Transgender Homecoming King: in celebration of Andrew: UPDATED

Not much time to post here this morning, but I have a short piece up at Inside Higher Education today: The Meaning of a Transgender Homecoming King. Last month, PCC elected my former student, Andrew Gomez (who is transitioning from female to male) as its Homecoming King. Homecoming is a bigger deal here than on most community college campuses, and I have some reflections at IHE.

UPDATE: I realize that the IHE piece was edited, and some of what I wrote was left out; the full piece as I originally wrote it is below the fold.

This story, which ran in Saturday’s Pasadena Star-News, has now been picked up nationally: King for a day: Transgender student elected Homecoming king.

For Andrew Gomez, the month of November has been one of firsts.

First, he broke the news to his mother that he was transitioning from a female to a male. Then the 24-year-old transgender student was elected Homecoming king at Pasadena City College.

Neither event came easily, but the second milestone nearly did not happen. PCC’s Homecoming committee initially ruled Gomez ineligible because of his pierced ear.

“I wanted them to feel like they could do something like this, instead of having them feel, `I am not straight so I can’t do this,”‘ Gomez said.

I’m very proud of Andrew, who was a student in my Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History class in the spring of 2006. Andrew’s election — which has been reported as far away as Boston — represents a significant milestone for Pasadena City College and the broader Pasadena community. Pasadena, after all, is home to the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Queen. There are very few other communities in the United States where elected “courts” of queens or kings are taken more seriously than here. (Technically, in order to be on the Rose Court, a young woman must live within our college district boundaries, a little-known fact.) Most community colleges in California don’t celebrate Homecoming week with PCC’s enthusiasm and sense of tradition. We’re one of the state’s oldest community colleges (founded in 1924), and our Homecoming tradition predates the days when Jackie Robinson starred for our football team (before he transferred on to UCLA and the Brooklyn Dodgers.) So Andrew’s election — as a transgendered man, and not merely to the Homecoming Court but to “King” itself — is a remarkable and noteworthy occurence.

In 2004, the New York Times ran a story about the impact gay and lesbian students were having on Homecoming traditions. When I first read about the significant energy that so many young activists were expending on changing those traditions, I wondered if their efforts were not misplaced. Surely, I thought, there were more important battles for gay, lesbian, and transgendered students to fight than for inclusion on Homecoming courts. After all, in most American high schools, Homecoming kings and queens are selected from the ranks of the most popular students on campus — and in most places, the most popular students are conventionally attractive embodiments of traditional gender roles. From a feminist standpoint, the whole “Homecoming” culture seemed irredeemably sexist. As Audre Lord said, “you can’t dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools.” Having openly GLBTQ students run for Homecoming court seemed to be a rather silly attempt to do just that.

Andrew Gomez has single-handedly changed my mind. He’s the talk of campus, and most of that talk has been overwhelmingly positive. Being Homecoming King or Queen at a community college (where most students, even here, would have trouble naming the football team’s opponent for the Homecoming football game) is not, perhaps, a terribly significant achievement. But Andrew’s decision to run — and the students’ decision to elect him — has had a measurable impact. There’s no group more frequently ridiculed than the transgendered; even those who are grudgingly willing to extend some rights to gay and lesbian folks often recoil from those whose very identity is at apparent odds with their physiology. Andrew, who is handsome, bright, charismatic and active on campus, is in many respects a terrific role model for young “trans” people.

It would be wrong to assume that Andrew Gomez ran for King in order to subvert the entire Homecoming tradition. Andrew takes the college and its traditions seriously, as did the students who voted for him. Electing a man who was born in a woman’s body to be Homecoming King is, at least here in Pasadena, a reflection of a popular commitment to expand and update a respected autumn ritual. The age-old dilemma for feminist progressives (whether to work within the system to transform its sexist nature or reject it totally) remains, but in the case of Andrew Gomez’s Homecoming triumph, it’s hard to see this victory as anything other than a small but significant victory for the transgendered and their allies.

Of course, the novelty of Andrew’s victory, as exciting as it is, is a reminder that on countless high school and college campuses this fall, Homecoming rituals played out in ways that weren’t innovative or inclusive. In most places, the popular, good-looking kids who exhibited “ideal heterosexual behavior” won Homecoming titles. In most places, the criteria for participating in this nearly-century old tradition haven’t changed in decades. Homecoming rituals may not have the same grip on the majority of students the way we imagine that they did in the 1950s. That doesn’t mean, however, that for the substantial minority of students who do care passionately about who “wins” King and Queen that the process has become any less sexist and reactionary. Of all the important battles that need to be fought on college campuses, the struggle to transform Homecoming (or abandon it altogether) may not seem the most pressing. But Andrew Gomez’s victory reminds us that these rituals still have power, still have meaning, and still need to be confronted.