I'm not judgmental, am I? (The relationship between gender and sexuality)

There are a handful of personality traits that I used to display proudly, like medals awarded for being a decent human being within society. One of these traits used to be the fact that i'm not judgmental. However, to my dismay, I have discovered that this might not be as true as I thought.

For the challenge program i'm doing through my University I had to read Andrea Miller and Betsy Lucal's The Pedagogy of (In)Visibility: Two Accounts of Teaching about Sex, Gender, and Sexuality. This reading really answers a lot of questions regarding the relationship between gender and sexuality.  The reading tells two stories, one of Andrea and one of Betsy - both teachers trying to navigate their gender and sexual identities within their classrooms. Betsy is a female and a lesbian but her androgynous style leads to confusion regarding her gender. What I found especially interesting about this is the fact that because of her gender ambiguity, her students never stop to question her sexuality as they are too busy trying to figure out her gender. Therefore it can be argued that people read your gender before they read your sexuality. I myself, am guilty of making such assumptions based on gender.

Andrea on the other hand, is a bisexual female. Her story involves her struggles to establish her bisexual identity as valid in spite of the fact that she is married to a male. She is described as having normative feminine gender features. Therefore she has to reveal inconsistencies with the heterosexual matrix in order to be seen as an "authentic" bisexual. At first Andrea tries "I am" statements to reveal her sexuality to her students but this is not enough and most of the students still doubt her bisexual identity even after her self declaration. In the end Andrea concludes that her students privilege experience above identity - this means that instead of labeling herself as a bisexual Andrea has to tell her students stories about her past relationships with women before her bisexual identity will become visible to them. This made me realise that the way one "performs" your gender identity  plays a primary role in the way people read your sexual identity. I would argue that heternormativity enforces stereotypes and makes it easy for an individual to be subsumed under the heterosexual matrix, even if they do not subscribe to it. I think it's unfortunate that a more feminine man and a more masculine woman will both be assumed to be homosexuals. Sex is expected to be congruent with gender and gender congruent with sexuality. This lead me to question - what else do we judge based on gender?

That is the thought that drove me to conduct a social experiment that I will get to in a second.

Anyone who knows me now knows that I like to collect friendships like Pokémon, and not like Ash Ketchum, like Red who apparently has collected all 150 original Pokémon, including psychic-type creation, Mewtwo. (I've only noticed how poor this analogy was when I actually had to Google "Top 15 Greatest Pokémon trainers" but i'm rolling with it) I hope by diversifying my circle that I can learn more about people and hopefully start breaking down my heteronormative thinking.

The reading also makes the statement that people tend to think in binaries. Male/Female, Straight/Homosexual, etc. However not everything can be categorised into dichotomies and this way of thinking can lead to certain identities becoming invisible. My social experiment involves interviewing ten of my friends, all with different gender and sexual identities. I have made sure to include some "unconventional" identities in my experiment by interviewing non-binary, pansexual and bisexual friends. I am going to write a short bio for every friend. I am going to give their bios to strangers and ask them to guess the a) gender and b) sexuality of the person described in the bio. My expectations for this is that people will rely on gender roles to make assumptions regarding the gender and sexual identities of the people described in the bios. Afterwards I will reveal the true gender and sexuality of the person behind the bio, as well as their picture. I am excited to see how accurate the guesses will be.

Sexuality and the contextual gender construct

What I found most interesting while reading The Pedagogy of (In)visibility: Two Accounts of Teaching About Sex, is the suggestion that “gender and sexuality cannot be taught in mutually exclusive context.” (2009:260). Jenkins (2009:261) states that people have little control over how people read your gendered and sexual identities.” According to Phelan (2009:260) there are “unmarked” categories not easily cloaked in binary language. I have set out to test the accuracy of these statements.

What I wish to achieve with my experiment

I wanted to see what people look at when making assumptions regarding an individual’s gender and sexuality. In the process I tested the binary thinking that seems to be prevalent within society. 80% of the people I interviewed only answered in terms of male/female or heterosexual/homosexual – most only realised after I had revealed the individual’s identity that there were other options such as bisexuality or non-binary identities. Some of the interviewees relied on gender constructs and symbols such as painted nails and pearl necklaces for females and a beer or a cap for men.

I interviewed students as well as older individuals to see if there is a difference in the results. 4/6 of the younger individuals knew about terms such as “pansexuality” and “genderfluid” whereas none of the older individuals knew about those two terms. However, I was surprised by the reactions of the older individuals after explaining what the terms meant. They all seemed eager to learn more. Some made statements such as “In my day we only had either/or, male/female, heterosexual/homosexual – no in between.” suggesting that there is a greater tendency to rely on binary thinking in the older generation.

What I have also noted is that some people were hesitant to label someone as “queer” or “homosexual” – they often apologised in advance or said things like “I don’t want to offend anyone.”. I feel this illustrates how anything not within the heteronorm is seen as an insult or offensive.

Most interviewees predicted that they would guess more accurately based on images than descriptions. None of the interviewees guessed more than 3/10 correctly when guessing based on description and 4/10 when guessing based on images. Therefore, it is safe to assume that one cannot rely on visual queues or descriptions in order to guess someone’s gender or sexuality.