Trying to Shove Ourselves Back Together

Abstract

Trying to Shove Ourselves Back Together Miah Jeffra (bio) (after Hedwig and the Angry Inch) In summer 2018 a group of senators, led by California representative Kamala Harris, introduced a bill that would require the US Census Bureau to solicit and record responses in our country's largest survey for a new category: gender identity. Forms for the census—which the Constitution requires every person in the US to take part in—have long offered people the option to select "male" or "female" as their sex. Harris said, in a written statement, "The spirit of the census is that no one should go uncounted and no one should be invisible." I'm curious what sort of spirit a census possesses. In general, it is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population, usually one of a nation. It bears Latin derivation, with the earliest known Roman census administered by King Servius Tullius in the sixth century bc. Other known census efforts, however, began a thousand years prior, in Egypt. Intact records from the first century ad have been preserved in China. There are mentions of a census in Exodus. India performed a census around 300 bc during the reign of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya. The new bill does not clarify what response options for gender identity would appear on the Census Bureau's questionnaires. The agency would be asked to conduct research to come up with a plan to develop the new questions within a year after the bill becomes a law. This bill arrived on the heels of what appears to be a movement to more accurately represent the complex of our culture, and particularly this aspect of human identity: gender. For so long, at least in the Eurocolonized US, male and female were the options available for both someone's sex—their biological attributes apparent at birth—and their gender—an individual's performed characteristics of being. My friend, Hollywood neighbor, and fellow broke artist, Cee, had a personal visit during the 2010 Census "because I forgot to fill my form [End Page 77] out." The representative was a skinny kid with pimples on his chin and a buzz cut. Cee identifies as neither gender. So, when it came time for the sixth question on the census form, and the only choices available to check were male and female boxes, Cee gawped at the representative with an open mouth. Buzz Cut was equally turkeynecked—it is rather difficult to assign Cee an apparent gender upon sight—so Buzz Cut ultimately instructed, "Whatever it says on your birth certificate is what you have to check." Cee, not a stranger to public humiliations, explained to me over beers at our favorite dive, the Spotlight, "I wanted to cry, Miah. It's different when it's assholes heckling on the street, or homonormative dudes in West Hollywood. This was the government. My government. I love this country." And in the following elliptical silence, I knew Cee was discovering, in a deeper way than they had ever considered, that their country, in some ways, didn't love them. This is changing, however, and not just in America but around the world—if bureaucratic minutiae is any signifier, at least. Australians now can choose "X" as their gender in all government documents. In 2004 the Chiang Mai Technology School in Thailand allocated a separate restroom for kathoeys, with an intertwined male and female symbol on the door. In 2007 in Nepal, the supreme court ordered the government to issue citizenship cards that allowed "third gender" to be listed. In 2016 an Oregon circuit court ruled that resident Jamie Shupe could legally change gender to "non-binary." And, in 2017, my home state of California passed legislation implementing a third, nonbinary gender marker on birth certificates and driver's licenses. Many socially progressive folks are clinking wine glasses over this recent development. The news excited me as well. In the Bay Area, I have dozens of friends and colleagues who don't subscribe to "male" or "female." My friend B was born with the biological attributes assigned to a male but adopts the cultural characteristics of the feminine...