Living Without Gender: A Conversation with a Trailblazer

Making Men Interview- 

Beau Laurence 7/5/2012 at the Gypsy Coffee House in Capitol Hill

Gypsy Coffee House

When I asked hir for an interview, Beau Laurence wanted to meet me beneath the fabric folds hanging from the ceiling at the Gypsy Coffee House. Beau is thin and freckled, with an Irish face and hair cropped in a pixie cut. Xi joked with a  straight face, and leaned forward in hir chair for most of our 90 minute interview, thinking and picking hir words with the intensity of a scholar.

Peeing in the Gender Woods

For Right Be Done, I was interested in hir thoughts about masculinity. Xi is making a conscious choice to adopt some of masculinity, keep some of femininity, and move to something new. If men are ever to be liberated, we must make the same kinds of choices as Beau. Because no conversation about masculinity can ignore our historical relationship to it, I started by asking about hir past. Surprisingly, Beau answered by talking about how we toilet.

Right Be Done (RBD): What is your earliest memory of what it means to be a man?

Beau Lawrence (BL): Probably the earliest difference that I remember is about how boys go to the bathroom. So, I have a brother who is two years older, and I grew up… I was born into, and until I was 10, we lived in a commune and I was the first female child. There were three boys. They were older than me. My brother and two other boys. So, I didn’t have other girls to hang out with when I was a little kid, I just had the boys.

Girls Peeing in Urinal by Paul Avril

So, we all played together. They climbed trees, so I did all of these activities and didn’t think anything of my body being different, or "I’m not supposed to do that," until it came to actually urinating and it was like, “Wait. I don’t have that. That doesn’t work for me.” I specifically remember asking my dad to teach me how to pee standing up so that I could be like the other boys. Because to me it wasn’t a boy/girl thing, it was a kid thing. Like, I couldn’t do what the other kids did. But I was the youngest one, so it’s like, you know in your kid brain, you don’t necessarily revert to gender as the reason you couldn’t do this. It’s, “I’m the youngest one and I haven’t learned yet and I want to be like the big kids and do this.”

RBD: What did your dad say?

BL: My dad was like, “Okay.” And I actually did learn. Then, I was at my grandmothers and I was like, “You wanna see?” And she was like, “you will never do that again.” That’s when I learned that it was definitely not a girl thing to do and that I was a girl. It was really her that sort of reinforced what a girl was NOT, more than, “This is what boys or men are like.”

In a society where “man” is neutral, it is normal for someone who was raised as a girl to learn only what man is not. Perhaps, the biggest problem with feminism has been that we have not discussed traditional masculinity from an objective point of view. However, Beau later told me about one person in hir life that did create from scratch a conscious definition of what it meant to be a man.  Television isn’t normally a place to break stereotypes, but xi cited one example of a man who strayed from convention.

The Radical Politics of Mork and Mindy 

BL: I hadn’t thought about T.V. shows until you asked this question. Lone Ranger.

RBD: Supermale. The Lone Ranger is definitely a super male.

BL: I remember being really offended. I was always really offended the way that he treated Tonto. I was really hyper-aware of… Wow this really is kind of awful, but straight white men were always pigs, and so whatever they did was definitely like, there are other ways to be because there are other males, and there are strong females, but these white males are awful.

Fair use for political comment,
from Mork and Mindy publicity.

BL (Cont): But, the first thing that popped into my head as an alternative male T.V. character was Mork from Mork and Mindy.

RBD: But wasn’t he an alien.

BL: He was an alien, but…

RBD: So, he wasn’t really a man.

BL: He was an alien impersonating what it was like to be a male getting coached by Mindy.

RBD: Strangers in a Strange Land sort of masculinity where he had this opportunity to point out how ridiculous masculinity was.

BL: And he could do really fun.., really childlike sorts of things and get corrected for doing gender wrong.

The writer’s of Mork and Mindy gave America a chance to question basic assumptions of masculinity, the same kind of assumptions that this blog is attempting to undermine. And here I thought I was being a radical when in fact Hollywood did it 40 years ago and in tight pants.

Condescending to be Helpful

Later, I asked about the best and the worst traits of masculinity.

RBD: So what is the worst trait that has traditionally been associated with the word masculinity?

BL: Certainly patriarchy. And condescension. But those really aren’t unique to masculinity.

RBD: What makes condescension in particular traditionally masculine?

BL: It’s so hard to separate the traditional concept of masculinity. It's so wrapped up in white northern European culture that it’s kind of like, “It’s all the same.” It may be more that whiteness, that religiousness, more than masculinity that [condescension] comes from. That manifest destiny, we know better, we’re chosen by god, sort of everything is our minion. Women and children and people of color are our property. That to me is the worst thing about traditional masculinity.

RBD: How about the best thing about traditional masculinity? The best trait?

BL: I struggle with this because the thing that I, throughout my life, have sort of really maybe wanted to emulate more than anything else is not necessarily a positive quality, but the self sacrificing is sort of…

RBD: I call it loyalty.

BL: But not just loyalty. Chivalry is a real awful thing that implies condescension and all of that negative, but the, “I’m going to take the burden on so that somebody else doesn’t have to,” is something that I’ve always really liked. I know that in a lot of ways it’s not healthy because it’s a lot of it ego, but I have always enjoyed being the kind of person that would give my seat to somebody else. Or carry something that was really heavy so that somebody didn’t have to. And it wasn’t that they’re not capable of doing it, but that I’m strong and capable, and I can help in this way. And I think that’s something I value about masculinity. That sort of willingness to, not help the old lady across the street, but sort of like, you need somebody to move heavy furniture, I can do that, and it doesn’t have to be somebody who has a penis that does it. But I think that there is that attitude of masculinity in that offer.

RBD: In a way it seems like two sides of the same coin. The thing that you dislike the worst (condescension) and the thing that you like the best about masculinity (helpfulness).

Petersburg- Caviar by Walter Smith

BL: And that’s what I really struggle with actually. And as I broaden my own awareness of who I can be, and it doesn’t have to be butch or femme. There’s been a lot of that sort of cafeteria masculinity, picking and choosing what you want to keep and what you want to reject, and it’s not just all bad. And the parts that I have traditionally thought of as good, have their origins in something that’s not necessarily positive.

The idea of cafeteria masculinity is close to the image of liberated men that I hold in my imagination. I originally conceived of writing an article about hors gendered folks for that very reason. We men who are seeking liberation are looking for role models ourselves. We are looking for people to pave the path to freedom. Those like Beau who have decided to take on the underpinnings of gender are acting as our Moses, leading us out of the constructs that have kept us in lives of solitude and violence. It is hard to imagine the threat under which they live as a result. The reaction to non-conforming gender is morbidly violent, and theirs is a unique courage born of a mix of desperation for acceptance and a rebellious character. Regardless of Beau’s reasons for trailblazing our liberation, we owe hir and those like hir a debt of gratitude.

Breaking Down Stereotypes 

At the end of our interview, we spent a long time just letting the conversation flow, and at one point I wondered if xi felt like society was becoming more free because of the breaking down of traditional gender norms in society at large.

BL: It is, but here’s the double-edged sword about all that. In the kinds of circles that I’ve traveled in, the radical political stuff. When there’s a meeting, people go around and introduce themselves and say what gender pronoun they prefer. It is sort of a thing for a lot of people to say, “It doesn’t matter.” And that’s really marginalizing and erasing for those of us who have to choose and are so aware of the choices that we make and that other people make. So when an obviously cis-gendered straight man says, “Oh, you can call me ‘she,’ I won’t be offended.”

Beau Laurence's profile pic from Facebook.

That’s really a place of privilege to be able to say that. "You do your gender so well that you won’t be offended if you are called 'she.'" For those of us who may not do gender very well, what other people perceive us as has a huge emotional impact, so that place of, “It doesn’t matter,” is like, “You’re not really taking seriously that it matters so much for some of us.”

RBD: That’s true, but being exposed to non-normative gender associations can break those stereotypes for cis-people.

BL: It absolutely can, and just like every other thing, this is sort of the natural way of progress. You have these very rigid boxes, and they start to get broken up, and then you have conventionally perceived or attitudinally conventional people who then start to co-opt the language. And that is something that is a natural progression, but it’s annoying.

(If you have a complicated relationship with masculinity, and would like to have your life broadcast on this blog, please contact me to set up your own Making Men Interview.)

Video Game Violence, Censorship, and Sexism

Arguing against banning video game violence but arguing for a ban on animated child pornography is sexism.

The reasons that we censor pornography have always been motivated at least partially by sexism. There is no other way to explain it. How is it that consensual sex is so horrific that some consider breastfeeding in public as obscene, but partaking in a simulation of the quartering of a woman dressed in highly sexualized clothing is not? How could it possibly be that the act of creating life is obscene, while the act of ending life is not?

The obvious answer is that our narratives have convinced us that women hold the power in consensual sex, but clearly it is men who hold the power over violence.

J. Scalia points out in his recent opinion on age-limits for the purchase of violent video games that literature is full of violence from Homer on down to today's copy of the New York Times. Isn't it also full of sex? Wasn't Lott fucked by his daughters (Genesis 19:30-36), and didn't the men of Greece rape the Trojan Women at the end of the Illiad? And yet, interactive depictions of these acts are sold in XXX shops to people 18 and over.

J. Scalia also argues that pointing out how much video game violence is racist and antisemetic (as J. Alito does) makes a case that it is art and therefore free speech. But an inordinate amount of child pornography is sexist. Does that mean that child pornography is art?

In an earlier case that banned animated child pornography, despite the fact that they cited no studies indicating that animated child pornography harms children, they were willing to believe that it would feed pedophile's urges and make them more likely to victimize children. However, they are unwilling to look at the ample studies that prove categorically that violent video games increase violent behavior, decrease helpful behavior, and have led to countless assaults.

I'm not saying that I think we should regulate video games, but if we do not, we must not regulate animated child pornography either. But of course that will never happen because sex is so insurmountably abhorrent that even consensual loving sex is often an exception to the first amendment. On the other hand, violence is necessary to keeping women in their place.

Violence is necessary because we need to train little boys, and I mean tiny little boys who have no reason to hate anything, to grow up into killing machines. We need to convince men that killing one another is a feat that not only is acceptable, but is rewarded on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, the Fourth of July and by saying, "Thank you for your service" when we encounter a professional killer on the street. I do not mean to trivialize the service of our men and women in uniform. They are professional killers, but if we are to live in an imperfect world we have to be able to protect our nation. However, we must keep their service in context.

These violent video games are aimed at boys because we need to train them to believe that it is exciting to kill and be killed. In video games, it is easy to say I "shot him" and he is "dead," and even I am "dead" or I am out of "lives." It is all so trivial, fun, rewarding, and exciting that the military itself uses these video games for training and recruiting purposes, and sponsors the creation of these video games. We are training boys to live lives of violence. Violence requires victims. Many of these boys are not able to find legitimate victims so they turn to one another, or their wives, or their children, or people in the street, or themselves.

And the reward is even better than it seems at first. The reward for all this violence is the continuation of the gender hierarchy that puts men on top, keeps women on their backs (and I do mean it that way), and aligns the world all right (and I do mean it that way). If the little girls flinch when the little boys cheer, it just proves to us all that little girls and the women they grow into are not cut out to do what needs to be done to run our country, our world, or our society. Girls need to be protected, so they should play Dora the Explorer, or at worst Super Mario Bros., but leave the violence to the little boys who are "just naturally drawn" to beating prostitutes to death before decapitating another victim.

The worst problem with this holding is that it completely misidentifies and aids the true threat to our freedom of speech. We are no longer living in a world where governments (Egypt, China, and Iran) are able to control what we say. We now live in a world where the most active censors are corporations, the same corporations that are making these video games. Sometimes corporate censorship is the kind that we know traditionally, as is the case with Apple and Amazon.com when they ban objects from their platforms because they claim they are obscene (who gets to say what's obscene and how come it's always gay smut?).

More often, corporate censorship is the marketing of certain (usually sexist) products, while making other products mostly unavailable. They say that they market what the public wants, but if that were the case nobody would ever pay for marketing (I'll let you puzzle that one out). In fact, they spend millions attempting to get us to want certain products. Corporations use advanced psychological techniques that are as effective as brain washing, and they target children whose brains do not fully mature until as late as 25-years-old.

Which is what these corporations do with violent video games in California. They rate the game M for Mature, and recommend it for users over 16, but then market to 12-year-olds who buy the games by walking to their local Game Stop and then hiding it until late at night during a sleepover (where your child visits and plays it even though he doesn't own those kind of video games because he is a good kid). The question in this case was not whether the video game manufacturers should be able to sell to kids, or even market their mature products to kids who everyone admits are too young for the game. The question in this case is should those kids have to ask their parents for permission to buy those video games as they have to do already for pornography. The question is whether our puritanical society thinks consensual sex is worse than murder. The answer is clear. They are both terrible evils... [Excuse this interruption, I'm being handed a message from our sponsors. "Violence is awesome!!! Rip off some fucking heads!!! Rip them off!!! Yeah!!! Rip that hot bitch in half!!! Yeah!!! This rocks!!!"]