Colluding against gender freedom

It’s a shame that we don’t all have freedom over our own gender expressions, and it’s a tragedy every time someone is discriminated, oppressed, or attacked verbally, physically, emotionally, and otherwise when ze does not conform to contemporary gender role norms.

Given this, it was good to read the New York Times story of Khadijah Farmer, a self-identified lesbian woman who got kicked out of a restaurant’s women’s restroom and filed a lawsuit against that restaurant based on gender discrimination (October 9, 2007; N.Y./Region)

I don’t doubt that Farmer’s lawsuit and more precisely, the NYT’s coverage of it have already gone a long way to raise awareness around the issue of gender discrimination. In fact, I was made aware of the article because a professor of mine ran across it, and wanted to incorporate it into her class discussion.

Television and print news media are certainly powerful mediums. Over the years, my introduction to LGBT Studies students have consistently remarked that we need to cover “current events.” What they mean is that they want us to spend class time talking about what they see on television and read in the newspapers.

Their desire is certainly one I understand, but not necessarily one I make a point to fulfill. (I do offer extra credit, however, that allows them to search for such current events in relationship to our course’s required readings.)

At times, my lack of making current events central disappoints students, but it’s a disappointment that I don’t mind, and even one I strategically invite.

News media is such an alluring medium that I often find students so engaged and engrossed that the story is being told at all that they don’t take the time or care to consider the way in which the story is being shaped and framed in particular ways. (Well, and this can be a hard thing to do, especially for those for whom the power of discourse has not been a focus area.)

Let me take the NYT article about Khadijah Farmer as case in point…

The opening paragraph makes clear that what makes this particular instance of gender discrimination noteworthy is that unlike other instances of bathroom-based gender discrimination this one seems to make no sense. I mean, it is so obviously ridiculous that they’d throw a woman out of a women’s restroom!

Too bad the author, Jennifer Lee, didn’t seem to understand that it is just as ridiculous to oust a person who identifies as a woman out of a women’s restroom, despite the sex/gender assigned to that person at birth.
And, of course we’d all be outraged that her ID wasn’t accepted by the bouncer who proceeded to escort her out of the restroom, and out of the restaurant.

Too bad, again, that there wasn’t room left for any sympathy for those of us who might not be able to produce such uncontestable ID.

I can understand how Farmer’s situation does lend itself to being “strategically important and potentially precedent-setting” in the eyes of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. I understand trying to put together ideal “test cases” that have a high probability of favorable outcomes, I really do. But, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me a little sad each time these “ideal” cases are pushed forward/over others.

I know that in law setting precedents are important, and that setting good precedents can lead to larger, farther ranging change…but it still makes me cry a little inside when I feel as if I can see the compromises being made, and those at whose expense this is done, in order to get those initial precedents. It makes me sadder still when news media can be seen to be in collusion.

Okay, *getting off my soapbox* time for lunch.