Pearl-girls and Trans-boys--a twist on convention?

Here's an interesting article from the NY Times's Magazine on transmen (a new phrase for me)--that is, a transgender person transition from female to male. It's a good article, and an interesting discussion about transmen on women's college campuses.

It's interesting that they published this particular article (my impression is that it is a segment of a longer work-in-progress) because it is in fact couched in terms of an update on the battle of the sexes. The subject of the article is Rey, a transmen who decided to go to Bernard, still Columbia's sister college, and switched to Columbia after a week. While the author nicely dissects the problems of a transmale or gender-queer person in a specifically gendered space, it is problematic that she relies on friction between men and women and in order to do so, she reinforces gender stereotypes.

Bernard College, where Rey matriculated for a week before transferring to Columbia College, is "one of the last girls-with-pearls bastions;" indeed "the women on campus seemed to Rey to be socially conservative and archly feminine." (Sounds like a certain green-and-pink-festooned college I know.) Bernard doesn't have a culture of accepting more than one version of femaleness--the pearls and Cup and enormous-white-wedding-to-the-perfect-boy-that-Daddy-pays-for kind. (Do they use "Daddy" in New York?). This is a very self-protecting culture. It is alienating to not conform and sometimes deathly (but frequently painful) to.

The author never referred to Rey using a female pronoun nor by his given name (at his request to protect his family). When discussing Rey as a thirteen year old, the author says that he was bat-mitzvahed and became a woman. (Not having met Rey, I likely would have used she at 13 and he at 18. It gives a clearer impression of the person we are discussing and illustrates more clearly the impact of the change.). In addition to being gendered male through pronouns, Rey is portrayed as a typical young man with typical boy living habits. He's messy and sloppy. He and his girlfriend Melissa discuss living together, but she's nervous--he's so messy. Never cleans up well after himself.

In this portrayal of the couple, the author reinforces gender stereotypes. Melissa is a typical female would-be nag, and Rey the sloppy male who just doesn't care how things look enough to clean them. This little difference between Melissa, gendered female, and Rey, gendered male, is emblematic of the author's treatment of the relations between the genders in the larger piece.

Rey's sojourn at the women's college, his acceptance by traditional feminine community, lasts for a week until he leaves for a community with a more accepting view of gender. The battle of the sexes is engaged, and woman--a sanctimonious version of femininity represented by the community of archly female women at Bernard--defeats man, represented by Rey who, while trans-, is always gendered male. The woman wins the day by being particularly rigid and cruel. The author reinforces gender stereotypes that portray women negatively and in doing so, she does the one thing that Rey rejects--puts his gender identity in a box.