Bonus Post: The Gender Issue

There's a lot of discussion about gender in news and social media outlets these days: gender bias, gender equality, gender ambiguity, transgender people, etc. I'm usually fascinated by these discussions because gender is at once very personal and almost completely socially constructed. I tend to lean toward a gender continuum, which is to say that I dislike the idea of a strictly binary gender model. Gender identity is a huge part of being human, and I believe gender is much more complex and nuanced than the male/female dichotomy Western society tends to embrace.

Nevertheless, when it comes to teaching low-fluency English speakers, simplicity is paramount. I most often stick to really concrete subjects and examples, like objects in the room, or easily demonstrated activities, like walking or lifting.

I am substituting for Mary at ASIA, Inc. on Tuesday and Thursday this week. That means I am teaching both the higher and lower levels of this class from 9:30 am until 3:00 pm, with no help from volunteers. (I'm getting paid, too, which is nice.) I met with Mary Monday, and she suggested a few lessons, one of which was a mock-up of a form to fill out. This is a "vocational" ESOL class, so we try to tailor the lessons to the workplace, which for these people means knowing how to fill out a lot of forms. I don't mind this kind of lesson; it's pretty concrete and involves a lot of repetition, two cornerstones to teaching ESOL.

I saw the problem right away, however. This form included "gender" as one of the things to fill out. We've never broached the idea of gender with this group before. How, exactly, does one explain the complex, abstract idea of gender to people whose working English vocabulary is less than that of first graders?

I started with members of the family because I knew Rebecca had been working on that weeks ago. I wrote the word family on the white board and asked the class what members of the family they remembered. They started slowly, but soon began to call out "grandmother" and "son" with more confidence. I wrote each word in one of two columns under the heading of family. After we had a good long list in each column, I had everyone repeat the entire column after me.

"What are all of these?" I asked, indicating the list of females. I got mostly blank stares. "These are all women; right?" 

Bo and Puk, two of our newer students who understand more than most, nodded.

"I'm a woman; right?" I tapped my hand on my own chest. More people nodded and seemed to get it.

"So, what are all of these?" I indicated the list of males. "These are men; right?" More nods. I felt confident that they were following me, so I pressed on.

"Here's a couple of new words for you," I said as I wrote male above the column of male names and female above the other column. "Male means man, and female means woman. Okay?"

A few students were writing in their notebooks; the others sat and stared at me.

"I'm a woman, right?" I tapped my chest again. "I am female. Kamala is a female. Asha is a female. Nadi is a female. Right?"

Most everyone nodded in agreement. I felt we were making progress.

"So these are all males: father is male; uncle is male' grandfather is male; right?" A few nods. "Lindu is a male. Bo is a male. Puk is a male. Sanji," I confronted the student at the front of the table. "Are you a male?"

"No," he said with a smile. Bo and Puk laughed a little.

Sanji is an interesting student. He is in his late twenties or early thirties and more cute than handsome. He has a child-like quality about him, maybe because of his smooth, round features, maybe because of his easy smile and playful manner. On one of my first volunteer days in this class, as he was searching for his ID card in his wallet, I saw a business card with some handwriting on the back: "good sex call" and a phone number.

"Sanji," I said, laughing a little myself, "are you a man or a woman?"

"Wo…uh…man," he stuttered.

"Yes, you are a man," I said. "That means you are male. Am I a man or a woman?"

"Man…uh…no…woman," he said, shaking his head and correcting himself.

"Yes, I am a woman. That means I am female. Are you female?"

"Yes," he said.

We went back and forth like this a few times. The other students giggled and tried to explain to him in Nepali what he was doing wrong. After a while, we moved on to filling out the form mock-ups. I wrote some of the questions on the board to help them get words in the correct spaces, to write above the lines rather than below them. The second most difficult question was "marital status," but that was cleared up easily. Everyone in the room said they were married. Except Sanji. He couldn't seem to make up his mind about whether he was married or not. Nadi said he doesn't wear a ring, so he can't be married. But when I asked him directly, rephrasing the question to "do you have a wife," Sanji said yes.

He still marked an X in the box next to the F for the gender question. And we started all over again.

"Sanji, are you a man or a woman?"

"Yes, wo…uh, no…uh.. man."

"Sanji, are you male or female?"

"Fem…no…uh…male?"

Sanji, what gender are you?"

"Male!"

Through all of the lessons for the rest of the day, I came back to this one several times. By 2:30, I believe he got it because he hesitated less and answered correctly almost every time. Of course, by then the room was sweltering and all of us were a little punchy. Nadi started calling herself male just to be funny, I think. I let the class go a little early.

All of this only serves to reinforce my belief that gender is way more subtle and complex than the binary of male and female, no matter what cultural context it comes in. I'm pretty sure my students understood not only the lesson I was teaching them, but also the reasons Sanji's difficulty with the gender question was funny. Even if he was merely perplexed by the sounds and rhythms of English, he made us all think about the possibility of a more elastic gender continuum, and the constraining limitations of a binary gender system.

The real beauty in this lesson, for me, is that all of this was happening within the larger context of the 9t Gay Games being hosted in Cleveland, and many of its track and field events being held at The University of Akron. When I was done teaching Tuesday, my husband and I went to campus to catch what we could of those events. We watched a tall German man with a shock of platinum hair do some pole-vaulting, heard some announced results of long-distance running events, and just missed the end of the martial arts expo at the John S. Knight center. There were lots and lots of people of every imaginable size, shape, and fashion sense walking around our fair city, giving the whole place a festival atmosphere.

What I took away from my class Tuesday was that nuance of thought is not necessarily lost because of paucity of vocabulary. And what I hope the average American takes away from the Gay Games is that gender is not only way more complex than our society has allowed for, but also way less important—in the long run—than strength of character. Also, rainbows make fabulous sportswear.