Crafting language, defining self: part 2

Since mid-February I have been laying the ground work for my look at creating new gender terms in queer communities* (here, here, here, and here). Today I will be examining in greater depth what some of the implications of creating oneself through language can be. "Can" is significant here, for I am looking at what may be possible with a conscious attempt of self-creation; much work has already been done on how language shapes people on an unconscious level, I want to take the conversation in a new direction, one which most people may never take. If we consider that language does shape people, particularly words which imply identity, then why not use such words as a tool to purposely shape ourselves?

Similar to positive self-affirmation and choosing positive perceptions of life's events over negative ones, choosing the words we use to identify ourselves has the potential to change our self-perception and self-understanding, hence, how we experience our daily lives. You could theoretically use language to create a happier existence for yourself!

Now, before anyone starts rolling their eyes, accusing me of some crazy, pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, let me clarify that last paragraph! No, you cannot become a superhero by calling yourself one. But moving from calling oneself "useless" to "valuable employee" or "good student" is a common therapeutic strategy for changing self-perception. A change in focus can help effect a change in self-perception and consequently behavior as well.

This is what lies behind politically correct terminology, for example: retarded became mentally handicapped which became mentally challenged, in each case becoming less demeaning for those referred to. In the queer world, "gay" is not demeaning the way "fag" is. Identifying with more positive words promotes a healthier sense of self, better self-esteem.

It seems likely that this may be one part of the driving force behind the mushrooming of gender terms within queer communities. Terms currently in existence may hold too much negative baggage, or simply not enough positive reinforcement, for those who choose to create these new terms. These individuals are seeking to define themselves and have found existing options unsatisfactory. They are creating new terms to convey to themselves and the world who they feel they are. The potential for self-creation lies within these instances of language creation, whether the creator is aware of it or not. My question is, can we intentionally harness that potential to help shape ourselves in whichever direction we wish to grow?



*For convenience, I use the term "queer communities" to refer to all groups, organizations, and people in general who do not consider themselves strictly heterosexual and/or heteronormative. "Queer," as noted in a previous footnote, is a controversial term, but I have not yet encountered a substitute that could be used to cover all these groups without sounding as clunky and in need of detailed elaboration as "non-hetero-normative," my other option.

Heteronormative

I'm taking a journey to the flip side in this post; since most of my focus has been on non-traditional gender, i.e. not stereotypical notions of male/female, masculine/feminine, I've decided it's time to take a walk on the wild side and explore heteronormativity. Of course, our first stop is Wikipedia for a handy definition of the terrain we'll be exploring. Wikipedia draws the boundaries thus:

Heteronormativity is a term describing the marginalization of non-heterosexual lifestyles and the view that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation. Instances of this include the idea that people fall into two distinct and complementary categories (male and female), that sexual and marital relations are normal only when between people of different sexes, and that each sex has certain natural roles in life. The heteronormative view is that physical sex, gender identity, and gender roles should, in any given person, align to either all-male or all-female cultural norms.

To begin with, I'd like to point out the use of the term "non-heterosexual" in the first sentence; there is a reason this word was chosen! Many people conceive of "homosexual" as the opposite to "heterosexual," but this is problematic. Homosexual refers to "same-sex" relations, which of course are not heterosexual, but it says nothing about non-hetero relations that are also not homosexual. Did you do a double-take there? Yes, there are other possibilities beyond the construction of homo-versus-hetero! What about intersex people? What about transexuals? Transgender? These people do not easily fit into a binary construction of male/female, so then how can it be determined where they fit into a binary construction of sexuality that rests on a binary construction of sex? We simply do not have language crafted to convey such types of people and their relationships; our language is based on our binaristic assumptions, despite their inadequacies. This is why "non-heterosexual" is being used here, because there is no other word to describe all the ground not owned by "heterosexual": homosexual is not the opposite of heterosexual because there are no "opposites" when there are more than two options, even if those other options don't have their own names yet.

Next I'd like to look at "normal," also in the first sentence. How is it that we determine "normal?" According to Wikipedia normal

refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average.

In statistics, this would mean anything falling within three standard deviations from the average (the mean), either way, normal is defined by what most people do, and those outliers, the people who don't follow the herd, who go off the beaten path, well, they get labeled "deviant." But what most people do varies drastically from society to society, culture to culture. That being the case, locking down a norm for the species as a whole is highly problematic: "norms" are often culturally-specific constructions, not "natural" occurrences.

But is this the case with gendered or sexual behavior? Is heteronormativity really a social construct? Doesn't biology demand that we recognize the "complementary categories" of male and female, designed for purposes of reproduction? Even if we decide that intersex people are really just unfortunate abnormalities, "nature's mistakes" (a position I do not agree with at all), there is other evidence to contradict this stance. Though reproduction necessarily requires contributions in some form from a male and a female, the function of sex may not be entirely reproductive. Beyond mere enjoyment, sex often functions among primates as a kind of social grease; bonobos, for example, solve most social problems with sexual activity. Even in less sexuallized primates, "same-sex" sexual behavior is common as a means of establishing and enforcing social hierarchy. Perhaps this is why females have orgasms?* Anyhow, I digress. The point here is that assumptions of "normality," sex, and sexuality are just that, assumptions. Though they tend to get equated with what is "natural," our conceptions of what is normal may be more artificial than we think.

This leads to my final critique of "heteronormativity," the idea

that physical sex, gender identity, and gender roles should, in any given person, align to either all-male or all-female cultural norms

is based upon assumptions that do not pan out upon close examination. One culture's notion of proper female behavior does not align with the next culture's, or the next, or the next. The same can be said of male behavior, sexual behavior, and even how many sexes there are!** So with all this variation across cultures, why do we expect that our particular prescription for male:masculine:likes female and female:feminine:likes male, with all the attendant behaviors including speech patterns, dress, occupations, tastes, etc. is actually "natural" and the "way things should be?" In anthropology, this type of view is called "ethnocentric," meaning, one thinks their own culturally prescribed way of living is the one and only correct way, i.e. "natural." Everyone else is just off their rockers, running about in the wilderness without a clue of how to be a proper human being.

This is the problem, then, with heteronormativity: it takes cultural constructs and pretends they are natural, thereby marking all other possibilities as "unnatural," "deviant," "abnormal," none of which have a positive ring to them in the slightest. It is a form of cultural hegemony: it doesn't recognize it's origins in culture, presumes naturalness, leaving no room in it's version of reality for questioning the basic assumptions of what male/female, masculine/feminine, or sex/gender/sexuality are, much less why they should line up as the schema says they should. It leaves no room for the existence of people who don't fit the system, consequently, it renders such lives relatively, if not entirely, unlivable.

For more on deconstructing in relation to sex/sexuality/gender and on livable lives and hegemony, start with Riki Wilchins, then move onto Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. From there, the possibilities are endless, the horizon limitless and full of potential. Go see what you may find.



*There is a debate over the functionality of orgasm in females: it appears to have no direct physical benefit in reproduction. The panel I attended on the topic at the 105th American Anthropological Association did not, to my recollection, give serious consideration to the idea that females who enjoyed orgasms may be more likely to have sex, and thus reproduce more. I can't recall if the role of orgasm in connection with sex as a social lubricant and/or means of creating and enforcing hierarchy was broached. This is another topic I'd like to do research on!

**This is especially so since many cultures do not distinguish between sex and gender. Intersex people, of course, challenge the notion of only two biological sexes. Biology itself recognizes more chromosomal combinations than just xx or xy, though it does like to assign each variation to either "male" or "female," labeling the variations as "syndromes."

Crafting language, defining self

Historically, minority groups like lesbians, gays, and transexuals have been defined by two groups of people, "authorities" and hostile persons. The first group has included doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, law-makers, scholars, and more recently, activists. The definitions given to queer people by these groups were often negative, as in "gayness is a mental disorder." Though homosexuality was finally removed from psychiatry's bible, the DSM, transexualism still remain coded in it as "Gender Identity Disorder," and anyone wanting "sex-change" surgery must first submit to psychological examination and be found to have this disorder.

The second group is composed of those hateful individuals who have historically defined queer persons negatively through derogatory labels and abusive language in general. The word "queer" itself was originally an insult hurled at anyone who was seen as deviating from rigid social gender roles. It is only recently that the term has been appropriated by the lgbtq community and its meaning re-crafted to inspire pride instead of shame and fear.*

However, there has been an increasing push in lgbtq communities for self-definition, for the right to establish the parameters of one's own identity according to one's own self-perception, rather than being told who and what one is by those with a less than positive view of queerness. This drive for self-definition encountered some obstacles in language itself: there were no positive terms - and sometimes no words at all - that described the sense of self of many lgbtq people. The obvious solution was to simply create the necessary language, which is precisely what many people did (for a partial list of gender terms I have encountered click here).

On the surface, these are just words, desriptive words, but words none-the-less. However, as any linguist or symbolic anthropologist would tell you, words have the power to shape and define our concepts of the world and of our selves. Each word represents an idea, or often a multitude of ideas, that get applied to whatever or whomever the word gets attached to. This is especially true of gender terms - "man" and "woman" are loaded terms, carrying with them centuries of baggage concerning dress, talk, walk, ability, appropriate activities etc. "Man" does not simply designate an individual, but also a significant part of that individual's place in the social order, even in our current, supposedly enlightened society. "Man" still brings home the bacon - much more of it than "woman," anyhow.

So in considering these new gender terms, we must look beyond the initial definition of biological female who is a man inside," or whatever the particulars of the case, and examine what additional baggage may be coming on board for the ride. This is especially true when you consider that definitions of sex, gender, and sexuality are typically co-dependent. For example, if you define sexuality in terms of which gender one prefers, you have to bring on board your definition of gender. And if your definition of gender is in any way connected to biological sex, either positively or negatively (as in "I got the wrong body" scenarios), then biological sex is along for the ride as well. If you think about it, it should not be hard to see that these connections are there in a good many scenarios, due to the way we have contructed our ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality to begin with.That said, each new word that gets coined to describe a personal experience of sex, gender, or sexuality should have some relation to all three realms, whether intended to or not.

Beyond that, we must consider the power of language to shape our self-conceptions. There is a substantial body of scholarly work on this topic with which I am unfortunately not yet too familiar,other than knowing that it exists. At the moment, I can only speculate on what I will find, but from my own personal experience, I know people tend to grow to fit a label as much as they may try to bend a label to fit their own experience. Start calling yourself a hippy or a playa or any other descriptive term of that type, and see if you don't start emphasizing or even introducing the corresponding viewpoints or behaviors in your life.

As I conduct my research I will be looking for the above phenomena to see how it may be taking place in lgbtq communities as individuals seek self-definition. There are several other concerns I hope to address as well, like how the spread of new terms help to change group membership, define new sub-groups, and simultaneously produce inclusiveness and isolation, but that is for another post.

As you go about your daily lives, stop now and then to consider the effect of the language you use and how it may help shape your own perceptions of reality. Do you like what you find? Or could your vocabulary use some tweeking? Just think of the possibilities.



*Using "queer" is currently hotly debated in some groups, as some feel it can never be appropriate due to its history. It is analogous to the use of the word "nigger" among black Americans.

Gender: A Flaky Pastry? I Wish.

Gender a flaky pastry? Of course it makes no sense! Not yet, anyhow - let me explain. My tech-heavy writing class, for which this blog has been whipped together like a last-minute pasta salad,* has introduced me to the most delightful online buffet I have yet encountered: Pageflakes. This scrumptuous site allows one to assemble at will, in one place, all one's most favorite web offerings; for the over-extended and starved for time, it resembles in no small way a smorgasbord from heaven.

I'd like to show you just what I mean, so I'm going to shamelessly promote this site by giving you a tour of my xploragen pageflakes, a customized complement to this blog, assembled to give a more than adequate dose of what's hot in gender discourse today, from news to blogs to academia. I’ll even throw in some of my own musings on the topic.Let's go see what's cooking!

(Warning, this kitchen is about to get hot with symbolic meaning, like a New York City drag ball!)

The first items for your perusal are the bright, welcoming colors of Hawaiian flowers, artfully arranged across the top of the page with the color scheme continuing throughout the page to neatly tie everything together aesthetically and symbolically. I chose this theme carefully as representative of my own conceptions of gender: yellow and magenta are hardly blue and pink, rather, yellow is often used as gender neutral and magenta comes awfully close to lavender, which has historical ties to the gay and lesbian movements. Flowers, of course, are aesthetically pleasing reproductive units, therefore the historical connection with females and femininity. Academic pursuits, however, especially research, which my blog and pageflakes are ultimately all about, are historically gender-coded as male and masculine. Form, in this case, conveys meaning without involving a single word, much like a Japanese obento arrangement (food arranged artfully, full of meaning).

Next on the menu are the appetizers and a la carte items in a balanced arrangement across the top of the page. Our appetizers feature a universal news search primed to give the latest news on the feminist front and our universal blog search will serve up a selection of blogs written by, for, or about trans people and topics. Again, I have crafted the menu to play on a subtle symbolic level: feminism is supposedly dead, living on only in the frantic, ghostly rants of onry old feminists clinging to an outdated meal-ticket. However, the universal news search manages several times daily to find choice offerings of feminist concerns in media world-wide. The blog search is primed for trans topics because historically trans people were written about, talked about, and decided upon by non-trans people in positions of power. With the advent of the internet, trans people have much greater visibility and opportunity to speak about, for, and to their community: our blog search is designed to tap into the growing number of blogs by trans people rather than confine them to being spoken about by “experts” in the news on our pagecast.

Our a la carte items pay further tribute to the voices of feminists, trans people, gays, lesbians, and genderqueer people of all types. We have a selection of ten fine RSS feeds, from Genderfork (a collection of androgynous photography and thought) to Bilerico Project (a staple of lgbtq blogging) to classic feminist blogs such as Bitch, PhD and Feministing.com; we're sure you'll find something to tempt your tongue.

Just under the appetizers you'll find our academic fare: imnothin's own bibliography tailored for research to be covered in the Adventures in Gender blog. Here we have peer-reviewed articles, academic book reviews, and scholarly books as well. Several items have been garnished with imnothin's own annotations to help the reader determine what their flavor of the day will be. Each source cited is an entree in itself (provided you actually read it, that is).

Finally, top things off with some del.icio.us bookmarks from our dessert section. Our current offerings feature imnothin's own del.icio.us bookmarks and those of The Common Ryan, imnothin's social bookmarking soulmate. Here you'll find an ecclectic assortment of gender related tidbits from around the world, a nice way to top off your gourmet gender meal.

If your stomach isn't yet turning from this heavy sauce of analogy, or perhaps even more so if it is, let me now explain why I'm presenting gender in terms of food. Gender, like food, is a vital part of our existence. However, unlike food, gender is not a biological necessity; it is crafted and imposed upon us by our own respective cultures, it has been made a social necessity. We are made to think that doing gender, performing gender, is as natural as eating, but in reality, each gendered act, each gendered reference, is as cooked as a well-done roast, sometimes to the point of being rather tough to chew and swallow. Still, we are not afforded the ample opportunity to pick and choose in the realm of gender, as we are with our daily food selections. Imagine a gender buffet, where you could take whichever items you thought most tasty, and as much or as little as you liked. Imagine a world where gender preferences were your own concern, and no one else's, where you could be selective, like choosing and enjoying a fine wine, or indulgent, like eating a rich dessert.

Conversely, try to imagine being verbally abused, violently attacked, or even killed, because of the food you happened to be inclined towards. Eating is a biological necessity, and we have all these ways to enjoy it, unlimited ethnic cuisines that are spreading globally to reach everyone's tongue with a new and delightful taste. But we don't biologically have to wear a dress and heels, suit and tie, wear only socially acceptable accessories, act only in social prescribed gendered roles. Why should gendered behavior be so rigidly defined and enforced? Why can't it be like going and eating a flaky pastry if that's what you are feeling like right now? Or perhaps skipping a meal altogether if you choose?


*By which I mean a quick and tasty, yet artful and satisfying dish, not a cold, slimy, cheap substitute for a real meal that leaves you wanting for substance and sustenance! Heaven forbid I post anything in cyberspace that would resemble the latter in the least!

More from the research files

As with my previous post, this entry will be about sources I have found for my research project on new language in lgbtq communities. I have another item from William Leap, this time a book on gay men's language (still academic, though possibly more accessible to the laymen than the anthology), and an absolutely fabulous find: a review of the literature on lesbian and gay language! It's always nice to see that someone else has done half of your work for you!


1)Leap, William. Word's Out: Gay Men's English. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Using anthropology, social linguistics, and drawing on gender studies, Leap examines actual language practices by gay men in every day contexts: magazines, songs, conversation, books, performances, etc. Jacobs calls it a “linguistic ethnography” (Jacobs 1997). This book may have some useful sections as it looks at cooperatively constructing meanings in a minority sub-culture, which is at the heart of my own research. How language shapes identity should come up, and there is a discussion on the reclamation of the word “queer,” which should also be quite useful. Running through the book seems to be an ongoing consideration of communicating one’s identity through specialized language use. In other words, letting other gay men know one is also gay, perhaps without non-gay people catching on. While this does not seem directly connected with my own work, it should none-the-less provide a good background in linguistic studies of language among gay men, a plus since I have no background in linguistics.


2) Jacobs, Greg. "Lesbian and gay male language use: A critical review of the literature."American Speech. Durham: Spring 1996. Vol. 71, Iss. 1; pg. 49, 4 pgs

This review of the literature was done for an academic journal published by Duke University (American Speech) and covers studies pertaining to lesbian and gay language use with citations dating as far back as 1935, though the bulk of the work is from the 1960s into the 1990s. In 22 pages, Jacobs gives an overview of what has been studied in this field and how, including notes on methodology and theoretical underpinnings. Studies range from controlled, clinical studies to field observation, as in the case of William Leap, whose work I am also referencing. Though the most current research cited here is more than a decade old, this review is still invaluable as it delineates historical developments within this field, an understanding of which should inform any later research, including my own. Reading this review will contextualize more current work and provide a map of what theory has worked, what has not, and what is still under debate, or should be. Jacobs review will essentially function as a sort of instant primer in linguistic thought on language and non-heterosexual social positioning.


Additionally, I have also found a couple of book reviews which I intend to utilize as I evaluate Leap's books and another book, Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, by Kira Hall and reviewed by Mary Bucholtz. Readers may remember that Bucholtz and Hall co-authored the article I covered in my last post. The review of Leap's books is done by Greg Jacobs, whose literature review is covered in this post. (yes, academia can be a very small world after all) Here is the bibliographic information for the two scholarly reviews:


1) Jacobs, Greg. "Lavender Linguistics." American Speech. Vol. 72, Iss. 2; pg. 200, 10 pgs


2) Buchholtz, Mary. "Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality." American Anthropologist. Washington: Dec. 1999 pg. 855, 2 pgs

The research begins!

As mentioned previously, I am beginning some research on the creation, functionality, and meaning of new language in queer communities, drawing on linguistic studies of language & sexuality and language & gender. I have begun gathering potential sources for this project and below are notes on two of the sources I plan to use in my work. The first is an anthology of scholarly work and the second is an article from a peer-reviewed journal. Both are meant for an academic audience and are full of academic jargon and theoretical concepts, so if jargon and theory are not your cup of tea, hold out for something different!


1) Leap, William. Beyond the Lavender Lexicon: Authenticity, Imagination, and Appropriation in Lesbian and Gay Languages. Australia: Gordon and Breach, 1995.

This anthology, edited by William Leap, covers historical, anthropological, and linguistic inquiry into lesbian and gay language. It demonstrates that such languages do indeed exist and looks at how they are cooperatively formed, what effects they have in shaping identity, and discourses about and around lesbian and gay identities. I anticipate some of the selections will be highly relevant, but even those that are less so may give some further insight to how language functions to shape identity, especially in the case of a minority population. Selections such as Martin F. Manalansan IV’s “’Performing’ Filipino Gay Experiences in America: Linguistic Strategies in a Transnational Context,” may be particularly useful as it examines a further subculture within the gay community with its own particular speech, “swardspeak.” I anticipate Leap’s work being cited by other scholars in the field (Bucholtz, Cameron, and Kulick mention him), so having a basic knowledge of it may further understanding of later texts.


2)Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall. "Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research." Language in Society. Cambridge: Sep 2004. Vol. 33, Iss. 4; pg. 469, 47 pgs

This article uses queer linguistics, an approach which draws upon "feminist, queer, and sociolinguistic theories," to examine the positions of identity and desire in the field of language and sexuality research. Recent work by Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick, whose work I am also examining, has called for an end to inquiry into identity within language and sexuality research, advocating an investigation of desire instead. Bucholtz and Hall examine these critiques of sexual identity scholarship in linguistics, embracing some views and cautioning against others, arguing for an understanding of intersubjectivity in identity research and giving a framework from which to proceed with semiotic study in language and sexuality. An overview of relevant historical linguistic scholarship is given to back the critique of anti-identity theorists and defend practices of linguistic inquiry into sexual identity.

Mary Bucholtz received her PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley and has published in various peer-reviewed journals of anthropology and linguistics. Kira Hall also received a PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley, but does not seem to have published as much as Buchholtz. The authors are authoritative and the use of linguistics, semiotics, and intersubjectivity in considering identity and sexuality is a particularly powerful combination for examining the phenomena I am researching.

Stay tuned for more from the research front!

The Common Ryan

The what? Who? I don't know, I don't quite get it either. But what I do know is that The Common Ryan likes to bookmark transgender related topics on Del.icio.us. Or used to, anyhow. From May of 2008 to September 2008, this user created 98 bookmarks, tagging them with 175 different keywords, the most frequent of which were as follows:

• trans33
• transsexual19
• ftm18
• queer17
• politics17
• web2.017
• geek15
• gender15
• transgender14
• feminism13

The Common Ryan also shared a link to his own blog, which is also no longer being updated. Abandoned blogs are not uncommon, and I imagine the same can be said of social bookmarking pages. However, such material is often still available to the public online and can be mined for various purposes. Ryan's bookmarks, for example, provide a nice introduction to both bookmarking and trans and other gender topics. While it is not hard to find currently active del.icio.us users bookmarking the same topics, if you are new to the site, especially if you are new to social bookmarking in general, browsing through a static collection the size of Ryan's may be a better way to start out.

Some users have hundreds or even thousands of bookmarks, and wading through them all, even with the aid of tags to help in sorting, can become overwhelming; cases of information overload can develop, especially if you are like me and get the urge to start reading and bookmarking everything you see, as though it will all disappear into oblivion tomorrow. Ryan's collection is small enough to browse in its entirety in a short time, allowing one to quickly get a sense of overall content and to easily sift through items to pick out only the must-have pages for one's own bookmark collection.

One can also examine how he has tagged items for easy retrieval, evaluating if this kind of organization would be useful for one's own purposes. Learning by example, whether a good or bad example, is a valuable, time-saving approach! With Ryan, we see that he regularly used multiple tags for each item, which I do as well, to increase my chances of quickly finding a specific item later on. I may not remember the one specific tag I gave to something, but if there are five key words, I am more likely to recall at least one of them. He avoided redundancy, meaning you don't see multiple forms of the same word, so his tags are more efficient, and he also included a brief comment on each item explaining what it is for future reference.

Another advantage to browsing a static collection is that it isn't going to change on you in the next few days. A more active user may average three or more bookmarks a day. If you are just starting out with this technology and don't use it for a week, that user whose bookmarks you like could have another 21+ entries the next time you browse their content. That may not be a problem for some, but for others, I can see the confusion brewing already. I know someone who stopped using gmail because it was so different from what he was used to, he just couldn't adjust. And this is person creates web pages! Never underestimate the power of the mind to resist new ways of doing things.

If you are comfortable with navigating social bookmarking sites, and you have actually read this far, del.icio.us users mmilleryoung, solvent, and Queeruption each have in excess of 1000 bookmarks, regularly mark items relevant to gender and related issues, and mark items fairly frequently. They are good resources for your gender-related needs!

Some other blogs I like

In addition to Trans Political and Difference Blog by Dan4th, which I reviewed previously (here and here, respectively), I thought I'd share with you some of my other favorite gender-related blogs. Let's start with Genderfork, an unusual blog focusing on androgyny. Genderfork is primarily visual, as it's main entries are photos of androgyny submitted by users. Photos come with captions and users are encouraged to comment on them. Along the right side is running commentary on photos and other comments. Genderfork has begun regularly profiling users, including a photo (of course) and information such as prefered gender pronouns, what the individual identifies as (male-to-female, bisexual, gay, straight, genderqueer, etc.) and what they would like others to understand (usually something about the non-binary nature of gender or how non-normative people are people too). The site was formerly run by a girl named Sarah, but is now managed by a team of volunteers recruited from users (yes, complete strangers are cooperatively running this cool site!). What I like most about this blog are the photos, since most other blogs I have seen do not use many pictures at all. One gets a more complete sense of how people are conceiving of androgyny through the heavy reliance of photos accompanied by brief commentary on what it means to be androgynous.

Next up is Bitch, Ph.D. The title alone draws your attention, but the image at the top of the home page of two little girls - one flipping you off and the other laughing - grabs you and won't let go. This blog is also a team effort, with a core of five bloggers, one of which I believe is male (but don't quote me on that) who post and Twitter at will. Readers can get multiple posts everyday plus Twitter updates - you'll never run out of Bitch, Ph.D. attitude. Did I say attitude? Roaring attitude is more like it (not that I'm complaining, I rather like it). The bloggers here do not hold back on expressing their emotions, and expletives do fly:

What the flying fuck, people? Can't a fat woman eat a motherfucking salad without incurring comments from all and sundry?

from The Salad Police, or

Sorry to interrupt all the happy randomness but what. the. hell.
Cop beats the crap out of teenager because she's 'lippy' and kicked her shoe off?

Welcome to fucking adolescence, asshat.

(And the video is not pretty. I am getting really sick of this shit.)

from a quick note entitled posted by ding (sorry, no permalink available at this time).

Bitch, Ph.D covers anything of concern to feminists that pops up in the news, in their personal lives, or posts on other blogs, and no matter what the topic, they reserve the right to be themselves and say exactly what is on their minds. They have been online since 2004 and are well established in the online feminist community. Technorati gives them an authority ranking of 667.

The third blog I would like to draw your attention to is One Trans Show, by Riki Wilchins. Wilchins happens to be one of my favorite authors and activists. Wilchins is the founder of Transsexual Menace, an activist group know for protesting at court hearings and holding vigils for murdered transexuals across the country. Wilchins is also the founder of GenderPac, an advocay organization for gender equality - for all genders and all ages. The author of several articles and books, Wilchins is a well known and highly visible persona in the trans world. Though she doesn't post very frequently - less than once a month - having an RSS feed for this blog is a must for those times when she does post. Wilchins work is always sharp, brutally honest and to the point and often humorous as well:

You have to say these weird things to get surgery. You can have a tummy tuck, tooshie lift, face lift, ear bob, eyebrow lift, nose job, boob job, and enough Botox to paralyze the facial muscles of a charging bull elephant but no one says you have to go see three psychiatrists.

But if you tell them you want to have a surgery down there – a “groin job” – suddenly you’re sick with something called “Gender Identity Disorder.”

This is the medical diagnosis you have to get if you’re going to get surgery. Otherwise it’s considered “elective,” like Viagra.

Ooops, sorry, no. That’s always covered because old men getting erections is critical to the foundation of our very social fabric.

Wilchins is also able to take theory from Michel Foucault or Judith Butler and show you how to apply it to your daily life. In fact, she wrote a whole book for that very purpose, Queer Theory, Gender Theory. This is one blog you won't want to miss!

Finally, you should check out The Bilerico Project, a standard in the realm of lgbtq blogging. This is how they describe themselves:

The Bilerico Project is the web's largest LGBTQ group blog with 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and genderqueer contributors. The Project is the coming out and together of LGBTQ activists, politicos, journalists, novelists, advice columnists, and video bloggers.

This blog is necessarily much more than a blog. In addition to several blog posts a day, there is a regular advice columnist and a couple vloggers as well, one of which covers Hollywood, stuck in here and there amongst ample lgbt-focused advertising, featuring several bare-chested men. There are two extensive blog rolls, one featuring Blogads Network bloggers and the other listing the blogs ofBilerico's contributers and supporters and a section of recommended reads. Thechnorati gives them an authority rating of 531, they have a traffic rating by Alexa of 137,331, and Feedburner shows 2580 subscribed readers; I would say they are doing well.

Of all the gender-related blogs I have seen since staring my own blogging project, the six I have profiled are a diverse lot, covering trans, lgbtq, feminism, and androgyny, with a healthy mix of politics, legal concerns, entertainment, science, and personal experience for your reading pleasure and needs. Some are well-established, some are fairly obscure, but each has something unique to offer readers. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!