?

Spirit: the power and mystery of nature that animates the physical body, perpetuates and connects all life on Earth. Spirit brings the body alive!

Power. Have you ever been struck by the beauty or sheer force of nature? When was the last time you were in a powerful storm and felt the winds whip your hair? Or been to the river to feel the eternal flow on your feet? Or the sea to see infinity? Or simply witnessed a child grow?

Mystery. Everyone has moments that transcend daily experience but are a normal part of human experience: birth, death, heightened creative expression, dreams, intuitions, visits from loved ones who have crossed over, near death experiences and more. What experiences have humbled you and left you speechless?

This power and mystery resides within us and makes us who we are.

Mind: the thinking, believing, communicating aspect of the self. The mind interprets reality and interacts with the world.

Western culture prefers and perpetuates a kind of thinking called binary opposition and it starts as soon as we’re born. This affects how we think, what we believe and even how we talk. It is inherently stressful because it doesn’t reflect real life or support figuring things out. It’s polarizing. On purpose.
How often do you see things as black and white? Right or wrong? Good or bad?
Do you have time to fully understand your self, your life, what’s going on in the world, etc…? Or do you need quick reads, easy answers and step by step directions because you’re already dealing with so much in your life?
Does your thinking affect how you feel? Or does how you feel affect your thinking?

Heart: the feeling, loving, connecting aspect of the self. The pull between parent and child; between partners, extended family- chosen or natal; the feeling for friends and coworkers, pets, mamiearth and all of humanity.

Can you express love freely in your life? Hold hands, kiss, embrace romantically in public, in front of family? Do you have to explain your love or attractions to anyone in your life? Or to any institutions in your life? Especially ones connected to your child or family? Church? University? Work? School?

What about other feelings? Do you feel free to have anger, sorrow, fear, or joy flow through your body and heart? What feelings do you have the majority of the time? What feelings set the overall tone of your life?

Unknown: the part of the self that we do not currently know or understand, but may sense and experience in different ways.

It is nearly impossible to fully determine what parts of the self have been suppressed that flourished pre-patriarchy. Some past and current accounts suggest that dreams, intuition, precognition, astral dream travel, energetic healing, and more, were/are practiced and used as personal and community support systems.

What mystery lies within you? What powers? Are you intuitive? Creative? Do your dreams teach you? Have you ever had a turn in your health and healed unexpectedly? Have your prayers ever been answered? How could your great unknown support you even now?

There are disconnects between all of these aspects of self in Western culture. Research in multiple disciplines show the importance of reestablishing these connections, for example body/mind medicine, social/emotional learning in schools and more. Expanding and calling in the whole self makes a huge difference in our ability to heal ourselves inside and out and negotiate the world. It locates agency and authority about who we are within ourselves, but there’s more.

The self, however whole, does not exist in isolation. The self is not WHOLE until seen in CONTEXT.

Context includes: FAMILY, COMMUNITY, SOCIETY, HISTORY, ANCESTRY and the UNKNOWN.

Similar to the holistic self, consider the following questions and perspectives. The more queer/trans/intersex people know our own history within each of our own racial/ethnic communities, the more our purpose and meaning will be understood.

Family: of origin. Siblings? Birth order? Adopted? Fostered?
Adult family? Single? Partnered? Kids? LGBTQIA2S+ family? Chosen family? Role/s?

Community: Who did you grow up around and who do you live around now? Who do you interact with on a regular basis?

Society: What position or role do you fulfill in our current society? (You can include outsider. I am.) What stereotypes and stories are attached to your position in society?

History: Where do you and your family/ies fit into US and indigenous American history? Global history? What stereotypes and stories are attached to your position in history?

Ancestry: What larger sweeps of history have your racial and/or ethnic ancestors been a part of? Do you know your ancestry? What stereotypes and stories are attached to your ancestry?

Unknown: There’s always room for more. I will never claim to know everything. Myself and nearly everyone I know, including my natal family, have had experiences that can only be explained by the likes of quantum physics. What experiences have you or your family/community had that cannot be explained within current systems?

Western culture often wants us to compartmentalize, simplify, reduce, assimilate, sublimate our true selves only to be rewarded with living in survival mode.

When we can see our WHOLE SELVES in WHOLE CONTEXT we begin to see our real selves more, as well as our position in the larger dance of life, and the world. This can help bring compassion to our survival skills and those of others. Western culture often wants us to compartmentalize, simplify, reduce, assimilate, sublimate our true selves only to be rewarded with living in survival mode. For many of us we fit into Western culture just enough and perpetuate the patriarchy just enough from the inside out so that we do not cease to exist. We get by. But the more we know our whole selves and our position in context, the more we can see the falsehoods and the impact Western culture has on us personally and create internal changes that make us stronger and stronger.

Seeing the HOLISTIC SELF makes you strong because it naturally helps you see through Western culture and the patriarchy. Through your own experience and understanding of yourself, you begin to transform Western culture and the patriarchy from a concept, a theory, something far away–into a personal story within the context of the larger sweep of history and consciousness. You step into history. Which means it is yours to change.

As Gloria Anzaldúa says, “We change ourselves, we change the world.”

Once you see, you can’t unsee. Once you know, you can’t unknow. There is a world of truth and beauty that includes queer/trans/intersex people and experience and always has. We have been invisiblized. We have gone underground. We have coded ourselves into history. We have hidden ourselves even from ourselves at times.

There is no place on mamiearth that does not have queer/trans/intersex expression in nature, including people. We are. We always have been. We always will be.

But always, we have persisted.

There is no place on mamiearth that does not have queer/trans/intersex expression in nature, including people. We are. We always have been. We always will be. That is truth. Our presence is a constant reminder that we as humans are a part of the power, mystery and diversity of nature.

The patriarchy and Western culture took a very long time to develop to this point. In some ways it seems that we are at a pinnacle moment. A heightened expression of the binary. But simultaneously, there is an awakening in the makes, gaining momentum. Lines are being cast, webs are being woven, bridges are forming between what is natural and true, between ancestors and spirit. We are becoming WHOLE again.

I ended this series at 1899 for US history because I wanted to court that moment when it seems gender and sexuality were still very fluid, before they tipped over into a more highly Westernized frame. I wanted to feel that moment before the binary became so deeply entrenched. When third, fourth, fifth genders were still singing through the edges of Western culture across the globe. Before colonization had obliterated or sent everything far underground.

The Bugis of Indonesia still sing today. They continue to believe that all 5 genders must be held in unity. Only if everything and everyone is connected can the whole world remain balanced and safe.

A MOMENT OF LOVE FOR YOURSELF before we fly on

Let’s pause here to try some exercises before we move on to the second section.

Calling in your Holistic Self:

1. Learning to think HOLISTICALLY. This is the best trick ever! Gaining as large of a perspective as possible on whatever I’m dealing with has become my style. I learned that if I’m suffering or feeling great discomfort, I can ease it up a little if I can get a large enough perspective on what’s going on. It can take a moment, but it changes how I think, how I feel, how I deal. I call it ‘sitting on the moon.’ It works wonders. (I only teach what I know personally works!)
- - Then, when it’s time to drop back into real life here on mamiearth, I keep this bigger perspective and my place in it alive by seeing reality in concentric circles. I don’t always draw them out on paper, but sometimes I do! I’m committed to seeing the bigger sweeps in my life because I know they help me learn through my personal lessons. I begin to see the circles, the connections, the patterns, the larger sources and results in my life and from there in the world around me.
  - Thinking holistically changes everything, including gender. Every step away from the false binary dismantles the patriarchy’s effect, frees the mind and heart, and moves us closer to the truth of the world. It is a constant practice. And totally worth it.
- With this in mind, here are two worksheets from my online school that you can use to explore your HOLISTIC SELF and your HOLISTIC SELF IN CONTEXT.
  Writing things down and using your creativity are powerful ways to integrate your experience.When looking at these worksheets you may also want to look back at the questions presented from above for each of the areas to help explore yourself and your experience more deeply.
  - Worksheet #1: My Holistic Self (2 pgs)
  - Worksheet #2: My Self in Context (2 pgs)
2. Extending it OUT. Thinking holistically is a whole new, true way of looking at everything, from the biggest perspective, nature all the way to the most intimate, your own personal experience. That’s how vast the impact of Western culture and the patriarchy have been. So truly-uly, every step counts. It’s personal. It’s global. It’s societal. It’s everything and every person has their own individual doorway into understanding it that is relevant to them. Personal experience that interrupts the falsehood of the binary is vital to deeper understanding. With that in mind, make it personal! Pursue holistic pathways in whatever ways speak OUT to you. They could be:
- - - Holistic health and medicine
    - Holistic business and problem solving
    - Holistic education
    - Holistic spirituality
    - Holistic philosophy
    - Holistic parenting
    - Holistic therapy
These exercises and explorations will be useful as we move into the next section for this week.

Read PART 5: Section Two on “THE HOLISTIC SELF & THE GENDER WHEEL”

Resources and References:
- - - Societies of Peace: Matriarchies past, present and future
    - 1,500 animal species practice homosexuality
Maya Gonzalez is a ferociously quirky queer femme with a deep love for daily drag and dress up. She’s also an artist, progressive educator and award-winning children’s book illustrator and author. She has been a close ally of the trans community for over 30 years and her partner is trans. Her work focuses on art and story as powerful tools of reclamation and transformation both personally and culturally. Currently her primary tool of activism is creating and publishing radical children’s books that tell the truth of who we are and what we can be. She invites grown-ups and kids alike to do the same through her online school and free kids program that teach a holistic approach to creating and publishing children’s books.

GENDER MONTH–Week FOUR–US HISTORY (1600s-1800s)

5 weeks of expanding the mind and beautifying the world with Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness!

maya March 23, 2018 March 6, 2019 +lgbtqi2s+ / 5 Part Gender Series / activism / children's books / gender / life as arte / reflection press / teaching3 Comments

**NOTE: I turned this blog series into a FREE Online Course available through The Gender Wheel website. View the course>>>

ON TO THE FOURTH WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

Each week of this month I’m focusing on a different theme in relation to Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness. If you missed any of the last three weeks on NATURE, MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS, & INDIGENOUS HISTORY, check those posts out here.

WELCOME TO U.S. HISTORY WEEK!

In PART FOUR of the gender series we open our eyes to the history of the United States. While often invisible, suppressed, even illegal for being who we are, trans/queer/intersex people have been pushing American society forward and influencing it in surprising and often profound ways. This is a look back to the early days and development of our country.

This part focuses on early American history until the close of the 1800s. The contemporary queer/trans/intersex movement through the 1900s and up until our current time will be a separate section added later.

A PURITANICAL NEW WORLD BEGINS

What we call the United States of America began in the 1620s when separatist Puritans left England and began to colonize what they perceived to be ‘available land.’

Of those original settlers,

“…Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage.”

In a fairly unusual act, when put on trial for his behaviors he was not executed, but instead sent back to England. The standard homo/transphobia embedded in Puritanical/patriarchal thought were at play but there was more to his expulsion than that.

“It was Morton’s social egalitarianism, his openness to treating the Algonquians as relative equals, and his theological liberality that set him decisively apart from the Puritans.” – from A Queer History of the United States

British historian, R.I. Moore on England’s society, “argues that a series of fundamental social changes—including the rapid growth of town and cities, broad changes in agricultural distribution networks, and a radical shift in how hierarchical power was distributed—created this new set of social classifications. Its purpose was to create clear social and cultural boundaries that would stabilize society by safely containing groups designated as dangerous pollutants. This fear of pollution was less about sex or death than about power and social standing.”

What Moore names the persecuting society seems to be at the heart of what Thomas Morton wrote about his experience with the Puritan community,

“Pollution fear…is the fear that the privileged feel of those at whose expense their privilege is enjoyed.”

“Despite the progressive inclination of some colonies, the persecuting society persisted. Colonists continued their sexualized treatment of native people, sodomy laws proliferated, and the legal, economic, and cultural institution of slavery was introduced into the colonies. It is impossible to understand American history—including the position of LGBT people—without acknowledging the overwhelming, debilitating effect that slavery has had on this country. From the mid-seventeenth century, organized, profit-driven slavery influenced all aspects of American life. Slavery struck at the heart of the ideals of individualism, personal liberty, and equality that were present, in sophisticated and rudimentary forms, at the birth of the colonies. Slavery was integral to how the colonies, and later the Republic, continued to reconceptualize individual freedom, race, property, and the rights and responsibilities of the individual.” – from A Queer History of the United States

And still queer/trans/intersex people persisted.

Homo/transphobia, intolerance for actions that lead to inclusion or equity, racism, severe social control of sexuality, presentation and personal expression, these are the hallmarks of the separatist Puritans that colonized the people and land of the future US. And still queer/trans/intersex people persisted.

Frontis portrait of Frederick Douglass from his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom

“To shed light on same-sex experiences of American slaves, author Charles Clifton suggests re-reading narratives written by former slaves. For instance, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, former slave Equiano discloses that, on his passage from Africa, a white co-voyager named Queen ‘messed with me on board’ and ‘became very attached to me, [saying that] he and I never should part.’ Equiano ‘grew very fond of’ another white companion. On many nights they laid ‘in each other’s bosoms.’

About his fellow slaves, Frederick Douglass writes in My Bondage and My Freedom, ‘No band of brothers could have been more loving.’ He leaves un-detailed his ‘long and intimate, though by no means friendly, relation’ with a former slave master. And he alludes to the ‘out-of-the-way places . . . where slavery . . . can, and does, develop all its malign and shocking characteristics . . . without apprehension or fear of exposure.’”

– from Same-Sex Desire and the American Slave Narrative

“In the European mind, the non-gender-normative and non-sexually-normative body—however defined in each period and circumstance—was the dangerous body, the less-than-human body, even the disposable body. This wedding of draconian moral judgment to the need to separate and punish led to violence, particularly sexual violence, that was to shape attitudes in future centuries…In this view, the founding of modern society was predicated on the creation of minority groups whose only purpose was to be vilified as unclean and prosecuted for the illusion of a comprehensive sense of societal safety.”

– from A Queer History of the United States

Documentation clearly shows that we have always existed, even amongst the Puritans, and invisibility is relative to the time. Who is able to see us and how they frame us, dictates our ability to be seen by the larger society and how. Many queer/trans/intersex people and experiences were known in their lifetime, but attempts are often made to wash off any hint of queerness through the documentation process or the passage of time. There were also many queer/trans/intersex people who found it necessary to remain hidden and/or underground during their day for reasons of safety, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t known by at least some or someone.

America’s history is layered and to hone a queer eye it must be looked at from multiple angles to understand.

To better understand our history we must also bring in the shifting perspectives regarding gender and sexuality. Lines that separate transgender from homosexual experience were not as firmly defined in the past as they seem to be today. Some, especially privileged, effeminate men and masculine women could adhere to enough overall social standards of gender stereotypes to remain public. Often accused of being the ‘opposite sex,’ they still moved through society semi-openly. Lines of affection were also drawn differently in some periods, specifically the concept of romantic friendship in the 1800s, which often held in it queer/trans/intersex experience.

Judgment against queer/trans/intersex people often compels people to snap history back to a more controlled version where we magically disappear.

In painstakingly sifting for reference in old documents while understanding the nuance of the era and the current vernacular, a faint vision of a queer past comes into view. Legal documents, public records, news, journals, diaries, travel documents, etc… All this can validate our presence to some degree. But what can seem like cold, clear facts to us can easily be twisted and distorted to erase our presence. Judgment against queer/trans/intersex people often compels people to snap history back to a more controlled version where we magically disappear.

Wilkinson-Jemima-1752-1819 — aka Publick Universal Friend, queer American preacher, woke from a near-death experience in 1776 with the sense of being neither male nor female.

Occasionally a treasure is found when a person from the past wrote down and expressed their experience clearly. The vast majority of queer/trans/intersex Americans traditionally led their ‘real’ lives outside of the publicly documented sphere. Just like today, life was made up of friends and lovers, home gatherings and holidays, work and play. Finding love songs between cowboys far from society’s eyes, or private letters between women never meant to be seen by anyone else, these are the documents that sing our song throughout time, but they are the hardest to find. Photographs that hold ‘the look’ or even boldly show affection are even better, but even more rare.

1775 PUBLICK UNIVERSAL FRIEND

One well known person in their time was Publick Universal Friend.

“Jemima Wilkinson (1752-1819) was a queer American preacher who woke from a near-death experience in 1776 with the sense of being neither male nor female. Adopting the name “Publick Universal Friend,” the preacher fought for gender equality and founded an important religious community.” “Wilkinson is recognized as the first American-born woman to found a religious group, but is also called a “transgender evangelist.” The breakaway Quaker preacher spoke against slavery and gave medical care to both sides in the Revolutionary War.”

1800s ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP AND THE ARTS

Statue of Deborah Sampson at the Sharon Massachusetts Public Library.

Becoming aware of the expression of same-sex attraction and/or gender expansion beyond societal expectations in dominant literature is one of the most important ways that we can track our presence through the history of the US.

Queering our eye as we look back, we can sift through the voices that are undeniably queer. These are not just a few names, but many of the most influential names of the 1800s literati. Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Melville, Dickinson, Whitman, Stein, and more. Besides this queering of lit, women having male experiences in real life and popular literature held the public entranced and was in high demand during this time.

Real life:

“Deborah Sampson is best known for disguising herself as a man to serve in the Continental Army from May 1782 to October 1783. She was also one of the first women to receive a pension for her military service and the first woman to go on a national lecture tour of the United States.”

Fictional:

“This is the first complete modern edition of The Female Marine, a fictional cross-dressing trilogy originally published between 1815 and 1818. Enormously popular among New England readers, the tale in various versions appeared in no fewer than nineteen editions over that brief four-year span.”

WARS AND ECONOMIC BOOMS CHANGE EVERYTHING

Huge shifts in society, specifically wars and economic booms, create huge shifts in social structures, especially for marginalized communities. In a patriarchy like the US, this proved especially true for women, POC and queer/trans/intersex people.

The Civil War, expansion into the West, the Gold Rush all created possibilities for people to have different experiences, including passing as the other sex. While some frame it as a complicated, humorous, even unpleasant experience necessary for women to have access to greater freedom, a queer eye sees access to greater freedom of queer/trans/intersex expression.

This is one of the areas where erasure is easy and at times confusing to decipher especially when you read definitives like this from Wikipedia, “Women used cross-dressing to pass as men in order to live adventurous lives outside of the home, which were unlikely to occur while living as women. Women who engaged in cross-dressing in earlier centuries were lower class women who would gain access to economic independence as well as freedom to travel risking little of what they had. Cross-dressing that consisted of women dressing as men had more positive attitudes than vice versa; Altenburger states that female to male cross-dressing depicted a movement forward in terms of social status, power, and freedom. Men who cross-dressed were looked down upon because they automatically lost status when dressed as a woman. It was also said that men would cross-dress to gain access around women for their own sexual desire.”

We can’t know how some people would identify if magically transported to our current time and given the options of LGBTQIA2S+. A personal measure I used to use, but no longer, is whether someone retains their trans identity beyond the time that seems necessary for an experience. We cannot know from this time and perspective what circumstances people were living under that may have influenced their identity and presentation.

Here’s Albert Cashier. They began dressing male as a young person and continued as long as they had the power to do so.

“Reactions to Cashier himself were actually fairly positive. For the majority of his life, no one actually knew of his secret and those that found out were very supportive. When Cashier was under investigation for committing fraud, “His comrades from the 95th Illinois rallied and testified that this was not Jenny Hodgers but Albert Cashier, a small but brave soldier”. They also defended him when he was forced to wear a dress at the very end of his life. The senator who ran into him with his car agreed to keep his identity a secret, as did the physician. Interestingly, one soldier claimed that when they were in the army, they called Cashier “half and half.” At this point the meaning they intended is lost, but it certainly suggests that they knew something was different about him.”

“Returning back to civilian life, he chose to remain living as ‘Albert Cashier’ and performed civilian jobs such as street lamplighter and farmhand. While performing a job for Illinois State Senator Ira Lish, Cashier was hit by a car driven by the Senator. His leg was broken. The doctor who examined Cashier’s leg then discovered his secret, but “moved by Albert’s pleas, the doctor agreed to maintain his confidence”. At this point, it was decided that Cashier should move to the Quincy, Illinois, Soldiers and Sailors Home. In 1913, due to dementia, Cashier was moved to a state hospital for the insane. It was there that his sex was again discovered and he was forced to wear a dress. This was ultimately what led to his demise as he, wanting to remain comfortable, pinned his skirt in order to attempt to make pants, that he was accustomed to wearing. He tripped and fell, breaking his hip, which led to an infection that ultimately took his life. Albert Cashier passed away on October 10, 1915, and was buried in his full military uniform.”

– from OutHistory.org, Challenging Gender Boundaries

There’s also Charlie Parkhurst a notorious stagecoach driver in the Old West.

Once in winter, when the rain was coming down in sheets, as it had been for three days past, and the coach was laboring along through mud almost to hubs, Parkhurst was hailed by a stray wayfarer and told that the bridge across the Tuolumne river was in a shaky condition, and that it would not be wise to risk driving over it. Parkhurst answered never a word, but gathering up the lines with one hand, he cut the swings and wheelers across the haunches with the other, and pushed on. Soon the swollen stream came in sight. It was swashing and roaring like a mill-race. The bridge was next seen, and Parkhurst, clearing the rain from his eyes, perceived that in a very short time there would no longer be any bridge, for it was already shaking on its foundation. The solitary passenger begged of Parkhurst not to venture on the creaking structure, but Charley, setting his teeth together, and gathering the reins in a firm grip, sent the long whip-lash curling about the leaders ears and eyes, with so vicious a swing that giving a wild leap, they plunged forward on to the bridge. The planks trembled under the horses’ hoofs and rocked beneath the wheels. But with a final effort, a cheering cry from Parkhurst and a flying lash, the opposite shore was gained in safety; gained only just in time, though, for looking back at the turn of the road the further end of the bridge was seen to sway in the stream.

This account from The Wisconsin State Register gives a clear example of the reputation Charley carried. But, even more than being fearless of the journey’s difficulties, Charley is also attributed to being fearless of road-agents (bandits).

One danger for stage coach drivers was the possibility of robbery or murder. Similar to pirates taking over cargo ships, there were always road-agents willing to shoot and kill for money or loot the coach carried. After being robbed once in California, Charley is said to have invited a second attempt. It eventually came on a trip between Stockton and Mariposa where he shot an infamous road-agent named nicknamed Sugar Foot after he attempted to loot Charley’s coach at gunpoint. Due to incidents like this he gained a reputation of being a reliable carriage driver. He would even take on double duty; this meant not only would Charley drive the carriage but also keep his eye on the “treasure box” (the valuable material of the coach) night and day and receiving double the compensation. His roughness was further expressed by his nickname, “One Eyed Charley”, which came later, due to being kicked in the face by a horse and losing vision in the left eye. His career in stage-driving lasted twelve years ending around 1864. This is a highly laborious and skilled job for anyone to take on for twelve years.

– from OutHistory.org, Challenging Gender Boundaries

HERE ARE MORE LGBTQI2A+ PIONEERS FROM EARLY US HISTORY:

Mary Walker, “commonly referred to as Dr. Mary Walker, was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war and Civil War surgeon. She was the first and only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor.”

Mary Jones, “one of the earliest transgender people in American history, although whether she was a gay crossdresser or a transsexual woman is not known.”

Frances Thompson, “was most likely the first trans person to testify before a congressional committee in the US. In 1866 she testified before a committee investigating a riot that had occurred in Memphis, Tennessee.”

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

Imagine everything you ever learned about the history of the United States included contributions made by queer/trans/intersex Americans. And it didn’t end there. Imagine that everything you learned was couched in the fact that these ancestors did it while facing complete erasure, some living in fear and secrecy, all of them stepping outside of social norms and trusting their own hearts and truth…you begin to sense the power and strength of their presence and take to heart that their contributions were not solely historical or social, but emotional, spiritual, hopeful and far reaching.

This is the power of queer/trans/intersex people in our society.

Imagine honoring queer/trans/intersex ancestors with statues, poems, songs, stories, books, even naming schools and buildings after them. Imagine our presence permeates everything, because it does.

Queereterenal/gendernow.

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

from *Transgender History* by Susan Stryker

The impact of separatist Puritans establishing the first colonies and serving as the ground from which our democracy rose cannot be underestimated. Their beliefs, thinking and practices initiated the original culture for European Americans here.

Laws against same-sex love were proposed in 1636 and were repeatedly put on the books, reinforced and adjusted as colonization spread across the land. The first laws explicitly against cross-dressing began in 1696.

Trans activist and educator Susan Stryker created a chart that shows the spread of legalized homo/transphobia across America throughout the 1800s into the 1900s in the form of anti-cross-dressing laws in her book, Transgender History/ The Roots of Today’s Revolution.

Perhaps one of the lasting and strongest echoes of the past can be seen in our country’s development of what AN AMERICAN MAN is supposed to be. Most of the founding fathers were not the kind of people who could personally, aggressively colonize the country from the advanced civilizations of hundreds of tribes of indigenous people living here. An exaggerated stereotype of the MANLY MAN was concocted and fused with the idea of America. This MAN could.

In many ways, this ideal was the antithesis of the founding fathers’ kind of character and served as a socio-cultural tool to distance themselves from a refined English culture, while instigating a fighting work force among the common man. It is conjectured that the perpetuation of legislation against same-sex love and cross-dressing were in part necessary to maintain pressure and value of this MANLY MAN stereotype.

There is some evidence among queer scholars that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln, all experienced same-sex attractions.

Context:

origins of the beliefs about boy and girl from the children's book, The Gender Wheel by Maya Gonzalez — from The Gender Wheel by Maya Gonzalez

It’s important to remember at the beginning and development of the United States the kind of thinking and culture that were present, because it was within this frame that our society began to grow and express itself.

For early politicians, the two most important pieces to address in the American psyche were the need to justify and maintain the colonization of the Americas from advanced indigenous peoples, and the desire to separate and stand apart from old England. They had to create and hold a distinct and wholly American identity based on the kind of person necessary to colonize and dominate what they considered a wild territory. Plays, literature and lectures conjured and confirmed the MANLY MAN persona, with one of the main characters in the first American play named Colonel MANLY.

Historians like Moore and Bronski acknowledge not only the power/ privilege framework of Western colonization, but include the intrinsic need for a ‘scapegoat’ to maintain this kind of social structure. Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans and queer/trans/intersex people were among those considered dangerous and polluting to American society.

Impact:

Medicine, education, social norms, economic and political structures, legal systems, personal liberty, equity and expression, EVERYTHING has been impacted by the kind of cultural environment that our country developed in regarding gender and sexuality. These two aspects of human expression and experience touch everyone in some way and consequently deeply affect personal thinking and being in a community.

When communities are scapegoated and marginalized because of gender and sexuality to maintain privilege and power, the very fabric of society becomes dependent on perpetuating negative perceptions of those communities. A patriarchal society born of aggressive and dominating colonization is predisposed if not specifically scaffolded with misogyny, homo/transphobia and racism. This served as fertile ground for the kind of government we are still negotiating as marginalized Americans to grow and spread.

On LGBTQI2S+ Community:

When communities are scapegoated and marginalized because of gender and sexuality to maintain privilege and power, the very fabric of society becomes dependent on perpetuating negative perceptions of those communities.

This environment specifically punishes, ostracizes, invisiblizes, silences, disguises, and so on…our communities through history. This hides the contributions many from our community made to our country making it challenging to find the stories and lives about historical LGBTQI2S+ people.

More importantly, in a homo/transphobic culture negative messages, not historical contributions are meant to be internalized by Americans, especially LGBTQIA2S+ ones. This perpetuates the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental trauma of real people being scapegoated in our society. It also clearly marks who it is appropriate to lash out at and not be punished.

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

I thought I was the only one, has been a common sentiment expressed by queer/trans/intersex people struggling with being a part of American society. Most of us grow up in isolation from the truth of our history or the presence of LGBTQIA2S+ people in our lives. That’s changing. But there’s more to do.

We must spread the truth that we have always been here. And not only have we been here, we have worked to expand and improve our society, and done so generally under great and direct stress.

We are courageous, tenacious, hopeful, strong and eternal. We will always be part of society because we have always existed. We are gorgeous and true. We are here. We are everywhere.

We simply ARE.

It is imperative that we and all Americans begin to internalize the truth of what is. Queer/trans/intersex people have contributed to the United States of America from the beginning. Despite being judged and scapegoated, we are an important and valuable part of society.

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action:

1. Think differently. When we begin to understand the development of our country, we can better understand where many of the cultural standards and stereotypes come from. The American necessity to be a MANLY MAN, mock effeminate men or masculine women, shun LGBTQIA2S+ people, scorn expansive thinking, and cling to systems that perpetuate privilege and power while scapegoating people for their gender and sexuality, these are all rooted in our past and the development of our country. And they still play out in our society today.
- Being able to see that our oppression is a tool to control society and perpetuate power-over dynamics is an important step. The more we can see through the lies and judgment and what purpose they serve/d, the more room there will be for the truth and for a renewed respect for queer/trans/intersex people in America.
- This is what we and all queer/trans/intersex should be internalizing. Truth. Presence. Power.
2. Speak truth. By acknowledging queer/trans/intersex people in US history alongside the popular figures our country focuses on, you begin to dismantle the silence and invisibility our community has endured since our country began. You bring our presence back into awareness. You begin to change history.
- It’s not enough to know history, we must also place it in real life, human context.
  The people are the ones who made the country–for better or for worse. And we, the people can heal our country from the damaging perspectives and dynamics that created it. It’s not enough to know history, we must also place it in real life, human context. We must include the heart, the body, the spirit, the mind of our ancestors. They were real people negotiating challenging lives because of who they are naturally. Allow the truth of your LGBTQIA2S+ experience to mingle with theirs. Infuse your stories with what it feels like to experience this kind of oppression. Engage your heart when you speak the truth. Allow your humanity to reflect back and bring greater emotional presence to our ancestors’ stories.
3. Interrupt falsehoods. The compulsion to snap US history back to one that does not include queer/trans/intersex people and experience is powerful. Our marginalization is confirmed and enforced from many directions in American society. It takes concerted effort to dismantle our erasure with documentation, and even then our impact, importance and presence can be dismissed as meaningless or worse.
- You may find people, even yourself, protecting US history from being revisioned. But the truth is the truth. We have been part of America from the very beginning. Understanding history in relation to our experience changes the way all of US history is seen. And that’s exactly what we need. A change in perspective that includes everyone’s experience, especially those communities most marginalized, LGBTQIA2S+ Americans, African Americans and Native Americans and Mexican Americans.
4. Educate toward truth/children’s books and adult resources.

Resources and References:

Looking at internalized homophobia
Looking at internalized transphobia
Bullying linked to gender and sexuality often goes unchecked in schools
Homosexuality in Puritan New England
When cross-dressing was criminal: Book documents history of longtime San Francisco law
“America is Queer” article by Michael Bronski
Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution, by Susan Stryker, covers mid-twentieth century to today

GENDER MONTH–Week Three–INDIGENOUS HISTORY (NORTH AMERICA)

5 weeks of expanding the mind and beautifying the world with Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness!

maya March 16, 2018 March 6, 2019 +lgbtqi2s+ / 5 Part Gender Series / activism / children's books / gender / life as arte / reflection press / teaching5 Comments

**NOTE: I turned this blog series into a FREE Online Course available through The Gender Wheel website. View the course>>>

ON TO THE THIRD WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

Each week of this month I’m focusing on a different theme in relation to Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness. If you missed last week’s post on MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS, check that out here and the previous week’s post on NATURE can be found here.

WELCOME TO INDIGENOUS HISTORY WEEK!

In PART THREE of the gender series we open our eyes to our ancestors in North America, the lives they lived and the echoes of that time that still sing through to this day. Beginning again with Leslie Feinberg and their book Transgender Warriors, we position ourselves here, on the land we live on and the people who’ve lived in North America for thousands of years.

There is an undeniable strength and power that queer/trans/intersex people hold. Opening up to multicultural awareness about gender showed that the history and presence of our community is global and stretches through the expanse of time with great variation. As we look at queer/trans/intersex history here in North America we find a similar story.

We see courage, persistence and endurance. Frequently in matrilineal/matrifocal communities, we can see an inability to deny the power of nature within the self, and instead a commitment to give it expression, fluidity and freedom. Like many global cultures that acknowledge 3rd and 4th genders, multiple gender expression permeates a vast number of indigenous cultures in ancient North America.

3rd and 4th genders provide a more nature-based embodiment within a culture that supports and celebrates roles for queer/trans/intersex people. These are the kinds of roles that create connections and bridges, synthesize information and experience, and maintain expansion for their communities. Valuable roles that serve their people and time, but can also serve as a lifeline to another person at another time.

The National Museum of the American Indian when it was located in the Bronx. You can now visit the museum here.

In this short video, Feinberg speaks about the moment they first found 3rd/4th gender representation. The truth in our ancestors was so clear and undeniable, it could reach through time and open Feinberg’s eyes to their own self. It was at The National Museum of the American Indian.

Although numerous tribes never forgot and remember to this day the presence of 3rd and 4th genders from their traditions, most knowledge about gender went underground during the time of aggressive colonization and rightly so. But when knowledge goes underground for safety and survival reasons, it is easily lost or temporarily misplaced. The fact that this knowledge was not lost and in fact could not be denied and is rising with greater strength even now, is a testament to the enduring power of queer/trans/intersex people and the positions they played in North America’s historical past.

In contemporary times, it can be challenging to step outside of the Western framework and into a more indigenous one. Western messages have become deeply embedded, even internalized, until it seems they are reality itself. And sadly much of the documentation that reflects pre-colonized perspectives are filtered through heavily biased individuals and systems. However, by putting them in context and looking with a queer eye, we can gain a valuable window back in time that can help re-frame and potentially heal the present.

From Transgender Warriors,
“ ‘Strange country this,’ a white man wrote in 1850 about the Crow nation of North American, ‘where males assume the dress and perform the duties of females, while women turn men and mate with their own sex!’

I found hundreds and hundreds of similar references, such as those in Jonathan Ned Katz’s ground breaking Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the USA, published in 1976, which provided me with valuable research. The quotes were anything but objective. Some were statements by murderously hostile colonial generals, others by the anthropologists and missionaries who followed in their bloody wake.

Some only referred to what today might be called male-to-female expression. ‘In nearly every part of the continent,’ Westermarck concluded in 1917, ‘there seems to have been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and performing the functions of women…’

But I also found many references to female-to-male expression. Writing about his expedition into northeastern Brazil in 1576, Pedro de Magalhaes noted females among the Tupinamba who lived as men and were accepted by other men, and who hunted and went to war. His team of explorers, recalling the Greek Amazons, renamed the river that flowed through that area the River of the Amazons.”

Feinberg’s book fascinated me because of its range. It is a sweeping testament and holds the freedom and the beauty of containing their own personal experience and exploration as part of their documentation.

“I began to hear more clearly the voices of Native peoples who not only reclaimed their traditional heritage, but carried the resistance into the present…Two historic developments helped me to hear the voices of modern Native warriors who lived the sacred Two-Spirit tradition: the founding of the Gay American Indians in 1975 by Randy Burns (Northern Paiute) and Barbara Cameron (Lakota Sioux), and the publication in 1988 of Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Randy Burns noted that the History Project of Gay American Indians ‘has documented these alternative gender roles in over 135 North American tribes.’
“I knew that Native struggles against colonization and genocide—both physical and cultural were tenacious. But I learned that the colonizers’ efforts to outlaw, punish, and slaughter the Two-Spirits within those nations had also met with fierce resistance. Conquistador Nuno de Guzman recorded in 1530 that the last person taken prisoner after a batter, who had “fought most courageously was a man in the habit of a woman….”

– Leslie Feinberg, from Transgender Warriors

These books are joined by one that drops more specifically into the life and times of We’Wha. Will Roscoe’s The Zuni Man Woman was published in 1991. It won the prestigious Margaret Mead Award, as well as the Lamda Literary Award. We’Wha was the most famous lhamana, a traditional Zuni gender role, now described as mixed-gender or Two-Spirit.

Changing Ones/Third and Fourth Genders In Native North America, was published in 1998. This book contains an extensive overview documenting multiple cultures and individuals.

Roscoe says,

“In truth, the ground American society occupies once may have been the queerest continent on the planet. The original peoples of North America, whose principles are just as ancient as those of Judeo-Christian culture, saw no threat in homosexuality or gender variance. Indeed, they believed individuals with these traits made unique contributions to their communities.”

“The evidence of multiple genders in North America offers support for the theory of social constructionism, which maintains that gender roles, sexualities, and identities are not natural, essential, or universal, but constructed by social processes and discourses…”

It may not be possible to fully understand indigenous perspectives on gender and sexuality after centuries of colonization, but by turning in this direction we can begin to learn. In listening more closely and opening our minds and perspectives, we can help root a present and a future where queer/trans/intersex and indigenous people are once more treated with deep honor and respect. Our ancestors are still alive in us and on this land.

This makes it valuable to more fully understand the history of indigenous North America. Numerous stereotypes persist because of deeply biased scholarship.

One book I recommend to expand perspectives is 1491/New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann. It helps with envisioning what indigenous North America must have been like. Very different than what most of us were taught, it helps give some framework to the economic, spiritual and healing/health systems functioning at that time.

Here are videos that share some of the inclusive, indigenous genders still singing through from the ancient past into the present time in North America.

Although in ancient time as today there has always been a 4th gender, what is sometimes called female-to-male, it appears within a patriarchy these representations are more actively suppressed. What is sometimes called male-to-female is more frequently represented.

The Middle Road/Kane Wahini, Wahini Kane in Hawaii

Man, Woman, Muxe/3rd Gender in Mexico

Two Spirit/Native American Tribes

Contemporary

A closer look at WORDS and Native American experience

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

You are surrounded by a vibrant, beautiful group of queer/trans/intersex folks. It may be a small group or even a very large group. A strong underlying feeling of mutual respect and a sense of service and belonging permeates everyone’s actions and reactions within this group and extends to everyone beyond this group. In fact, you’ve experienced a deep feeling of being fortunate and lucky ever since you were a small child.

You were always seen as a gift, and encouraged to blossom freely. As you developed into your queer/trans/intersex self you were cherished and your family invested in you to develop your natural skills.

Creativity, spirit, service, mediation, intuition, home, family. Strength, insight, endurance, freedom, independence, passion. These strengths are valued within you and allowed to flourish for the benefit of yourself and the community.

You know that everything in nature includes your reflection. Rest down into yourself.

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

In a Eurocentric, colonized environment complete suppression is the name of the game. Genocide, slavery, aggressive interruption of culture, stealing and destroying land… The true history of the US and the indigenous people of the Americas has and is suppressed if not completely distorted either intentionally or through ignorance by the dominating culture.

While minor change has occurred to bring greater truth, it has been extremely slow and education remains severely lacking on multiple levels. One of the primary problems is that the majority of people are taught through the public school system where perspectives that do not include indigenous history or people in a truthfull manner are passed on by positions of authority. These perspectives are then firmed by larger social, political and cultural systems.

Context:

The colonization of North America was at all times an economic venture. Anything and everything that could be used to disrupt and overtake the perceived resources was employed. 3^rd and 4^th gender roles in indigenous cultures were people who generally held more economic, spiritual, sexual, health and social power than most in their community. It is not surprising that there are stories about specifically targeting and shaming these individuals. This would diminish their role as well as fundamentally impact their community.

False accusations of cannibalism, harsh judgment against sodomy, and fabricated ‘proof of being irrational’ were used as justifications to enslave and slaughter huge swaths of indigenous people across North America from Mesoamerica to Canada.

Impact:

Racism against indigenous peoples of the Americas can be personal but it is always systemic in the US. A country that evolves from aggressive colonization holds at its core the same principles that created it. Unless these foundations are consciously addressed fully, they continue without interruption and permeate all aspects of society.

Over centuries of developing justification for aggressive colonization, numerous theories were provided that falsely position indigenous and POC as inferior to Europeans. Although proven wrong, the emotional impact of this kind of promotion has lasting effects on the mentality of the population at large. Again, if not consciously addressed these sentiments have a life of their own across a society that systemically oppresses indigenous people.

On LGBTQI2S+ Community:

1998, from Changing Ones/Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America:

“Alternative gender roles were one of the most widespread and distinctive features of native societies throughout the continent, yet they are barely mentioned in ethnographies and, until the 1980s, no anthropologist or historian comprehensively studied them. A conspiracy of silence has kept the subject obscured and hidden. In the eight volumes published to date of the Smithsonian Institution’s state-of-the-art Handbook of North American Indians, berdaches* are mentioned in entries for only sixteen tribes—an accuracy rate of barely ten percent based on the number of tribes with alternative gender roles listed in the index here.”

*Note: ‘Berdache’ is an outdated Persian term no longer in current use, brought over by the French to designate 3rd and 4th gender roles in indigenous North America. Two Spirit is the term adopted in the 1990’s by native people to reflect an alternative to Western labels like “gay, lesbian, transgender, as well as berdache.”

The indigenous and POC LGBTQI2S+ communities continue to be some of the most invisible, silenced and marginalized people, even within the LGBTQ movement, which has historically maintained a predominantly Eurocentric bias.

In November 2017, the National Center for Transgender Equality released “a detailed report about the specific experiences of transgender American Indians and Alaska Natives in many areas of life.”

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

By creating a truthfull foundation that includes nature, multicultural global awareness, as well as the reclamation of the suppressed history of North America, we literally begin to reconstruct the world we live in.

By creating a truthfull foundation that includes nature, multicultural global awareness, as well as the reclamation of the suppressed history of North America, we literally begin to reconstruct the world we live in. This is not isolated to one area of thought or theory. This quite literally touches everything. And as we bring this information into more common awareness, it changes everything it touches. The world is queer and always has been.

Making this world view accessible to our kids, not only makes their lives better, more sane, it resonates OUT, changing the present. And from there, it changes the future in ways that we can only guess.

Quite literally, truth heals. We may not know the specifics of where we’re going, but we can clear the path and open up to the highest good available. By acknowledging what’s happened and what is, we can heal through to the present.

What supports this kind of knowing and healing? We need our queer/trans/intersex, LGBTQI2S+ elders to connect with our kids. We need our queer families to hold these truths and pass them on to their kids at home, and when possible get them shared in the schools.

We need to pursue whole stories that address not just LGBTQI2S+ oppression, but the systems that were brought to this country through colonization and the impact they’ve had and continue to have to this day. Together we are stronger.

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action:

- - 1. Think differently. Imagine different ways to consciously engage with kids that includes expansive gender expression beyond the binary.
    - From The Zuni Man Woman:“Before the ages of four to six, gender was not emphasized as an attribute of the child, and parents and other relatives referred to the children of both sexes with the same term, cha’le’, or child. In fact, cha’le’ was applied to the offspring of any animal. Only later were children distinguished with such terms as ‘aktsek’i, young boy, and katsik’i, little girl.
      - change the nouns you use to refer to kids and people in general to include the possibility of 3rd and 4th genders: kids, child, people, folks, y’all, peeps…
      - expand your use of pronouns, refer to WEEK ONE and the Speak Truth section
- 2. Speak truth. It is very important to learn about the land you live on including the tribes that originally lived there. Finding original texts from indigenous voices is preferable if possible. If not available, poetry is another important resource. Bringing awareness to indigenous America and the history that’s been suppressed heals all of us.
- 3. Interrupt falsehoods. Just as important as speaking truth. The more you know about our history and the history of 3^rd and 4^th genders the easier it will be to steer attention and awareness toward the truth. This includes holding awareness in the LGTQI2S+ community. Everyone is learning and relearning. Often falsehoods provide the best opportunity to share truths. The stronger you are in your knowing, the easier and more free flowing these experiences will be. Your voice and presence are part of embodying the truth of our community. Your respectfull awareness leads to greater truth in our world.
  - Two-Spirit perspective from Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques: Building Alliances between Native and Queer Studies by Qwo-Li Driskill (Cherokee):

“While radical white-dominated queer movements often attempt to reject religion because of institutionalized homophobia and heterosexism or on the other hand create spiritual movements and communities that often appropriate Native practices, Native Two-Spirit/GLBTQ people insist that we already have a place within traditional religious and spiritual life. It is this part of our identities that many Two-Spirit movements emphasize. This is not a way to desexualize our identities in order to be acceptable to non-Two-Spirit/GLBTQ people, as non-Native radical queer movements might argue. It is a way to acknowledge our specific roles in cultural continuance. Two-Spirit oppositional politics are oppositional to colonial powers and to colonial values and epistemologies, including those internalized by Native communities. However, while radical non-Native queer movements formulate queerness as oppositional and antinormative, Two-Spirit critiques locate Two-Spirit and queer Native identities as integrated into larger Indigenous worldviews and practices. Two-Spirit activism works to mend and transform the relationships Native communities have with Two-Spirit and queer people. In this way, radical Two-Spirit politics are not oppositional in the way radical queer movements are; they seek to create and maintain balanced relationships and power dynamics in our communities as part of decolonial activism.”

4. Educate toward truth/children’s books and adult resources.

- Gender Now Coloring Book
  - Download another coloring page from Gender Now – (1 pages, 1MB)
- 47,000 Beads
  - a pow wow story of a Two-Spirit kid
- Prietita and the Ghost Woman
  - A decolonized re-telling of the La Llorona myth from queer Chicana activist, Gloria Anzaldúa
- Antonio’s Card
  - Written by another queer Latinx author about a boy with two moms
- Ma Llorona (Young Adult Novella)
  - A queer reclamation of the classic Mexican ghost story, La Llorona, spanning from MesoAmerica 1500 to present day San Francisco. View sample pages on the Reflection Press website
- Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman
- Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America

Resources and References:

GENDER MONTH–Week Two–MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS

5 weeks of expanding the mind and beautifying the world with Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness!

maya March 9, 2018 March 7, 2019 +lgbtqi2s+ / 5 Part Gender Series / activism / children's books / gender / life as arte / reflection press / teaching3 Comments

**NOTE: I turned this blog series into a FREE Online Course available through The Gender Wheel website. View the course>>>

ON TO THE SECOND WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

Each week of this month I’m focusing on a different theme in relation to Queer/Trans/Intersex fabulousness. If you missed last week’s post on NATURE, check that out here.

WELCOME TO MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS WEEK!

In PART TWO of the gender series we open our eyes to the whole world through greater multicultural awareness, beyond the US borders, remembering that many people in the US are immigrants historically, and currently.

This week begins with perhaps one of the most influential books I’ve read. Transgender Warriors/Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg. I knew of their work because of an earlier book, Stone Butch Blues published in 1993. Both of these books made sense out of my experience in the world as a queer femme and gave voice to something many of us were experiencing at that time but not completely understanding.

I can still sit and read Transgender Warriors for hours. There is so much queer/trans/intersex history from throughout time, and across the globe, gathered in one place all being digested in real time by a real life trans/queer. It’s like entering an alternate universe where people I love exist and where I make sense. Each story feels like a precious secret uncovered, another truth revealed. Even now, over 20 years from my first reading.

We have always been here. Queereternal.

That’s why we’re here now, and forever. Gendernow.

Despite geographic and historical distance of many of Leslie’s stories, they didn’t feel far away. And they included contemporary stories. These informed and contextualized my present. My ex had begun transitioning in 1994 and I was one of his main supports. And when I traveled to India in 1996, the same year Transgender Warriors came out, I witnessed a community of Hijras board our train and lovingly harass the passengers with song and dance until they were tipped appropriately. I also saw a singular Hijra out at a restaurant in the evening in a district where Indian women were prohibited to be out alone. This woman was not only alone, she was quite nearly holding court in the back of the small eatery as man after man waited on her.

Even though I lived a very queer life, I felt Feinberg’s work initiate a reorientation, perhaps because of its scope. Slowly but surely history and culture queer’d in all directions at once. No corner was left untouched. Nothing could be seen from the same angle again, ever. And the world felt more like home. I had been researching bits and pieces since I came out in 1984, but having one resource where I could immerse myself in so much information coupled with queer perspective was significant. It led me deeper into my self and my work.

I don’t pretend to understand how folks in other eras, cultures and locales felt or feel, especially about their sexuality and gender or how it fit/s into their social structure. But by learning as much as I can about as many different kinds of experience as possible, I’ve at least confirmed that there are countless ways to feel about sexuality and gender.

I don’t pretend to understand how folks in other eras, cultures and locales felt or feel, especially about their sexuality and gender or how it fit/s into their social structure. But by learning as much as I can about as many different kinds of experience as possible, I’ve at least confirmed that there are countless ways to feel about sexuality and gender. Focus, context and meaning can all shift and radically alter experience, sometimes to the point that all my reference points dissolve, even queer or gender expansive ones. This is massively humbling and reminds me to always be curious and not project my experience into seemingly open spaces.

Feinberg says,

“When I try to discuss sex and gender, people can only imagine woman or man, feminine or masculine. We’ve been taught that nothing else exists in nature. Yet, as I’ve shown, this has not been true in all cultures or in all historical periods. In fact, Western law took centuries to neatly partition the sexes into only two categories and mandate two corresponding gender expressions.”

“The paradigm that there are two genders founded on two biological sexes began to predominate in western culture only in the early eighteenth century,” historian Randolph Trumbach notes in his essay, ‘London’s Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Gender in the Making of Modern Culture.’

When a patriarchal system using violent aggression to colonize and eradicate a culture is present, physical safety, economic survival, and emotional trauma contribute to cultural shifts that otherwise might not have happened.

The more and the longer a culture has contact with Western culture, especially through economic ties and/or colonization, the more judgmental some indigenous and nature based culture’s seem to become regarding gender and sexuality. Queer/trans/intersex people held a particular kind of power in many pre-contact, matrifocal cultures. When a patriarchal system using violent aggression to colonize and eradicate a culture is present, physical safety, economic survival, and emotional trauma contribute to cultural shifts that otherwise might not have happened.

Perhaps one of the most important pieces I felt Feinberg retrieved through their scholarship was the spiritual aspect of queer/trans/intersex people in multiple cultures. In fact, the very act of transitioning was often seen as a spiritual act.

“In ancient China, the shih-niang wore a combination of female, male, and religious garb. In Okinawa, some shamans took part in an ancient male-to-female ceremony known as winagu nati, which means, “becoming female.” And trans shamans were still reported practicing in the Vietnamese countryside in the mid-1970s.

Female-to-male priests also exist—and most importantly even co-exist with male to female shamans. Among the Lugbara in Africa, for example, male-to-females are called okule and female-to-males are named agule. The Zulu initiated both male-to-female and female-to-male isangoma. While male-to-female shamans have been part of the traditional life of the Chukchee, Kamchadal, Koryak, and Inuit—all Native peoples of the Arctic Basin—Inuit female-to-males serve White Whale Woman, who was believed to have been transformed into a man or a woman-man. And female-to-male expression is part of rituals and popular festivals with deep matrilineal roots in every corner of the world-including societies on the European continent.”

Legal third gender status is currently available in 11 countries: Austria, Australia, Germany, India, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, United Kingdom and parts of the United States.

Although people who would be assigned female are also present everywhere that people who would be assigned male are, the vast majority of documentation focuses on queer/trans/intersex people who would be assigned male. This may be in part the effects of patriarchy.

Here are three reflections from Samoa, India and Pakistan, and Indonesia.

Fa’afafina

Hijra

Pakistan:

India:

Bissu

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

Take the time to try this on. Stop and imagine a world of 3, 4, or more genders. Not an isolated case, but a universal concept that included everyone. Everywhere that you could travel across the globe, everyone acknowledged the basic truth of nature, that there are numerous genders.

It’s easy to imagine all the small and large aspects of life that this would affect. Bathrooms, of course. Fashion. Travel. But don’t go there yet. Stay with yourself. Remember, in whatever way you can, your own birth. Imagine that there were more than 2 boxes to choose from, including a gender free option that allows an individual to acknowledge for their selves what gender is theirs, when the time is right. Imagine guiding your parent’s hand, choose this one!

What would it be?

And if you guided them to choose the same that you were assigned at birth, does it feel any different knowing that you and everyone has more choice?

Are you a parent? What if you had more than 2 boxes to choose for your child? What if you could give them time to figure their gender out for their selves? What would change if you had a 3rd or 4th box to assign them?

Now imagine for another moment, that the spiritual leaders in your community are queer/trans/intersex people. Perhaps it’s even you. What wisdom do you have to share? What stories would you tell to help others like you grow strong, especially our youth. Perhaps you’re already doing this. (thank you!!!xoxoxox) Many queer/trans/intersex people choose lives of community service. Spirit keeps us strong.

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

Homo/transphobia is an international issue. Change toward greater acceptance is seen as a landmark shift toward human rights, but remains a hot topic. Queer/trans/intersex people are traditionally used as scapegoats in Western culture, and those impacted by colonization directly or indirectly, to release social pressure. Homosexuality is currently illegal in over 75 countries. Change is slow, but steady. This number is down from 92 countries in 2006. (you can go here for a full list and to learn more)

Another marker is the classification of homosexuality and transgender experience as a mental illness across the globe.

HOMOSEXUALITY:

“First published in 1968, DSM-II (the American classification of mental disorders) listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. In this, the DSM followed in a long tradition in medicine and psychiatry, which in the 19th century appropriated homosexuality from the Church and, in an élan of enlightenment, transformed it from sin to mental disorder.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) asked all members attending its convention to vote on whether they believed homosexuality to be a mental disorder. 5,854 psychiatrists voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM, and 3,810 to retain it.
The APA then compromised, removing homosexuality from the DSM but replacing it, in effect, with “sexual orientation disturbance” for people “in conflict with” their sexual orientation. Not until 1987 did homosexuality completely fall out of the DSM.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) only removed homosexuality from its ICD classification with the publication of ICD-10 in 1992, although ICD-10 still carries the construct of “ego-dystonic sexual orientation”. In this condition, the person is not in doubt about his or her sexual preference, but “wishes it were different because of associated psychological and behavioural disorders”.
The evolution of the status of homosexuality in the classifications of mental disorders highlights that concepts of mental disorder can be rapidly evolving social constructs that change as society changes. Today, the standard of psychotherapy in the U.S. and Europe is gay affirmative psychotherapy, which encourages gay people to accept their sexual orientation.”

-excerpt from, When Homosexuality Stopped Being a Mental Disorder

TRANSGENDER EXPERIENCE: The APA currently talks about ‘Gender Dysphoria’ in relation to transgender experience. You can learn more about how they frame it here. As of 2017 in Denmark, it’s no longer a diagnosis.

Buzz Feed News published an overview in 2016 of a survey covering 23 countries across the world. There was a faint trend toward supporting transgender people. In Brazil 50% of the people surveyed said that they knew a transgender person, in Russia it was 16%. Spain and Argentina consistently showed more overall support in comparison to the other countries.

Context:

The spread of Western culture across the globe has fundamentally modified thought and practice in most indigenous cultures it has colonized. Gender and sexuality oppression seem to specifically appear in relation to Euro Western countries exploiting and colonizing indigenous, usually nature based cultures across the globe. This has a lasting impact and is firmed through a long standing international focus on Western culture and its academia, including Darwin. I’m reminded of what Trumbach said, “The paradigm that there are two genders founded on two biological sexes began to predominate in western culture only in the early eighteenth century.” Darwin’s influence cannot to be diminished, despite the fact that many of his theories remain unproven.

Impact:

Many indigenous cultures retain positive traditions of homo/trans identity acceptance despite deeply rooted homo/transphobia introduced by and perpetuated through violent contact with Western culture.

On LGBTQI2S+ Community:

Oppression of our community can often feel explosive and violent as well as less significant in relation to other communities, even marginalized ones. It is connected to multiple layers of silence and suppression, misinformation and aggressive lies used to oppress the people at large by separating them from their core beliefs and truths. This is usually rooted in a past of violent colonization of indigenous people, usually most violent against queer/trans/intersex people of the community.

image from the children’s book, *The Boy and the Bindi*, read the HuffPost article

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

Look at queer/trans/intersex experience throughout the entire world pre-colonization. Then look at post-colonization perspectives and how and why a culture may have changed. Place this beside our more complete and current understanding from the last week of nature. The more we look at global experiences of what I’m calling queer/trans/intersex and how it’s talked about, especially through time, the more we can see the underlying indigenous culture still present alongside the impact of colonization. I believe Transgender Warriors would be wonderful required reading for queer/trans/intersex folks.

Including global perspectives in home and educational settings helps bring greater awareness to the diverse fabulousness and eternity of our community while highlighting some of the ongoing awareness that’s needed about international oppression.

Stepping away from exclusively Western/Euro/US LGBTQI2S+ frameworks expands the possibilities available from which to perceive gender and sexuality. Including global perspectives in home and educational settings helps bring greater awareness to the diverse fabulousness and eternity of our community while highlighting some of the ongoing awareness that’s needed about international oppression. This is an opportunity to engage larger and necessary conversations with our kids about racism, colonization and how it’s tied to homo/transphobia in our own country and abroad.

Bringing this kind of critical awareness and making connections at a kid’s level may seem daunting at first, but understanding our world and their position in it is empowering. And when we teach from a place of powerful self- and community-love first, that is the strongest message communicated and that will help keep all of us strong. The details and lessons are like seeds. They’ll grow over time.

“a seed, a tree, free to be free” from *Call Me Tree*

It’s also valuable to understand nuance, make connections and further conversations. 10 countries where homo/trans expression may be punishable by death: Yemen, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates are Muslim. That doesn’t mean there aren’t queer/trans/intersex Muslim people. Like with Christianity it is a hot topic. Having been raised Catholic and then disowned by my family because of their faith and homophobia, understanding the history of the Bible and queer reality was my first step into historical activism. Looking at the different translations within context and how they changed over time was enlightening indeed and began a more expanded perspective of myself and helped me negotiate the intense homophobia in my family and the faith I was raised in. Islam is similar.

In the book Islamic Homosexualities, comparative sociologist Stephen Murray and award-winning author/scholar Will Roscoe look at a great history often known for its queerness. It’s also worth mentioning their book, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands/Studies of African Homosexualities.

Books like these while explicit at times and inappropriate for kids, are a great resource for grownups to educate ourselves about the prevalence of queerness across all lines even when current narratives deny it.

Queer Theory and Queer Studies. Developed in the 1990’s queer scholarship and understanding is on the rise. There is power in truth, but again it’s important to retain critical awareness especially about context and history. There are many contributing factors and being able to see through the global influence of Western culture is imperative. I’m always excited to see new generations coming into voice, especially IPOC queer/trans/intersex folks.

Here is an interesting pair I found who freshly posted this video:

The International World of Queer Identity and Colonialism:

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action:

1. Think differently. Open up to the possibility of thinking outside of LGBTQI2S+ Western frames in relation to gender and even sexuality. Again, this includes thinking beyond opposites and binaries, beyond stereotypes and generalities. Take time to look at nuance, greater and greater inclusion, what erasure if any is functioning and if and how context influences things. Try looking at things from new and larger perspectives. For example, it’s not about thinking queer/trans/intersex indigenous people are exactly the same as our contemporary community. What is different? What is there to learn?
2. Speak truth. Open up to new ways of speaking that reflect an expanded understanding of international, multicultural perspectives on sexuality and gender.
- In my book Call Me Tree I don’t use pronouns, all of the kids are in nature and all of them are in poses inspired by the Yogic Tree pose. I wanted to create a framework that could be used to explore an expanding reality.
- It begins with nature, then connects the kids to their bodies through Yoga, specifically the Tree pose and variations thereof. This provides an opportunity to learn about Yoga and India. We can learn that India has a legal third gender. We can then reflect back on the book and explore the kids’ genders.
- I wrote a letter to my readers acknowledging that the main character would have been assigned female at birth and ask how does knowing this change their understanding of the other kids in the book?
3. Interrupt falsehoods. Speaking truth is awesome. As we expand how we talk about nature and break down the binary we can include stories and awareness of many cultures. The more perspectives we learn about the more resources we have to draw from, especially for our kids, as they move into new understandings beyond our experience. Again, we must also take the time to say what is not true and acknowledge that almost everything around us is saying these untrue things, but that doesn’t make them anymore true. If we don’t model this for our kids, no one will. We can embrace the truth about gender and sexuality in many cultures now.
We need so many more children’s books!! Here’s a beautiful one by Canadian author Vivek Shraya that expands gender through their lens:

4. Educate toward truth/children’s books and adult resources.

Resources and References:
- Legal 3rd Gender:
  - Which Countries Recognize a Third Gender?
  - When asked their sex, some are going with option ‘X’
- Illegal in countries:
  - 76 countries where homosexuality is illegal
  - Gay relationships are still criminalised in 72 countries, report finds
- Update Bugis:
  - Indonesia’s transgender priests face uncertain future
- Africa and Homosexuality:
  - It is homophobia, not homosexuality, that is alien to traditional African culture
- Gay in Muslim countries:
  - Everything you need to know about being gay in Muslim countries

About Maya:

About Maya:

About Maya:

Context is Everything

My Gender Work and Presentations/More Context

Plagiarism, Distortion, and Erasure

The Authors and Their Publishers

The Impact

A Call to Action

Now is the time to make deep change.

And if you’d like to make your voice heard in relation to these two books,

We must always remember we are QueerEternal/GenderNow!

Our VOICE is a REVOLUTION!

More Resources:

About Maya:

My Story

The Background Story

Who’s Controlling the Narrative

First Voice/Own Voice and Healing

More Links:

WELCOME TO the second part for this WEEK – THE HOLISTIC SELF & THE GENDER WHEEL!

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action:

CLOSING PRAYER

ON TO THE FIFTH & FINAL WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

WELCOME TO the first part for this WEEK – THE BINARY & THE HOLISTIC SELF!

A MOMENT OF LOVE FOR YOURSELF before we fly on

Calling in your Holistic Self:

Read PART 5: Section Two on “THE HOLISTIC SELF & THE GENDER WHEEL”

ON TO THE FOURTH WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

WELCOME TO U.S. HISTORY WEEK!

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action:

ON TO THE THIRD WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

WELCOME TO INDIGENOUS HISTORY WEEK!

The Middle Road/Kane Wahini, Wahini Kane in Hawaii

Man, Woman, Muxe/3rd Gender in Mexico

Two Spirit/Native American Tribes

Contemporary

A closer look at WORDS and Native American experience

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action:

ON TO THE SECOND WEEK OF GENDER MONTH!

WELCOME TO MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS WEEK!

Fa’afafina

Hijra

Bissu

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT…

WHAT IS COMMONLY TAUGHT AND THOUGHT

BACK TO THE TRUTH and PRACTICAL, DAILY APPLICATION

The International World of Queer Identity and Colonialism:

Here are 4 areas where you can put truth to action: