Gender Roles

Peggy Biro didn't plan to be a truck driver. But in 1996, laid off from her grocery-store management position and going through a bitter divorce, she began to consider it. "They said you can be away in the truck 30 days at a time; I said that sounds like a good runaway job to me," said Biro, who lives in the Northern California town of Anderson. Five years later, she has remarried and settled down with Pomona-based KKW Trucking.

BUENOS AIRES - Daniel Frago sat with a cup of coffee at a small table on the edge of the dance floor, explaining the art of the tango. "It's not about the man and the woman," the 55-year-old Buenos Aires hairdresser said. "It's about the driver and the driven. " Frago had come out to celebrate the eighth birthday of Tango Queer, a weekly party where women dance freely with women, and men dance freely with men. It's one of several popular gatherings in Buenos Aires that cater to gay and lesbian tango enthusiasts, as well as straights who want to test the dance's traditionally heterosexual gender roles.

A milestone in the history of American gender roles was reported in your newspaper but it was buried in the Business Section, so I fear many of your readers missed it. I am, of course, referring to the report that the new Nordstrom department store in Santa Ana will be offering diaper-changing tables in the men's as well as the women's restrooms. Your article noted that the tables are being put in the men's rooms in response to "a crying demand from several male customers." This is cheering news for many of us out here who've been toiling away for the last two decades to change society's assumptions about how families function in real life.

One of my hobbies is collecting what I call strange convergences, unexpected overlaps between seemingly antithetical political philosophies. For example, when it comes to gender identity and the proper role of women, Christian conservatives arguably have more in common with the Muslims they so distrust than they do with feminists and secular liberals. That's not to say that they endorse honor killings, forced marriages, full-body veils or criminal sanctions for homosexuality. But there are undeniable points of connection.

BREAKING CLEAN By Judy Blunt Alfred A. Knopf 320 pages; $24 Like her parents and grandparents before her, Judy Blunt was raised to live amid the austere terrain of eastern Montana. "I could rope and ride and jockey a John Deere as well as my brothers," she writes of her childhood in "Breaking Clean," a spare, sharp-eyed memoir, "but being female, I also learned to bake bread and can vegetables and reserve my opinion when the men were talking."

Attempts to evoke the past inevitably reveal current obsessions more clearly than those of any earlier time. To art historians, Jugendstil is a movement that began around 1890 as a German manifestation of what we call Art Nouveau. However, the three locally based creators of "Firewaves, an evening of dance and performance in the spirit of Jugendstil," all focused on reversals of conventional gender roles.

BUENOS AIRES - Daniel Frago sat with a cup of coffee at a small table on the edge of the dance floor, explaining the art of the tango. "It's not about the man and the woman," the 55-year-old Buenos Aires hairdresser said. "It's about the driver and the driven. " Frago had come out to celebrate the eighth birthday of Tango Queer, a weekly party where women dance freely with women, and men dance freely with men. It's one of several popular gatherings in Buenos Aires that cater to gay and lesbian tango enthusiasts, as well as straights who want to test the dance's traditionally heterosexual gender roles.

Sometimes she wants to protect them, sometimes she wants to, as she says, "kick their butts." But there's one thing that Theresa Carter knows about herself and her students--who fall into that category called "at-risk"--at Simons Middle School in Pomona. She often treats the girls differently from the boys. "Basically with a guy, no matter what the personality, I'll use more patience," said Carter, 51, who also has four children of her own.

Elizabeth Brumfiel, a widely recognized scholar in the field of feminist archaeology who studied Aztec culture, examining not only the functional and economic significance of ancient relics but what scholars learned about changing gender roles and relations in society, has died. She was 66. Brumfiel, a past president of the American Anthropological Assn., died of cancer Jan. 1 at a hospice in Skokie, Ill., her family said. In 2007, the Mexican village of Xaltocan presented her with the Eagle Warrior Prize — named after the highest warrior class in Aztec society — for her dedication to the Xaltocan community.

If the pill had never been invented, perhaps American politics would be very different today. Sex has consumed the political debate in recent weeks. To many it has been a surprising turn of events, given the near-universal prediction that this year's election would be all about the economy. If the history of the bipartisan sexual counterrevolution were better known, no one would be surprised. Conflicts over gay marriage, transvaginal ultrasounds, Planned Parenthood funding and insurance coverage for birth control are not isolated events.

If the pill had never been invented, perhaps American politics would be very different today. Sex has consumed the political debate in recent weeks. To many it has been a surprising turn of events, given the near-universal prediction that this year's election would be all about the economy. If the history of the bipartisan sexual counterrevolution were better known, no one would be surprised. Conflicts over gay marriage, transvaginal ultrasounds, Planned Parenthood funding and insurance coverage for birth control are not isolated events.

Elizabeth Brumfiel, a widely recognized scholar in the field of feminist archaeology who studied Aztec culture, examining not only the functional and economic significance of ancient relics but what scholars learned about changing gender roles and relations in society, has died. She was 66. Brumfiel, a past president of the American Anthropological Assn., died of cancer Jan. 1 at a hospice in Skokie, Ill., her family said. In 2007, the Mexican village of Xaltocan presented her with the Eagle Warrior Prize — named after the highest warrior class in Aztec society — for her dedication to the Xaltocan community.

Sergio Garcia stood in the gymnasium and told the senior class at Fairfax High School not to worry: If he was elected, he wouldn't wear a dress. "I will be wearing a suit," Garcia said, "but don't be fooled, deep down inside, I am a queen!" Garcia, 18, spent most of his years at Fairfax openly gay and wanted to be part of the Los Angeles school's prom court -- but not as prom king.

An elementary school event in which students were encouraged to dress as members of the opposite sex drew the ire of a Christian radio group, whose broadcast prompted outraged calls to the district office. Students at Pineview Elementary School in Reedsburg were encouraged on Friday to dress either as senior citizens or as members of the opposite gender as part of a school tradition called Wacky Week. The dress-up day was not an attempt to promote cross-dressing, homosexuality or alternative gender roles, district administrator Tom Benson said.

To judge by the American Film Institute's list of the greatest American comedies, there is apparently nothing funnier than a dude in a dress. At No. 1 in the AFI rankings (which were issued in 2000): Billy Wilder's 1959 cross-dressing comedy, "Some Like It Hot." At No. 2: Sydney Pollack's 1982 cross-dressing comedy, "Tootsie." A case could be made that Wilder's farce, with its view of sexual identity as a fluid construction, was ahead of its time.

What if you were a 10-year-old boy who woke up one morning to find that everyone, Mom and Dad included, thought that you were a girl, and always had been? And what if your mom sent you to school in the pinkest, frilliest, laciest dress you've ever seen--and everyone at school thought you were a girl, too? Gender stereotypes are given a delicious trouncing in "Bill's New Frock," presented by the Mark Taper Forum's professional theater for young audiences, P.L.A.Y.

One of my hobbies is collecting what I call strange convergences, unexpected overlaps between seemingly antithetical political philosophies. For example, when it comes to gender identity and the proper role of women, Christian conservatives arguably have more in common with the Muslims they so distrust than they do with feminists and secular liberals. That's not to say that they endorse honor killings, forced marriages, full-body veils or criminal sanctions for homosexuality. But there are undeniable points of connection.

An elementary school event in which students were encouraged to dress as members of the opposite sex drew the ire of a Christian radio group, whose broadcast prompted outraged calls to the district office. Students at Pineview Elementary School in Reedsburg were encouraged on Friday to dress either as senior citizens or as members of the opposite gender as part of a school tradition called Wacky Week. The dress-up day was not an attempt to promote cross-dressing, homosexuality or alternative gender roles, district administrator Tom Benson said.

BREAKING CLEAN By Judy Blunt Alfred A. Knopf 320 pages; $24 Like her parents and grandparents before her, Judy Blunt was raised to live amid the austere terrain of eastern Montana. "I could rope and ride and jockey a John Deere as well as my brothers," she writes of her childhood in "Breaking Clean," a spare, sharp-eyed memoir, "but being female, I also learned to bake bread and can vegetables and reserve my opinion when the men were talking."

The teenager mounts her motorcycle, starts the engine and in a flash is defying gravity, balanced nearly parallel to the ground as she speeds around inside a 26-foot-tall cylinder she calls her "Wall of Death." She's also defying the strict social mores that conservative Islamic clerics are seeking to maintain despite strong electoral support given to Iranian reformers in recent years.