Diversity Week’s final event, “Queer Transgender Identities”, shed light on the common misconceptions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender identities and gave Cal State Long Beach students a better understanding of what those terms mean.
According to Jennifer Reed, assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the idea of what gender means is becoming more complex. Since new terms such as queer, transgender and bisexual have emerged in society over the last 20 years.
“There’s a lot of confusion about terms I think,” Reed said. “Transgender…implies a gender expression that can be disconnected from physical attributes. Transgenders want to live full-time as in another sex without medical intervention.”
The majority of people don’t know how to classify the term transgender, Reed said. She calls it an identity, as claimed by transexual activists.
However, theorists prefer to classify it as a verb. The term transsexual is different from that of transgender as transexual refers to an actual physical or sexual change.
Reed also read the formal definition of gender and discussed at length with the audience how gender is perceived and what is considered socially acceptable gender-wise. Reed described how gender played a major role in the feminist movement and that women are considered the gendered sex.
“We see only two genders and we try to fit every single human expression into one of those two,” Reed said.
In the past, gender equality has been desired for both genders, but now more and more people desire gender equality for all types of gender expressions, according to Reed.
She described how the modern day gay and lesbian rights movement, which began over 30 years ago, produced new words that were gendered manifestations of the lesbian identity. Words such as drag, butch and queen now exist in American society. With this current gay and lesbian movement, we can study the relationship between gender and sexuality as a society.
The emergence of these new terms that people are using to express themselves and their gender has caused discomfort for many, according to Reed. Some people feel empowered to analyze and rethink the relationship between gender and sexuality, but others do not. Reed said that this has caused the LGBT community to fight for their rights to express their individuality and it also continues to breed homophobia.
“The heart of homophobia is the change in gender norms by one desiring the same gender,” Reed said.
Despite the challenges the LGBT community faces, Reed feels this is an exciting time to be a part of that group and hopes that one day a wider version of gender will be accepted in society.
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