Are you genderqueer? Well, have you thought about it? But wait, you say, I'm not even "regular" queer. Not a problem, straight people can be genderqueer, too. Don't be shy; take this self-diagnostic genderqueer test: Are you tired of having expectations placed on you that are based on your genitalia? Do you refuse to live within the socially accepted duality of gender? Do you feel like the biological sex you were born into is sometimes or all of the time an imperfect or insufficient fit? Do you in any way transgress the boundaries of the gender norms imposed upon you?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, you might be genderqueer. Of course, only you get to decide how you want to identify yourself, this test is only designed to get you a little more in touch with that gender identity.

Now that you know what genderqueer is, and maybe have just experienced the exciting revelation that you are indeed genderqueer yourself, now what? Well, it seems that here at Macalester, you are in good company. This year on campus there has been a good deal of screwing around with gender going on right out in the open, with events like the Club Casanova drag king show and speakers like Debra Davis, the transgendered librarian who transitioned in her public high school and the revered Kate Bornstein, author of My Gender Workbook and Gender Outlaw.

But is Macalester the genderqueer paradise it could, and I think, should, be? I am queer, both in terms of my sexuality and my gender and I am concerned about the gendered way we do things around here. I am uncomfortable being herded into this bathroom or that based on what is under my panties, thong, boxers or briefs. Our gendered system accommodates self-identified masculine men and feminine women pretty well, but leaves everyone else, such as people who are intersex, transgendered, bi/tri/omnigendered, androgenous, etc., out in the rain. I am not so sure anymore that gender has earned the importance we are ascribing to it. It is starting to feel a bit arbitrary ... like dividing us up based on whether we like chocolate or vanilla. But wait, you say, what if I like chocolate and vanilla? What if I like strawberry? That's the point—not everything can be divided into a simple either/or scenario. This creates a problem when we force people to fit into the "either/or" of gender. And besides, would you really want to be stuck with one ice cream flavor for your whole life? I don't mean to imply that gender identity is something that genderqueer people just wake up and decide each day. Although gender identity can be fluid, it is certainly not trivial. I do not get up in the morning and say, "hmmm, today I'll be a man!" anymore than you would get up and say "today I think I'll be attracted to women/men/horses."

Even though I am a genderqueer person and despite my growing uneasiness with the system, it still works pretty well for me. See, if I want to, I can still squeeze myself into the "woman" box and slide nicely into the mainstream when, for example, it comes time for room draw and I need to find a roommate. But I am not comfortable with that, because I know people (who often identify themselves as transgender) for whom that option does not exist. I have transgendered friends who could check either the "male" or "female" box on their hypothetical surveys and still be wrong. They could walk into either the woman's room or the men's room and be in the wrong place. The fact is, I think it is hard to come by transgendered folks at Macalester, and maybe that is because our system of sorting people based on gender, especially with respect to on-campus housing, effectively prevents many transgendered people from coming here for their education in the first place.

So why are we still asking a question that, for some people, has no right answer? Why are we forcing each other to fit into this rigid, exclusive, and arbitrary duality of gender? I am not so sure about this gendered system anymore. And I hope you are starting to question it, too.